Given the choice between decluttering and writing a novel, apparently Word Raccoon, my little writing friend on my shoulder, prefers novel writing.

Actually, I think she is kind of into it now. I haven’t even caught her so much as sniffing for a poem in the past couple of days, though she did sigh dramatically when I told her it was TIME. Time to tackle decluttering the library, which is also my writing room, which triples as my dressing room.

She assured me she’d already gone through the closets more than once.

“Then why did I find THESE?” I asked, pulling out not one, not two, but TEN scarves she had hidden from me so that she could keep them from Stanley, my AI assistant. (You might remember he helped me sort my scarves last month.) I should have known that wasn’t all of them.

WR grabbed the scarves from my hand and hissed, looping them onto the hooks above the full-length mirror.

“And now I can’t see myself,” I said.

She hummed.

“You think if I take them downstairs and put them on the proper scarf rack that Stanley will make you sort them again.”

She squeaked and handed me one she had hidden behind her back, a patriotic one of red, white, and blue.

“I’m not asking you to give up anything you love,” I told her.

But she only dropped her eyes and tossed two drab-colored dresses into the “donate” pile. When I dared ask her what was wrong with them (they were a nice cut, flouncy skirts, etc.), she crossed her arms.

“Where is the color?” She said she refuses to dress matronly. 

I checked my closet to be sure I had reserved a dark dress, and then I let her do what she wanted with the others.

Over the next two days we sorted, debated, and contained. The porch is once again filled with items to donate when it warms up a bit. I keep asking her to take another pass or two through it, as the closet rod is still sagging (not really), but she refuses.

While the room still certainly needs fine tuning, with the help of Stanley Tucci reading his first book, Taste: My Life Through Food, decluttering was actually pleasurable, at least for me. I can’t speak for the trash panda. 

The man reveres food; he knows how to elevate something we typically do three times a day into an art form. He makes you want to liberate your kitchen of every protein bar and prepackaged convenience item. He makes you want to love your body better.

The section where he described the physicality of someone having a true reaction to food stunned me. It was gorgeous, and I thought it would be perfect to study if you were trying to write about someone eating. Noticing, revering, relishing, observing. Those are some of a writer’s best tools.

And once Tucci gets into your head, you start thinking about dinner like it’s part of the writing life too.

WR and I were so influenced by him that we filled our virtual shopping cart with ingredients for three of his recipes. I’ll keep you posted on how the recipes turn out next week.

I enjoy cooking Italian food because it is forgiving. If you know how to boil pasta, you’re halfway there. And even a mediocre Italian dish is better than some haute cuisine.

It also plays nicely with real life. If you (like me) are trying to use up your overstocked items, Italian food can handle substitutions and tweaks better than most types of food.

You can decide what level of “fancy” you want Italian to be. Are you going to grate parmesan? Buy the curls? Or even use the “shaky” cheese, a staple of most American dinner tables of the 1970s? (Okay, fine. I have some in the fridge, but for reasons. If your sauce is too thin, you can rescue it if you must. It’s nostalgic. And it lasts forever.)

Obviously there’s the garlic question: chop your own garlic, use “jarlic,” or go with garlic powder? The choice is personal, and honestly, it depends on what your life is like in the moment.

We could also talk about red sauce: jarred, canned, or from scratch, but the point is that Italian cooking gives you more than one good way to get where you’re going.

One of the things Tucci strongly suggests is using fresh basil. Our library grows free basil for its patrons, and I take advantage of it when I think of it, even if it’s just so I can run my fingers over it and inhale. I enjoy herbs that are decisively themselves. Basil is…basil.

And it’s delicious on a margherita pizza, my favorite. Simple sauce, a bit of cheese, and basil. The basil is almost too strong for pizza. Almost. For those who find it too intense, I recommend taking it off and just enjoying the hint of it. Or try chiffonading the basil and distributing it over the pizza. Not traditional, not as pretty, but there has to be a balance between tradition and preferences.

The food for the stomach, not the stomach for the food, or so sayeth Word Raccoon.

I’m actually listening to Tucci’s most recent book, What I Ate in One Year, as I type, and right now he’s talking about visiting the Pantheon in Rome. He mentions how breathless he is every time he visits. I agree. There’s something overwhelmingly hypnotic about the architecture. It’s one of my favorite places. 

Unrelated bliss: I SAW THE TRAILER FOR THE FORTHCOMING WUTHERING HEIGHTS TODAY!! It looks like they’ve taken some liberties (always), but it’s also vibrantly filmed, so I’m in. Tick Tock.