Randomness, Oscars and Truffle Butter Popcorn

Sometimes life takes you on non-sequiturs, embracing the random.

So I was walking down the street with my friend Jeanmarie, when we saw a doll sitting up in a trash can on 50^th and Park. It was a baby doll, the kind with eyes that blink if you tip them up and down. “That reminds me,” said Jeanmarie, and, honestly, I was waiting for her to say, my childhood doll Lucy or something like that.

“That reminds me of my friend Paul.”

“How so?”

“Well, he was this very talented singer, a true artist, really, and a few years ago he decided to sell everything he owned and travel around the world and just, you know, see things and be artistic.

So he’d been in Europe for about a year with just a change of clothes and a journal in his backpack, when he met a homeless guy in Paris, and they became friends, and the homeless guy gave him an old baby doll, just like that one.

Well, Paul said thank you, and took the doll because he didn’t want to offend the homeless guy, but he intended to throw it out. But then, as time went on, he became more and more attached to her. And he gave her a name, and took her everywhere with him. And it ended up that he really felt the doll had been sent to him as a sign from some kind of higher power, and it became his greatest treasure.”

I waited for the rest of the story as we crossed the street together in the snow.

“And?”

“And what?”

“And then what?”

“Then nothing.”

“That’s it? The doll didn’t tell him to do something crazy, or inspire him to write his great opera, or infect him with TB, or turn out to be possessed by the ghost of a murdered child?”

“Jeez, Kate, no! This isn’t a movie!”

And that was the end of that.

Back home, with my salt-stained snow boots drying by the radiator, I made truffle butter popcorn with the truffle butter I’d been saving for Oscar Night. I’ll buy some more. It’s fine. No drama.

Truffle Butter Popcorn

• Tip the kernels into a pan, pour in the oil and half the salt (1tsp)
• Cover the pan with foil – use serious heavy foil or do a double layer – to make a lid and cut a few holes for the steam to escape
• Hold the pan above the heat so that it gently cooks the kernels (about 4 minutes.)
• (Or make some plain microwave pop corn)
• Melt the truffle butter and pour over the pop corn, sprinkling over the rest of the salt. Stir well to combine