I made a mess. (tofu veggie red curry)

So, I have a sweet friend who I have been infrequently attempting to school in domesticity for the last few months-ever since I was given permission to interfere. Thus far she has affected an appreciation for the artful display of tchotchkes. She may be soon moving on to the artful draping of colorful fabric. These are both crucial aspects of my decorating style, though my current living space is undergoing a facelift. More updates on that later.

She generally lets me inflict myself upon her in any way I choose; what this means is we made red curry with tofu and vegetables without a recipe.

So I pan-fried the tofu in garlic and oil, chopped up and threw in a couple potatoes and an onion, and eventually some peppers. This culminated in me pouring some coconut milk on top, mixing in red curry paste, and cooking until everything was done and serving on top of brown rice.

It was unremarkable, but it was amusing to be cooking for someone who would ask “Is the rice done yet?” and I would say,”No, or at least it doesn’t smell done.” That blew her mind, though whether I was making that up is a mystery to both of us.

The trouble arose in that cooking everything together, and stirring it frequently to make sure nothing was sticking or burning (I believe frequent stirring is one of the most crucial elements of cookery) resulted in the tofu disintegrating. Everything I make turns into a hearty stew. I’m a little bored of it.

In other news, I haven’t gone food-shopping in over two weeks so I ate out for pretty much every day today. Planning on resolving that soon but feeling unmotivated to change. It’s winter and I’m feeling apathetic. Although; I applied to grad schools and my friend came out to her family this week, and today I took her out to eat fried food and talk about her feelings, and she said, “Maria! Our lives changed this week forever !” And I said,”How, what did I do?” Applied to grad school. Remember, that thing you did yesterday? Oh, yeah. That.

January needs to chugga chugga along. And I am open to the idea of cheap new hobbies, though right now I seem to be preoccupying myself knitting and redecorating, and am not doing the things I promised I would do after applying to grad school like writing zines or falling in love or joining a gym. I get so productive when people tell me things I don’t want to hear. A couple of months ago some friends I love told me I was allergic to nice (in terms of folks I wanted/tried to date) and I got so cranky and set out to prove them wrong. Earlier this evening someone said my room was messy and I was irritated and have been rearranging things ever since. Reconceptualizing living space is so productive.

I want my next culinary adventure to be making Vietnamese spring rolls. We have the rice wrapping paper; I just need to pick up some veggies and vermicelli and make peanut sauce. YUM.

dancin’ to satan’s mandolin

Dear readers of fat tuesday,

I have been remarkably remiss in updating the cooky blog; I have been woefully absent from my kitchen lately. There has been lots of wine-drinking and tomfoolery to do with the holidays and new years’ etc. I haven’t been coking lately. It’s a sad thing. I’ve been eating a lot of cookies (today I had some that were largely constructed out of potato chips-they were pretty good), I think I may have developed a caffeine addiction (or else it’s the incessant staring at the computer and and dim lighting that makes work so wearisome), my friend has been educating and expanding my tea palate-though for years I would only drink the most fluffy ridiculous tea (I was a big fan of “Victorian Earl Grey” which is earl grey with rose and lavender-I think it’s delightful, other people complain it’s too perfume-y. Lately we had Sparkling Sugarplum-smells like plum, glitters in your cup because of the sugar crystals-today we had some kind of coconut tea that smelled like macaroons, exactly as she predicted.). My friends from LA brought me California chai, my youngest brother bought me rooibos chai for Christmas, I am beginning to appreciate the difference.

Cooking wingman made me a cookbook for Solstice/Christmas/December holidays, eventually those recipes will make it to fattuesday. It was kind of like a love letter from somebody who knows what I’m actually like. But I’ve been stoked about making bread for months; maybe I’ll actually make challah because now I have  recipe that has been tried and tested. A particular difference between our cooking styles is that my culinary endeavors are more like adventures that usually don’t fail abominably but are often more process than product oriented; and I usually expect my friends/housemates/whoever I have decided to grace with my cooking to come along for the ride and be grateful. Her acts of culinary exertion are more conscious and intentional. They are usually based in the science of Having Cooking Skills, or as often as not as this act of love and affection from someone who verbalizes a lot of snarkiness but will perform amazing feats in the kitchen in the name of feeding people. So she has recipes that she tries, experiments with, and improves upon. The cookbook includes instructions like “don’t substitute this. no, really. don’t do it. you may think you can, but vinegar and lemonade are not the same thing.”

Also, I get myself into quite a bit more trouble than she does. It is good to touch base with the fact that life, and cooking, need not always a freefall mediated by intuition.

And by the way friends-tomorrow grad school applications go out. I know the world of people connected to my cooking blog are not necessarily as connected to the minutiae of my life as…..other folks; and I have appreciated everyone’s encouragement and good wishes in the meantime. I need to sustain the vision that I will get into grad school somewhere and that the wondrous life I have imagined is impossible, and lately I have been engaging with things like fear and doubt, and this is not so useful or fun for me. So if you could rub your little brain-antennae together and help me manifest that shit, that’d be awesome. Or pray, or chant, or visualize, or get naked and paint yourself green. Do what you need to; but at any rate I am five steps away from letting it all go, so all I can do afterward is make it happen on a cosmic level. And while I have yet to touch base with the Catholics I grew up with, and I will at some point soon have a flock of Catholic nuns praying for my acceptance to grad school, why don’t y’all help me make it happen with your tarot cards and the secret and your daily affirmations or whatever woo woo gets you through the day.

And in the next while I will have updates most likely about experiments with curry; I want to make that thai curry with potatoes in it. Mussaman!

I hope everyone’s two-weeks-off-from-life were delightful.

ohmygod FOOD.

There has been so much cooking, though not always new things, though:

I made truffles-early grey and key lime to start with. Though I will tell you more about that later.

So, I heard that if you boil maple syrup to 240 degrees and pour it over snow, it gets all crispy and turns into this neat midwintery snack. However, apparently, if you boil too much, or just put the snow in a tray but don’t pack it down, it turns to mapley slush, which you then drink, and feel disgusting. That’s why I’m in bed at 10:30.

Other point of interest: hot chocolate with a coconut milk base. Delicious! Very rich. Right now I’m having a love affair with  full-fat coconut milk and seriously, I have been licking the cans like some kind of pervert. So maybe less overwhelming if you use low-fat, or cut it with water, or something. But delicious. My house also has dagoba brand communal chocolate, which is fancy-dancy hippie stuff. I can’t even imagine who bought that and just decided to share it, I probably wouldn’t, but I’m also bad at buying things like hot chocolate mix and vegetable oil and things in general that aren’t NECESSARY but are in fact sometimes actually quite USEFUL.

Also, I’ve been making a lot of soup lately, and I have three kinds in the freezer right now. I am going to be so sick of it in the near future. I will need to branch out to burritos or something else equally reproducable in bulk. Something about this weather does NOT make me want to eat vegetables or fruits, so I keep throwing kale into my soups.

Tonight I made creamy mushroom soup. I put in:

2 pounds crimini mushrooms

3 leeks

1 bunch purple kale

1 carton vegetable broth

2 cups water

4 cloves garlic

1 tsp thyme

LOTS of fresh-ground pepper

1.5 tsp salt

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup flour

I chopped up the mushrooms and cooked them in butter, and did likewise with the leeks, and then threw everything together and let it simmer, though the flour and spices were a result of dancing around the kitchen discovering that we had thyme and being totally baffled by the smell.

This was loosly based on an epicurious.com recipe, but  I added the kale and meant to add potatoes as well, but got distracted.

So, actually, I don’t really like mushrooms. And evidently I particularly don’t like mushrooms when I cook them. Because when all is said and done, I don’t really make creamy-brothed soups (which exception to stuff with a coconut milk base, which kind of is and kind of isn’t the point) and I will eat mushrooms when other people make them for me but in a home-grown kind of way they turn my stomach. I’m sure it’s something about them being “earthy”-like how I don’t like cooked broccoli, and my smartyass chef friend tells me “most cooked brassicacaes smell like methane.” As in FARTS. I don’t like this vegetable because it smells like FARTS. To me, this is an entirely legitimate reason to not favor a vegetable. Especially having grown up with three brothers, resulting in entire years of my life being mired in the stench of methane. It was inescapable. Now I have a low tolerance for it.

But my housemate, at whose request I was making this, was highly satisfied.

And it was pretty good soup, it improved immensely when I told myself to imagine that my friend Anne had made it for me, who is one of the people who feeds me most frequently, though her specialties lie in esoteric varieties of shortbread, but make a particular mushroom-onion-pasta thing sometimes that’s pretty good. I eat the mushrooms she cooks, but generally they do not sit well with me. They are a fungus. Like athlete’s foot. Not pretty.

Also, last night I was the dessert maven at a shindig, and bought a gluten free chocolate cake mix, which I saved by adding probably a teaspoon, maybe a teaspoon and a half of fresh-grated ginger, and making into cupcakes, which I stuck dark chocolate into. They were famous.

I don’t know how much I’ve grown as a cook in the last year, I still have a relative disrespect for authority and disinclination to follow rules and I seek out substitutions for the sake of my own amusement and preference for improvisation, but I also think that makes my cooking interesting. I’ve also gotten better at fussing with spices and improvising measurements without totally screwing things up, which makes me feel impressive. I also have more people to feed and what’s funny is I think the people I know are just grateful for most things including my efforts, and I cook and so they validate my cooking, which is so so good.

I have gotten the feedback in my life that I am not a good cook-because I am sloppy, or disorganized, or forgetful-and I definitely have moments of not-glory, like the time I made beautiful blueberry scones and had used baking soda not baking powder. They taste terrible. It was so sad. BUT! I am developing my improvisation! And learning to trust my nose!  And developing an intuitive balance of excess and restraint! And people eat what I cook and they like it! Ha ha!

Also: Grad school apps are probably three weeks from done.

And I am going to Vancouver BC in the next couple weeks, and while I am devoted to Seattle (I never seem to leave) I am PASSIONATE about Vancouver. Something about it being the urban metropolis I wandered in college because I needed to get the hell out of the college town I was living in. It also had something to do with the fact that in 2004, I was a desperate wreck, and resolved to skip town, go get an MA in library sciences, and live there forever with my sweetie. I had many weekend trips up there in which the whole world seem to be sparkling in every direction around us, and we were so excited,”The mountains and the ocean are so beautiful! Ivan Coyote lives here! When we walk down the street holding hands people smile at us! Canadians are quirky and speak French!” And we had been together for a long time at that point, probably three years, and I think he was gazing at me and imagining a future in which I would have his babies and I would insist that we would drag them to cultural events and be the first wave of gentrification in communities of color and things like that. I was definitely gazing into the future, but to contextualize, one of the things I was trademarked for was my general assumption you should do what you want, whatever makes you happy because people don’t look that closely and if they do who gives a fuck. The general assessment was that I felt this way because I grew up in a progressive family in a city with parents that generally didn’t exactly know what I was up to.  I have maintained the notion for a long, long time that life is immense, and so many things in the world are hugely possible. (though I’ve only recently begun to develop strategies and organization for said plans, whereas for a long time the point was to say,”Anything is possible! Be whatever you want!” as loudly as possible.)

Vancouver was the city I roamed through as a young adult and imagined my life being different. I was living in a town I hadn’t learned to love, I was in a monogamous relationship with somebody who was pretty terrified of life, and my closest friendships were generally with people who didn’t share the same inclination to jump on life and have a tickle-wrestle war. The only thing I approached with passion and intensity was the degree I wound up designing, though I had lots of enthused outbursts but no sustained fueling of my sporadic enthrallments.

Nothing formative happened to me when I was in Vancouver, I spent most of my time there with somebody I generally didn’t love or even necessarily like; but I stared wide-eyed at that city like it was going to give me something back. And it gave me the vision of my life in a greater context; of political radicalism, of a city like Seattle but even more gorgeous and cosmopolitan and international, and of a more glamorous life that I just needed to imagine for myself and then throw myself on top of until it got used to the idea.

I did not move to Vancouver, I did not marry that nervous boy, and I did not become a librarian. I moved back to Seattle, had a lot of therapy, fell in and out of love with a couple of people, learned to cook, hopped off and on the hussy train more times than is necessary to count, and live in some orbit of community based on location and politics and the fact that everyone I know is usually broke except when it’s happy hour. But I am going back to Vancouver, and it is still this gorgeous mirage of a life I didn’t have, but some days I still want to.

peanut soup-or, why I listened to portishead in middle school and now I don’t think it’s good makeout-tunes

I made peanut soup because it needed to be made.

I acquired lots of vegetables from my garden and my neighbor’s garden and the free food market last Saturday (thanks Seattle punks and Cascade People’s Center!) and needed someplace to direct them. Also, I was out of pozole and needed something to eat for lunch, because binging on m&ms  and fantasizing about goat cheese can only work for so long.

Also, my throw-shit-in-a-pot method of cooking has not been effectively implemented yet, either.

So this is what I threw in, approximately:

5 potatoes chopped up

1.5 big yellow onions

1 large can whole tomatoes

6 cups water

12 cloves garlic

6 cups kale

3/4-1 cup peanut butter (crunchy, salted, tj’s)

1 carrot

1 orange bell pepper

I threw this all together, and would stir intermittently and added shakings of pepper and chili powder whenever it seemed like a good idea. (often) I meant to use red pepper flakes but we were out. Speaking of which, I have a spicy pepper in my messenger bag that should get taken out….damn. I just got up and disposed of that. My messenger bag is a black hole that jewelry, pipe cleaners, and small mammals get stuck in never to be heard from again.  So. Right. Peanut soup. This takes about an hour to cook satisfactorily. It’s a good idea to blend about half of this, because most peanut soup is really….soupy, and I like chunky soup, but I’m learning about balance.

Also, a friend of mine recently made me peanut soup, and cooked rice to put the soup on top of. She lived in Ghana for awhile and they would apparently put a ball of rice in a bowl, put the soup on top and eat it with their hands. I was intrigued.

So I found an extra bag of wild rice, and shook it up with my half-full jar of white rice, and cooked that up, and threw the soup on top of it.

Now, it is spicy, and is best with a little bit of salt, but generally I don’t cook with salt because I hate things that are oversalted. But it’s pretty tasty in general.

In the past I’ve made peanut soup with sweet potatoes and tart apples in it; this is tasty, but a very specific kind of peanut soup-it’s really sweet, and if you haven’t caught on yet, I make a big pot of soup and eat it until it’s gone, which takes awhile, and sweet-ish soup that isn’t  a SMOOTHIE is confusing for my taste buds. (like melon soup, for example) I can’t eat sweet soups like that for days in a row, so this should fare better.

I have this wonderful housemate who makes a lot of extravagant truffles and cupcakes and things that spring out of her brain wearing ruffles and tasting like God, but she sometimes struggles to consume vegetables, so I feed her my ridiculous soups and she is largely impressed. Today I made her soup so she would read my grad school essays.

Also, I may not have verbalized this on the cook-y blog yet, but I am shuffling toward vegetarianism. The times and opportunities I have to eat meat are limited, and certainly it’s not going to stop me from eating meat when I want to, but based on the communities I exist within, and the kinds of people I make friends with, becoming vegetarian is a pretty logical next step. If it’s just vegetarian I’m dealing with, and not wheat-free-dairy-free-sugar-free, it’s really quite simple.

And next week is my boss’ last week at work, so we are planning a soiree, and I will devise more and more wheat free-dairy free confections, because that is what I do and those are her needs….and it’s gonna be amazing. Stay tuned to fat tuesday and listen to the rantings of a brokeass zaftig lady as she devises and strategizes to feed her friends, make sense of people’s wonky-ass dietary needs, construct elaborate fanciful metaphors and make oblique references to her personal life that are largely unsubstantiated gossip.

banana bread, or why we live in a sex-negative culture.

Banana Bread Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

Mix it together. Bake at 350. Till it’s done. Bam.

Banana bread is easy, and I judge people that throw away their mushy bananas instead of making banana bread out of them. I also hate mushy bananas. I do not want to eat them unless I am desperate for something to eat, and that is usually when it has been a long day and bad morning and I need to eat SOMETHING or I will throw a raging fit and do not have the presence of mind to make toast.

Notes on judgement: I think it is reasonable to judge people on how they make waste, and not reasonable to judge people based on how and when they do sexual expression with consenting adults. Why, because we’re not in the seventh grade anymore, and calling people a slut is not the fucking point, when you don’t take care of your own business, much less compost.

Knock it off. And think of something to do with your aged produce besides throw it at your neighbors.

you forgot the kitchen sink! (blackberry chocolate walnut oatmeal scones)

So, instead of telling you what the recipe was, I will tell you what I put in:

2 cups flour

1 cup oatmeal

1 egg

10 tbsp butter (melted earthbalance)

1/3 cup milk

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder (this seems like a lot….maybe not so much next time)

2 cups formerly frozen blackberries

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

1/2 cup walnuts broken into smallish pieces by hand.

So, originally, I planned on these being very niceynice scones with a gentle variation on the joy! recipe for scones, especially since the internet at my house wasn’t working yesterday. However, they got way goopy from all the blackberry juice, I kept throwing in flour to make them a fascimile of a presentable scone, and eventually I just said fuck it and started throwing in whatever seemed like a possibly good idea (walnuts! oatmeal!) and this is what I got. Half of them are scones that resemble prehistoric land masses, and the other half are stubby muffins who did not rise as expected.

Baking is an awful lot like developing land masses, if only visually. When I was in high school I had been crushed out on this girl for years and at one point, shortly after I gave her a velvet-bound copy of the works of Shakespeare, I tried to make her a castle out of snickerdoodles. (This wasn’t something I thought of on my own, this was about snickerdoodles being her favorite cookie, and us discussing how there should be a castle built of them. See how I suffer for love and invent bizarrely symbolic gestures for people I find attractive.) I thought it would be this grand gesture, but it wound up flat, lumpy and fairly lackluster. This says more about the temperamental nature of snickerdoodles than about my propensity for architecture. Snickerdoodles are like pie crust-they’re finicky, and I don’t totally trust them.  Maybe the point is that she was still kind of impressed and we’re still friends. She is still getting the people who adore her to do all manner of things for her out of devotion, but like snickerdoodles, I have moved on to direct my affections toward less temperamental climes.

Anyhow, I brought my nubby muffins to a friend’s house that I generally inflict my baking upon, and her boyfriend said,”You’re really good at making….decadent things….” and I was pleased.

I generally don’t follow recipes, so I think I may disabuse myself of the notion that I ought to, and so some creative posturing may follow shortly. Look out, world, I’m bowling without bumpers.

crepes!

This is a basic recipe:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Those are the ingredients. You mix them all up until you have something of a batter-like consistency, though this is very thick.

The trick to crepes is you are supposed to let the batter sit for at least half an hour. Sometimes overnight. This, I have no patience for.

This is a very thick crepe batter. I added a lot of water because I had no milk and felt paralyzed until the friend that I was making crepes for insisted it would be fine. So, do that at your discretion. It may have thinned out given time to sit around, or it might have just turned into sludge.

Also point of interest-should a crepe be pale and slightly doughy, or should it be slightly seared from the butter? I prefer my crepes on the doughier side, but then again pancakes were the very first thing I learned to make and raspberry crepes were the first fancyish thing I ever made, though I had no idea what I was doing, and I definitely cried. But in my sixth grade French class I was the queen of the potluck, if closely followed by the eighth grader I had a crush on who rode my bus who had made coq au vin. (I would make this in college,which I did because it had pearl onions in it, and could putter around the kitchen saying “coq au vin” to myself and chuckling. Really, if I can say anything that sounds dirty in a French accent, I’m happy.)

Also, I have been resurrecting frozen fruit lately, and I have some peaches and blackberries that need to be made into honest comestibles as befitting all their virtues.

But oh jesus, I would eat blackberries every day if I could. The second half of this recipe is about what you put in the crepe, which frankly I don’t care what you do, but I had peaches and blackberries and powdered sugar and it was amazing.

Also, I received an oldfashionedy typewriter as a gift. I feel compelled to create all kinds of hipster crafts that I can’t even imagine yet.

blackberry upside down cake, or, how I learned to raise one eyebrow.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups fresh blackberries (12 ounces)
• 1/2 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk

• Accompaniment: vanilla ice cream
• Special equipment: parchment paper

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Line bottom of a buttered 8- by 2-inch round cake pan with 2 rounds of parchment paper, then butter parchment. Dust pan with some flour, knocking out excess.

Arrange blackberries in 1 layer in cake pan. Sprinkle berries with 11/2 tablespoons sugar and shake pan to help distribute sugar.

Whisk together 1 cup flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Beat together butter and remaining 1/2 cup sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add egg and vanilla and mix at low speed until just incorporated. Alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk in 3 batches, mixing at low speed until just incorporated.

Spoon batter evenly over berries, smoothing top, and bake in middle of oven until top is golden and a tester comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes.

Run a thin knife around edge of pan, then invert a large plate over pan and, using pot holders to hold plate and pan together tightly, flip cake onto plate. Peel off parchment and serve cake with ice cream.

What I actually did: used whole milk not buttermilk, doubled the recipe, shared half of one of the cakes and stacked it on top of the other, covered it in homemade whipped cream-which is still a revelation, but something certain people still haven’t figured out, and that point it was kind of a dishevelled mess, so I put autumn leaves in it because it kind of looked like a creek bank just because it was so ridiculous and lumpy.

And then I took it to a potluck-party and it was famous. I really enjoy making desserts that people get worked up over and the correlation thus far seems to involve intense levels of dairy. (things like cream cheese frosting, and the chocolate lavender tart that I make are particularly infamous.)  Also, having a decent base, and then coating it in something sticky. Good way to win the crowd.

I don’t have much else to report in cooking news. I’ve been running around as usual lately and now have visitors who say things like,”Do you have any cookies?” and I say,”No, but I have bananas, an apple, celery with peanut butter, and some almonds. But if you give me half an hour, I could make cookies.” So the will is there, and usually the means, but I don’t know how people get it together to make something different for dinner every night. I don’t always have the time or inclination, and if you offer to feed me pupusas or spaghetti squash, I’m there.

I have been thinking a lot about families and couples and households and really the point is I live in a house with a bunch of people who don’t share food but are sweet with each other and no one expects me to show up for house dinner but I’d rather be committed to the people I live with than have some kind of partnered situation where we show up and stare at each other all night because there’s no one else to talk to. Or really, point being, I only know a few couples that do domesticity well, and I seem to know a lot of people that are trying to make that happen for themselves. I find it surprising, and my social/emotional life these days is a lot like how I eat-I’ll go where they feed me, and I’m definitely capable of cooking for myself, but I share a lot, but it happens all over the place and is pretty inconsistent on a day-to-day basis. But, I’m trying to be more consistent with people.

It’s totally winter in Seattle, and people are getting kind of emotional and things are seeming hectic for a lot of folks in my life, and I have plenty to complain about but I’m still feeling really level-headed. Especially on the weekends.

Also, grad school applications are creeping up, and holy shit this is my life happening and me reaching for the things I want. heck yes.

Also, I want to cook with purple cabbage, and other vegetables in bright colors. Stay tuned.

peanut butter chocolate cupcakes. this will overwhelm you regardless of your feelings on the subject.

It is crunch time for grad school applications. I have been baking a lot, not out of stress but to avoid defining how I intend to revolutionize mental health through an anti-oppression framework and my intentions to define and utilize the intersections of systematic and interpersonal violence.  (Partially because writing them makes me feel like a self-righteous smartypants, and that’s probably because I am.)

Also, my sweet housemate came back from Vietnam, and my other sweet housemate who was subletting gets to stay forever. I want to throw them a party. But I do not have the time so I bake for them in my narrow windows of time between work and running around like crazy person and talking about my feelings and falling into my bed to stare at my facebook profile for hours when I should be sleeping or reading a book or doing a million other more productive things. Anyway. I give you the original recipe from epicurious:

For cupcakes

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• Rounded 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2/3 cup whole milk

For icing

• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• 4 ounces milk chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/3 cup chopped peanuts

• Special equipment: a muffin tin with 12 (1/2-cup) muffin cups and paper liners

Preparation

Make cupcakes:
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

Beat together peanut butter, butter, and brown sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until blended, about 2 minutes. Add egg and vanilla and beat until fluffy, about 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture and milk alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture, then mix until just combined.

Divide batter among lined muffin cups (about two-thirds full) and bake in middle of oven until pale golden and a tester inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes. Turn cupcakes out onto a rack and cool completely.

Make icing while cupcakes cool:
Bring cream to a boil in a small saucepan, then pour over chocolate in a small bowl. Let stand 1 minute, then whisk until smooth.

To thicken icing to spreading consistency quickly, spread it on a metal baking sheet and chill until thick and glossy, about 5 minutes. Scrape icing back into bowl and stir until smooth. Spread icing on cupcakes and sprinkle with peanuts.

I used crunchy peanut butter, store-bought frosting, and did not sprinkle peanuts on top. (I also had to run away to work before I had time to frost them, so one of the other housies did it) They went over fabulously. They were for my housemate who survives on many kind of foods but thrives on peanut butter. We also stuck candles in them to sing “Happy Homecoming to Reed.”

In general, people thought these were amazing, though (and maybe it was because I was full of BLT) I found them to be a bit much. You have to be ready for peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate frosting. Though they were sitting out on the table all before and throughout dinner, and one of my housemates had to physically restrain himself from shoving one into his face immediately after dinner. I wouldn’t have objected, but it’s perhaps not the most flattering reflection of someone’s comportment.

Also, now I have cupcake papers. Life is beautiful. My inner hippie can just be quiet. I’ve been having funny conversations with my boss about certain spreadsheets we use around the office, and why don’t I just print them out, and I’m like,”Trees! For the trees! We must do it for the trees.”

My environmentalism apparently still articulates at the same level of my 8-year-old self who was very invested in “saving animals. and the earth.” Trees were shortly thereafter on that list. I’m from Seattle. It’s how we do.

Peanut butter cupcakes are apparently also how we do, though not really me. But enjoy. You will probably like them.

they call the wind pozole….

So, a couple of months I bought a can of pozole from the Dong Hing Grocery in the ID, and nearly lost my shit. (the canned menudo, however, tasted like dog food. not delicious.)

So I have been fantasizing about making it ever since, and have had several cans of hominy sitting in my cupboard waiting for an excuse to get happy.

Last weekend my mom mentions she’s going to make pozole-and apparently there are ways to do it that don’t involve simmering for six hours, which is what the internet told me.

So with a combination of the internet, and my mom’s instructions, this is what I threw together in a pot:

4lb chicken (I accidentally grabbed thighs, I doubt it matters)

3 cans hominy

2 of those box-y things of chicken stock (they’re on sale!)

3 onions all chopped up

2 cups of water

and spices: about 7 cloves of garlic chopped up, 1 1/2-2 tsp oregano, 1 1/2 tsp chili powder plus excessive shakings, black pepper, 1/2 tsp cumin, and a pinch of clove. At least I think it was clove. My combined sniffing powers with our houseguest Sven’s deciphered it was probably clove.

I brought it to a boil, realized while I was flossing that it was boiling over, and ran downstairs to turn it down, and then it simmered for another 3 hours.  I went off to work in the middle, and was going to come back in an unhurried fashion, but when I said “I have soup simmering at home, I want to go make sure at some point that the house isn’t burning down” they took me at my word and sent me home immediately.

Anyhow. It’s really tasty. Though I’m starting to realize a little bit that my body freaks out about an overuse of chili powder, but I don’t know how else to achieve that lip-tingly nose-runny warm-belly effect without making it really spicy.

I brought my boss some of this in a mason jar because I think she may be hippied out enough that tupperware gives her hives, but anyhow I have yet to get actual feedback on this from other people. But it is quite tasty, I think. My vegetarian housemate told me that it smelled pretty. So, there you have it. I never cook meat because whenever I do I cannot share with people I love and that makes me sad. So I have all this tasty soup and I will probably be eating it for a really long time because no one else believes in eating animals.

Also, I just got diagnosed as an Enneagram type 2. I thought I should point that out right now.

And, happy wintertime in Seattle. I kind of like it, I feel really grounded these days.