Adventures in Summertime Fruit

This isn’t a failure, but it also isn’t sherbet. I picked – I’m estimating – about six cups of blackberries this week. I just used four cups to make some blackberry sherbert, but like I said it didn’t turn out sherbet-y. It’s pretty icy but the consistency is smooth and it is a gloriously delicious looking dark purple color.

I love blackberries. For interested parties, here is how I achieved this delightful dessert, but let me be clear, this is not a precise recipe and I made it up as I went along.

You need two cups of blackberry puree. Since I don’t have an ice cream maker, I wanted to try and make the mixture as smooth as possible so I tried to get all the seeds out. If you don’t care, you won’t have to use as many berries. To get the seeds out I tried using a mesh sieve but that got frustrating pretty quickly so I instead, squeezed the puree in a poor man’s cheese cloth, AKA a nylon trouser sock.

Lesson learned: Blackberries are messy and they get everywhere. I forgot to put on an apron, so goodbye to my best t-shirt, I guess I’ll see if I can repurpose that later. It also got all over my counter, stuck in my blender, stained my hands. By the time I dumped the leftover mulchy blackberry seed mush in the trash, my kitchen looked like a crime scene and I looked like I murdered Tinky Winky.

This was about the time I decided to put an apron on. That’s right. I’m like the guy in the zombie apocalypse who doesn’t have a baseball bat.

So I stirred a cup of sugar into the puree and that went smoothly. The next hitch was that I needed 2/3 cup heavy cream whipped into soft peaks. I was already covered in purple berry blood so I just opted to blend that too, but oh wait, I didn’t have 2/3 cup heavy cream. Me, being the brilliant improvisational baker that I am, just filled up the measuring cup with milk. Milk whips, right?

I don’t know what I was thinking. I know better and I did it anyway.

So the whipping cream didn’t happen. It half-whipped and thickened and got frothy and I just added it into the puree. It worked fine. It was fine. Then all I did was add these ingredients in this order and stir it all in:

3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp raspberry chocolate vodka (it’s what I had in the freezer)
a pinch of salt

I portioned it into two jars and two custard dishes, saran wrapped the dishes and popped it in the freezer for two and a half hours and it still wasn’t frozen so I sampled it anyway. It’s good. It’s really good.

Look at how many blackberries I still have. Clafoutis next week, for sure.

Miss Jackson and Other Music

You may know this about me but I’m a huge music fan. Just all music; any music; music is a life-force for me. One of the few things I find myself dedicated to enough to consider worship, is music.

With that in mind, I thought I’d make a blog about it. It seems fitting because in the later summer afternoon the wind is whistling and the trees look like they’re dancing.

I could write an entire dissertation on Fall Out Boy, so I think it suffice right now to say that I am loving their new album, Save Rock and Roll. It combines all of the best parts of their previous albums into something that is wholly greater than the sum of its parts. After months of listening to it repeatedly I found it a pretty hard pill to swallow when one of my Facebook friends said she felt the new Panic! At the Disco song was superior to Fall Out Boy’s.

I just. Couldn’t.

But then I listened to Panic!’s single, Miss Jackson, and I pretty much loved it. The first couple of times it didn’t leave a mark but the more I let it play in the background, the more the greatness sunk in. I still won’t say it’s better than Fall Out Boy, but I think it’s safe to say those two bands have been on par in my music loving life since 2006 (Pretty. Odd. hiccup set aside).

I have a habit of collecting one-off singles from bands I either don’t know or haven’t listened to in years. It makes for some pretty interesting playlists. I download free music from Amazon and iTunes; I listen to the indie stuff Sarah brings home from work; I follow struggling artists on Youtube. With the mainstream so flooded alternately in waves of the same thing, it’s necessary in order to properly cultivate a kitchen sink taste.

Here, have some lists that I curated.

Top 10 songs of July/August
1. Through the Roof and Underground – Gogol Bordello
2. Un Dia de Sol – Los Claxons
3. ThisKidsNotAlright – Awolnation
4. Proof – Paramore
5. Come Save Me – Jagwar Ma
6. Tower (Don’t Look Down) – Skylar Grey
7. Hothouse – 78Violet
8. Miss Jackson [feat. Lolo] – Panic! at the Disco
9. Shiver Shiver – Walk the Moon

Top 5 albums of July/August
1. Save Rock and Roll – Fall Out Boy
2. Megalithic Symphony – Awolnation
3. Our Version of Events – Emeli Sande
4. Secondhand Rapture – MS MR
5. Lindsey Stirling’s self titled album

In case you needed some new music, those are my recommendations.

Crochet Commissions

90% of the time I work without patterns, meaning almost everything I make is one of a kind. Prices are set based on difficulty, labor, and cost of yarn.

Currently I’m offering:

• Hats and scarves
• Reusable shopping bags in different styles
• all purpose bags

Prices from left to right

• Two-color block scarf: $30
• Two or more color striped scarf: $30 – $40 dollars depending on amount of colors
• Multi-color block scarf without edging: $30
• Single color mesh scarf: $20
• Asymmetrical hat, with flower: $30, without flower: $25
• Ribbon hat: $30
• Striped hat: $25 – $40 dollars depending on amount of colors
• Reusable shopping bag (up to five colors): $70
• Large-size all-purpose bag: $65

Extra info

EVERYTHING IS CUSTOMIZABLE

These are just examples of things I’ve made in the past and their value. Everything but the reusable shopping bag was made without a pattern, by hand, and can be approximated.

If the bags seem to be a ridiculous price that’s because they both require a lot of work. The smaller one is three days work of crocheting and hand-sewing and the pattern is pretty intensive. The larger one is easier and faster to make, however it’s huge. The small bag is 13″ by 9″. The large bag is 16″ by 16″ and comfortably holds a full set of hardback Harry Potter books. It can be made smaller for a cheaper price. Both are made from 100% cotton yarn.

Hats and scarves can be purchased separately or in sets. Standard scarf length is six feet. Each additional foot of length is $5. If you want something shorter $5 will be knocked off the price for every foot.

Lastly: If there’s something you really like and you send me a picture of it, I can probably approximate that pattern. I don’t have pictures of any amigurumi or stuffed animals that I have made, but I can make them and will if you send me a photo or just have an idea of what you want.

To place an order or ask questions, email me at: thenofacemonster@hotmail.com. I will send you a final price and an estimate on when your stuff will be done. I am willing to haggle. Everything you buy will come with washing and care instructions.

Please share this with friends and family. I need to make some money.

This Is a Blog Post

I don’t really know what I’m doing today, so I thought I’d write a blog post.

What’s been on my mind lately is health. I have not been making the healthiest decisions the last month or so, and I think because my body has gotten used to a certain way of moving and eating, the poor decisions have been effecting me much more than they did when they were just my regular decisions.

It’s been kind of an odd thing, actually. I eat pretty well for not having enough money to buy really good food, but I don’t move very much. I’ve gotten into the habit of sitting for most of my day, as opposed to Kingston when I was walking eveywhere, and last summer when I was exploring Bremerton almost every day. The winter put me in a rut and it’s been a hell of a time trying to shake out of it.

Today I reaffirmed my conviction to do some kind of stretching every day. We’ve started spring cleaning (or maybe pre-summer cleaning?) and it’s pretty painfully clear how out of shape I am. On top of my clothes getting tighter, it’s become tiring to do even a few hours of heavy work. So, starting this afternoon, I’ve done my stretches and in an hour or so I’m going to get up and do them again. My goal for this week is to do two sets of these stretches. It’s nothing impressive, but it’s enough that I feel it.

And I really need to stop eating cheap pizza and ramen.

Sometimes I don’t want to cook one decent meal, let alone two or three. It requires preparation and clean up, and there are weeks where I feel like I don’t leave the kitchen. Shirking for a day or two is not bad, but I fall into stints of shirktasticness where I don’t leave the couch. That is bad.

Strangely, I feel like in some ways I understand a little bit more about housewives in any era. The minutiae of the wall color, the bed spread, the cabinet varnish, whatever, becomes your every day life, and it doesn’t change. You have to find ways of making it interesting day in and day out. In a rental unit like ours, I can’t paint the walls, hang things with nails, or change the carpet. There’s little I can do to keep life from dragging me down. Hence, the pre-summer cleaning.

Half of our apartment got rearranged over the weekend. A new couch was acquired. Our old furniture was given away, as well as a bookshelf. Books were sorted, clutter picked up, windows and floors washed. I’m forming big plans in my head for how I want this place to look. For the foreseeable future we’ll be living here. I love the space and the location, so all that’s left is to DIY some personal touches.

Like A Sword Needs a Whet Stone

I thought I’d do a little post about the excellent books I’ve read in the last few years. In January 2006 I started keeping a log of all the novels and nonfiction books I read. Some have gotten forgotten and left off, obviously, but for the most part I’ve kept up on it. Including re-reads and things I’ve only half-finished it numbers one-hundred-eighty-three.

((yes, I still hyphenate my numbers – that’s how they taught me to do it in second grade))

So it’s been seven years since I started this list and that averages out to about twenty-six books a year, and as I was looking through the titles trying to find which ones really left a mark on me, I discovered it was far less than I had imagined. A little more than a year’s worth of books meant enough to me that I would recommend them to other people.

In particular order, they are:
1. The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield
2. The Last Unicorn – Peter S. Beagle
3. Howl’s Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones
4. Peter Pan – J.M. Barrie
5. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
6. Song of the Lioness (a quartet) – Tamora Pierce
7. Winter’s Bone – Daniel Woodrow
8. The Princess Bride – William Goldman
9. The Art of Racing in the Rain – Garth Stein
10. Inkheart – Cornelia Funke
11. Skellig – David Almond
12. Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside (a trilogy) – Holly Black
13. Just So Stories – Rudyard Kipling
14. Tales of the Otori (the first three volumes) – Lian Hearn
15. Tamsin – Peter S. Beagle
16. Water For Elephants – Sara Gruen
17. Fight Club – Chuck Palanhuik
18. The Outlaws of Sherwood – Robin McKinley
19. Drowning Instinct  – Ilsa J. Bick
20. Gingerbread – Rachel Cohn
21. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Neffinegger
22. The Dead Father’s Guide to Sex and Marriage – John Scott Shepherd
23. King of Shadows – Susan Cooper
24. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NYMH – Robert C. O’Brien
25. Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
26. Delicate Edible Birds – Laura Groff
27. I Am Not Myself These Days – Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Anyone who’s ever heard me ramble about books will know a few of these are my all time favorites, my comfort reads when I am feeling lonely or uncreative. All the same I thought it was an interesting look at what sort of things I’m drawn to; a little sad, a little dark, fantastical and sometimes ridiculously real. Aside from the handful of humorous or light-hearted things, a lot of these books have an odd sense of desperation or cynicism to them.

I’m pretty sure if one was so inclined, they could get to know me ninety percent if they read all of these books and paid really close attention to the themes in them.

Last Night’s Dream

I normally write out little snippets from the night before in a notebook not long after I wake up, but as I’m at my mother’s house and don’t have a notebook, I’m putting it here. Who knows, maybe I’ll make a habit of it.

Last night I dreamed about Kingston High School. I was worried for something, on a sort of time limit, and I went to the high school because I knew the trails nearby were the quickest way to get into town. The day was letting out and I dashed across the yard trying to get someone’s attention so they could point me in the right direction. I eventually found a red-headed girl who begrudgingly agreed to guide me through the trails on my quest.

We had to climb a set of stairs against one wall of the school up to a sort of sky-bridge walkway that spanned several miles. It was the safest route over the savage grasslands. We camped three nights on the sky-bridge and I told the girl about my quest (though I never actually said anything), we got into an argument about something that helped me reason my urgency and she got very angry and told me about how she’d given birth to a still born child. Whatever relevance this had to our conversation shamed me into silence.

As the sky-bridge descended into a forest, we said our farewells. I still had a week of walking ahead of me.

I stayed with a woodsmen and his family for a night. In exchange for room and board I helped them around the house, chopping firewood, mending clothes; I even killed a chicken for dinner. The next day I was helping their daughter forage for berry fruits from tall skinny trees when a black knight on a mechanical horse came after us. He was a rogue mountain man. I took the ladder out from under the woodsman’s daughter and ran away.

Not far ahead of me was the path I needed to take to reach town. I abandoned the kind family who helped me out and started back on my solitary way.

I Am A Result

If I had a doctrine
–it would be the gospel of the leaves

If I knew verses and scriptures
–they would be words set to music

If angels stepped down to greet me
–they would speak through the water

And
If I knew any god
–it would grant me my flaws
–and forgive me my accomplishments

One Dark Night In the Middle of the Day

Tomorrow I am attending a mysterious Halloween party. Mysterious only because I haven’t yet been told any details, except that it’s about a block away from my house and Brian is good friends with the host and hostess. I will be dressed as Medusa.

I’ve got a fabulous blue dress and the coolest makeup ever. My hair has been tightly braided for over twenty-four hours so it will be ratty and fluffy when I need to knot some plastic, glow in the dark snakes into it. Oh yeah. There will be pics.

I can’t imagine that I won’t have a good time, but years of wallflowering at every social gathering have made me reflexively dread going places with strangers. I have this list of things about myself that people might construe as uncool and I fear instinctually that every one of them will be revealed over the course of the night and I will end up drinking alone on the porch until I can go home. Also, usually in this terror-fantasy, it’s pouring rain and I have no coat.

Logically, I figure there’s a fifty-fifty chance of this happening, if I remain passive. If I actively try to be friendly and engaging, I’ll have a hell of a night and make new friends.

So we’ll go with that option.

Nothing Tastes As Good As Skinny Feels: An Opinion

Famously spoken by Kate Moss, the quote above if oft repeated in diet communities and by fitness trainers. It is passed around pro-ana girls as thinspiration for the weak. It and many other thin-promoting slogans are gospel to media slaves and women with low self-esteem.

Personally, I’ve heard it so many times that I feel like I’ll scream if one more person flippantly uses it to explain why they aren’t eating a slice of chocolate cake.

This is why: To me, skinny feels like self-loathing. It is a hungry, struggling, angry thing. To be skinny, I have to abuse myself. I have to misuse my time, redirect my energy, and count the few calories I have not eliminated. Skinny, in my life, is a frightening, desperate word.

As far as I’m concerned, there are hundreds of things that taste much better than the feeling of skinny. Cream cheese brownies, for instance; or homemade sticky buns; or orange chicken on a bed of white rice. Coffee, peppermint, lemon meringue pie, steak and eggs, young coconut juice. Raindrops, or gelato in the summertime, or breathing in the warm morning air, or slow kisses, or watermelon hard candy.

When people quote Kate Moss, I don’t think they mean ‘skinny’ in the truest sense of the word. People who long for impossible beauty aren’t really chasing that. What they want is the adoration and love and confidence they associate with it, and that is something no measuring tape or scale can give you. There is no magic little number that will make you like yourself. It’s appreciating life, marveling in what you’ve been given, and learning to accept your natural body; that’s what can bring someone joy.

Life is too short to give up food. When I think of all the rainy days, the kisses, the dates, dinners, and music that make life worth living, skinny just doesn’t seem so important anymore.

Rainy Monday

LOCATION: a teriyaki restaurant without a readily visible name
MOOD: a bit put out
WATCHING: whatever soap opera they have on the television
___

So I walked down to Sylvan with my lady, on a lovely overcast day. I had a delicious diner lunch in my future and a pleasant walk home.

Then it started to rain. ‘Oh well,’ I thought ‘I’ll just wait at A&C’s until it slows down. Aaaaand it turns out the diner is closed on Mondays… so I proceeded to stand at the crosswalk at Wheaton for several long moments with shower-wet hair and no feeling in my ears before heading up to this teriyaki place.

Not the meal I had planned but delicious nonetheless. The server is a bit stoic; asocial and distant, if I may.

Once I have quelled my hunger I’ll make my way home, crochet and watch Gilmore Girls (a different kind of soap altogether). We spent a pleasant weekend at my mother’s and I am taking today to just relax and do nothing. I seem to have many more plans to fill my week that I used to. Perhaps being a Bremeton housewife agrees with me :)

Tomorrow I have plans for more crocheting lessons with the Other Laura, and on Saturday it’s back to Seattle for more adventurings!