I decided that my pie comes from a culture in which it is indecent to show one’s crust, and whipped-creamed it accordingly.
WORLDBUILDING.
A conversation I had tonight with my partner at the culmination of a week of bean-type soups and chilis:
Me: Dinner tomorrow?
Partner: Three-Bean Soup.
Me: Me: *swears at partner*
Partner: Three-Bean Soup, but instead of the broth–
Me: There’s a fourth bean?
Partner: I call at Three-Bean Surprise. The surprise is the fourth bean.
The pandemic has meant that I finally started making homemade yogurt again. A local farm store is doing phone orders and pickups, so we have better access to quality milk than we do yogurt.
I worried that this batch wouldn’t come out because the milk felt hotter than normal, but in ten years of making yogurt, I’ve never had a batch fail “to yog,” as my partner puts it.
My partner and I discussing the true meaning of Vaffeldagen, aka Waffle Day, aka March 25th:
Me: Vaffeldagen isn’t about the waffles. It’s about the friends we can’t see because of the pandemic.
Partner: The real friends are the waffles you made along the way.
This is a thing that still exists in my dining room. When I made this gingerbread house over a month ago, my brother was making his own gingerbread house. His was the gingerprison known as “Santatraz,” while mine was the safehouse set up by three of the escaped inmates: a cylops and a walrusman who were the victim of experiments, and a permanently scarred soul who survived an endless conflict known only as “The War.”
The unfortunate truth about the safehouse’s south-facing bay window is that it’s also the mouth of the cannibalistic safehouse. No one mows the lawn on that side of the house and comes back alive…
Peanut Butter Cup Fat Bombs
I created my own recipe for peanut butter cup fat bombs since I’m not patient enough to look through 5,000,000 blogs and find a good recipe that someone else wrote.
I came up with a quick method for enchilada sauce that I am happy with.
Normally, I’m not a fan of recipes that use salsa. They’re too back-of-the-box recipe, shortcuts in the negative sense of the word, like when you think you’re going to save yourself a bunch of driving time, but then you end up on a shifty, haunted dirt road that just gets narrower and narrower until it’s basically a trail you have to back out of, and you curse your entire existence.
Anyway, after my recent discovery that canned enchilada sauce is even more underwhelming than I remembered, I decided there has to be a better way.
Salsa verde has the flavor profile I want in a green enchilada sauce, only without chopping tomatillos for a million years. It worked out to about 3/4 cup salsa verde with 2 cups or so of chicken broth, thickened with a bit of cornstarch. So far, it’s worked with at least one red salsa
I will never, never understand cake mix. Since cake has no nutritional value, its only function is to taste good. But if you make it from a mix, you end up with something more akin to aerated ceiling plaster with a hint of propylene glycol. Since it doesn’t taste good, it has no purpose.
More on skipping dessert
No. I don’t want dessert (an open letter).
How to Politely Pass on Dessert
I found both of these articles after I wrote “Are you sure you don’t want any?” Both the author and commenters on “How to Politely Pass on Dessert” are apparently much more considerate than I am–I hadn’t been thinking of this situation as a difficult one, just an annoying one. I expect others to accept a no-frills “no, thank you” as an answer. Not only do I not owe anyone an explanation, I’ve learned that it’s worse to give one–people try to counter your reasons, which is annoying when you have more than one reason, or just want to pass on dessert without telling someone your entire life story, dessert preferences, and digestive health. The article does have some good tips for people who aren’t quite as socially obtuse and uncompromising as I am.
The open letter spoke to me a lot more. I ended up focusing my own piece on the social aspects of one particular question, but a lot of what he wrote echoes parts that I took out of mine. In short: I’m picky about food, and I’m just not going to bother eating something unhealthy if I don’t truly love it.
Are you sure you don’t want any?
It’s not about the cake. It’s not about the calories or sugar, or even the wheat. It’s about you questioning my decision, which is among the most inconsequential decisions I will make in my life.
Tomato soup for the morbid and depressed
Combine a missing tomato soup recipe with scream-crying depression, a baby I am responsible for taking care of, and the fact that I can’t chop onions anymore because of how quickly and painfully my eyes tear up.
A recipe for goblin candy
The idea of goblin candy came from a quick bit of dialogue in Pumpkin Goblins that gave me a vivid image of what goblin candy is like: dark and fruity chocolate, gooey in texture, with a hint of spices. For authenticity, it should include bugs, but I left them out of the recipe.