Oh these kids today and their prom invitiations. Also: AWKWARD ROMANCE OF PROM NIGHT STILL LIVES!

SERIOUSLY. My boyfriend's gorgeous daughter was asked to the prom by one of her dear friends (they've come to Life headquarters for dinner a couple of times and these kids are wonderful) and this is how he did it. Daughter is a photographer of extraordinary talent, and her date is apparently some kind of Secret Cake Whisperer. Check it:

Could you DIE? I love the directness, brevity, the cocksureness. Who is going to say no to that? If I get married this kid is making the cake.

As you can imagine I have a hideous prom story to tell. My junior year prom fell the day after an enormous student council convention at which I was running for State President. This would have been an epic coup, completing the dynasty that was the How To Run Your Life family. My brother had been President of the County Association of Student Councils. My sister was President of the District Association of Student Councils (5 counties). I would be president of the state!

Denied. I lost by a single vote, some back door deal between all boys schools. Devastating.

Anyway: I came home exhausted and got ready for my prom. My dress was completely tragic: magenta, one shoulder, giant flower on said shoulder, taffeta. I was not a pretty picture.

AND! I had to go to prom dinner with my older brother -- he lording the County manele over me (not really) and my Brazilian exhcange student. My date was the twin brother of one of my best friends. Not really a love match, and if I recall correctly I totally engineered the invite through his sister. Very Machiavellian. I wanted to go to prom. How wrong I was.

My brother, then 21, my exchange student Edie, my friend and I went to the local fancy f rench restaurant and had an unremarkable meal. Edie couldnt figure out how to eat he onion soup gratinee. My brother tried to order wine and was denied because even though he was legal he was going to a prom. He ordered escargot instead. We ate, left, went to prom. I was depressed all night.

And then on Monday morning, what should pass but a GIANT HEADLINE IN OUR HOMETOWN PAPER, in the Living Section , across the top. "AWKWARD ROMANCE OF PROM NIGHT STILL LIVES" it read.

There was no awkward romance. A brother, sister, neighbor and exchange student. Lord.

A columnist happened to be sitting at the next table, eavesdroping on everything we said... and transcribing it. I was red dress. There was white dress, white tux, black tux (thank god we were all wearing different colors or this could have gotten confusing). Hideous, horrible, totally mortifying and only happens to me.

I skipped senior prom and went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I missed seeing my best friend crowned prom queen :( . After party was fun though.

I've lent my boyfriend's daughter a gorgeous red silk gown, though, so it's kinda like I'll be going to a senior prom after all.

Right? Transitive property of gowns?

Mount Welby and The Secret

So you know that book The Secret, which says if you visualize what you want, it will come to you? I totally don't buy it because I can promise you there are a bunch of Libyans visualizing not having their houses blown up, and there are many Japanese visualizing having their homes back from the tsunami, and lots of girls in Africa visualizing an end to female genital mutiliation and forced marriage.

But maybe it works for middle-class white American women because check it out. Totally out of the blue, I was invited to spend the weekend at Mount Welby, a gorgeous country house in Virginia that I long ago put on my list of favorite websites. Observe to the right: ---->

Anyway, there I was last weekend, and it's more beautiful than you can imagine. Just... perfect.
See?

The formal garden

Above, the dining room. Below, we made pies!



Irises on the kitchen table

The view from the porch. Tell me you dont want to live here.

The upper deck

Welby the Dog. Enjoys spitty tennis balls.

Run off off the rock wall...

The dining room fireplace.

another view of that chair.

dining room fireplace minus the hipstomatic treatment.

a downstairs bedroom

another downstairs bedroom.

the kitchen table.

5 bedrooms, 5 baths/... available for rent. Check it out. perfect place for a family Thanksgiving.

OK, the OTHER way to be beautiful for a big night

White eyeliner, just in the corner of the eye. I usually just line the inner 1/4 inch, top and bottom, and smudge it, then apply mascara and/or other liner as planned. It opens up the eye, makes you look awake and well rested... I like the MAC white liner. All the Hollywood girls use it! I guess. I don't know. Anyway, I use it.

(This isn't me)

So the new rules for how to be gorgeous:

1. Lots of water.

2. Lots of sleep.

3. A little white eyeliner.

You're welcome.

How to Be Beautiful for the Big Night

This applies less to you younger people -- whether you know it or not the mere fact of your youngness imparts a certain beauty (your eyes are brighter, your skin more vibrant, your body more gravity defying). But still: with prom season coming up it's worth a listen.

A few years back I had scheduled a date a week in the future and wanted to look gorgeous to impress the dude. I discussed it with my friend Meg -- what to wear, do I get my hair cut, I needed new makeup -- and she stopped me.

"Honestly, the only thing you can do is drink a lot of water

and get a lot of sleep."

Her very wise point: you pretty much look like you look, even if you spackle on the make up and truss yourself up to the nines. Within an hour of leaving the house, all the artificiality starts to fall apart (if you're me, which I am, with limited patience or interest in checking my lipstick every 10 minutes or powdering my nose. This is not because I am not vain but because I am easily distracted.)

So if you have a big night coming: hydrate and sleep well the week before, then leave it to fate.

How To Eat Indian Mangoes The Way I Learned in Osama Bin Laden's Third Wife's House in Kabul: NSFW

News peg: Osama bin Laden gunned down in Pakistan.

How To Run Your Life* tie in:

I grew up eating mangoes right off the tree in Florida (Palm Beach County, to be exact. Home of the Hanging Chad). Mango whip, mango fool, raw mango, mango fruit salad... you name it, we ate it. My grandfather had an enormous mango tree and he would pick the fruit, cut it into cubes and surrepticiously stick it in our freezer while my mother and father were at work. It was a surfeit of mangoes and one had to be furtive if one meant to get rid of it all.

You eat a Florida mango by cutting through the skin down either sid of the flat pit, then scoring the flesh and turning the skin inside out. Golden cubes of mango present themselves for easy, if messy, eating.

So I thought I knew mangoes.

Fast forward to 2002. I was in Kabul, staying in Peter Juvenal's guest house near the Interior Ministry. It had previously been the home of Osama Bin Laden's third wife -- until 9/11 and the U.S. invasion, that is. It had a nice apricot tree in the courtyard and was the most comfortable, clean place for foreigners to stay.

I was sitting with a bunch of Brits when the house staff served us these mangoes (unlike any I had seen before). They taught me the proper way to do it. It's a little naughty, as you will see.

These mangoes - I think of them as Indian or Pakistani or Afghan mangoes, but I believe the variety is called Ataulfo (and Whole Foods in DC has a special on them: 10 for $10!) -- are sweet and almost completely fiber-free. So here's what you do.

1. Cut a horizontal line around the mango all the way to the pit, like you might do with an avocado.

2. Gripping one half with each hand, twist the two sides apart.

3. What emerges is phallic. It gets worse.

4. Suck and scrape all the delicious golden flesh off the exposed pit.

5. Then clamp down on the pit with your molars, and twist the remaining half of the mango off the pit.

6. Repeat step 4.

7. Now you should have 2 gorgeous mango cups, ready for a spoon. If you are serving these to guests, do this bit in the kitchen with the doors closed, over the sink. It's messy but delicious. And fairly provocative. (If you want, you can dribble a little honey and lime in each half, or dust their cavity with cayenne pepper. But they are fine as is.)

How To Cut A Lot of Little Rolly Tomatoes All At Once

I learned this trick from my Cooking Channel boyfriend Chuck's Day Off.

That's my boyfriend, Chuck's Day Off.

So this is what you do.

Get two dinner plates with lips on the bottom (the ceramic kind, not the flesh kind. I don't think you can get those here.) Invert one plate.

Put your little washed tomatoes (these are Organic Grape Tomatoes) inside the lip, comma ca.

Now put your other plate on top, bottom side down and press a little harder than you think you should. With a serrated knife, cut horizontally through the tomatoes, sawing until you get...


to the other side. et voila! your tomatoes are all cut up and ready to make Butter Chicken, or sauteed Provencal mussels.

How to Make Fava Beans (No chianti)

They are totally lovely, despite the grisly and seemingly permanent association with Hannibal Lecter.

yay, fava

But they sometimes seem a bit more trouble then they are worth. I only recently dived into fava world, and it might be useful to have someone tell you how to make this gorgeous, silken, bright green beans that have absolutely NOTHING to do with lima beans which I hate.

boo lima

limas taste like they are wearing wooly sweaters. Cast them aside! Succotash is terrible!

so, favas.

First you have to take them out of their pods. It's like shelling peas.

Then you throw all the beans into a pot of boiling water and boil them till they feel done -- a few minutes. The outside will be wrinkly like your pinkie when you sit too long in the bath.

Then you have to peel them AGAIN. It's such a pain in the ass but so worth it.

here's the easiest way to do it: Grap a paring knife and make a little cut in the wrinkly skin -- not too deep! just like a paper cut -- then squeeze. A slippery green bean, maybe two split halves, will slither out. Saute in a little olive oil, salt, pepper, a little garlic if your tastes run that way, and serve warm with a shaving or two of good parmesan. Eat.