Let’s just say it: I was gone for a while.

Yogurt earns her right to rest by working hard for several years teaching and researching and drinking espresso and lowering tortoise-shell glasses to look students in the eye during office hours. So she gets time off to live in a villa in the Italian countryside for a while, pull grapes from the vine, and cycle slowly around picturesque hills. She probably even spends most of her sabbatical writing a whole other book, because that’s what cultured people do.

I got lazy. Sorry.

Instead of blogging blogs, I spent my time doing things that seemed pressing at the time, like putting empty coin roll wrappers on my brother’s fingers so they looked strange.

Like so:

I totally promise that I’m writing a book, too. At the very least, I’m stuffing my mouth with grapes like a fiending chipmunk.

People undervalue Fran Drescher. She had me at “The Nanny,” and how cool was she in This is Spinal Tap? Well, mostly it was cool that she was in that movie, because it was a cool movie.

But “The Nanny” rocks in so many ways. The accents. The asides. The voice. The Yiddish. The family values. And the awesome outfits.

I once wanted to be Marisa Tomei from My Cousin Vinny for Halloween, but because I didn’t have the correct outfits—just something tight and short—and because my hair was long, I went as the Nanny Named Fran, instead, and couldn’t have been happier.

Ask me to do the laugh sometime. I’m not afeard.

Ding! It’s time for the “Who Knew?” segment. Fran Drescher started an organization called Cancer, Schmancer (yes! now you understand how awesome she is!) to advocate for early detection of cancer and for patient advocacy—or rather, impatient advocacy. I like the values, but I’m still not clear as to where the money actually goes. But no matter.

There was a fashion show in DC that I was invited to by Citizen Cassidy, which was a fundraiser for the Nanny Named Fran’s real life organization. It was a beautiful show, held outside in what would have been an awesome location had it not been freezing. (Note: this is a relative term, relative to the fact that all the women were in minidresses. Believe me: it was cold.)

She was there, and she was fabulous. A real housewife of some county or other was also there, but I don’t know if I’d recognize her again. And lots of photographers and people who posed in front of them as if they were famous.

I’ll have to assume they’re famous even though I didn’t recognize them, as my vantage point under this rock here doesn’t always hip me to the cultured ways of life.

Every once in a while, I watch SNL again to see if it’s gotten any funnier.

It hasn’t.

This won’t, however, stop me from going to see Bridesmaids, which looks AWESOME.

Plus, even if SNL is generally kind of lackluster, Kristen Wiig is undoubtedly the best part. And I’m all about patronizing funny women, who don’t get enough vehicles for their talents and are often relegated to playing snotty soon-to-be-ex girlfriends, bland fiancees, and snarky, unlovable friends of men too busy celebrating their man-bond with other men, because lord knows men and women can’t be funny together.

Because women aren’t funny. They’re cranky.

A recent New Yorker article heralded Anna Faris as a funny woman breaking through in an industry that normally only appreciates hot women who appear vulnerable and make people laugh by being desperate and falling down (which obviously symbolizes the way a career-focused life leaves you alone with no strong man to catch you or tell you the floor’s a bit slippery).

What’s Faris’ secret? She got breast implants and collagen injected in her lips, is a size two, and dyes her hair blonde. She’s in an upcoming movie called What’s Your Number? about a woman who’s slept with 20 men and thinks that’s too many (but it’s not! giggles Faris. Women can do anything, including sleep with dudes!), but, tee hee, Anna Faris herself admits to sleeping with only five men. Because she’s not a whore like her character; she’s desirable to men.

I’m giving her a hard time mostly because: the New Yorker article was written by a dude; Faris does not appear to be transcending Hollywood gender roles; and because I cannot recall her performance in any film I’ve seen with her in it, which leads me to believe that she wasn’t all that funny. I haven’t seen her other stuff, though, so I oughtn’t judge.

But of course I’ll judge. I’m a woman. I’m not funny, I’m cranky. And, oh no, I just fell down.

Via Good.Is and Prose Before Hos.

This makes me especially wistful since my new apartment has yet to contain a dining table, or chairs, or napkin rings. How are you supposed to find your napkin if it’s not in a ring? 

Also, I missed my chance to host a seder this year, which is just as well, because the elevator in my building is a little stinky of late, and why would I want to subject Elijah to an elevator that smells like cat litter or hiking up six flights of stairs?

I wouldn’t. I’m sensible.

Plus, if we’re being honest, my track record on “classy dinner parties” is more revisionist history than provable fact. Read on. The Nervous Chef will spit the truth. (Read the full post here.)

Yogurt and the Nervous Chef Bake With Leftovers

1. A Really Old Picture of Food.

A long, long time ago — way back in January — I visited Yogurt in New York and attended the Opera. Now it happened, as is it wont to, that Yogurt’s household had some leftovers: some bananas going squishy and some cracked eggs that needed using up. Because I have Baking Pretensions, Yogurt asked my thoughts (note: this is usually a mistake, as it produces Nervousness, which makes me fuck up).

Well, the usual method of using up old bananas with banana bread was closed to us, because there was no raising agent in the household and the point of the exercise was to use only ingredients in the household. So what can you make with bananas and eggs that is not banana bread? I thought “Banana custard!” Which is nothing I’ve ever made—or possible eaten—before, but it seemed possible. So I googled (seriously, why does a GOOGLE site not recognize GOOGLED as a verb? Go away, red squiggly lines!) “Banana Custard” and selected the first recipe I found.

Well, we could do that!
There was no lime, so we used lemon. And for bread crumbs we used chocolate rugelach.
Distressingly, I was once again asked for my opinion (which made me nervous) about what the hell a “moderate oven” meant. I guessed 325 and was happy to see that other custard recipes backed me up.

The result wasn’t that pretty: the loaf pan and chocolate bread kind of make it look like a lasagna gone wrong:
However, I thought it tasted pretty good! And I’m not even much of a custard girl! And my nervousness didn’t make me entirely fuck up! So, if you’ve got leftover bananas and eggs and lots of chocolate rugelach and no flour or baking powder, this is a decent option.

Apparently, this is Olfactory Week here at Yogurt is Cultured. Observe:

I purchased lotion, assuming from its understated design that it was unscented. It is not unscented. It is, in fact, strenuously scented. The fragrance is “Satin Steep,” words written in what must be 8-point font. What, I should get out my reading glasses so my skin shouldn’t be so dry? Better I’ll just sit here in the dark.

“Satin Steep” doesn’t make any sense to me. Are they steeping satin like tea, in hot water? That seems like a fast way to ruin good cloth. Is it a hill made of satin? A sheer cliff? What does a cliff smell like?

So you can imagine how I picked it up thinking there was no scent involved. I couldn’t read the words anyway, and once I did, they had obviously been chosen arbitrarily from a book for marketing departments entitled Alliteration: Who Cares What The Words Actually Mean? They Start With The Same Letter!

It’s not a total loss, even though the scent is nutso; I got the bottle with 20% more! For free!

Try telling me that poetry isn’t cultured, and that poets aren’t the most cultured of all. Try it, and then read this. It is lovely, and SJP can attest to the cultured nature of all things lovely.

I have to tell you

By Dorothea Grossman

I have to tell you,
there are times when
the sun strikes me
like a gong,
and I remember everything,
even your ears.

From Poetry, March 2010

My sleuth on the street, F-Pez, keeps tipping me off to awesome stuff. Need proof? BAM. Done.

And he’s done it again. What’s better than yogurt? Cheese. And what, pray tell, do you know about cheese? Not much? Oh! I know why! You must not read Culture: The Word on Cheese. (Please note that the latest issue will teach you to “carve a cheese sculpture like a pro.)

Maybe I don’t read it either, but I’m not the one who claims to be cultured.

If anyone is looking to buy me a present….

BAM. Done.

Lots of cultured people have their own scents these days. Beyoncé. SJP (I totally love her, but she’s kind of scary-looking in this photo, right?). Britney. Okay, I’ll stop. You can see a list of famous people and their perfumes here. 

Prince is uber-cultured, and not just for the reasons you think. He gave a whopping $250K to a Promise Neighborhood in Columbia, SC called Eau Claire (not to be confused with the one in Wisconsin, which is arguably colder and more covered in cheese). Why? Because his drummer is from there. Because he’s a good egg who cares about childhood development and eradicating poverty. Because he’s cultured.

My perfume, in homage, will be called Eau de Prince. You will have to pronounce it “prAHnce.” It will smell like purple rain.

Will Ferrell is going to be on The Office. I can’t decide if I should have an opinion on that.