How to make vegetable soup and interpret Greek Tragedy, at the same time.

Hallo, all one or two of you who still occasionally stray onto this site, hoping against all hope that I may have updated something, anything, and will leave a shout to you. Yes, it's October. Yes, I'm a terrible correspondent. And yes, I have been nagged into this. As with the last time I posted, it is certainly not for want of goings-on that I have been silent; though the reason this time is quite different: my excuses this time are a journal to write in and all too much time typing emails on the computer. These days, Ian is out of town, off banding birds on a spit of bog in Lake Erie, and most of the time we have only emails as a source of communication. It is rough, I know - I live a hard life.

Otherwise, I am mostly just relieved that school has started up again. Finally, I'm busy enough to feel I deserve my down time, and now that I have things to procrastinate, I get so much done. I've been reading The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Bradley, and it is a delightful book, all 1,008 pages of it, and it's sending me back to my roots: all the love of paganism that I dropped, and all the medieval fantasies that I moved away from, have come roaring back, and I am so much happier occupying this space in my mind. The more of my mind that is taken up by thinking about the Medieval era, the greater my joy appears to be. Maybe I should write a PhD about that. Hmm... Well, no matter what, I've been cheerfully reading Middle English texts, and memorizing Old English poetry (which is amazingly beautiful, I will not lie, and I just want to put it to music, if it will lend itself to such a task - its meter is stress based rather than syllable based). Other amazing poetry of the moment: Greek tragedy. Take this brief passage from Euripides' Heracles, from the chorus (lines 108-113, translated by William Arrowsmith):

Leaning on our staffs we come

to the vaulted halls and the old man's bed,

our song the dirge of the dying swan

ourselves mere words, ghosts that walk

in the visions of the night,

trembling with age,

trembling to help.

My dear sweet gods, that is lovely. And we got to read the Oresteia, and all three preserved Electras (one of which was the Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, and then the other two are by Euripides and Sophocles - I love these authors, so very much), and then you get to compare then and it's all just beautiful, how different the characters seem when you set them together with their other selves, Orestes the hesitant with Orestes the child with Orestes the matricidal machine. And there are all these beautiful story-arching themes, like the ideas of sleep, death, and waking in the Oresteia, or the animal imagery used to describe all the characters from Agamemnon to his wife Clytaemnestra to their children to his usurper, her lover Aegisthus. And then (oh, and then!) there's Oedipus Rex, which has one of the most heartbreaking endings I have ever read - a father, blinded, polluted beyond measure, holding out his hands to his children, who are also his sisters, and bidding them come and touch him, for he shares their pollution and the cannot see them otherwise. And then Creon obeying the final commands of his king as he forces the selfsame man, having traded his sight for his knowledge, to let go these hands and be exiled. Oedipus' last words in the play are, "Don't take my children from me!" He goes from being a proud and powerful king with everything to a defiled and polluted exile in the course of a very short play, and his character changes so dramatically - starting out calm and kingly, middling frantic and unwilling to acknowledge truth, and finishing humbled, knowing his fate, and yet wishing against all evidence that he could just hang on to what's left of those he loves. But he cannot. Ohh, it is so powerful.

In other news, beyond my little literary bubble, I've more or less stopped making interesting food now that I'm busy all the time (I have school, a tiny amount of work - not even 30 hours a month - a club to help run, a choir to sing in twice a week, and naturally a whole bunch of work to avoid, so I get to do things to procrastinate as well), but fortunately I've stopped wanting to eat interesting food, too. So my main dinner dishes are stews of some sort or scrambled eggs with onion and spinach. BUT! I've been baking my own bread, and it's tasty, and the food I eat tends to be good and cheap. So I'm actually happier, eating these things. Some recipes follow, with explanations and stuff!

Fifteen minute biscuits

Enough whole wheat flour

Fluffy amounts of baking powder

Bit of salt, to your liking

1. Stir these delightful things together, in reasonable-seeming proportions.

Hunk of cool room temperature butter (not necessarily too much - less than you think you'll need)

2. Knead this into the dry mix with your fingers, until it is completely incorporated. It should look like rice in sand. (Appetizing, I know.)

Cold water to make it stick, and absolutely not a drop more.

3. Add the water slowly, stirring as you do - make sure you don't oversaturate. Undersaturate, if anything. Seriously, I promise.

4. Quick as you can, make biscuit-sized balls out of the dough and stick it in an appropriately sized oven for ten minutes (actual oven: heat to 400 degrees F, toaster oven...sent to toast? I don't know what our toaster oven's doing, but it works, whatever it is).

5. Eat hot! That which you do not eat, store as soon as you can, to kep the moisture in. Super fluffy and delicious.

Kate's Bread!

About 2 cups shower-temperature water

1-3 teaspoons active dry yeast (instant works too)

1. Pour water into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle yeast on top and allow to sit for a few minutes (no more than five).

1/3 to 1/2 cup canola oil

At least 1/3 cup brown sugar, more if you want a sweeter loaf

Salt!!! (no more than 1 teaspoon)

2. Add these things to the mixture, sugar first (stir a bit and let the yeast get going) and then oil.

5-7 cups whole wheat flour

3. Start with five. Stir it all together, and if it's a little rough or sticky, that's probably okay. You don't want it to be dry and stiff. The wetter (and not soupy) the better.

4. Dump the mixture out onto a floured counter, flour your hands, and knead. Adding flour as necessary (or if you don't want more flour but need to unstick your hands, get your hands wet), knead for ten minutes. This is important - during this time you're helping the flour's proteins develop so that your loaf can stay together, and also you're giving your bread a grain.

5. When you're done kneading, place ball of bread in a greased bowl and allow to rise for one hour (or until the ball has doubled in size).

6. After that hour, degas the ball, cut it in half, and shape it into loaves. I don't use pans, you're welcome to. These loaves are actually a little small for a conventional sized bread pan. Make sure that whatever surface you finally rest the shaped pre-loaves on is greased (either with more canola oil or, if you're not feeding vegan people like I am, butter).

7. Allow to rise for at least thirty minutes, or until they are about the size you want them to be.

8. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

9. When it's preheated, pop them in, and allow them to bake for 35-40 minutes.

10. When they come out, all smelling delicious and stuff, don't forget to let them rest for a few minutes (probably about ten) under a cloth, and then remove them from the pan and bag them. It is important to preserve some moisture in these loaves, as it's easy to make these pretty dry. One thing you can do to wetten them up a bit is to substitute some milk for the water initially. But, I'm lactose intolerant and can't exactly afford soy milk, so. My bread is milk-free.

This bread makes EXCELLENT toast, and tastes nutty and sweet on its own. Bad for sandwiches - I would suggest milked bread for that kind of thing. Milk adds proteins and makes bread more elastic.

Cheese Rind Soup (better than it sounds, I promise) - serves four, or so

1 medium large onion

1. Chop the onion into the right size of pieces. Put in a pot on medium heat with enough canola oil. Saute.

3 decent-sized carrots

1 medium large potato

2 (ish) cloves garlic

1-2 teaspoons Herbes du Provence

2. While the onions sizzle, chop the potato and carrots into appropriately sized eating chunks. Then make garlic into your favorite spicing size (I cut mine up really fine) and add to the now clear onions. Allow to cook for about 30 seconds, stirring as you do, to make sure they don't burn. Then add the rest of your veggies and the herbes to provence.

2 liters of water (give or take - I might take a bit, actually), boiled

1-2 square inches'-worth of Romano or Parmesan cheese rind

3. Saute the veggies for a while, stirring. When the potatoes are more or less fully cooked, add the water to the mixture, so that it covers it and then adds about half the depth of the vegetables in water on top of that. Plop in the cheese rind after that.

1 head broccoli

1 14 oz can kidney (or other) beans (drained and washed; or, like I did, some random and large quantity of dried kidney beans which had been adequately soaked and boiled - to do this, soak for at least six hours, and boil for about an hour and a half)

4. While your soup is getting more and more fragrant and boiling away, cut up the broccoli into bits of a size you'd like to find in your spoon. I included some of the stem, but you don't have to if you don't want to (it's good!). Add to the boiling water. Add the kidney beans when you do.

Some frozen peas (optional)

Chard or other dark green thing (also optional), chopped as you want.

5. Boil until you're happy with the consistency of the potatoes. Mash them a bit, if you want. Then add your peas and chard and allow the peas to thaw and the chard to wither.

6. Serve this dish hot with some lovely bread. Add salt and pepper to taste, and as the soup is actually fairly light, you can add a small blob of butter to each bowl, just to deepen the flavor.

Alright, my lovelies, it's 12:32 AM here, and I'd like to read more of Mists of Avalon before I pass out. Happy cooking, and for gods' sakes, read some Greek tragedy!

Love,

Kate

Summertime

Please forgive my prolonged absence - it's not that I haven't had a million things to mention, but rather because I have. After school, Ian and I visited his grandmother in Victoria, which is a city so beautiful that I wish I could go back and never again set foot in Vancouver. Everything feels exceedingly British, and the whole city is surrounded by a coastline of beaches and black slate rock. We were there at the height of camas lily season, and so the meadows were carpeted in a vibrant blue-purple, which contrasted sharply, but perfectly, with the green of the leaves, the black of the rocks, and the orange-yellow-green of the lichen. Each day found us at a garden, a beach, a relative's, and by the end of it I was pumped so full of tea and Jeeves and Wooster that upon returning to Vancouver, I went through a mild withdrawal, sprinkled with 1930's era slang.

Shortly thereafter, I went to Boston to see my mother graduate, and spent some quality time with a city I knew for only two months, but will love my whole life. I also managed to pick up a brand-new copy of Julia Child's cookbook the same way Julie Powell did it - by commandeering it from my mother, who never used it. On the way home, I devoured the latest Penderwicks novel (by the illustrious Jeanne Birdsall) and still had flight time left to read, and so I started in on Mastering the Art of French Cooking. By the end of my connecting flight, I was about halfway through the quiches.

Between then and now, I haven't done much. I'm looking for work. I'm trying to keep busy. But I'm not very good at self-motivating when I'm feeling low, and I've spent a lot of time feeling low. Things have begun looking up, however: I'm hunting for work quite avidly, I'm about ready to start volunteering in the Linguistics lab at UBC, and next week I'm heading back to Fort Collins to visit all the dear people I have been missing these long months. There's nothing quite like coming back to the place you grew up, and there's also nothing quite like realizing you miss that place with the same kind of deep, entrenched longing that you once applied to wishing to be free of it. I spent ages feeling like I didn't quite fit there, wishing for a place I did fit into, wishing I could run way from myself, but I know now that you can't run away from who you are. The best you can do is run towards a way of discovering who you can be. I ran to Boulder, I ran to Boston, I ran to Vancouver, and still I feel like I have yet to find the place my heart is seeking, while at the same time all my heart really wants is to go back to Fort Collins and bask in the warmth of old friends and a never-changing town.

*sits in sad silence for a second*

Anyway. On a brighter note, I have two recipes for you: homemade from scratch quiche and pizza. Please note: all measurements are quite approximate. I don't measure things, and I know that I should just so I can write it down for you, but I'm lazy. Included are descriptions of what everything should look like.

Mushroom Quiche with Herbes du Provence

Crust:

3/4 c. pastry flour
1/2 t salt
5 T butter, more if you need it
Several T's ice-cold water

1. Stir together flour and salt
2. Cream 5 T cold butter into this mixture (or maybe a bit more) until it forms small (1/4 inch or less) balls of buttery, floury goodness.
3. Add by T's ice-cold water until the dough just holds together. Mush into a ball.
4. Place the ball on a floured linen towel (you don't want to use terrycloth, as the dough will stick to it and give you a hell of a time) and flatten with the palm of your hand until it forms a round disk about a half of an inch thick. Then using a rolling pin, flatten it further until it will amply cover the bottom and sides of a pie pan. It should look like the dough might flop off the sides. Then, place your rolling pin at the edge of the dough, and using the towel to help, roll the dough onto the rolling pin. When it's draped over the pin, place your thumb on it to prevent it from rolling away, and then remove the towel. Transfer the dough to a pie pan and gently work it so that it is molded to the shape of the pan. Turn up the edges and crimp. Put in freezer.
5. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
6. When the oven is preheated, bake the crust for about 10 minutes, or until it is fully cooked but not burnt.
7. Lower the temperature to 375 degrees F.

Filling: (to be started and made while the crust is in the freezer and then in the oven)

1/2 an onion, or some shallots, finely minced
8 white mushrooms, or so, cut into quarters or eighths
1-2 T Cooking oil
1-2 T butter
1 t Herbes du Provence
Salt and pepper to taste
4 large eggs
50 g (4 T? Ish?) feta cheese

1. Saute onion on medium heat in cooking oil with spices until clear.
2. Add mushrooms and butter, making sure the butter melts completely and stirring so that the mushrooms get evenly coated in oil.
3. Cook until all is tender and juicy. Set aside.
4. In a bowl, beat eggs until they cry for their mothers. Add cheese and mix.
5. When the crust is ready, pour in the egg stuff, and then add the mushroom business on top.
6. Bake for half an hour or so, until the eggs are completely set and the crust is brown. Serve.


Okay. Pizza time!

Crust:

1 c. high-gluten flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t instant yeast
2-3 T olive oil
1/4 c. water

1. Combine everything in that order, and stir together well.
2. Prehead oven to 100 degrees F.
3. On a well-floured countertop, knead for 5-10 minutes (do not skimp on this! Trust me!) until the dough is springy and your hands feel soft from all the olive oil and you are in love with the idea of silk.
4. Replace ball of dough in bowl, and then cover and put into oven, whether or not oven has achieved temperature.
5. Allow dough to rise 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile....

Topping:

1 1/2 tomatoes ripe, lovely tomatoes, diced
1/4 onion, minced
Cooking oil as needed
Oregano, basil, and rosemary
1/4 c. Feta cheese brine, if you have it, or a pinch of salt, if you don't.

1. Saute onions over medium heat.
2. When the onions are clear and maybe a little browned, add tomatoes. Reduce heat to low, add spices and brine, and cover. Allow to simmer for a really long time (until I tell you to stop).

While that's cooking...

Return of the Crust!

6. Remove from oven and knead a little (maybe 30 seconds or less), just to wake it up again and get it going.
7. Allow to rest for 5 minutes. While you're doing this, check the topping on the stove. If the tomato skins are crinkly and the tomatoes are yielding and juicy, leave it uncovered. If not, give it a little more time, but keep checking it, and once it gets to that point, leave it uncovered.
8. When it's rested, it should be more malleable and pliant. Now you get to start stretching it! Let gravity do most of the work; hold an edge in a loose grasp with one hand, the other underneath for comfort, and rotate, allowing its weight to pull it into a larger circle. When it's about 6 inches wide, toss it spinning straight up into the air, and then catch it on two fists, held right next to each other. Launch and repeat. Do this until you're happy with the diameter and thickness of your crust. Set on an ungreased baking sheet and let it rest while you preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and deal with...

Son of Topping!

3. Check it out: is it more or less water? Boil it longer. Is it a pulp with a consistency a little closer to refried beans? You're pretty much good.
4. Apply liberally to your crust, but not on the edges. At this time, you can add cheese and anything else you want; if you used feta brine, feta works, and if you didn't, mozzarella sounds enviable. You can also add cheese after it's baked; that's what I did, and it was good. So no panic.
5. Bake for, I dunno, 10, 15 minutes, somewhere in there, until your crust is golden brown and you can't think of anything besides eating it. The crust is really, really lovely, so I hope you have enough of it and enjoy it.

Alright! Oh, and one last thing: a French bread recipe I've been using with great results. It's pretty simple, though it does require a night to rise and about 3 or 4 hours of attention the next day.

The night before you bake:

1 c. flour (I use high gluten, but all purpose would probably be just fine)
1/2 t salt
1/2 t instant yeast
2/3 c. lukewarm water (yes, that's a lot of water - the reason my bread has this much water in it is because I have a tiny mouth, and the flatter loaf is better for sandwiches. I think you can use a bit less water, but this is what I do).

1. Combine dry ingredients thoroughly in an airtight container (I use an old 750 mL yogurt tub)
2. Add water all at once, and stir vigorously to incorporate. You should be left with a worrisomely wet dough. Put on the lid, leave it in a warm corner, and go to bed.

In the morning, when you remember (it's nice for the dough to have at least 8 hours for the first rise, but more won't hurt it):

3. Dump dough onto liberally floured surface. It's a pain, but knead it a bit, folding it over and over again so that it takes up a bit of flour and you can work with it.
4. When it achieves that perfect silky consistency, form it into a baguette shape by performing the first step of kneading (pressing the dough down and forward), but instead of continuing, fold it in half lengthwise by and pinch that seam shut. Do this again twice and then roll it into a log to make the crack disappear. I usually cut this length in two, just so it keeps a bit longer.
5. Grease a baking sheet with canola oil and roll the dough in this. Allow it to rise for an hour or more.
6. When you remember, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Bake loaves for 20 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before you eat. These make excellent sandwiches.

Okay, my computer's battery is about to die. Good health to you and toodleoo!

Kate

Me misera. Seriously.

How do I begin? The blunt news is that I got a C- in Latin. Naturally, I am extremely depressed by this, and kind of want to go die in a hole. Perhaps worse than this is the fact that I got only a C+ in Phonetics, which is a major part of what I want to do my graduate work in, and what they do in the lab that I'll be volunteering in this summer. Like, I'll be directed by my ex-professor kind of lab work.

Then again, this is the same professor I play Dungeons and Dragons with, so. Maybe it'll work out. I'm not looking forward to seeing them again, though, with them knowing the grade and attaching it to my face. Maybe they'll deem me unfit to work with them. That would probably break my heart.

However, to mend it, Ian is coming home today! I'm going to meet him at the airport this evening, and then I'll be happy. Lately, however, I've been somewhere between miserable and depressed - my life lacks direction, I'm not doing anything with my time, I'm a good-for-nothing, that kind of lament. Maybe I should get a job. Ugh. I kind of can't wait for classes to start again - they give me something to think about, and something to avoid when I want to procrastinate. I think I'm more stressed without structure than with it. Sad, but true. Since the end of school, and the move, and all that, I've been staying abed until noon every day, and then getting up. I hate it. But I can't find any reason to get up in the morning. All I'm going to do is go read a book and maybe play the piano if I'm the only one home. Every now and again I go out and do something worthwhile, but that hasn't happened in long enough that I feel ridiculously behind.

Not to mention that today it's pouring rain, and I should clear a space in the yard for a garden, but I don't really want to go outside. And I feel ugly, and have no presentable clothes, and gah. I just feel like a spoiled doily. I'm quite sick of it.

And last week, my darling cat Fred died. He had lymphoma, and everything was wrong, and so he went away. I miss him. I want to fly home to Boston to hug my mom.

Okay. Brighter notes. We moved! It's exciting! Our new house is cute and awesome and drafty. Our new neighborhood is perfect - if there's anywhere in Vancouver that I'd actually consider settling down in and staying, it would be this area. It's full of beautiful old houses and big trees and people put up swings everywhere and we're right near some grocery stores and parks... I'm quite pleased with it. Granted, I have the smallest most closet-like room in the house, but since I've been here (all of a week and a half) I've been ameliorating that. It's a lot nicer now. And I've come to like how small and cozy it is. We adjust.

I think that's it, really. I'll try to keep you posted. Until then, here's a recipe for vegan cake, because that's what I had for breakfast.

Vegan Cake (adapted from "the best cake recipe ever that just happens to be vegan")

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix:
1 1/4 c. flour (I used cake flour, you can use all-purpose, though)
1 c. sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/3 c. unsweetened cocoa powder

Add:
3/4 c. hot, strong coffee
1/4 c. almond or soy milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp apple cider or white vinegar
1/4 c. vegetable oil

Stir until batter looks like edible satin and has no lumps (note: cake flour will leave funny lumps unless you watch out for this!). Pour into 8 by 8 baking pan (which you can grease or not, depending on how you plan to eat the cake - I didn't, because we were just going to serve it out of the pan). Bake for about 20 or 25 minutes, and then test it - if the toothpick or chopstick comes out clean, you're done.

If you want a good icing for this, don't ask me. I'm not good at icing. I would actually recommend some homemade whipped cream, which is 1 pint of cream, 1 Tsp sugar, and then sprinkles of ground cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Whip these together in your mixer until you deem it fit to eat. It takes the vegan-ness out of the cake, but it's good. Really, really good.

And on that note, I think it's time for cake and tea.

Love,
Kate

Vale, care me

Ian has been gone now for six hours. Out of a possible 12 days. And I miss him already. My roommate is listening to bad music, loudly, and I'm avoiding my syntax. I wish she would just leave so that I could play the piano in peace. Secretly I need to make bread, but I can't bring myself to get up and walk into the kitchen, where she would see that I'm wearing my iPod to escape her noise and would invariably try to make light conversation, which I don't really want to do right now. I just want to stir some ingredients together and then forget about them until the morning. And then read short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez until I fall asleep. And not touch my syntax. I can't bring myself to go near that crap. Even though the final is tomorrow. It's just so distant and unreal and I don't want to deal with it.

On a brighter note, I have 48 credits from transfers, and 27 from this year, so that means I only need 3 more terms to graduate. So I could conceivably do a term this summer, then graduate next spring. I can't decide if this is a good idea or if it's extremely flawed and stupid. More thought to come.

I wish I could post something for you about food, but I haven't been cooking anything more interesting than macaroni and cheese. Note to anyone reading this: do not pair soy products with dairy products. There's no reason to. If you want creamy macaroni and cheese, use real milk. I promise. Other than that, I've been eating baby carrots and sliced celery with peanut butter and raisins. It feels better than eating bread or cookies while studying. I'm being good.

Okay, I think the kitchen is empty. Dishes, then bread. Maybe.

Kate

Cake and Cats

Yesterday was Ian's birthday, and though it remains to be seen whether or not it was perfect, as I went home around 10 or so and two hours can make a world of difference with this kind of thing. It started off well, though - I was at a Dungeons and Dragons campaign with the linguistics people (which was super amusing - I fit with those people, despite being dramatically younger than most of them. This is the joy of being practically 20; you're enough of an adult that people still treat you as one, but you're still young enough that you can get away with being kinda silly and play baby dragons) and didn't get back until 2, and then at 7:30 I got up, groggy, and spent three hours listening to Jeremiah and Ian go on about white crown sparrows and ruby crowned kinglets and warblers and this variety and that, and the sun took its sweet time heating up the air, and so everyone was a little more than chilly. By eleven, we were hungry and exhausted and strange-feeling, but we staggered over to Jeremiah's for a party, where there was delicious food, and where we were given a large cabinet that will be perfect in the kitchen, for free, thank you very much. By the time we got home, everyone was happy, and it was only 2 in the afternoon.

Naturally, I made Ian a cake. Chocolate. What other kind is there? I used a recipe from David Lebovitz, who is a pastry chef living in Paris and a genius. Certified, I'm sure. This was easily one of most delicious cakes ever, and it was also very, very easy. So easy that I'm thinking of making another half batch sometime, just cause. Unfortunately, the icing was all my doing - and I've never made icing before - and so it was kinda odd. Like, I made it too runny at first, and it blooped everywhere, and I had to scrape it off and add more powdered sugar. But it still turned out well, and got very good reviews from everyone who ate it. Sadly, I have no pictures, though I wish I did. I garnished it with some fresh mint leaves, and the vanilla icing wound up flecked with cake, because I'm talented like that.

And true to my gift-giving abilities, I literally bought Ian's present less than an hour before handing it to him. But that was okay, because it consisted of two amazing books: To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis, and Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett. If you haven't, you must read these books. If you have, you know why I say this. He and his family and I went for Japanese, which I'd never had before. Something about the taste of wasabi and soy sauce stuck with me most of the evening, and reminded me of the sharp tinniness of blood. That said, it was quite good.

Sometime this evening, after his final, I'll check back in with him and maybe eat some cake. For now, though, I'm trying to get through some studying, but I'm constantly distracted, first by the fine weather, then by food blogs, and then by the news that my cat Fred, who has been having some digestive problems for the past three weeks, has lymphoma and is going to die, probably before I get to see him. Somehow, knowing that, the function of the anterior belly of the digastric is significantly less meaningful to me.

Anyway, I've posted the recipe, yoinked from David Lebovitz, below. Make it and feel better about the world.

Kate

Devil's Food Cake

For the cake:
9 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1½ cups cake flour (not self-rising)
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
½ cup strong coffee (or water)
½ cup whole or low-fat milk

For the ganache frosting:
10 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
½ cup water (or cream)
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter

1. Adjust the oven rack to the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Butter two 9″ x 2″ cake pans and line the bottoms with circles of parchment paper.

3. To make the cake layers, sift together the cocoa powder, cake flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a bowl.

4. In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, or by hand, beat together the butter and sugar about 5 minutes until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated. (If using a standing electric mixer, stop the mixer as necessary to scrape down the sides to be sure everything is getting mixed in.)

5. Mix together the coffee and milk. Stir half of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, the add the coffee and milk. Finally stir in the other half of the dry ingredients.

6. Divide the batter into the two prepared cake pans and bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

7. To make the frosting, melt the chopped chocolate with the water (or cream) in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring occasionally until melted. Remove the bowl from the pan of water.

8. Cut the butter into small pieces and whisk them into the chocolate until completely melted and the ganache is smooth. Cool until spreadable, which may take about 1 hour at room temperature.

To frost the cake:

Run a knife around the inside of each of the cakes which will help release them from the pans. Tilt one cake out of the pan, remove the parchment paper from the bottom and invert it back onto a cake plate. Spread a good-sized layer of icing over the top. Top with the second cake layer and spread the top and sides with the remaining icing as decoratively as you want.

Storage: Cake is best the day it is made, although it’s fine the next day. Store at room temperature under a cake dome. Just be sure to keep cake out of the sun in the meantime.

The Thwarted Loaf

Isn't that a beautiful loaf of bread? It's curvy, and the braiding was just so, and it rose well and browned evenly, and just looks so good. But, like the vibrant trumpets of morning glory, or the innocuous daffodil-like narcissus, a couple bites could probably maim a horse. I know I'm scarred for life. This is easily the most disgusting loaf of bread I have made yet.

Okay, people. I need a bread recipe that DOESN'T fuck up at the slightest touch of my fingers. I need something that does NOT use whole wheat flour (because you can't buy decent whole wheat flour around here; it's just impossible) and doesn't taste like paste, and doesn't come out always being a little less than what I know bread can be. I miss my mom's bread, so nutty and rich and pretty and crumbly. I miss the soft, earthy smell of whole wheat flour back home, where some genius actually knows how to grind whole wheat flour until there aren't any bits left in it, and it's just as fine and beautiful as white flour. It gives it this dark color, and a very full taste. Why, for the love of the gods, WHY can't they do that here?! Gods. Maybe the thing that makes me grumpiest is that I haven't had a really decent piece of homemade toast since Christmas, which is just flat too long to go without that, especially when one routinely makes bread. It's enough to make me want to explode or something. -sigh-

On the bright side, that bike Chelsea and I fixed up last night works like a charm. Riding a bike is about as close to flying as you can get without anyone really questioning what you're doing, though someday I'd like to make them wonder. I didn't go far, just around my neighborhood, but I couldn't stop smiling, and I can already feel my legs being less wibbly and pathetic. I've finally gotten moving again, and it feels incredible.

However, the next weekend and week are going to be just as busy as last weekend, if not more so. Tonight, Ian and I will finally (after three weeks of postponement) be dining with his lovely aunt and her two kids (who are 13 and 19). Tomorrow morning, I may be going to the banding station with Ian, which entails getting up at 5 in the morning and hauling our sorry asses out to a farm about two hours' drive off, and then getting back seven or eight hours later after much bird-related excitement. Then I'm baking a cake (with luck, I'll have a chance) and going to a Dungeons and Dragons session with some of the nerds in the Linguistics department, including my phonetics professor and TA. Sunday is Ian's birthday, and I still haven't found or made him anything and I feel guilty, so I must squeeze that in sometime in the next day or so. Monday and Tuesday will be eaten up for studying for my Wednesday and Thursday exams, and then Thursday afternoon, I paint, and Thursday evening, I pack. Friday we move. And somewhere in there, we have to clean up the new house and pack up a kitchen and and try not to die. Oh my dear sweet gods. So I don't think I'll get to breathe for another week. And then Ian will be gone from the 20th until the 2nd of May, and so naturally I'm going to miss him more than Lincoln misses his top hats.

Oh, and did I mention that my cat is trying to die? My cat is trying to die. He hasn't eaten more than could be shoved down his throat in a few weeks, and just...is giving up. So naturally I'm pretty damned upset about that, and I'm thinking of spontaneously flying back to Boston to see my mum and my cat. I miss them. A lot. So I may be doing that after my finals.

And that's my life. If I collapse and/or implode sometime in the next couple weeks, you'll know why.

Kate

Plans! part III

Phase 2...3? of the Grand Plans has been initiated! This evening, my roommate who volunteers at the Bike Co-op and I went to work fixing up my New Zealand roommate's bike, and managed to find her helmet, which was resting peacefully right under our noses.

Nothing much was really wrong with her bike, except that the bike chain is stretched a bit and of all the gears that technically exist on the bike, only three of them are actually hooked up to anything. There isn't much we can do with those things without tools, though, so we left them - they're not a big problem. In pumping up the tires, we both learned about a different kind of air lock and how to get around it, which was really neat (I know it doesn't sound it, but wait for the punchline). And of course, when I found the helmet and put it on in a fit of excitement, it had some water in it, which dribbled down my back in an unpleasant, hilarious fashion.

The punchline is this: working with my hands is invigorating. I enjoy reading, and learning, but I prefer doing. I think that's one of the reasons I don't use recipes too often - I like taking direction from experience, rather than from hearsay. I love picking up a new instrument, because it's like I have to reinvent how I think about sound, and teach my hands how to do something completely different than they're used to - a harp is much different from a guitar, is different from a piano is different from a clarinet. Whenever I get urges to do something, it's not often that I really want to just go run around - it's that I want to go solve an intricate puzzle of something I've never laid a finger on before. I pick up a pen to write when there's nothing in my head, a brush to paint when there's no canvas (and no artistic ability, but that's all the time); I sit at the piano when all I want to play is everything, all at once, and I can't articulate it any more than I can articulate the meaning of life. I don't think I just bake to eat; rather I bake to bake, to roll dough between my hands and laugh as it stretches and refines under my firm touch. So somehow, I have to find a way to spend my days doing things with my hands. Solving puzzles I've never laid a finger on before.

Kate