Deviant Dispatches

Let me start with this: Life is fucking hard and I don't blame you for skipping right down to the recipe. Lately (as in, since March 2020), it's been one thing after another. Staying home, avoiding people, doing what we thought was best for the kids, realizing that was not best for them or for us, and trying to survive hour to hour in the onslaught of anxiety, uncertainty, and decision fatigue. The kids are dealing with reintegration now, and it's hard in different ways for each of them. One is loving school and hates being at home, and the other doesn't know how to be social anymore. This morning, I felt tired, unappreciated, guilty, and broken all before 8 a.m. So I made cake for breakfast. The kids love pancakes, but the youngest only likes them with syrup or honey, and the oldest is never interested in a healthy side dish. Drop the "pan" though, and it's a different story. I added an extra egg to my favorite pancake mix, and poured it over a layer of f...

I need to start keeping track of what's going on for my own sanity. I want to be able to look back and say that things really were going that fast - to say, I hope, that we seem to have worried for nothing. To remember the good in all of this. I also need way more therapy than I can afford (though I'm still getting therapy, trust me), and so I write. I'm labeling the days in accordance with my workplace shutdown. Day 1 (Monday) was my first day working from home to prevent the spread of COVID-19. I'm happy to overreact so that others will survive, so they don't have to worry about whether a ventilator will be free if needed. I'm also still recovering, three and a half weeks later, from influenza A and am not eager to be that sick again. Less than two weeks after my trip to Korea (by the way, I went to Korea!), I got sick. After a little prompting, I requested COVID-19 testing and was told that CDC guidelines wouldn't allow my doctor's office to do ...

Hi all - been a while. Distractions abound. I'm trying to get back into the swing of it - I haven't had a blogging hiatus like this since I started this up in 2011. Time to regroup, which may happen in fits and starts, but I'll do my best. What's been distracting me? Well, you know. Life. My next couple of posts will feature a lot of backlog, and mostly pictures, as I find it easier to get a post going when there's an image to go with it. First: the great outdoors. Earlier this summer, Spousal Unit and I decided to make good use of our fire pit. We proceeded to buy a ton of logs from the grocery store. You know, the paper-wrapped ones they sell next to the coolant and motor oil. (That should have been a clue.) One night, Spousal Unit didn't just put out the fire: he hosed it out, dumping the ashy water onto our yard. We ended up with dead grass and weird mushrooms. (Not quite a fairy ring.) So that's gross and disturbing, and we're never b...

About eight months ago, before Spousal Unit and I had moved into the Batcave, my friend Stephanie had me try her vegetarian meatballs. They melted in my mouth and were incredibly meat-like - I was amazed and requested the recipe at once. Then I promptly lost it in the move before I had a chance to make them. Last week, while doing some cleaning, I finally came across the recipe again. Hurrah! Meatballs! (Yes, I could have asked her for the recipe again, but I kept forgetting about it. Like I do.) My first batch turned out wonderfully except for two things. First, I skimped a little on the breadcrumbs (either that, or I added the right amount and the problem was that the eggs were the size of Texas - each). I ended up with meat-saucers instead. Tasty  meat-saucers. Which just makes me think of Space Meat . Second, just before removing these from the oven, I turned on a burner for tea. But after I'd set these on the stove and they'd begun to cool, they starte...

I always have a hard time figuring out what to make for big holiday dinners - namely, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Their traditional main dishes are meat, whether it's ham or lamb, turkey or fish. Obviously, those are all out of the question, so what's a vegetarian to do? Fondue. At least, that's what I did this year, along with vegetarian sushi. My meatatarian in-laws loved it (at least, that's what they're saying, and I have no desire to question them further). For the fondue, I found a bag of pre-shredded fondue cheese, a mix of Emmentaler and Gruyere. The bag was only 12 ounces, which turned out to be a perfect first course for five people. But it was $14 for that little thing. Ever the thrifty one, I thought surely buying the cheese in brick form would be cheaper... but no. An 8-ounce brick of Gruyere was $12, meaning ounce for ounce, the pre-shredded stuff was cheaper. On top of that, it was less work for me. I've read in various places that ...

Yesterday's giveaway is complete, and we have a winner. The country I had in mind was Argentina. Ana, with her last-minute switcheroo, wins the scarf - Bolivia is the only country guessed which actually borders Argentina. Yep. It's true. One last thing before I venture off into the wild yonder of my life: a before and after picture of my basil. See, this is the time of year when basil plants must succumb to their fate in these frigid regions; if I leave the plant for too long, it will turn black and shrivel and be completely useless. Instead of allowing that to happen, I'm required to temporarily become a murderer. My lovely and amazing basil, before harvesting... ...and after. That pathetic little bag of greenery next to the pot full of sticks is the whole of my harvest. I'll be lucky to get even half a cup of pesto from that. But such is the life of a non-farmer in the city. It's better than nothing, and I think it was worth it...

Today, I have a lot to work on. I have an apartment application to fill out, cookies to bake, a cake to bake, a care package to send, a doctor to inquire after, CDs to return to the library, a budget to balance, a scarf to work on, a novel to work on, a kitchen to clean, wine to buy, and tomato sauce to make. (The last two are directly related.) I also have the incredible goals of buying a spatula and taking a bath, though not at the same time. I'll be amazed if I accomplish even half of those things - I have a terrible tendency to make an extensive, unreachable to-do list for my days off, which leaves me feeling half accomplished and very tired. That, or I give up after the first two are crossed off because the tasks ahead are too daunting. But not today. I can feel the days speeding up as we approach the end of our lease, and it's time to start getting ready for the next part of our lives, whatever that might entail. The crisp weather delights me, but also worries me - ...

Source I have big, big plans for today, and for the rest of my four-day weekend. Unfortunately, if I can't shake off the sleep that's caught in my eyes, I'll spend the rest of today napping and being lazy. This is not an acceptable course of action. Here are the steps I'm taking to remedy that: 1. An immediate and cold shower, lasting about five minutes. This will make my nerve endings scream, "AUGH! We're awake!" 2. A cup of Assam Gold Rain  black tea to make the brain cells snort, "Whut? Iz okay, we can has think nao." Or maybe I'll skip straight to the English Breakfast . That always gives my brain a good kick in the pants. 3. A head-first dive into my list for the day. Usually, by doing that, I tend to just forget the rest of the sleepiness, and by the time it's all gone, I've already been productive. The problem with all of these is that I have an unusual sleepy feeling today - one not caused by a lack of sleep. I ...

This is a giant radish we got in our community-supported agriculture (CSA) box a couple of weeks ago - just one of many reasons I love getting a big box of fresh veggies every other week. You'd never find a radish like this in a store, nor would it be quite so fresh. Hooray Circle M Farm ! Spousal Unit and I have gotten three of our ten summer boxes now, and I'm pretty happy with our choice thus far. How many CSAs let you go to the farm and work off what you owe for the veggies? We've gone once, with friends, and it was so cool to know we helped pick the sugar snap peas that came back to us - almost like when I went to Grandma and Grandpa's, picked a bucket of berries, and came back to the house to eat them over fresh biscuits. Sorry, CSA, but no matter how awesome you get, nothing beats the food my grandpa grows. On top of that were all the animals we got to see. I miss my days on the alpaca ranch sometimes, and it was nice to see fuzzy critters again. A li...

Has anyone else found traditional wedding gifts to be kind of ridiculous? You know the ones: you're supposed to give tin or aluminum for the tenth anniversary, silver for the 25th anniversary, and so on. Because nothing says "Happy tenth anniversary" like a tin cup or aluminum can. To a certain degree, these gifts make sense. Paper for the first year: so the couple can finally finish writing their wedding thank-yous (ahem note to self) , and it's cheap for them to give to each other. But there's some bizarre stuff on that traditional list - I know they vary sometimes, but I'm going off of the one I found here . Honestly, no joking: the 32nd anniversary gift is conveyances. Like bicycles and automobiles. I guess that's why it's the 32nd anniversary and not the 52nd, because they might have needed to add wheelchairs to the list at that point. The modernly devised anniversary gifts aren't much better. Rather than paper, that list starts out with clo...

Dear Weather, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but... it's fall. I know. You've been having so much fun making us all think summer will last forever and a day. Well I have to tell you: I've not been lulled into complacency. And I won't be. I want my fall days. Today, the high is 82. Weather, you're being kind of ridiculous. It's time to let go. It's time for crisp days, where we need to bundle up in sweaters and scarves to go gallavanting about in the crunch of leaves underfoot. It's time for a chill breeze, which drives us in from that walk to a cup of apple cider, or hot chocolate, or tea. Quite simply, it's time that you stop confusing me. This is the first time in years that I've had a chance to experience the change of seasons that I so dearly love. Where I lived in New Mexico, it certainly got cooler in the winter... sometimes. There was definitely snow... for a couple of days. And the leaves fell from the trees... but not in as broad...

Picture from an anonymous source MADISON, Wisc. - The truth behind red velvet cake was finally revealed at One Egg, Two Egg bakery this weekend: the red color is not caused by chemical reactions, as many believed, but by a special blend of red caviar. "I had to come out about this," said Pete Stieke, head chef at the Madison bakery. "I knew if I made this cake one more time without fully informing the buyer, I'd never be able to sleep at night again. I've been living a lie." Stieke's red velvet cake follows tradition dating back to the cake's eggy conception: rather than including a necessary fat, such as oil or butter, this blood-red cake uses salmon eggs to get its unusual tint. Stieke also mentioned the backstock of eggs in his cellar is running low due to the recent salmon strike. "If they don't stop this strike soon, I won't be able to make red velvet anymore," he said with a shake of his head. "I sympathize with their pli...

Though it is not graphic, this post discusses humane and non-humane animal slaughter. You have been warned. A couple of weeks ago, I found some bacon. Not Facon (fake bacon) but real bacon. I kind of want to eat it. It's produced by Applegate Farms, and the packaging proclaims that it lets the pigs have their self-imposed hierarchy and social organization - pigs are very smart, complex animals, and most farms cause them great distress by splitting them up and not letting that social order fall into place. They're also never given antibiotics (unlike farms that pump animals full of them every day) and are fed a natural grain diet (instead of being fed other animals). The only question their packaging and their website didn't answer for me was about their slaughter methods. They seemed likely to have humane slaughter methods in place, but I wanted to be sure. So I emailed them. And I didn't hear back for weeks. Earlier this week, I finally did. "Our standards include...

Spousal Unit, ever since I first met him, has been what I would call a meatatarian. He eats meat whenever it's available, in large quantities, covered with sloppings of barbeque sauce. BBQ ribs, brats, and hamburgers top his list of favorite meats. Last summer, Spousal Unit said, "Hey, let's try not eating any meat for a week." I just about fell over. I've never been much for meat, especially beef or things that ooze grease when poked. I'd always wanted to try it out, but it's hard to do so when living with another person. The idea of cooking two meals, or cooking one and setting aside the meat in your dish, is not very appealing. So I jumped on it. Week One went very well. Spousal Unit wanted to shoot for two, so we did. Yum, yum, veggies. And that led to our routine of eating meat only once a month. And then I read a book. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer discusses how the animals we eat become meat. Everything from fish and shrimp to fowl and pig...

I've just made a hat for my niece, who is the cutest niece anyone has ever had. It matches a scarf I made her a few years ago. Hat is drunkenly modeled by GIR because (surprise!) I don't have anything remotely near the size of a toddler's head. Not even in the freezer. And there's a lot of stuff in the freezer. For those who are curious, Plymouth Yarn Dream Baby DK, 50% acrylic, 50% nylon. I hope it actually fits her.