twd: rick katz's brownies for julia child

Readers, I just feverishly cut up the remaining brownies and stuffed them in the freezer.

They are too good.

Toothsome.

Fudgy.

Decadent.

Chocolatey bliss.

Irresistible.

Every time I strolled past my 8 inch square pyrex dish in the kitchen, I cut off a slim rectangle and sampled.

Winter wears our patience thin. My overwhelming desire is to take refuge in carbs and pure sweetness.

These brownies deliver just that, a little too well.

Get thee to a freezer, tempter!

(and, despite a novel technique for beating the eggs and whisking them into the batter, these are a snap to prepare, say in the last 10 minutes before the super bowl begins and the stars are singing patriotic songs to the whirl of blossom, my trusty kitchen aid mixer).

Thanks to the chocolate obsessed Tanya of the delightful blog Chocolatechic for selecting this winner.

**no photo *again* this week because of my banishment of the brownies to an arctic home, and the dearth of natural light that isn't grey and snow filled**

twd: mini (not milk) chocolate (not bundt) cake

I have bundt pan envy.

The temptation to buy a mini bundt pan to bake these cakes was strong, but the nearest baking supply store is far-ish. Now that Spring semester has started, my regional sojourns are definitely limited.

And so, without the darling pans, I decided to make one six inch cake. I have a thing for babycakes;)

I read tweets and P & Qs and decided to use my standard 70% chocolate for the cakes to increase the chocolateyness, as many respondents reported mild chocolate flavor.

I also read tweets and P & Qs and decided not to make the glaze as it a) sounded like many people disliked it and had difficulties making it and b) I dislike corn syrup (yes, commercials, i know it's made from corn. but i watched king corn. i read a lot of writing about the food industry. i know how processed you are. i know how much oil you're consuming).

(have i mentioned how useful the tweets and P & Qs are? invaluable!)

(can you tell i don't have much to say about this cake?!?)

I made the cake quickly Sunday evening, in an attempt to catch most of Jane Austen's Emma currently showing on PBS, and also to be done, cooled, and ready to eat before G left. The speediness detracted from the quality of the finished product, I'm afraid. The texture was...interesting. Not exactly bundt like or regular cake like.

And, despite using darker chocolate, I was disappointed in the level of chocolateyness. I love overwhelming chocolate. I used some of the infamous chocolate malt frosting from a few weeks ago, stashed in my freezer, to top the cake, which in no way resembled its original bundt form.

G and I split a wedge as we watched the Grammys once Emma ended. G quite liked the cake, and I sent the rest home with him...without snapping a photo. (poor planning on the part of not one but two participants in project 365! yeesh!)

Thank you, Kirsten, for choosing this recipe! Check out her blog, I'm Right About Everything, for more mini bundt fun.

daily haiku: tiresome

tiresome winter

cold sunless barren landscapes

dreaming of springtime

*inspired by the haiku challenge word of the day, tiresome*

daily bliss: solo saturday

Sunlight peeks through the edges of the blinds as I stretch, reach for my phone to check the time. I unstick myself from flannel sheets, pull on my workout clothes, remote start the car, gather my hair into a messy ponytail, and drive to the gym.

I curve past Walgreens, dodging shoes and what looks like a plastic flower lei lining the center of the road.

Plugging myself into my ipod, I cue up the Iowa Road Trip Summer 09 mix, program the treadmill, and start walking. Muscles alive, I increase the speed and run. Despite too old shoes, broken down and dirty, my feet find that old familiar rhythm. My breath evens out even as it speeds up. "Just like Heaven" begins to play, and I speed up the pace, aiming for something just short of breathless. Exhilarated. I spend a few minutes on the weight machines, challenging my muscles with more reps and weight until the edge of hunger begins to grow into something more vital and necessary.

I drive home amid traffic, winter weary neighbors seeking sunshine and an escape from cabin fever on this, the penultimate day of January, a month that has stretched and lingered longer than any I can remember...

Breakfast, and then journal writing, sudoku, internetting. Talking to my mom. Listening to NPR slip from Classics by Request to Live from the Met. Daydreaming ahead to the Chicago Lyric Opera in March. Imagining G's comments on the Opera music spilling through the house.

After eating a late lunch of roasted veggies and couscous, I plan my love story writing workshop. I jot down a few paragraphs for an article I'm writing. I watch old episodes of Gilmore Girls. I suit up again, start the car, drive to Walgreens to pick up photos I sent in a few hours earlier. The plastic lei is now a series of scattered blossoms, the shoe a lone white, simple lace up sneaker.

In Walgreens I watch, I observe: a teen girl buying a package of Pampers and a 200 minute Tracfone card. A young couple walking in the door together, looking both furtive and hopeful. An older woman walking slowly between the automatic doors, smiling.

I navigate the grocery store as quickly as possible, scooping up ingredients for tonight's dinner (pizza with potato, rosemary, caramelized onions, olives, gruyere) and a few staples for the busy week ahead.

Drive home. Shower. Heat milk, brew coffee. Toast English muffin half, spread with natural peanut butter and dot with chocolate chips. Pull my bed pillows together behind me, wrap up in the blanket best friend S made, sip coffee, nosh snack, and read for Monday's class. Watch the sun begin to set off in the distance. Snap a few photos of a world romanticized through lace curtains.

And then the quiet. The familiar quiet. The quiet of 15+ years of weekend days spent mostly alone. I know this quiet. I've grappled with this quiet. I've alternately balked against and made peace with this quiet.

And I'm glad this quiet is an anomaly.

***

G's "Up Nort" this weekend, enjoying a frigid festivus celebration with his buddies. The highlight of the weekend: snow golfing on the frozen lake, "sponsored" by Miller Brewing Company.

I was kindly invited to attend, but an especially heavy week ahead (not one but two writing workshops, hosting an all-day long, all-campus/community event, two teleconferences, and one meeting, in addition to my regular class schedule) combined with my aversion to cold weather lead us our separate ways.

Since we generally spend most of the weekend together, I wondered how I would feel with an entire weekend to myself, a throwback to my single girl days (recent enough (eight months yesterday to be precise) that one might think no real adjustment would be necessary). Would I revel in the utter freedom? Would I be crippled by loneliness and longing? I hoped that neither extreme would be true.

When I was single, I made many declarations, whether internally or externally, about not being that girl. You know, that girl who:

a) focuses on her new, romantic relationship and lets other connections slide

b) needs reassurance

c) falls apart over non-relationship stuff in front of boyfriend, becoming a teary mess

d) initiates conversations about the future

e) misses said boyfriend during the week when work keeps them apart

f) misses said boyfriend when they spend a few days apart for holidays or weekends

g) enters conversations with "we" and "us" instead of just "I" or "me"

I'm discovering, though, that it's human and necessary to be that girl, Cosmo advice (which is admittedly crap! anti-feminist, anti-man, anti-happiness, anti-healthy adult relationship crap!) be damned.

Building a relationship, as I'm arguing in my analysis of Jenny Crusie's novel Agnes and the Hitman, is akin to building an elaborate, multi-tiered cake. Foundation and embellishment. Sturdiness and frills. Not everything is attractive or delicious (have you seen the supports they add to the insides of these cakes?) at all times. It takes work. Acts of love. A willingness to get messy. To play around.

To make it up as you go.

***

It's Saturday night. I'm filling the silence with music, Layer Cake shiraz, and homemade pizza.

I wish G was here to share with me. To fill the silence with his hilarious stories, his laugh. To enjoy the meal, the wine.

But, I'm also glad that he's with friends.

I'm glad that I've found someone who believes, like I do, the relationship math where one + one = three. This weekend, we're living our ones. And there will be more weekends, more times when I'll be the one to leave him here, alone. Work conferences and classes beckon to distant locales...St. Louis, Paris.

What a comfort to come home to that happy three, the space that expands when our ones add up to something more than two.

daily haiku: eight

eight is my favorite

number poised on perfection

stretching forever

daily bliss: healthy mac and cheese

Feeling sleepy but relatively chipper, I decided to make a veggie laden mac and cheese for dinner. Though mac and cheese is my staple comfort food, I didn't feel in the need of culinary soothing tonight. I just craved something cheesey and veggietastic.

I sauteed leek, garlic, red chard. I added broccoli florets and stalks, roasted red and yellow peppers. I cooked whole wheat pasta. I made a cheese sauce: melt a dab of butter and stir in flour to make a roux. Add skim milk, coarse pepper and salt, reduced fat mexican melting cheeses, 10 year aged cheddar, and bellavitano (a fruity parmesan style produced in Wisconsin). Mix all the ingredients together, pour into a buttered casserole (le creuset!) and top with buttered panko. Bake. Pour a small glass of Layer Cake Shiraz.

The dish tasted delicious, both decadent and healthy all at once.

The only problem is that in this case, it seemed to cause the blueseyness that it usually cures.

Suddenly, the cold, dry, winter air seemed interminable and unbearable. The noise of sitcoms I usually find humorous grated on my nerves. Sudoku puzzles, my latest interest, seemed ridiculous, annoying, and pointless. I turned off the TV and the silence reverberated, filled with my own thoughts, which quickly turned into a series of unfounded worries, since, to quote Holden Caulfield, "When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around" (rest in peace, Salinger, literary man of mystery).

I'm tired, after my first week back of teaching after break. Next week I'm hosting a campus wide event *and* leading a workshop on writing your own love stories. Projects, small and large, loom over me. The coldest air of the year is parked here for a few days. I have a stack of student essays to grade, an article to write.

I really want to curl up in front of a fireplace (which I don't have) with a 500 page novel and leave the world for a little while.

Such is winter.

And so, I seek solace in laughter, in conversation. In an earlyish bedtime and sweet dreams. The promise that tomorrow will start a happier day.

Goodnight, my friends.

daily bliss: one mile

at five miles per hour.

a full twelve minutes.

on the treadmill.

running.

again.