Monday, Monday

Monday, Monday why do you have to follow Sunday?

I married my first husband, quite honestly, I don't know why. I mean at the time it seemed like a good thing to do. But, once caught up in the actual act of it, I wanted to run, run like the wind. Why didn't anyone (like my true love, my high school sweetheart) stand up and object. Why couldn't someone have the voice that I seemed to have lost. Why couldn't someone just say "no". Why couldn't that person be me?

My life, as it was, was going nowhere fast. I was working full-time in Manhattan, at a job that was given to me and not even remotely related to the Paralegal degree I had. Enter the cousin of my best friend. As an uptight NYer (gasp!), this strange, kinda hippie looking guy from California, piqued my interests. He was bizarre, irreverent and completely spontaneous. Just what a conservative, Catholic school upbringing, young thing found attractive in some perverse way.

Mind you, at the time I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. As entertaining as he was, he was just a little too "off" for me. But, there was this underlying attraction brewing. Life went on and he returned to California to resume his non-materialistic life, while I, quite frankly, embraced all things money could buy, and did. My office was one block from Macy's in NYC and I could do a marathon scouting, shopping expedition in under one hour.

My best friend worked a few blocks from me for Hilton Hotels and her job came with some impressive perks. Like free hotel rooms at any HH. Our grand plan was to take full advantage of this perk on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. Only, Oahu didn't want us, or any other hotel guests for that matter. The hotel workers were planning a strike and hotels were not going to confirm any reservations. Arriving in Hawaii without a place to sleep didn't sound like much fun, even if it meant being homeless in Paradise.

Enter California......

My friend's aunt and cousins (see strange guy, above) lived in sunny California, home to all the tanned, beach bunny babes, and we thought what the hell. So we packed our bags and headed to Beverly Hills, hills that is, movie stars. Seriously. One of the comped rooms was at the Beverly Hills Hilton. Very nice digs.

Our trip was to LA first, then a drive up the coast to Monterey, and finally San Francisco with visits to Petaluma to see the "strange" cousin. I don't remember the Monterey Hilton so much because we arrived in the middle of the night and I never did make it to the SF Hilton. Long story short, either my hormones were raging horny or "strange" cousin was really not so strange.

Three days later, I'm on my way back to NY with a "boyfriend" in California. How many NY girls could say that, huh? It seemed so cool at the time.....

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Recipe:

I love to bake. I love to eat what I bake. I am a recovering anorexic so I don't eat as much as I'd like to. More about this later...

I made this recipe a few days ago. It's from Baking Bites' website.
I think this is one of the easiest things you can put together in under 5 minutes, especially if you use fruit you don't have to cut up. I used fresh blueberries, but any fresh or frozen fruit would work.

Easy Cobbler (my name for the recipe not Baking Bites’)

½ cup flour
1 egg
¾ cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp lemon extract or any other complementary flavoring (optional)
1 - 1 ½ cups fruit cut up if necessary

Preheat oven to 350', grease a 9 x 9 glass baking dish.
Combine all the ingredients except the fruit in a small mixing bowl. This will look like a whole lot of nothing. Don't worry, it works.

Pour the batter into 9 x 9 glass baking pan (this is what I've used but a pie plate was in the original recipe). This is a very thick batter, so you will have to spread it with a spatula to get it into the corners.

Sprinkle the top with the fruit of your choice. The original recipe called for rhubarb, which I have made with frozen strawberries and is very good.

Bake 350' for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned on top. This is delicious warm and has a crunchy top when fresh. After refrigerating (if it lasts that long) it becomes soft but just as good.