The Challenge: Super Burrito to the Rescue

Any real San Franciscan can tell you that for the best tacos in the city, you go to La Taqueria, but for the best burritos, you have to go to El Farolito. Neither one is a classy joint. But El Farolito is by far the less classy of the two.

And now I give you a photo of my brother Jason eating a super carne asada, number 75 on 7x7's Big Eat. Look! An authentic bearded hipster eating an authentic Mexican burrito!

Jason! Jason! How is it? 

"Super."

The finer points of an El Farolito burrito: It's hefty. You'll need both hands. The tortilla is magnificently, tooth-sinkingly soft. And then there are all kinds of big glops of things inside. Plenty of cream, and cheese, and red flecks of salsa and chile floating around. You'll encounter the occasional slice of buttery avocado. Please note: We're not talking carefully balanced. Stephen was annoyed that all his steak landed on one side, and all his beans to the other. "Smush it! Re-smush it!" we advised. In the realm of big beefy burritos, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Picture overhead lighting, questionably clean linoleum tables, the finest jams Mexican radio can provide, and a line of chatty twenty-somethings pushing eagerly through the door.

My personal recommendation: It's best to go when you're incredibly famished or incredibly drunk or, preferably, both.

Thanksgiving for Grown-Ups

I meant to publish this post on Thanksgiving, along with a gorgeous picture of a roast bird. But things happen (namely, gorgeous birds always taking longer than expected, needing to warm five thousand side dishes at the last minute, and frantically applying mascara before guests arrive). So imagine, if you would, a burnished roast! Or better yet, these Parker House rolls. They were stunners. And Happy Holidays! They're not over yet.

This will be the first Thanksgiving I haven't spent with my parents. I know. I know! I'm 25 years old. I've been away from home (starting with boarding school) for 10 years now. Cue Stephen:

"What, ever?!"

"Yes."

"You mean, ever-ever?!!"

"Yes!!"

I'm going to go for broke and say that British people really don't get this holiday. (Based on my sample size of one boyfriend. Look, I'm an English major. I'm going to let the social scientists worry about the ethics of sample sizes.)

Anyways, vacation days didn't work out, flights were expensive, and here I am in San Francisco. I was feeling pretty bummed about it a couple of weeks out. I just really love holiday cooking with my mom. She's really good at doctoring gravy, and not panicking when the Yorkshire puddings that you promised would be "so easy" happen to set off every smoke alarm in the house. Also, she has a generous hand with the Chardonnay. Especially if you're helping out in the kitchen.

So, I was feeling glum, and so, to cheer myself up, I did the obvious, and ordered an 18-pound turkey. Nothing like a massive roasting project to get the old spring back in one's step, right? Then I bought 3 pounds of Brussels sprouts at the farmers' market. The Brussels sprouts dude said, and I quote, "You must really love Brussels sprouts!" Yes. Yes I do.

We have two friends coming over, one of whom is vegetarian. Just thinking about the leftovers makes me a little weak at the knees. It's going to be great. My apartment may be outrageously small, but where there's a will, there's a way.

I also plan to open the first bottle of Chardonnay around noon. What can I say? I learned from the best.

The Challenge: A Working Girl's Afternoon Off

Last week, my parents came to visit. They are always up to things, but my mom found a window to swing by the Financial District on a sunny Friday afternoon. After some hugging and mutual dress compliments, she said those magical words of parents everywhere: "Well, sweetie! Where would you like to go for lunch?"

I replied, "Just let me get my list." (Commence rummaging through oversize handbag.)

And because she is a particularly indulgent mother, she suggested we go to Perbacco. Now, keep in mind that my mother used to be a young urban professional herself, back in the day, in 'frisco, no less, during the 80s. Rest assured that she knows how to treat a working girl to lunch.

Perbacco it was. Is it just me, or does San Francisco have approximately a bazillion upscale/Italian/Californian/rustic/house-cured/house-pickled restaurants? I don't really care. If they are all this good, keep it coming. Per 7x7's recommendation, we had the salumi misti. Made in house using "traditional Piedmontese recipes." You heard me.

But we really fell in love with some Brussels sprouts. Now, Brussels sprouts and I are old friends, but I understand there are people in this world who feel otherwise. If you labor under any delusions that you don't like Brussels sprouts, for heavens sake, I beseech you to stop boiling, steaming, and otherwise abusing them. Roasting really makes their nuttiness sing, but Perbacco does one better. Panfried, crispy-edged, bathed in (most likely an unconscionable quantity of) brown butter, tossed with burst capers, and sprinkled with a generous handful of Reggiano, they were to die for. Little cabbages to die for, I say. (Slams fist clenching fork to table.)

Then, after you've polished off your exquisite Italian/Californian/house-cured lunch, I highly recommend blowing off work for the afternoon, and going shopping at Loehmann's with the original working girl. One never knows. That next Diane von Furstenburg could be just around the corner.

Hardy on Family

"Angel sat down, and the place felt like home; yet he did not so much as formerly feel himself one of the family gathered there. Every time that he returned hither he was conscience of this divergence, and since he had last shared in the Vicarage life it had grown even more distinctly foreign to his own than usual. Its transcendental aspirations... were as foreign to his own as if they had been the dreams of people on another planet."

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

The Poor Upper Middle Class Graduate

The three months of my unpaid internship have come and past, and, thankfully, I now find myself gainfully employed—well, gainfully employed to the tune of 14 dollars an hour with no benefits. The book publisher I have been interning for has decided to keep me on, and despite their struggling finances and a company-wide hiring freeze, they’ve signed me for another three months, paid.

On the one hand, it’s an enormous relief, and trust me, I was and am ecstatic. I feared my ability to find other work, and I’ve really loved writing and editing as my—can you believe it—actual job. On the other hand, I have entirely burned through my savings from my previous loathsome-but-unfortunately-better-paying law firm position, leaving me breathtakingly broke at this point in time.

Most of the time, one tries not to think about it. I check WellsFargo.com as little as humanly possible these days. This may be about as intelligent as sticking my head in the sand, but I go into paroxysms of doubt and anxiety when I see the account balances. Aside from paying my rent, my train and bus pass, and insurance, I endeavor to buy nothing. Yes, absolutely nothing. Is this practical? No. Am I in credit card debt? Of course, although nothing, I desperately hope, that two more paychecks (halle-freaking-lejah) won’t sort out.

I have started compiling a list, of those things that I need, want, and generally pine after. It is entitled the When Becky Isn’t Poor Anymore List:

Dry cleaning
Take shoes to cobbler
Blender
Ramekins
Tart pans
Steaming rack
Mascara
Clothes shopping
New laptop
A Subaru Outback Legacy, from approximately 1997
A pony

If some of these items seem frivolous, well, so be it. You try living with four month-old mascara, or having a bag full of clothes that you would really quite like to wear but haven’t been able to since June because you can’t afford to take it to the cleaners. I would like to point out that the computer that I write to you from is literally falling apart. My charming youngest brother Bruce kicked it a few years back, and the hardware has been slowly splitting apart ever since. Yesterday the poor thing lost a foot. It gives me a whole new appreciation for the cliché of not having a leg to stand on.

On a more serious note, however, I do know that credit card debt, however minor, is nothing to dabble in. And there is, as you may have guessed, reader, one inevitable and depression-inspiring solution: the much dreaded phone call to the parents. I can’t bring myself to do it, or at least I haven’t been able to yet. At this point I’d rather pay off interest than admit defeat. My parents are investment bankers, and while they made very positive noises when I announced that I was going to quit my vile law firm job after only nine months, I have and continue to have my doubts about their enthusiasm. Part of me thinks they’re waiting for the call, and I hate that. I so desperately want to make this work on my own, and prove to myself, more than anything, that I’m a competent human being and not just an entitled, impractical, upper middle class brat.

I am amused by the fact that my banker parents have been blessed with markedly impractical children, and I suspect this poetic justice must often be the case in comfortable families. There are four children in my family, and so far, of the three of us that have graduated, we’re batting 3 for 3 going into the arts. My sister Jessica is an assistant in a modern art gallery in Manhattan, my brother Jason is an aspiring documentary filmmaker/bartender, and then there’s me, book publishing. I don’t know how much my other siblings may have dug into the parental resources or not. At the end of the day, does it matter? Regardless of the exact details, there’s a mindset singular to the newly “self-sufficient” upper middle class college graduate. We have never considered the possibility that we’re not going to be okay. This, I believe, drives our career and life choices just as much as a tenuous financial background may drive another graduate to consulting, i-banking, or, ahem, law school.

The thing is, I think my parents are guilty of more than just spoiling us (which, of course they have, though god knows they’ve tried not to). I was up visiting my parents for a weekend recently, and I had a conversation with my mom. We were in the kitchen and I was attempting to evasively answer her questions about my finances. She started in on describing the path that had led her towards business school, something I’ve heard many times, but something that I hadn’t heard before came up.

“My father, the architect,” she mused, “struggled his whole life. My grandparents even paid for the deposit on the house in Mercer Island, for instance. He just never seemed able to sever that umbilical cord. When I graduated, I was sure I never wanted that to be something I worried about.”

For a moment, I was floored. Images of my own umbilical cord floated up behind my eyes; wrinkled, spongy, and supernaturally white, it was tying me forever to this woman in her sunny kitchen with her 80s Italian pottery and enviable complete Le Creuset set. And then, I recovered. If nothing else, my elite education has given me the ability to draw a counterargument, even if I may not have entirely convinced myself yet.

“But mom,” I said, shimmying a pan the way she taught me. “Surely that can’t be all there is to it. It is not some random happenstance that made all of your children go into the arts. You were an East Asian studies major; Dad was Latin American History. You may have been very happy with your jobs, but they were always your jobs, not your interests. Growing up, you read us C.S. Lewis and the Legend of Davy Crockett, not the Wall Street Journal. I don’t just happen to love literature. I was taught to. And even if I can’t make it work, I think I owe it to myself to try.”

“You’re right,” my mom patted my shoulder. “You go for it, kiddo.”

I don’t know how much she meant it. Most of the time, I don’t think I have half the conviction I pretend to have in what I’m doing right now. But in my better moments, I hope that if I can just scrape by for the next three months, it will all have been worth it. That I’ll look back on my life and think of these as my formative years, when I made a decision about who I am and what I want, and just went for it. Right? Well that’s the theory, anyways.