Now let us sing, sing, sing, sing!

On Saturday, December 3rd at noon at the Christian Science Plaza, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus will attempt to break the World's Record for the Most Carolers Singing (Carols) Together (for at least 15 continuous minutes). The current record is 9,100 people, set in November 2010 in Adelaide, Australia.

So I'm going. I HAVE to go. I'm not a joiner as a general rule, but this is an extraordinary event. How many opportunities does a girl have to be part of a group trying to break a World's Record? And for something as fun as singing carols? Well, not carols plural. Just one carol. As I understand it the group will be singing "Joy to the World" for 15 minutes. Regardless, it is going to be fun!

In 2010 the BSO tried (and failed) to break the record in December 2010. This year, because I'll be there, they'll break the record.

I'd LOVE for my Boston friends to join me. Here's the scoop on being part of the fun. I'll be at P.F. Changs outside the Pru at 11:15 AM. No later than 11:25 - ideally before - I'll head across the street to become part of the caroling scrum at the Christian Science Plaza.

I have NO idea what to expect. A handful of questions run through my head. How will they count us? Will we get sheet music? How many people can fit at the Christian Science Plaza?

While there are many things I don't expect to know until I show up on Saturday, I would like to know if you plan to join me. Drop me a note in the comments section or on my Facebook page so we can work out our rendezvous plans. And afterwards, we can grab cocoa or a martini somewhere?

Happy holidays!

Can this be real?

BMG and I signed our "Purchase and Sales" agreement last night. We finish our mortgage application on Saturday. We meet our architect on Monday.

Are we seriously buying and renovating a house? In the suburbs? Because we've strategically decided this is the best route to have enough money to eventually buy a condo in the city?

I'm having a Talking Heads moment as I contemplate the idea of us moving from wish talk to real life.

Great Cookie Swap

Thanks to my Twitter buddy, @cavecibum, I'm now participating in The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap.

This means I have to ship one dozen cookies to three separate people by December 5th. And...I have to post the recipe here. (Oh, and I get three dozen cookies mailed to me.)

Think I'll crowd source this one.

Which Christmas cookie would YOU want to get in the mail from a stranger?

I'll be baking the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Look forward to getting your thoughts before then!

Tolerating Intolerance

This middle-aged body has become lactose intolerant in the last six months. As the current partner and roommate of the provocateur at bowlofcheese.com cheese and other dairy treats have been an essential part of my life for a long time.

Needless to say, lactose intolerance is taking some adjustment.

I've been moving through Kubler-Ross' stages of grief as I mourn the loss of cheese. I started with denial. "What" This can't be true. It must be a stomach bug."

So I kept eating cheese and dairy. And I kept feeling bloated, crampy and uncomfortable.

Now? I vacillate between anger, bargaining, and depression.

What does this look like? I'm testing the boundaries of what I can and cannot eat (bargaining).

• A little bit of blue cheese on a salad - ok
• Caesar salad with Parmesan shavings - most assuredly not ok
• Homemade pizza with glassy soy cheese - fine, if you go for that sort of thing
• North End pizza with mozzarella - stomach churning
• Hollandaise on eggs Benedict - fine
• Croque madame at Brasserie Jo - never again
• Saag paneer - not so bad in small amounts
• Sour cream-based veggie dip - also do-able in small amounts

And the anger? The depression? At the grocery store, in restaurants and watching Top Chef and other food shows on tv when I realize there is one more thing to add to my list of foods I'll ever be able to eat a full (or even a half) serving of again:

1. Ice cream (Don't give me that "But you can have sorbet!" b.s. Sorbet is NOT the same as ice cream)
2. Grilled cheese sandwiches
3. Macaroni and cheese
4. New England clam chowder
5. Yogurt
6. Chicken cordon bleu (I didn't eat this a lot, or ever, but now I want it simply because I can't have it)
7. Cottage cheese
8. Nachos

The Lactaid pills (and their generic equivalent) don't seem to have much impact on the issue, and I'd rather just avoid the food that makes me feel so uncomfortable, than put my body through the turmoil of having to adjust to something I naturally shouldn't be eating.

And over time I'll pass into acceptance. I smile wryly when I hear myself saying "I love soy milk and coconut milk ice cream WAY better the original," and can see the bright side of savoring a nibble - rather than a gobble - of fine cheese when we visit places like Formaggio and Farmstead. This is my body. I can't fight it, so instead I'm trying to tolerate my intolerance.

*****

Have you adjusted to lactose intolerance? How'd you do it? If you HAD to give up dairy, what would you miss the most?

My ♥ Belongs to Wegmans

My hometown grocery store, love of my retail life, opened it's first store in Massachusetts today. (Unless you live under a social media rock you already know Wegmans opened in Northborough on October 16, 2011.)

What you may not know is that this store is 47 miles from my house. One way. The travel time is nearly 1.5 hours. One way.

I live within three miles of three other grocery stores. Go seven miles further and you find three more grocery stores. That's six grocery stores, that I'm aware of, within ten miles of my home.

And now, today, after having made the three-hour round trip journey, where I shopped and laughed for four hours, I cannot imagine shopping anywhere else.

I forgot to buy paper towels and plastic wrap at the hometown market today. Yet I cannot bring myself to drive the 1.5 miles to the nearest grocery store, park the car, and walk through the sad, fluorescently-lit aisles. I just can't. It depresses me.

94 miles round trip is a ridiculous and wasteful distance to travel to buy groceries, particularly when I can do the same household errand in 3. That's 1/3rd of a tank of gas versus 1/100th of a tank of gas. My conscience won't let me make the hometown market my one and only.

But my ♥ belongs to Wegmans.

Guess will be living without paper towels for a little while.

My Vegetarian Experiment

October 1 is annually World Vegetarian Day (WVD) and October is Vegetarian Awareness Month. I responded to a challenge issued by the organizers of WVD. The challenge? Experiment with being a vegetarian for a day, a week or a month.

I made a pledge to try vegetarianism for a week. If I succeed I'll be entered into a drawing to win $250. (I pledged to try vegetarianism for a month the drawing prize would be $1,000.)

I'm day five into the challenge. And, what a challenge it has been. Here is a taste of my week.

Monday - Columbus Day holiday
On a "normal" holiday Monday?

• Big breakfast with BMG at one of our favorite local diners, complete with mounds of bacon and sausage
• Big lunch out with BMG at a spot near the water
• Small dinner with copious amounts of wine as I geared up for the work week

During vegetarian week?

Toast, with butter for breakfast

Frozen bean and cheese burrito from Trader Joes for lunch (with an apple cider chaser)

Monstrous amounts of baked potato chips

Picked over onion rings from BMG's big lunch out with non-vegetarian friends

Big dinner - spinach, veggie sausage and whole wheat pasta. And copious amounts of wine as I geared up for the work week

Tuesday
On a normal work day?

• Toast with sliced turkey for breakfast
• An apple or grapes mid-day
• A chicken or beef burrito with guacamole from Boloco or Chipotle for lunch
• Dinner at home or out - likely grilled chicken with pasta or rice and a veggie

During vegetarian week?

• Fat free pumpkin muffin with apple butter for breakfast
• Grapes for a mid-day snack
• Teriyaki "burrito bowl" with tofu, broccoli and onions from Boloco for lunch
• Truffle fries and a veggie burger for lunch

Wine tasting dinner at our favorite Boston restaurant, Brasserie JO, on Wednesday?
On a normal day?

• Mounds of passed appies like mini Croque Monsieurs and foie gras sammies
• Veal and tomato bubble as an amuse bouche
• Seared scallops in a vanilla beurre blanch
• Frisee salad with poached quail egg
• Braised short ribs
• Interpreted beef Wellington with cremed potatoes
• Cheese course with poached pears, bleu pot de creme and tomato confit
• Pumpkin tart with burnt caramel ice cream
• Copious amounts of wine (and martinis) beautifully paired with each course

During vegetarian week?

• Mini martinis during the appie course
• Specially prepared tomato bubble as an amuse bouche (thanks Chef!)
• Frisee salad with poached quail egg
• Cauliflower steak with cremed potatoes
• Gnocchi with a delicious cilantro-esque pesto
• Cheese course with poached pears, bleu pot de creme and tomato confit
• Pumpkin tart with burnt caramel ice cream
• Copious amounts of wine (and martinis) beautifully paired with each course

Thursday and Friday proceeded much like Tuesday.

As I head into the weekend I'm confident I can live with two more days of this. I'm heading to a grocery store opening on Sunday, which is certain to be filled with tempting samples. But I'm certain http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifI'll be fine.

I'm also certain I'd like to go back to being an omnivore. I miss bacon, and my daily turkey toast for breakfast. If I felt healthier or less physically polluted I might consider moving to a more vegetarian diet. But I don't. During the last five days I've eaten the same amount of fat and salt as I do during the week. I've also eaten WAY more dairy, in the name of "getting protein," than I should.

It has been a good experiment. I hope I win the $250. And I'm ready for this to be done.

Recipe Box

I have a tin recipe box, given to me by my mother when I was a teenager. The original gift came with a set of recipe cards that I promptly filled up with favorites from my mother's recipe books and my grandmother's memory. Over time the box became bloated with recipes torn from the newspaper, sloppily copied down on post-it notes, and printed from emails sent from friends.

I love this recipe box. It houses my mom's recipe for baked beans, written in a shorthand only I can understand. Two copies of a scone recipe that I first learned while on a hiking trip in the White Mountains of NH. I have recipes for Copper Pennies (aka carrot disks cooked with brown sugar) written in my grandmother's spidery script, along with all of my family's Christmas cookie standards. The box continues to grow. Over the summer I added the recipe or BMG's mom's curried rice salad.

Back when I started collecting recipes I did so with the intention of turning to the recipe box as my source for cooking inspiration. I now use the Internet as my primary source for recipes, along with the small collection of interesting recipe books I've amassed over the 25 years I've been cooking.

When I thumb through the recipe box, crowded with little slips of paper filled with delicious (and largely unfulfilled) intention, a pragmatic part of me says, "You've never prepared that recipe for Italian chicken stew you clipped out of The Washington Post in 1990; recycle that slip of paper!"

I don't think of myself as a particularly sentimental person. Except, apparently, when it comes to my recipe box.