I Wish

Recently I've been crushing on some very beautiful necklaces. Unfortunately, since I am short on money and a job, crushing is just about all I can afford right now. Sigh.

The Dream Weaver necklace is gorgeous. It's my favourite object of adoration at the moment.

Another beauty is this "Serene" throat jewelry. I waaaannt it.

And finally, the Tabula Vulgaris. It's stellar.

I wish jewelry making was a talent of mine.

Mass and migraines

Both have been unpredictable and a little irritating.

Does anybody else gain weight when they start exercising regularly and eating healthily? Or am I the only lucky one? Andrew got a scale for Christmas that measures weight, fat percent, and hydration. As I exercise more and eat more fruits and veggies (V8 V-fusion is fantastic), my weight has been increasing ever so slightly, along with my fat percent. So, I am not adding heavier muscle, I am...making more fat. Oh, the wonders and joys of my body.

Also in the luck department, I never used to get eye-tearing, moan-inducing headaches centred intensely around my left eye. The last few years I have been getting these monsters for about a week, every few months or so. I was in denial for a while, refusing to believe I too had succumbed to the intense pain gene that is prevalent in both sides of my family. However, I think it's time to admit it. I get migraines, and they suck.

A lot.

There is one developing today. It's been trying to surface all week, I can feel it hovering there, threatening to burst forth when I least expect it. On Sunday it was almost full blown, but I somehow managed to conquer it with a few Motrin and a nap. I'm not sure I will be so lucky today, or tomorrow. I've never escaped an attack before. Especially not one that has been building slowly, biding its time, positioning itself just so.

I'm scared. Hold me?

Defrost Disaster

Yesterday we woke up to a freezer full of water that should have been ice, defrosted meat that should have been frozen, and mushy, mushy bananas. Egads!

I spent my morning yesterday making spaghetti sauce (might as well use the ground beef while it's hot, so to speak), transferring foods outside, and wondering whether my digestive system is fortified sufficiently to handle chicken that may or may not have been sitting at room temperature just long enough for a small kingdom of salmonella to set up shop.

Trying to salvage what food I could, I made spaghetti sauce, two loaves of banana bread, a loaf of cheese bread, and strawberry banana daiquiris. Unfortunately I still have a frozen yogurt tub three quarters full of brown banana mush in the fridge. I don't have that many recipes that use brown bananas. Also, the cheese bread didn't use up any defrosted frozen stuff, I just wanted it.

Never a dull day around here. Especially when there are daiquiris about.

PS The fudge is fucking fantastic.

Fudge Fiasco

So I made the fudge.

A few things went wrong. First of all, I mixed all the sugars and cocoa together, and then realized, I have no milk.

I always have milk.

I did look through the recipe first, to ensure I had everything, since I'd just posted about how I didn't have everything the last time I baked, and I skimmed right over milk (hehe), because I always have it. It is a given. Except, I don't have any.

I do have chocolate milk.

This fudge is either going to be really, really good (as I suspect since obviously I've tasted it already), or really really awful.

That was the first hiccup.

The second was that I used my largest saucepan. I figured it would be a good idea, since the recipe called for four cups of sugar. Unfortunately, my biggest saucepan is not that big.

When things are heated, they expand. This is something that most people know.

I got fudge...everywhere. Everywhere. It boiled over the top of the pan onto EVERYWHERE. I wish I'd gotten a picture of my stove because, wow. It was, ugh.

This brings us to my third issue:

Due to a combination of everything above (except maybe the chocolate milk), I could not get the fudge up to the proper temperature. I tried. I heated, stirred, removed from heat to let it go down, removed half the contents from the pan, heated, stirred, let it go down, and repeat, and it still only just avoided overflowing by the combination of my will and that of Van der Waals. UGH. So, it only got to around 225, maybe 228 °F, which is about 12° lower than needed.

This will very likely lead to a fourth issue:

We will probably have to eat the fudge with a spoon.

At least it looked good in the mixer.

Return from Unannounced Hiatus

Well, that was a while I was gone there, huh? I have no good excuse, except that I finished my degree, went home and ate a lot of good food, got a lot of good presents, and then forged head-on into the wonderful world of job hunting.

It's not a wonderful world. Especially when the economy is down the crapper so no one is willing to hire anybody, least of all me. I have almost resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to find a low paying retail job just to get by for a few months until something picks up and I might be able to get a job I paid thousands of dollars to be qualified for.

In other news, my etsy shop is back up and kicking. I closed it down over the holidays, but all is alive and well again.

My favourite Christmas gift this year was my KitchenAid stand mixer. It's big and red and beautiful.



It makes wonderful cinnamon buns and cheese and pesto buns and french bread, and so on and so forth. I love it to pieces.

Today, I am going to make fudge. Peanut butter chocolate fudge. I've never made fudge before, so it will be an adventure.

Two days ago I started making haystacks with the recipe my family has always used since I was little. After I had melted all the butter and sugar and everything together, I reached up for the rolled oats, and I had...very few. Around one cup. I needed three. Now, this is an example of a lesson that I have learned before. Always, always, always make sure you have all the ingredients before you start. I have been known to drive to the store in the middle of a batch of cookies to get eggs. But this, you can't just leave haystacks. So, I started piling everything I could think of into the pot to make up 2 cups of volume. Graham cracker crumbs, almonds, walnuts, and crushed saltines. The mixture was still very runny, but I didn't have anything else to put in it. We're not big cereal eaters, so all we had was Honeycomb and I didn't think that would be the greatest match. Also, it's probably about 6 months old. So, I scooped out the gooey mess onto waxed paper, watched it run all over the place, and put the tray into the fridge, feeling rather dismayed. A few hours later, I gathered my courage and pried a "haystack" that looked rather much like a wet shiny chocolate cookie off the tray and took a bite.

It was delicious. The salt on the crackers totally worked with the chocolate, and the lack of oats really made it smooth and yummy. Andrew said they taste like chocolates you might buy in a box. I was proud of my flop.

I should have pictures for all of these things, but I do not. Maybe next time kids.