Almost Famous

So yesterday I ate a chocolate chip cookie from the same silver tray that held brownies, cookies, and a life-size molded chocolate eagle at Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver's wedding. It was a Conan-sized, good for snacking off of when you're all tuckered out from crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women.

The cookie itself, from a recipe that was a favorite of John-John's, kind of sucked. It was thin and flavorless.

I had my brush with fame at the Kennedy Library, where I'd gone to see a former chef of the Kennedy's talk about his cookbook (which I gave McMumsy a couple of years ago) and make a recipe. The host, a local celebrity, kept reminding the audience how "lucky" we were to have won tickets. I beg to differ.

First of all, the chef made lobster stew, which we didn't get to sample because NECN, which sponsored the event, was too cheap. Second, the chef himself was bland and when he wasn't bland, he was mean. One of the stories he shared was about that same silver tray; he said that once the brownies and cookies were gone, he found Oprah ("And this was when she was doing The Color Purple," he said, adding a few more choice words to make sure we knew this was fat Oprah) breaking the tailfeathers off the life-sized chocolate eagle and eating them.

Of course once Oprah started eating the eagle, it became an eat-the-eagle free-for-all, said the chef. Later, when someone asked him to name his least favorite culinary trend, he said he hated how big portions had gotten and that he was disgusted by people filling their plates up at buffet-style restaurants and then laying down to nap. This in front of a crowd filled mainly with somewhat squishy middle-aged to older women. When someone mentioned what a fat lard Ted Kennedy is, he defended him, saying he'd broken his back and couldn't exercise. And whenever anyone wanted to know anything remotely untoward...like who was a picky eater, as if that were a scandalous question compared to, I don't know, a question about why the Kennedys seem to keep dying off in fantastically horrible ways...he'd avoid answering the question. Mostly he came off as a cantankerous, pompous oaf who felt like he had better things to do then be there.

L came with me and I was glad for the company. She pronounced my cookies way better than the Kennedy cookies. Which they are.