Long winter holiday weekend

It has been such a relaxing weekend, despite social obligations. Friday night we went to Vault for a coworker-friend's birthday. We left after about two hours, using my recent stomach flu as an excuse. We walked to the video store and stopped on the way back for tea at Palio. Through miscommunication it was served in mugs, so we stayed and read the weekly papers while sipping tea. It was so relaxing and quite an enjoyable change of pace.

Saturday morning I went for breakfast with my brother, prepped the bathroom ceiling for painting, and tried to do all of the grocery shopping for xmas cooking. That night was a holiday party at a running buddy's house, at which we also stayed for two hours. We barely left the house on Sunday. Instead we stayed home, took care of chores, and ended up drinking tea and hanging out in the kitchen nook listening to jazz for a few hours. I read Veganomicon and Erik played WoW on the laptop, while Kenard lapped up affection. We dinner with Erik's parents at Lauro, now that they have a bit more time to themselves.

Monday I went out to buy sequins, and candy for gingerbread house-making. Fred Meyer was so parked up that I went all the way out to Target-- where no regular-sized candycanes were to be had. I also painted the bathroom ceiling (second coat) and made a pumpkin (not technically a pumpkin, but a winter squash, okay?) cheezcake with grahamcracker crust for xmas dessert. Erik and I went for a run, and I think we watched a movie or two. Maybe that was Sunday. It starts to blur together, doesn't it?

Tuesday we went over to Erik's brother's newly completed house for gift-opening at 9am. Our 4 year-old nephew had awoken at 4am to open all presents featuring his first initial on the gift tag, and when one of them had a note from Santa he woke up his visiting maternal grandmother to read it for him. Consequently, his mother had to wrap a number of gifts back up. Despite threats that he wouldn't have anything to open, however, there were tons of presents. I think everyone was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed seeing my one-year-old nephew hug the stuffed animal I bought for him at Crafty Wonderland.

Back home, of course, I finished making No Knead Bread (with oregano, lemon thyme and rosemary from the garden), roasted green beans with garlic and lemon zest, and a kindof sortof attempt at seitan wellington. Whatever it was, it turned out awesome. Onions, leeks, Italian tofurky, seitan, all sauteed in my biggest pot, with red wine to deglaze, soy sauce, parsley and herbs from the garden, and my spice trinity of coriander, cumin and powdered mustard, all wrapped up in puff pastry. Leave it to puff pastry to make everything _that_ much better.

Aspen came with us for dinner at Erik's brother's house, and then we went home to decide on gingerbread house plans, cut out and bake the pieces, and assemble the main frame. We got two sides candied up before tuckering out around 11pm, all bah-humbugged by thoughts of work the next day. I have to say, it was one of the most enjoyable winter holidays I've experienced, and I even have something to show for it.

Roll my die, Change this life

All I can do is be vague. It's Friday night again. I'm at home, listening to the National on my ratty second-hand headphones. Taking photobooth pictures and wondering if my face will ever show emotion. The facial tic-- my lower lip on the left side, where I pull it down in a little "eep" move-- has finally abated after forty-eight hours. I think it came about from trying to control my expression in meetings, to appear what I hope looks like positive neutral.

Erik's gone to bed and I've used up all the phyllo dough wrapping triangular packets of the roasted pumkin, ricotta, and kale filling I made during that cooking jag Tuesday night (the other dishes I made were lettuce wraps with a PF Changs-copy filling, and stuffed peppers). I also used the chocolate ganache-- left over now that the chocolate cupcakes are all eaten-- as filling for a vanilla-snap cookie crust pie with peanutbutter warmed and drizzled on top. The kitchen is tired of me.

It is often that I wonder how I got here. In the past few days alone, I've had the age-flash no less than three times. This first was thinking about some of the clothes I have, including the first thing I bought in my favorite color green. I don't quite have a handle on which thriftstore I found it in, but it was 1996, and I saw the color and fell in love. I haven't worn it in years, though, nor the army pants I bought some time in high school which still grace the pants shelf. The flash is what came next-- thinking of my glittery things, especially all of the new socks I bought. Will I get looks for wearing sparkly things in another year? It's generally looked down upon to go in for glitter after 30. But why should I even care? I walked out of my closet with those thoughts, my doubts left behind.

The next flash was seeing the birth year of my favorite contestant on a reality tv show: one year before mine. But he seems so old! I can't believe he's only a year and a half older than me. He's such an adult. And mentally my nose wrinkles and I know that's not me at all.

Wednesday night at Oba, ordering wine for Erik and I, the bartender is cute and has a full sleeve on his right arm, and he says to me something like "We can say you're 21, right?" Well yes, honey, I'm pretty sure I'm older than you.

I harp on this theme, I know I do. Call it my age-orexia, my bul-year-mia. Or stop me before I make up these terrible puns, that would be preferable.

What I feel is: there's a fine line between childish and childlike. I am dancing on that line. Some days I'm pretty sure which side I'm on, and other days the fire in my belly will demand a switch of sides. What I've determined is that there are more times to be quiet than there are to expound.

I may well be the most actively social hermit in the Pacific Northwest.

superheated chocolate disaster

Last night I experienced my first microwave misadventure; at least the first that I can remember.

You see, our [cream cheese] frosting supply from the chai spice cupcakes I made a while ago ran out, and-- much like the dilemma of the hot dogs (ten to a pack) and buns (eight to a pack)-- I had made a batch of chocolate cupcakes to use up the extra frosting from the previous cupcakes. I decided to make chocolate frosting this time, something light and airy. In order to try something really different, I got out the cookbook most likely to have a good frosting recipe: Sinfully Vegan. "Whipped chocolate frosting" really seemed to fit the bill.

This is the point in the story where I give the disclaimer that I don't often use cookbooks. I have a difficult time following recipes. Usually I don't gather the ingredients first, or even check to make sure I have everything (which happened with the cupcakes this frosting was for. I was out of sugar. And then I just assumed they needed baking powder, as that's what most vegan baking recipes call for, but it was baking soda... and by the time I realized that, since I only ever write down the barest bones of a recipe and it just read "1t bs," it was impossible to remove the baking powder from the flour and cocoa in the mixing bowl. Then the whole thing sat in the fridge for a few days til I bought sugar. At any rate, back to the frosting saga...). I try to read all of the directions first, now, but what can I say. I'm really not good at following any directions.

So I had dumped all of the ingredients into the blender, except for the two cups of chocolate chips which were to be melted in the microwave. With the power at 50%, I nuked for one minute, checked for melting, another minute, checked, another minute... until they had been in there for five minutes. That seemed a tad long for something as meltable as chocolate, but the chips were a little old, so who knows. Finally, I microwaved it for a minute at full power.

When I opened the door, there was smoke coming from deep within the chocolate mass. I poked it with a spoon, and the smoke increased. I poked around more, to try to smother the... superheated mass. In the center of the still-not-melted cup of chocolate chips, hard black chunks sizzled and spewed. I ran cold water into the pyrex cup, thinking that would cool it down and put out any possible fiery-type stuff. Smoke-filled bubbles buzzed angrily to the surface. For a while I continued to poke, hoping to dampen more of the smoldering, superheated, black, crunchy mess.

It didn't work. I added more water, and left the whole thing in the sink, thinking that a good soak would loosen it up to be cleaned in the morning. In the meantime, I went on to make the frosting with a fresh batch of microwave-melted chocolate chips, this time stirred every thirty seconds. The frosting came out more like ganache. Oh well.

The next morning, the chocolate-microwave disaster had somehow subsumed the water into itself. Again, I left it and went about my morning. Imagine how impressed I was, then, when Erik set to washing dishes and took the time to scrape out the pyrex cup and clean the whole thing up. My hero! I made sure that the cupcake for his lunch had extra ganache on it.