Playing Teacher

Twenty curious faces and a cocktail dress. What better to lecture in than a tobacco-colored number and lizard skin high heels?

My Learning Annex classroom on Madison Square Park reminded me of my Gotham Writer days. But, of course, instead of squeezing my hips into a desk designed for a ten year-old’s slender frame, I was strutting (tottering?) across the linoleum floor, in front of the blackboard, trying to entertain, inspire and answer questions about GoogleSense, AdSense and the like. Technical mumbo jumbo makes me blush—it’s NOT my thing. I admitted such and swiftly transitioned our talk to more important topics like, Martha Stewart and “Who is coming out with me afterward for a fancy cocktail?” I love elderflower and champagne.

There was an Eastern European beauty and a charming woman with a 7-carat diamond (yes, we became such fast friends that she divulged diamond details in our booth at “Eleven Madison”). There were older men just beginning blogs and young, striking Latino American girls who were a few months into the daunting project. A slice, a cross-section, a grab bag of the Big Apple gave me their attention and time on a cool Wednesday evening and I loved them for it.

Tasting

Come sample the Granddaddy of all Southern foods today at Grand Central Station. (A man at last week’s Bleeker Street tasting declared both my product and get-up to be “spicy.” I’ll take that.)

What: Pimento Cheese and Banter w. Brooke

Where: Murray’s Cheese, Grand Central Market

Time: September 12th, 3pm-7pm

ABC News.com

Gabbing over at ABC… (And I’ve decided that a simple ponytail works just fine for such appearances)

Belle at the Learning Annex

Champagne at Balthazar to follow. Y’all know this is how you want to spend a Wednesday evening…

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Belle in The New York Times

Right now I’m on vacation with my family, trying to explain where my money goes.

I haven’t seen you in a new dress in ages… Chinatown for a haircut?… Honey, mind your cuticles… That shade of lipstick is very Alicia Silverstone circa 1995… You still have a VCR?!

I buy cheese, family. I buy 180 minutes with a lawyer. I buy myself an LLC. And then, y’all know what I do? I buy more cheese and pounds upon pounds of red bell peppers. With my spare money and time, I run up to Union Square and splurge on an heirloom tomato or two and then come back down to Sullivan for a ball of mozzarella from Joe’s. I’ll slip in a glass of wine and call it luxury.

But I do feel like an entrepreneur and I do feel like I’m taking a risk. My products are tucked away on Bleeker Street and stacked on the cooled shelves at Grand Central.That makes me happy. That keeps me going…

Dressing Up Pimento Cheese

In some parts of the country, pride is taken in homemade pimento cheese; self-respecting Southerners would never buy the commercial kind to fill a sandwich or to top a canapé. And why would they? At its simplest, pimento cheese calls for shredded sharp Cheddar, minced jarred pimentos and mayonnaise. Variations include cream cheese, onion, pickles and hot sauce.


Brooke Parkhurst, far left, a native of Pensacola, Fla., now living in New York, likes hers sharp and spicy, suitable to nibble with a martini at 5 p.m. or to use as an omelet filling for Sunday brunch. Tweaking her grandmother’s recipe, she roasts red peppers in olive oil, uses sharp Irish Cheddar, Ben’s cream cheese, mayonnaise and, for the kick, sriracha hot sauce. Her Belle’s Southern Comforts pimento cheese is $6.99 for seven ounces at Murray’s Cheese stores.

[via NY Times]

On Broadway

I left him at the table and walked north back to my apartment, staring at the sky above my riverbed, the white and silver scales atop the Chrysler Building (the arrangement of lights looking like the fish I’d seen on the walls of Pompeii). Alone and heading home.

It reminded me of my first weeks in the city, walking from Union Square down Broadway after my movies—always alone—past Grace Church, Amalgamated. The education of a girl and her sensibilities. It came to me, finally. “Alone” and “lonely” were very different. Right then, I was by myself yet a part of those around me, Broadway, a river of souls, the echo of heavy heels, sneezes (little orgasms of air), monologues of crazy street poets. I considered all of my romances—the city, my job, the men. Manhattan was real and the only thing that had grabbed a hold of me, never once letting go. So I had that. I’d always have that. Breathe.