After staring longingly but idea-less at the romanesco in the grocery store, I finally realized that a recipe that could use cauliflower and broccoli was perfect! Romanesco au gratin was born…and subsequently consumed.
Fractal food! Isn’t it lovely?
It may indeed be phantasy: when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain, perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Today’s my birthday, and I wanted to get some pictures of my newest little girl, BabyDoll.
Working diligently on finishing up my DoA Mod Talent Show entry, cooking tasty gluten free dinners, making plans with friends for baking dates, almost swirling with writing ideas, being able to get out with the dogs and go for walks, some dollie love that I’d thought was totally gone returning, reading fantastic books.
Work sucks majorly, but the stuff outside of work is so much better. It makes it hard to sit in the office all day, knowing that there are so many other things to be thinking and doing and planning. Also makes it really rough to get home and have no energy at the end of the day to do these things.
Any ideas for ways to beat the ‘end of the workday’ drain? I have things to do!!
So randomly, yesterday I decided to actually participate in the Mod Talent Show on DoA. I hadn’t had any ideas before, as I don’t have any…well…talents. XD I can’t sew, can’t do faceups, etc; I enjoy my dolls differently. I like to create outfits, create characters, suit dolls to characters, find perfect accessories.
My project is requiring all sorts of new skills from me, and oddly enough, it actually has me wanting to play with my dolls again, something I haven’t wanted in quite some time. I even may have pre-ordered a new doll head yesterday. Maybe I just don’t challenge myself often enough; sometimes I’m very quick to tell myself that I can’t do something. But with the pieces I’ve finished this weekend, and the plans revolving in my head, I’m actually liking this.
Go on, anyone who doesn’t feel they can, find one of the DoA contests and participate! It might do your hobby more good than you think!
So today was an exceptionally awful Tuesday. This morning, a rep called and yelled at me for at least fifteen minutes for something that wasn’t my fault. Raised voice, insulting me, serious yelling. I work in commissions, and this high rolling bully wanted his money…but we have to wait for the statement to come in the mail so I can see who gets what portion of said money. After demanding my manager’s name and yelling again that it was “unacceptable,” he slammed the phone down. Just as my manager walked in. And embarrassingly, I started crying.
Now, I cry easily; it’s no secret. My sisters love watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” with me every year on Christmas Eve because they think it’s great comedy that I cry EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Songs make me cry, beautiful poems make me cry. Sometimes telling someone about Farinelli will give me teary eyes. I try to console myself with the knowledge that John Keats was similarly weepy.
My manager took me to his office, wanting to calm me down, even as I shudderingly tried to explain it away to “I cry easily.” He was rather livid with the rep, didn’t blame me at all, and was a real gentleman about it. Then he got the CEO, and I told them both what had happened. She was comforting, understanding, didn’t blame me either. They were both very kind and calm and ideal, as far as bosses go.
But that still doesn’t fix what that rep did. Because not only did he rip me a new one before ten in the morning, he then proceeded to humiliate me by making me cry in front of my manager and the CEO. Seriously! Now I look like an idiot.
And the worst part? It’s twofold.
First, they caved to his demands. He basically got an advance this week that totals my yearly salary. Nice reward for bad behavior.
Secondly…I didn’t cry because I was upset. I cried because I was impotent. It was frustration that caused the tears. As he insulted me, my work ethic, my understanding, my human dignity, I couldn’t say anything back to him. All I could do was apologize, gag myself on the things I would have dearly loved to respond, and try to soothe his anger. I would have loved to eviscerate him verbally. There would have been no tears then, I assure you. But because he’s got big money, and because he makes big money for the firm, I had to bite my tongue. I hate that more than anything else. Bullies with corporate faces.
Still baking, even though it’s crazy hot out. There’s something about cooking that is so therapeutic for me. I like the challenge of new recipes and the perfectionist craving for dishes to turn out just the way they should. I also love sharing the food I make; I don’t want compliments, I just want to know that the person I’ve made the food for really enjoys it.
So…here are some recent bakings.
Armenian flatbread. The joy of dimpling loaves! For some reason, that was the stressful part of making this (???). This was a recipe from the Modern Baker, a book I’d wanted for a bit and picked up on the bargain rack at Borders.
Vegan brownies, made as a special request for Ross. Used a base recipe, but then worked it out for myself. I also got a phenomenal piece of artwork in exchange (I need to post up my ever-growing series of sexy Captain Nemo sketches Ross has done for me!). These were surprisingly good; I don’t have a lot of experience with vegan cooking, especially baking, and having a vegan friend who I need to keep from starving is a wonderful challenge for me. These tasted better than they looked…the pic sort of just looks like cake. But they were chocolatey and fudgey!
Last one, since I totally forgot to take pictures of the cookies I just baked the other night. I’d wanted to try these for awhile, but I wasn’t sure how they’d actually turn out. Oreo-stuff chocolate chip cookies. Make them. Try them. Amazingly worth it decadent. I used the original recipe from Picky Palate and followed it exactly. Worked like a charm!
And that’s all I’ve got! Cooking is my one respite lately. If anyone has fun recipes for unique cookies or breads or other treats, send them my way!
I’m learning that I’m simply not an endurance writer. I have so many failed novels. I could just call them “incomplete novels” or “novels I started but just haven’t finished,” but to be honest with myself, I’m not going to finish them. I love the first rush, the adrenaline of the setup, but my brain is simply not set up to plot out a longer story and carry it through. To do that, I’d need a co-author…a co-plotter, really, a sort of storyboarder. Probably hard to find one for writing novels though, haha.
I’ve done a few short stories, but then I feel that it’s just too pithy. Or too abstract, and there’s nothing quite happening at all. I’m not giving up on the form, though, as it’s one I have such huge respect for. Short stories do the work of novels, packed into such a small space. Every single word does the work of a sentence. Something I’d like to work on further.
When it comes down to it, I’m a poet. I get hit with poems, rather than novels or plotlines. I get slapped in the face with character sketches and painful moments and phrases. There is nothing more cathartic for me than to get a poem down on paper. I like to write them down, physically; it feels more real to me, and stupidly safer. I wrote tonight, and instead of that overwhelming “Oh God, I’ll never write enough!” feeling that smothers me when I fight a paragraph one one of my longer pieces, I could sit back and close my eyes and feel a sort of release. Doesn’t mean I won’t edit the two I wrote tonight within an inch of their little literary lives. Doesn’t mean either poem will ever see the light of day. But there’s a certain completeness I get when I write poetry, long or short, that I just haven’t found yet in a longer piece. Maybe I’m not ambitious enough, heh.
So…I need a new journal to carry around with me to take care of my poetry urges. I used to fill pages and pages, but I find that I don’t have a good sized one now. I like to have the perfect notebook and the perfect pen. I’ll have to see what I can find. I don’t want to waste this feeling while I have it.
I do still have dolls, believe it or not, and sometimes I get to play with them. Unfortunately, with the stress of work and house and traveling around, I haven’t had a chance. This weekend I was hoping to take some doll pics, but fate worked against me. Actually, it was a combination of fate and time. Fate decreed that the cookies I’d made last week for my gramma’s birthday were a disaster, and I only had so much time to make new ones this weekend to mail out. I was happy with them, though.
Two weeks ago, I had another cookie mail out. When my sister and her new husband arrived back in Texas after the wedding festivities in New York, they discovered that the parking lot where the car had been patiently awaiting them had had a tornado touchdown. The car was a mess, all the windows shattered and the body of the car dented and bashed by debris. I sent some octopus cookies, each with his own unique mustache, to try to cheer them up. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the ones I mailed, but the few that were made of the last bits of dough were missing one side set of tentacles. My talented roommate used the small leftover bits to give them mechanical appendages to make up for the tentacles they’d lost to science.
Tav is the one with the mechanical eyepiece, Oscar is the untrusting one, and Fitz doesn’t have anything steampunk about him except his impressive sideburns.
I’m always on the lookout for unique cookie cutters, so if you see any, let me know!
Made these for a friend’s birthday at work.
I think it’s supposed to rain tomorrow…sometimes wish I was still the type of girl who wore shoes she didn’t mind puddle-jumping in. 
This particular cupcake was sadly lacking in raindrop blue sprinkles inside. Or maybe they already all fell down into the rather big puddle at the bottom.
Got this idea from Bake It in a Cake, though I think the original idea came from elsewhere. My cloud buttercream wasn’t as tall as I’d initially planned, but honestly, after eating half a cupcake, any more frosting would have been overkill.
Back to reading “Ulysses” in anticipation of Bloomsday tomorrow.
“I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.”
Ah, Mr. Joyce, how did you know me so well, living so long before I was born and stealing my sense before I even had it?
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