Bon Appetempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!)

by Morris, Amelia

  But looks can be deceiving.

  Just as my Martha Stewart-esque acorn squash soup fell short on taste, if you peer a bit more closely at our wedding pictures, you might notice the careful, calculated physical distance placed between the various relatives from my side of the family not speaking to one another; you might see the tension between me and my brother, or me and both of my grandmas. And though our priest ended up not mentioning Jesus by name, you might argue that He won out anyway, as the photos also reveal seaside gusts of wind so strong that the chuppah Matt’s mom made wouldn’t stay in place, nor would the kippah he tried to wear.

  And even though it’s standard for everyone to comment otherwise, to gush as if the wedding day is a woman’s beauty zenith, you’d see how tired and worn-out I look. My skin is thin and dark under the eyes, and my dress is a bit too loose from my first-time-ever sudden loss of appetite during those last weeks before the wedding.

  When I was a beginner cook, Martha Stewart’s recipe for acorn squash soup, with its simple list of ingredients and accompanying image of a pale orange purée in two matching white mugs, appealed to me. I could do that, I thought. And I did. Sort of.

  As a twenty-six-year-old (read: beginner) bride, Martha Stewart Weddings, with its pretty brides, handsome grooms, happy guests, and charming DIY favors, appealed to me. I could do that, I thought. And I did. Sort of.

  But recipes don’t come with years of hands-on kitchen experience. And wedding magazines don’t come with bold disclaimers on what a wedding really is: a high-stakes family gathering with multiple hosts. If anything, the disclaimer is: Get ready for the best day of your life!

  But if it weren’t called a wedding, would you really think that hosting a dinner party for ninety-six people and budgeting for it and trying to look your prettiest while doing so would be one of the best of your lives?

  No.

  Besides, perhaps the best day of my life is yet to come.

  What about the day when quitting my day job doesn’t sound impossible? What about the day we buy our first home? Or what about that one day we already had? We were in Big Sur for Sara and Sean’s wedding. We woke up on Saturday to a big country breakfast, then walked the beach with our friends—it was late October and all of us were bundled up in our corduroys and sweaters. Matt and I went back to our log cabin of a room to clean up and accidentally took a nap instead so that we had to get dressed in two minutes to make it to the ceremony on that bluff overlooking the Pacific where Sara told Sean, “I give you my heart, the greatest gift I have to give,” and afterward, as the sun went down, we ate dinner and drank champagne and danced in that crisp ocean-mountain air. My favorite picture of us is from that day. It’s taken from far, far away. We’re standing on the beach, and my back is to the camera and Matt is hugging me and someone’s dog is walking by.

  While I love butternut squash soup, Matt isn’t totally sold on it. This pizza, however, makes us both happy.

  BUTTERNUT SQUASH, CARAMELIZED ONION, AND GOAT CHEESE PIZZA

  Serves 3 to 4

  1 (16-ounce) ball store-bought pizza dough, at room temperature

  1 butternut squash (see Note)

  ¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more if needed

  1 large yellow onion, cut in half lengthwise and thinly sliced

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Juice of ½ lemon

  ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper

  About ¼ cup all-purpose flour for dusting

  4 ounces soft goat cheese (about ½ cup)

  1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

  ½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley (optional but highly recommended)

  If your pizza dough isn’t already coming to room temperature, go ahead and take it out of the fridge.

  Peel the butternut squash, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, and cut it into ½-inch cubes. (This step always takes me a while, and since I’m most successful when using a rather large knife, I would caution you to do the same and not to rush. After all, how many times a year do you break down a butternut squash? Also, my peeler never seems to peel through all of that tough skin, so what typically happens is that while I’m chopping it, I end up slicing off thin slices of what’s left of the peel as well.)

  Preheat the oven to 400°F and set the squash aside while you get your onions started.

  Heat ¼ cup of the oil in a large heavy skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onion and a few pinches of salt and pepper. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden-brown, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave covered until you’re ready to top your pizza.

  Toss the squash with the remaining 1 tablespoon oil (and possibly a little more), ½ teaspoon salt, and give it a few turns of the pepper mill. Spread the squash onto a baking sheet and bake until soft and lightly browned, about 25 minutes, stirring halfway through. Once it’s out of the oven, toss with the lemon juice, a pinch or two of salt, and the crushed red pepper. Set aside. Turn the oven temperature up to 500°F.

  Line another baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

  On a lightly floured work space, stretch and/or roll the pizza dough into a 12-by 10-inch rectangle—you’re going for the size of the aforementioned parchment-lined baking sheet. (Mine usually looks more like an oval.) You’ll find this task to be much easier if the dough is at room temperature. Transfer the dough to the parchment-lined baking sheet. Let the dough rest for 5 to 10 minutes (or longer if you’d like—sometimes I’ll leave it for an hour or so while cleaning up or taking my dog for a walk).

  Top the pizza dough first with the caramelized onions, followed by the roasted squash, followed by the goat cheese and then the mozzarella.

  Place in the oven and bake until the cheese is melted and mottled brown and the crust is nice and brown, 8 to 12 minutes. Sprinkle the parsley on top and let it rest for a few minutes before slicing.

  Note: You’re only going to need about 2 cups of the squash for the pizza; however, this recipe has you roasting the whole lot so you can reserve the extra cooked squash for lunch the following day.

  Chapter 20

  A Feast of Failure

  Once we’ve waved good-bye to the last of the guests from the ferry terminal, my appetite comes rushing back. We don’t have the money for a proper honeymoon, but we are staying an extra night in our spacious island rental before flying back to Los Angeles together, where I’ll be for the next three months.

  We head straight to the restaurant at the harbor and order his-and-hers oyster po’ boys with a side of hush puppies. I don’t know if I’m experiencing repercussions from my unintended fast leading up to the wedding or if it’s all the leftover adrenaline in my body from the trying day itself, but after lunch I’m still hungry. We go to the very overpriced grocery store and buy frozen French fries and Stouffer’s French bread pizza, and even though we’re leaving in the morning, Matt springs for a bottle of Heinz ketchup.

  We open all of the cards we received and read through our guest book. And then, just a few hours after lunch, we eat an early dinner while watching television. The normalcy of it feels like heaven. And since we can’t fathom trying to bring the top tier of our wedding cake home with us on tomorrow’s connecting flights, we slice ourselves two large pieces of the white cake with lemon curd filling for dessert.

  All in all, it’s a great day.

  Back in Los Angeles, Matt must return to work as normal. I, on the other hand, am looking forward to a relatively unscheduled summer. My graduate assistant job pays for the month of May, even though I haven’t had to report to work, so my plan is to make that and my I-stomach-LA T-shirt money stretch through the months of June and July while spending the bulk of my days writing the first draft of the novel I hope will be my thesis.

  But on the Friday of our very first week back in town, Matt comes home from work looking stunned. The Internet start-up where he’s worked for the past year has let him go. We knew the company wasn’t doing as well as they’d wanted, but sti
ll, we weren’t prepared for this. (As it turned out, the company would go completely under the following month.)

  After dinner, we take a walk around our neighborhood and discuss what we should do. I can tell that at least a small part of Matt is excited. He had hated the job, and though his title was technically office manager, he must have spent at least eight hours a week at Just Tires getting his boss’s tires replaced. (Who knows what that guy was doing with his car, but his tires clearly couldn’t handle whatever it was.)

  “The good news is that I’ll definitely qualify for unemployment and I’ll have my days free to write,” Matt says.

  “And to apply to other jobs,” I say.

  “Of course,” he says.

  Last summer, right before I left for school, I’d picked up a job with the LA Film Festival selling tickets and answering phones for six weeks. I’d just gotten an e-mail from them with an offer to work it again, which I’d planned to decline, but now I’m thankful I’ve yet to respond.

  We scramble to find a smaller, cheaper apartment to rent. Oddly enough, one has just become available across the street from where we are now. We apply and are quickly accepted. We’ll move in at the beginning of the next month.

  We hardly even discuss the other option, which is for him to move to Wilmington with me in the fall. We hardly even discuss it because Matt and Geordie have just commenced working on a brand-new script—this time one that their manager, Darren, “knows he can sell.”

  Though Darren and company weren’t able to sell Matt and Geordie’s previous script, “A Blueprint for Successful Living,” the modern-day fairy tale/bildungsroman that had won awards and gotten them representation in the first place, they have a plan for Matt and Geordie.

  They believe in their talent as writers. But it’s hard to break into the business, even with strong representation. And as good of a script as “Blueprint” was, it was also quirky and strange, and as it’s explained to them, studios don’t want to risk buying such an off-the-beaten-path project from two unknown writers. What they need to do, Darren says, is write a “really hot spec”—spec being shorthand for speculative script, which basically means that Matt and Geordie would write this hot script first with the hope of selling it once it’s completed.

  According to Darren, something with a “super high concept” will give them the greatest opportunity to create a “really hot spec.”

  According to Darren, the title alone is fifty percent of the selling point. “Take Jurassic Park or Alien, for example,” he says, “something like that would be perfect.” Or something based on an historic event (Titanic!) or popular public domain work (Pride and Prejudice!) or character (any Greek god!). Darren stresses that this formula will make the project easy to sell, and his bravado is mildly backed up by the fact that he recently sold a script that followed these very guidelines.

  Matt and Geordie have plenty of ideas for stories they really want to tell, and so they immediately begin pitching them to their management team. What about an allegorical take on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, only set in present-day Hollywood; the main character is a young writer with a day job as an assistant to a heavy-hitting talent agent who tasks our hero with traveling deep into the Valley to retrieve a copy of a rare film. No?

  What about a modern retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, only Hamelin becomes Hamelin Gardens, a fictional housing development of McMansions, and the pied piper becomes Joe Piper, an eccentric rodent exterminator who promises to rid the development of rats once and for all. No?

  OK. What about a present-day, comedic take on Phantom of the Opera? A community theater house is haunted by a phantom who aspires to become a director and thus, has a tendency to make head-scratching demands on the actors and production staff?

  No?

  OK. Modern retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue?

  No?

  OK. A Roald Dahlian camp story centered around a cherubic, Godfather-like eleven-year-old who leads the Cabin Six Candy Cartel and controls, in abundance, the only currency in camp: candy.

  No? Are you sure?

  The weekly pitch sessions go on for months. But the ideas are either, in the words of Darren: not high-concept enough, too character-driven, too execution-dependent, or too similar to ideas already in development somewhere.

  After three months of this, Matt and Geordie ask to have a meeting so as to get a clearer idea of exactly what they’re looking for. “If the story were a house, what kind of house would it be?” Matt asks. “Like, our house is typically the really interesting-looking one; it’s well-built from foundation to roof, but small—maybe two bedroom, two bath, but when you pass by, you think that there’s something cool about that house.”

  “We’re looking for the biggest, gaudiest house on the street. The one you can’t miss because it’s ten times bigger than the others.”

  A few hundred mansion-size story ideas later, Matt and Geordie pitch them one they’ve titled simply Safari:

  An elite rescue team ventures to a remote game preserve after receiving a cryptic emergency transmission. The straightforward rescue mission soon becomes the ultimate safari when the squad learns that the preserve specializes in designer game monsters customized to the hunter’s specifications.

  And after all these months of rejections, Darren and company flip for this one, certain they can sell it on concept alone. “It’s like Jurassic Park, but with customized monsters!” They want to call it “Monster Safari.” They say it’s the sort of spec that sells for seven figures.

  This is where we are when Matt gets laid off. After all these months of being in a stalemate, Matt and Geordie have finally begun writing a script again. And though “A Blueprint for Successful Living” took them years to write, they figure they can write “Monster Safari,” a seemingly much simpler story, in a few months. Perhaps they’ll even finish it by the end of summer.

  In the meantime, we move into the smaller apartment. I report to the film festival daily while Matt files for unemployment, writes, and sends out his résumé. We eat a lot of pasta, Stouffer’s French bread pizza, and Zatarain’s jambalaya. (If we made a movie about those three months, it would be called Our Simple High-Sodium Summer. And it would have a disappointing opening weekend.)

  By mid-August, the monster script is not going as quickly as he and Geordie had hoped; Matt has not found a job, and tension in our one-bedroom apartment is pretty high. So much so that I’m actually relieved to be able to escape to Wilmington, where I’ve arranged to move out of the suburbs and into “historic downtown” with a new roommate, Alison. The little house we’re to share comes complete with a placard on the front porch officially marking it as historic, central air-conditioning, and a koi pond. What more could I possibly want?

  I arrive at my new place just in time to say good-bye to Alison, who’s off to spend ten days in Colorado with friends recuperating from her breakup with her live-in boyfriend, who just moved out. The house is tiny, maybe nine hundred square feet, but has four bedrooms and a loft space upstairs, which means that both of us get a bedroom and an office for the sum total of $350/month each. (Ah, Wilmington. Go for graduate school, stay for the reasonable rent!)

  But within a few hours of my arrival, I understand why the price is so low. Downtown Wilmington is a bit hit-or-miss. And our street leans toward the latter. Before she leaves, Alison warns me that one of the neighbors is most certainly involved in some sort of drug ring, and “If you sit on the front porch for a few hours, you’ll see the various customers pull up.”

  But that’s fine. The house comes with an alarm system, and I have plenty to take care of to keep me busy. It’s not until late that night when I notice that I keep scratching my legs. When I look down to check it out, I see I have a bunch of bites on my feet and shins.

  Since I’ve never had a pet as an adult, it takes me until the following day to realize that the house is infested with fleas. Alison is hard to reach, but I get in touch with
our landlord and find out that Alison’s ex-boyfriend had two cats. And sometimes, she tells me over the phone, what happens is that when an animal moves out, it can leave behind fleas that have nothing to host on except the humans.

  In the next week, I will learn everything the Internet has to teach me about fleas and removing them from a domicile. Did you know that fleas have hind legs that are so well-adapted to jumping that they can jump vertically up to seven inches and horizontally up to thirteen?

  Thanks to an Internet tip, I take to wearing white knee socks while in the house, which keeps fleas, for the most part, from pouncing onto my skin. It also grosses me out to no end, however, when I look down and see my socks spotted with the small creatures clinging on for dear life.

  I buy my first-ever bug bomb, set it off in the living room, and then sprint out of the house where I must stay for at least three hours while it does its work.

  When I’m finally able to return, I set to vacuuming the entire house, hopefully collecting a bunch of dead bodies. And when I come face-to-face with my first dead roach, which is lying belly-up in the middle of our kitchen, I spend a whole minute feeling sorry for myself until I notice a couple of fleas have jumped up onto my bare legs.

  Needless to say, this will be my first of many bug bombs and my first of many dead roaches.

  Needless to say, it doesn’t take too long before I hate Alison for leaving me in this stupid house, the historic charm of which I can no longer see. I also hate Matt for not being here to help me; and last but not least, I hate myself for not being able to handle the situation with just a tad more patience and grace.

  After my fourth failed bug bomb, I finally call the exterminator. I’m so broken down and desperate that I sign up for an expensive monthly service. But I don’t care. When Alison returns home, I bill her for half.

  Ah, to be a flea on the floorboards and to have witnessed the difference between Alison’s relaxed and restored demeanor and my own. Alison returns from her trip apologetic but calm. I, on the other hand, feel as though I’m inside of a Cathy cartoon. It will take me weeks to stop monitoring my legs for signs of them, to feel comfortable in the house.