Jack Kerouac, as Sal Paradise once said: "I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion." And I think that's a rather apt description of my blog over the years, and perhaps the most perfect description of me in general that I've ever read. So that's what this blog is, a collection of the falling stars that are beckoning me at any time.

27 February 2009

Of houses, flus, and Baking

The last month has been hectic, we've been house-hunting, which has been a huge stress on me as the one who's been doing all of the scouring and calling and arguing with landlord's that it's utterly ridiculous to only hold a property for 2 weeks when anyone who's an up-and=up tenant with an actual current lease has to give 30 days. I'm a little concerned now as we have to give 30 days on Sunday, but still haven't found the right place. We're due to look at a bungalow tomorrow morning that from the couple photos in the posting looks like it might be right, so I've got fingers mightily crossed. I really won't feel comfortable giving notice without knowing I've got somewhere to move in a month, but if we go month-to-month our expensive loft gets even more expensive. It was fun for a year, but it's really not worth the extra money, the ridiculously drafty energy inefficient windows (seriously I had a folded envelope sitting on the sill in front of the closed and locked window and it was fluttering like a hummingbird wing before a gust blew it off onto the floor, and this is a self-described "luxury" apartment.) the terribly underpowered stove (10 minutes to boil water if the oven is on, and then it can't keep up a boil once you've added the pasta) oh and some of the wiring is dodgy.

I've also just had the flu, which I knew I was going to get because everyone at work seems to have had this nasty 2-day flu and I've been so stressed with the car problems and house hunting and school and workload that I suppose it was inevitable.

On a happier note, as one of my 5 year plans was to do more things that make me happy and are productive, I've actually implemented Baking Sunday/Guinea Pig Monday, in which I bake something on Sundays and turn all my co-workers into Guinea Pigs on Monday. This way I get to test out all the tasy looking recipes I've been collecting, I get feedback on whether they're good and I don't gain 4000 pounds from eating a whole pan of brownies every week. Plus it will give me something to post about every week, if nothing exiciting has happened to me. I forgot to take a picture of week one which was a chocolate mocha brownie recipe from Bon Appetite's Fast and Fresh cookbook, with some randomly crafted cream cheese espresso frosting I decided they needed because the rack was in the oven too high and the very top of the brownies fot a little too browned looking for my aesthetics. They went over pretty well.

This week I decided that the Candy Apple Pie recipe I found on the Kitchn, really needed a try. I actually just followed the recipe on this one, usually I end up adding at least one extra spice or ingredient, but I just stuck to the directions this time, though I did use less pecans because the amount called for just looked like way too many as I was pouring them in. This is definitely a keeper. I wasn't very happy with my graham cracker crust, but it tasted fine, which is what counts, but it will probably take more practice to turn out pretty.

The recipe can be found here. Now I just need to figure out what to bake this Sunday.

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