Not “king” kinja. But kinja autocorrected to king and now apparently there is no editing window.

I just tried to respond to you but kinja went haywire. I said that I use Pillsbury frozen puff pastry, canned mushrooms, and chicken liver pate. That’s getting rarer and rarer to find in NYC but if you go into Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods they’ll sell you chicken livers and you can make your own. I’m going to hit…

You’re obviously a very accomplished baker so Beef Wellington should present no challenges to you! People think it’s incredibly complicated but it’s not, and there are short cuts around it (I don’t make my own dough, for example.) It’s very rich and filling though, so a little Beef Wellington goes a long way.

When I get over this insomnia I’m going to wake up tomorrow and make Beef Wellington. I make it three times a year, at the onset of Fall, which we’re now experiencing, at Christmas, and the last cold day heading into Spring. I make it the Julia Child way. The videos I would have embedded are screwed up. I know how to…

I loved my mother, all my siblings did, and I used to call her up and rile her up by talking about stuff I knew she disagreed with. I called her My Worthy Opponent. My siblings would say, “Why are you calling her to make her upset?” I would respond, “I think she might enjoy it.”

Our shelter dogs growing up were dachshunds and dachshund mixes! My father, an engineer, explained that they had the length but not the height. He was fascinated by this I think so we always had one or two running around.

When we got our most recent shelter dog (we’ve had four in our adult lives, and I grew up with four others) he was a puppy. In the course of house training him we put down the wee-wee pads and I took him out for frequent walks. He used to follow me into the bathroom and would bark if I closed the door. [I’m a gay guy…

This is not really helpful but I recommend reiki and here’s why:

Well done! Circa 1990 I found this gorgeous Art Deco coffee table with an inlaid stained glass top just sitting out on the street in my Chelsea neighborhood. This was the pre-bedbug infestation era and it was 29 years ago so I was in the physical condition to haul it up three flights of stairs. When we moved I put it…

This is a very strange and late comment, but if you remember me I’m from the polka dancing Floefflers.

I’ve read in many places that the Queen actually enjoys seeing herself depicted in movies and on TV, but how would anyone know this? Aside from Philip, maybe. I can’t imagine her wandering through the stables with a groom and saying casually to them, “I don’t suppose you saw Helen Mirren playing me in ‘The Queen,’…

He is only 70 and seems pretty hale and hearty. You should read his wikipedia page, especially the section about writing songs for other people. He did so much more before he was 25 than most people accomplish in a lifetime. Plus, he was living in Greenwich Village and collaborating with and “dating” Nico when he was…

I had a wave of sadness wash over me when I read a headline this morning that said something like “David Crosby Chokes Up About Jackson Browne.” Oh no, not Jackson Browne!

I am half of a bad couple then. I’m spending the evening drinking beer and reading Jezebel and Splinter, which at least is politics-ish. My husband is on his second stiff gin and tonic and watching Judge Judy reruns in the bedroom.

This is petty, but Fire Island is not the Hamptons. (The Shark Tank story, which is about Barbara Corcoran selling a big beachfront house in Saltaire and buying the one next door.)

I love celebrity memoirs. I often get them as presents because people know how much I enjoy them and lots of them can be had for a quarter at yard sales and flea markets. 

I recently learned that Werner Erhard (the founder of est and the Esalen Institute) is still alive. He’s only 84, astonishing given that est probably reached its apogee in the mid-1970s. He stopped with the est stuff in the 80s and now seems to be focused on business ethics (?) Every day he must wake up and read about…

Similarly, “trainings” and “knowledge on” have both been popping up more and more lately. “With these trainings you will increase your knowledge on...”

Replying to myself, something I try never to do:

I feel like “synergy” has been around since the 18th century, or at least the 1980s. This use of “productize” is a new one on me, but thankfully I work for myself now and attend very few “strategy breakout sessions” so I don’t “play in the corporate sandbox” much anymore. No, I am firmly in “the freelance/contractor…