Pfunksfoolosophy

It’s a good time to let you in on something: I’m a bit of a geek. My crushes tend to be on men in Physics or men who aren’t conventionally handsome.

When I was in high school I had a crush on Carl Sagan and Seiji Ozawa. Sure, I had a major crush on Paul Michael Glaser from Starsky and Hutch, but it was Carl Sagan and his ‘billions and billions’ of interesting facts about the cosmos making my heart race. As I grew older, it was Stephen Hawking, but that was an ill fated intellectual romance because he disproved my theories on time travel. We’ve since drifted apart, but he’ll always have a special place in my heart, even if he thinks my theories are faulty.

Michio Kaku became my not so secret intellectual beau after I read ‘Hyperspace’. He’s dreamy and smart. An astrophysicist with a sense of humor is my kind of catnip. I keep him in the rotation because he also teaches here in NYC. Another of my favorite men is Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s the grooviest.  ‘Death by Black Hole and other Cosmic Quandries’ is  well written and a fun read. If you’re even remotely interested in astrophysics, you’ll read it in a flash.

Tyson was also voted one of People magazine’s most beautiful people. I’m not saying I knew that before them..I’m just sayin’…

Check out his website: http://research.amnh.org/~tyson/index.php

My friends tease me about my ‘boyfriends’ but I don’t care. If loving them is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Anyone can have a crush on Johnny Depp. It takes a woman of substance to find a physicist sexy.

(well, I wouldn’t go that far)

Sundays in my family are traditionally big food days.  Roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, veggies…desserts…we love to eat. It’s very telling that one of our favorite movies is “Fatso” starring the lovely, talented and sorely missed Anne Bancroft and the very much alive Dom Deluise.

That movie revealed our family’s dirty secret. We are EATERS of the highest order. Something to celebrate? Let’s make a cake. Unhappy? Let’s get something to eat while we talk it out. Feeling tepid? How about some comfort food. Unsure of how you feel? Grab a bite. Sometimes I think it would be easier if we had alcoholics instead of foodies in the family.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s dysfunction on that front as well…but it’s not satisfying to talk about.

So, today since I was feeling like I needed to reward myself for my hard work (The hard work was getting out of my own way to write my great American novel), I decided to make myself a good savory treat. I made pernil.

Pernil is Puero Rican pork roast. It takes the lowly pork butt or shoulder  and elevates it to the sublime. Garlic, oregano, and other spices are forced into slits in the meat and as it roasts, melds with the flesh…sorry, I started drooling a little. The apartment was perfumed with the aroma of roasting meat, garlic and oregano. Even the cat was purring happily as the roast cooked.

Is it good for you? Well, since the meat is rather fatty, I would say that it’s a heart attack on a plate, but it’s soooo yummy. I made arroz con gandules and string beans to go with and I ate like it was going out of style.

I’m full and sleepy…but there’s room for ice cream. Since I now have a gym membership, I think I will break even health wise. That’s the best I can do, right?
Now for that ice cream