Well, last week's post about my job was some sort of catalyst. It -- along with a few other incidents during the week -- convinced me that my job was not where I wanted to be. And on Friday I quit!

Today is my first day of real freedom and I couldn't be happier. At the moment I'm not planning on finding another full-time job. I got a pretty amazing freelance writing position (I'll disclose more details once it's started) and while it won't be nearly enough work to support me, it has convinced me that writing for a living is actually a possibility. Until that happens, I'll be cobbling together various jobs and planning my permanent escape.

The truth is that I had been contemplating quitting my last job since my first week there. For the first month, it was due to my HORRIBLE coworker, who was rude and irrational to the point of insanity. One example:

I am sitting at my desk during the first week. She comes over to my desk and hands me a box.

Horrible Coworker: [Redacted] wants you to go through these receipts. Give the box back to me when you're done.

The box is full of approximately 2 million receipts, just loose and floating around.

Me: Wait, what do you mean by 'go through'? Does she want me to organize them by card or date or what?

Horrible Coworker: I don't know! She just told me to tell you to go through them and I've told you, so now my job is done!

She huffs off.

Yes. This is not exaggerated. The girl also threatened to get me fired and told another coworker she wasn't going to train me fully because then they'd have a reason to keep her around. I hope she's having fun doing her old job today....

I also quit because the company was totally shady: underpaying workers, misfiling them as independent contractors so the owners wouldn't have to pay employment taxes and in the meantime making all these extravagant personal purchases. There were also no benefits, not even paid sick days. When I quit, I told the owner of the company I didn't like the way he ran his business for all the reasons above and I think he was in shock. The only thing he said was, "So that's it? No notice, just this is your last day?" I said, "Well, you've treated me like a temporary employee, so I'm going to treat this like a temporary job."

Which is probably as close to "You can take this job and shove it" as I'm ever going to get.

I'm now organizing a mass IRS and California Labor Board complaint submission. It's amazing how many people have come out of the woodwork to offer support and commiseration. Meanwhile, I've been on this puffy cloud of post-quitting euphoria. I've been writing, cooking, laughing and talking to friends. On Thursday I'm flying up to Seattle with Rob to visit my family, his first time seeing my mom and stepdad since a brief dinner almost four years ago. Today I'm going to eat ice cream and go jogging in a nearby park. I've spent the morning working on my screenplay for Script Frenzy (a story for another day). The sun is shining.

So things are good here. How are you?

With all the extra time I have this week, I've been able to actually do some cooking, which is nice. On Sunday I wanted to make something for the book club brunch, something green and spring-like, and I decided on one of my Japanese standbys: aspara no kurogoma ae, asparagus with crushed black sesame.

It was an excuse to unpack my suribachi (Japanese mortar and pestle) from the garage and use the bag of kurogoma I bought in Little Tokyo a couple weeks ago. The grooved bowl of the suribachi makes it easy to crush the toasted sesame, but if you don't have one you can also make the sauce in a food processor or grind the sesame seeds in a clean coffee grinder and mix them with the other ingredients in a separate bowl.

If you try this recipe, make sure you use toasted black sesame seeds (irigoma). You can either buy them pre-toasted or toast them yourself in a dry pan over a low flame for a few minutes, stirring or shaking constantly. When they smell nutty, remove them from the heat immediately. Pre-toasted sesame should also be warmed briefly in a pan before you crush them; they'll be much more fragrant and tasty that way.

One very Japanese technique used in this recipe is fanning the asparagus to cool them and preserve the color, rather than using an ice bath. It results in a more flavorful blanched vegetable. For reals. Plus, using an uchiwa as a kitchen tool is awesome. (A piece of stiff cardboard also works.)

Aspara no kurogoma ae (Asparagus with crushed black sesame)

Serves 8 at a book club buffet, 4-6 as a side dish

1 1/2 lbs. asparagus
1/4 cup toasted black sesame seeds (irigoma kuro)
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon mirin

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Snap off the woody base of each asparagus spear. For big, chunky spears, remove the skin from the bottom half with a vegetable peeler. Cook the spears in boiling water until bright green and just tender, 1-3 minutes depending on the size of your asparagus. Drain in a colander and fan until barely warm.

If using pre-toasted black sesame seeds, warm them briefly in a pan over low flame for 1-2 minutes, stirring or shaking constantly. Crush seeds in a suribachi or other grinder. It doesn't have to be a uniform paste; some seeds will be left intact. Add the sugar, soy sauce and mirin and mix until the sauce resembles moist sand. Toss with the asparagus (you can do this in the suribachi, if you're using one) and serve.

Seattle was great, completely restful and restorative. We spent Thursday and Friday in the city, where we experienced animatronic dinosaurs and creepy insects at the Pacific Science Center (one of my sisters works there), successfully located a crepe to fulfill Rob's random crepe craving, and found Bruce and Brandon Lee's graves.

This picture makes me smile.

Joe Bar, where we found the crepe we'd been searching for. Highly recommended.

Cherry trees in bloom on the way to Bruce Lee's grave.

At the end of the day on Friday, we took the ferry to my mom and stepdad's house in Kitsap County, where we spent the rest of the weekend playing board games (my mom's new favorite is the simple yet entertaining Apples to Apples), doing crossword puzzles and enjoying the oddly warm and sunny weather.

A Honey Bucket by the lake where we picnicked. Am I the only one baffled and repulsed by the name "Honey Bucket" as applied to a portable toilet?

And then there was the Magic.

Magic: The Gathering, that is. Do you know about this game? Nerds play it all around the world and the super-nerds play at tournaments where they win tens of thousands of dollars. It's like Dungeons & Dragons, but you play it with cards and there is some sort of strategy involved, like chess. Here is the text from a card I just pulled randomly from Rob's deck:

Summon Faeries
The only sound was the gentle clicking of Faeries' wings. Then those intruders who were still standing turned and fled. One thing was certain: they didn't think the Scryb were very funny anymore.

Somehow this is a game.

So anyway, Rob has been wanting to teach me to play for awhile, but I have been refusing, mainly because I can't rid myself of the memory of the hunched, sweaty dork-boys at my high school who spent every lunch period playing Magic, looking up only long enough to stare at the boobs of some girl passing by. But my youngest sister, who attended a blissfully Magic-free high school, was persuaded.

Back in LA, I had ridiculed his plan to teach Sonya how to play, so Rob hadn't brought his deck with him to Seattle. But with his eagle eyes (or is it Faerie eyes?) on the lookout, he immediately spotted a nerd store in a strip mall near my mom's and on Saturday afternoon we ventured inside, Sonya, my mom and stepdad in tow. "This will be like a cultural experience," my mom said cheerfully to Rob. "We'll get to see your world."

As luck would have it, there was a Warhammer tournament going on inside the store. Assorted sweaty dork-boys sat hunched around tables covered in small plastic dragons, looking up only long enough to stare at our boobs as my sister and I passed by. The place was depressing, like a Blockbuster had gone out of business and allowed the dorks to temporarily set up shop among the empty shelves. My mom observed, "The first thing is, there's no women in here!" The dork-boys seemed to have a sense of humor though, so they laughed along with us. There was peace in the Kingdom of Nerds. Rob got his cards and the next day taught Sonya how to play, thereby completing the next step in his master plan to teach me how to play Magic: The Gathering.

Please observe the pure excited joy in his eyes versus Sonya's "I don't think the Scryb is very funny anymore" smile:

If you live in Los Angeles and love ice cream, you've probably heard of Scoops. The owner is a reluctant Yelp superstar who makes small batches of ice cream in mixed-up flavor combinations like matcha-banana, cranberry with basil seed and pistachio-lemon -- and these are just what I've tried in the last two weeks. The shop's signature flavor is brown bread, which tastes like brown sugar and cream and is laced with crunchy Grape Nuts. Yum!

As a weird-ice-cream-flavor aficionado, I was obsessed with Scoops while I was away from LA, forgot about it when I returned, then recently realized I live practically within walking distance. The obsession has returned full-force and I've been stopping in at least once a week. A cup with two flavors is only $2.50 and refills -- refills! on ice cream! kind of a dream come true! -- are only $1.75. Insert Homer Simpson drool here.

There's a board on the wall for people to write their flavor suggestions, which I always find inspiring and amusing. Glazed Donut is one I keep thinking about. I'm not sure exactly how it would taste, but if they sold it at Scoops, I would totally eat it.

There's something special about fundraising cookbooks. You know what I mean. Fat books of typewritten recipes and hand-drawn pictures sold by the Junior League of Smalltown, USA or the First Presbyterian Church Ladies' Circle. Looking through one is almost like an archaeological dig, as you slowly piece together the lives of these people in this place at this time. Lucky for me (and for you too), the Los Angeles Public Library has one of the largest collections of culinary materials in the country, including a large number of fundraising cookbooks from California and the Midwest.

I've been looking for a new weekly feature for the blog, something that will inspire and delight me as much as Japanese candy once did -- and this is it. I'm pleased to announce Cookery Book Friday, in which I review one fundraising cookbook from long ago and attempt at least one recipe from its pages.

(Note: the recipe links below will take you to a picture of the recipe mentioned.)

The first book up: Kitchen Madonna, published by the St. Bronislava Rosary Society in Plover, WI. The typewritten recipes are divided into sections, with ballpoint-pen drawings adorning each page. It kicks off with beverages, most of them alcoholic, the only contributions to the book from the husbands in this town. My favorite drink recipe, however, comes from a woman, one Darlene Starosta, who is also one of the few women in the book not titled "Mrs. Husband's Name." I don't think this is a coincidence. A woman whose contribution to her church cookbook is "GIN & WATERMELLON COOLER" -- simply a fifth of gin poured into a "watermellon," which is left to sit for 24 hours, scooped out with a melon baller and served -- is way too fun to be known only by her husband's name. Also, she misspelled "watermelon" multiple times. Clearly a lush.

From there, the recipes move on to food, or dishes resembling food. Judging from the last names of the contributors and the section devoted to "Polish Favorites," Plover is a town filled with Polish immigrants. So there is an odd dance in the book between the typical American post-war fare of meals assembled from boxes and cans, and the traditional hearty Polish food the women have inherited and most likely grew up eating. There is, for instance, Salad Supreme, a particularly perplexing combination of warm applesauce, gelatin and 7-Up, topped with diced marshmallows, crumbled cream cheese and heavy cream which has steeped together overnight. I don't understand if you are supposed to eat it or use it to clear out a stopped-up drain.

But there are also, tucked among the cream of mushroom soup horrors, recipes like the intriguing Duck Blood Soup. Or Sauerkraut, which includes the instruction "Remove scum as it forms and wash and scald cloth often to keep it free from scum and mold." (Mmm...scum and mold. It's actually more appealing than Salad Supreme.) And there is the entire Polish Favorites section, which I am tempted to try a recipe from, but too many of them start out with lines like "Remove eyes and teeth from pig's head" or call for, like, snouts.

There are a few surprise ingredients that show up throughout the book. One of them is prunes which, along with raisins, show up in desserts, soups (Tasty Prune Soup!) and wine. Another is crumbs. I know that's not really an ingredient, but tell that to Mrs. Adolph Brillowski and her Crumb Soup, a puzzling concoction of flour, egg and...wait. Let me just show you the recipe and you'll see for yourself.

Thanks, Mrs. Adolph. For some reason, the milk added at the end is the most horrifying part. I imagine the crumbs themselves would be kind of like spaetzle or weird noodles.

It's hard to pinpoint when this book was printed. The LAPL website lists it as 197-?, and indeed there are quite a few cheese fondue recipes, but somehow the book feels older than that. Maybe I'm just baffled by this triptych of "Chinese" recipes and their accompanying illustrations. It's strange and somehow sad this was produced in the same decade as my birth.

First, Baked Chop Suey, with a picture of what seem to be three mushrooms:

Next, Chop Suey, with a picture of some sort of Chinaman cook:

Finally, Cantonese Casserole and its odd hybrid -- three mushrooms with Chinese faces?

Let's just be happy we've come a long way since then.

The recipe I decided to try is Prune Cake, contributed by the coy Mrs. Jerome Iwanski. Her recipe is merely a list of ingredients with an oven temperature and cooking time -- even the GIN & WATERMELLON COOLER came with better instructions, and that was written by a probable drunk. But I assembled the cake in a way that made sense, guessed at the pan size and ended up with a light, tender spice cake, speckled with small pockets of prune. It's lovely, especially topped with sweetened whipped cream. And eaten for breakfast.

Prune Cake

3/4 cup pitted prunes
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease your pan of choice. (I used a 13 x 9" rectangular pan, but a bundt pan would be even better.)

Place the prunes in a small saucepan and cover with water, plus the vinegar. Simmer over medium-low heat for 10 minutes. Let prunes cool in the pan, then drain and chop. Set them aside while you assemble the batter.

In a large bowl, beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Add the sugar, eggs and milk, beating until smooth in between additions. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing with a wooden spoon until fully incorporated. Mix in the chopped prunes and pour batter into the pan. Bake on the middle rack for 15-20 minutes (for a 13 x 9" pan), or until a tester poked in the middle comes out clean.

This is the newest member of our household, Milhouse. His turn-ons include climbing shower curtains, napping in closets and battling invisible enemies. We got him over the weekend at the LA North Central animal shelter and he's been increasing the cuteness in our lives by about a million percent ever since.

See?

In other household news, Rob flew to New York today to shoot a romantic comedy starring Catherine Zeta Jones. It's kind of a huge deal!