Dear President Obama,

Thank you for the work that you’ve done to bring the Affordable Care Act to fruition. Leaving aside the government shutdown nonsense for a moment, today the healthcare exchanges opened, enabling many of my friends and colleagues to get affordable health care for the first time. They are small business owners, independent contractors, freelance artists, and people with pre-existing conditions that made them ineligible for basic health care.

I am one of those people. I run marathons, don’t smoke, eat a mostly vegetarian diet, wear my seatbelt, my sunscreen, my bike helmet. I should be an insurance company’s dream. But I was treated for skin cancer when I was in my early twenties, and as a result, I’ve never qualified for an individual health insurance plan. I could never start my own business or work as a freelance theatre artist, because no one would insure me unless I was under an employer’s giant umbrella. And going without health coverage would have exposed my parents and their retirement assets to the unlikely-but-still-possible chance that I would sustain some extremely expensive illness or accident. The Affordable Care Act has opened up whole new opportunities for my life and my career. For so many Americans like me. And unlike me.

We have a long long way to go in order to untangle the mess that is our healthcare system, but for today, thank you for standing strong in the face of many many opponents and showing the country, and the world, that, just like education, shelter and food, access to health care is a right, not a privilege.

Sincerely,

Teresa.
I love those gourds! I always just roast them until they’re soft and eat them with lots of butter and salt.

Me.
Well then, don’t be surprised if you hear the doorbell ring and find a paper bag full of gourds abandoned on your doorstep one afternoon. Last week we dropped Eddie at a friend’s house for the weekend (had an allergic house guest) and we included in the bag a spaghetti squash that was larger than the cat!

Me.
Half the issue is getting INTO the gourd in order to roast it. Whoever suggested that you could PEEL an uncooked butternut squash? Trying to open a butternut squash with a vegetable peeler is like trying saw a log in half with a noodle. Maybe I need a meat cleaver?

Teresa.
Ok, so you can peel a butternut squash. After seeing it online a million places and trying it and failing, I went out and bought a new peeler and that made the difference. It was now possible, although it dulls the peeler quickly and when the peeler is sharp I always felt in imminent danger of peeling my finger.

Me.
Let’s review: a gourd can ruin a metal vegetable peeler and then threatens to turn the peeler on you? Any food that puts up that much of a fight makes me think that maybe I just wasn’t meant to eat it.

Teresa.
And I should have said I’m onboard with all the gourds except spaghetti squash. Those are just a cruel trick. Roast them and then mix the roasted squash in with something yummy to hide it… like pasta sauce. I once made the mistake of substituting the squash for noodles. Ugh. You will not be fooled. Have real noodles also.

Me.
My forth-coming memoir about learning to eat gourds will be called, “Have Real Noodles Also.”

We have enacted new austerity measures in order to sock away enough money for a down payment on a house, and those measures include trying to eat all the already-paid-for vegetables in the CSA box each week for dinner, rather than eating dinners out.

I never know what to do with those winter squash we get from the CSA. Do we eat them? Are they decorative gourds? Should I put them in a papier mâché cornucopia and decorate the mantel with them? Dry one out and make it into a rattle? Mostly they sit on my counter glaring at me. I glare back. But tonight I came home armed with a recipe. “I am going to eat you, gourd,” I warned. And we did. One delicata squash, roasted and tossed into a green salad with goat cheese, toasted walnuts and parsley vinaigrette. It was nothing to get excited about, but still, there is one less gourd occupying my countertop, so I consider the meal a success.

a co-worker brought his dog, a goldendoodle named Gatsby, to work yesterday. as i was fussing over him, i told the dog affectionately, “you have some serious dog-breath!”

my coworker leaned over conspiratorially, “i secretly kind of like that smell,” he confesses, “don’t tell anyone.”

“that’s okay,” i confided, “i secretly love the smell of warm, sleepy cat.”

I received this in the mail, and automatically handed it to Ben, thinking it was a little odd that my grandmother was writing him a letter, but whatever. Apparently I’m not yet used to being “Mrs. Ben Wilhelm.” :)

My training plan had 16 miles on the schedule for today but I’m on vacation in California. So my brother, sister-in-law and husband assembled a bike relay team and each person accompanied me for 5 or 6 miles. Thanks team! I have the best family.

…and sometimes, you’re standing next to Peter Sagel at a party all evening and don’t even realize it because 1) you’re bad at recognizing celebrities, even NPR celebrities, and 2) your husband fails to make an introduction even though he knows him!

for christmas last year, B gave me a gift certificate for a one-day letterpress class at a paper arts studio. it took until august to schedule it, but we finally managed to take the class. the only thing better than working with beautiful paper and ink is working with beautiful paper, ink, 100+ year old machines, and zillions of little compartmentalized cabinets and drawers*. a photo journal of the afternoon:

* compartmentalization, both literal and figurative, is basically my most favorite thing ever.

As a belated wedding gift, my childhood friend Nick came to visit us this past weekend and took us out to dinner at, holy shit, Alinea. I will never eat a meal as delicious, or as expensive, as that one again. But perfect gift giving sometimes requires giving someone something they can’t or won’t buy for themselves. So when Nick said he wanted to take us out to a “crazy awesome dinner”, and I suggested Chalkboard or the Publican, he ignored me and bought tickets for Alinea’s 14-course tasting menu.

The evening is more of an eating amusement park than it is a simple meal in a restaurant. Every detail is catered to, from the moment you walk in the door. The front entry is an immersive art installation (for the summer season, a carpet of real grass, growing indoors, and a sort of maze that leads one from the street to the lobby entrance in dim neon pink light). The host somehow magically knew who we were and whisked us to a table. There was a centerpiece of pickled vegetables sitting in a box of grass and lit from beneath by a bright halogen light (giving off a green glow through the vegetables), which turned into the 3rd course when they opened the jar and served us heirloom tomatoes from within. I joked that, over the course of the 4 hour meal, they knew when I wanted to visit the restroom almost before I did. Someone would materialize to escort me to the ladies room, then pull out my chair when I returned, clean napkin folded and waiting for me. The servers weren’t just stiff, formal, and impeccably trained, but actually adapted their style to ours. We were a table of casual people who were there to have a good time, and they chatted with us and made us comfortable. The table next to us was on a very formal date and their server was polite, efficient, nearly invisible.

So, the food. The food! A ravioli filled with rich truffle liquid that literally explodes in your mouth. A cold potato and mushroom soup with a tiny hot roasted potato dropped into it moments before eating. Fried squash blossom with cardamom and saffron. Heirloom tomatoes with Spanish goat’s brie, melon sorbet and cucumber-foam. Ceviche served on a bed of seaweed that spilled out lemongrass-scented dry ice. Duck prepared four different ways. Squares of pork belly and daikon that some described as “life-changing”. A deep-fried shrimp head to be eaten in its entirety, with six inch long antennae standing up like the wild bits of a floral arrangement. Things on fire! Five tiny cubes of ginger served on skewers like acupuncture needles, to transition from the savory to the sweet courses. A helium balloon made of apple fruit leather, so that after inhaling the helium, one actually ate the entire ballon, string and all. For a final course, a chef comes to the table, rolls out a rubber mat, and “paints” dessert directly onto the table, a sort of free-form chocolate tart surrounded by a splatter paint of violet and raspberry syrups. Wines selected to pair with each course or couple of courses. French press coffee to finish. A cab waiting for us after a quick post-dinner tour of the kitchen.

But there is a part of me that is ashamed of eating such fine things when other people have so little to eat. I mean, we could have donated the cost of that meal and then enjoyed an evening of pizza and beer together, right? But this was a gift, and not any less enjoyed or appreciated for my nagging guilt about the expense. Nick bought the tickets, and treating us to dinner is what he wanted to do. The best I can do with this Catholic Guilt* is to always be grateful for the opportunities that come my way. Enjoy them, try to pay them forward.

Hopleaf’s bathroom stall is pulling for you.