Reason for Not Eating Out #14: If You Can’t Find It, Make It

I have this problem often with clothes. I’ll conjure up exactly the pair of pants, for instance, that I want in my head, down to the weft and stretchiness of the twill and exact shade of, say, cerulean blue and go off on a desperate search to find them, which always (obviously) ends in failure. I am picky with a capital P. Unfortunately, I never owned a sewing machine or dress pattern, and barely know how to sew a button back onto my clothing when it falls off. Holes? I can’t do that. I am poor at clothesmaking with a capital P.

Making my own clothes might be out of the question. But what happens when I get an insatiable craving for, say, buttery, spiced rum-flavored butternut squash ice cream (as I did last weekend)? I cook a butternut squash to carmelized mush, whip up a custard, douse with rum, pinch with cinnamon, and churn, baby, churn. Yes, I can do that. And because it was how I’d conceptualized it, it was perfect (with a capital P).

It’s not easy to come by perfection even in a town saturated with choice. For most, the diverse food offerings of the city are more than plenty. But it’s easy to be disappointed still. I once wandered through the East Village on a hot summer day in search for a ice cream scoop shop that I never found (since then I’ve realized where many of those shops were lurking). It’s also easier to forgive yourself if you don’t particularly care for the food that you made than it is for the store that you shelled over $5 a scoop for. Disappointments are facts of life, whether you find what you’re looking for or you don’t. But when it comes to food disappointments, I like to have a little more control.

With that taken care of, I can deal better with clothes that don’t flatter my butt.