A touch of the ADHD

Many times, it pays to be impulsive because you get to go on grand last minute adventures. Sometimes not, but I like to chalk those up to learning experiences instead of poor choice making (the gym membership was an excellent case in point). After my bootcamp class this morning, I met friends for coffee at the local morning watering hole. We were discussing our Saturday plans (mine initially included getting some pants hemmed) and my friend mentioned she wanted to go check out the local community garden and find someone who would let her apprentice for the summer. Well, who needs a gardening mentor when you have Google and the garden plot only costs a relatively risk-free $25 for the summer? Not this girl! The only gardening experience I have is the tomato plant from last summer, which I got frustrated with around July because it was growing uncontrollably and kept falling over. So all of these thoughts occurred at one time, and I gamely volunteered to take this journey with my friend, no experienced gardeners necessary. Luckily, the other gardeners are helpful, and pointed us to the pile of "aged manure" (formerly known as horse poop) and we set to work getting our raised bed ready. With no gloves. Because who has gardening gloves when they go on impulsive adventures? The other fun thing about impulsivity is that it often goes hand-in-hand with instant gratification. So off we went to the gardening store to get some seeds (with no actual knowledge of the dimensions of the bed or how many rows we could/should plant) and some gardening gloves. So it turns out seeds have to be planted at different distances from each other and different depths under the soil and all sorts of details that one cannot be bothered with because I have never in my life seen a gardener or farmer out in the fields with a ruler. So in the little seedies went, with a mixture of dirt and horse treats sprinkled over. Just like a warm smelly blanket, which is good... because it definitely said on the back of the seed packets to wait to plant until after the last frost, which is not so great since it is supposed to snow tomorrow. Nonetheless, internet quotes variously attributed to famous authors abound to describe today's activities: Seize the day! Do one thing a day that scares you! And my personal favorite by Mr. Winnie the Pooh: One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries. Word.

Unique strengths

I almost don't even know where to start. I get so annoyed with blogs when the bloggers don't post. And it's not like I have a lack of things to post about. I think it was that whole I got so far behind and then I felt like I should have some big interesting post and well, my life is not that exciting. I mean it's exciting to me but not to the general public. I've been doing some farming (i.e., container gardening) which is awesomely awesome. Except for the cilantro plant that is taking over my life and killed my basil. I mean I love cilantro but it's up past my waist at this point and I just can't make that much salsa. My tomato plant is similarly OOC except apparently they can't be harvested for like another 2 months. I'm pretty sure at some point I'm going to wake up and my whole condo is going to be filled with cilantro and baby tomatoes. But I digress. What I really meant to make this post about was my shocking lack of planning, spatial organization, and general engineering skill. I have mentioned before that I really like iced coffee. And this is a pretty good recipe for homemade iced coffee (which is good because my local coffee shop charges $4 for iced coffee and psychology just doesn't pay that well. Plus I don't have a lot of flex time in my morning routine). So anyway, I've been making 1/4 of this recipe for a while (1 1/4 cups of ground coffee to 8 cups of water) and it's dandy. But it's kind of a pain in the bum to filter the coffee and it takes an annoyingly long time. So I decided to make a bigger batch, per the original instructions. So I bought one of those water dispenser thingies at the grocery store. My thought process was: I'll make a hole in the top, dump the coffee in, let it brew, pour the coffee out of the container into a filter sitting in a pitcher, rinse out the water dispenser, and put the brewed iced coffee back in and then it will be like I have my own personal coffee dispenser. You will notice a measuring cup, my coffee maker carafe, two bowls, my mesh strainer, my permanent coffee filter, about 15 paper filters, a pitcher, and a glass bowl are in use. Yeah, so... anyway, planning, volume estimation, spatial stuff = not my strong suit. Clearly. Here's hoping the coffee tastes good.

So much ice cream, so little time to blog in March

I have a sneaking suspicion although I believed I had an ice cream making obsession this winter, I have only just begun... The deliciousness of strawberry buttermilk ice cream as we move from an unseasonably hot spring to what I believe will be a swelteringly hot summer may have just tipped the scales from obsessed to obsessed-er. (I always like to completely ignore the fact that the kids with autism and I are the only ones who make up words). I have tried to write an ice cream-related post a few times and haven't figured out what to write. In fact I am just noticing I went on a blogging hiatus for a month. Oops. I'm not good with schedules. So, back to the ice cream. I typically am stricken with severe decision making problems upon walking into an ice cream store - this started early on when we lived around the corner from a Baskin Robbins and I would go there and the flavors would always be the same (the 80s were not a time filled with gourmet ice cream flavors that varied with the seasons) and I would walk back and forth along the freezer case trying to decide which flavor I wanted and I ALWAYS got mint chocolate chip. Every time. Except for the occasional bubble gum which was always kind of gross and I remember regretting as soon as I took the first sugary bite. It turns out that I still to do the same thing now - I peruse ice cream cases for long drawn out minutes and typically get mint chocolate chip. The one ice cream store in which this is not the case is Capogiro in Philadelphia because they don't have mint chocolate chip. So it is interesting to me that the one flavor I have not made yet is mint chocolate chip. I've done salted caramel, chocolate coconut curry, bourbon butter pecan, chocolate cinnamon cayenne, dark chocolate peppermint, pistachio chip, honey peanut butter chocolate chip, toasted rice pudding with black tea, and today, strawberry buttermilk. Whoa momma. Each one has been completely delicious and unique and surprising in its own way. Except the rice pudding, which was weird, but that might be because I don't actually like rice pudding. The Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home cookbook makes me want to be a more adventurous ice cream eater. And go to the gym more often. Her ice cream flavors are just dreamy. End of the story. Buy an ice cream maker and this cookbook. Or move to Columbus or Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Or come over to my house all summer. Whichever option suits you the best.

My journey toward locavore-ness

I did it! I bought a half-share (evidently equal to a half-bushel, whatever that means) of a CSA through Bergefurd Farms. I can't wait for June. I'm totally going to blog about it every week, perhaps with a picture of me and my farm share. I had a nice chat with the owner of the farm about how joining a CSA would broaden the variety of vegetables in my diet. Bring on the kale!

Wegetables

I've been pondering over having a lot of contests for myself recently. One was blogging once a week. Epic fail, as the kids say. One was making a yeast-based recipe each weekend to make use of the 2 pounds of yeast (that's 128 packets in case you're curious) that I bought at Costco in January. That's currently going okay; I made lemon pull apart bread last weekend and this weekend isn't over yet. The other thing I'm thinking about that is not so much of a contest but along the same lines, is joining a CSA. I love the idea of a CSA; supporting local farms, enjoying fresh produce, being challenged by making something delicious using two pounds of kale and six beets, etc. I also kind of feel like joining a CSA will balance out my earth-killing love of Costco in a super hipster earth-loving kind of a way. I found one that allows pick up at the Hyde Park Farmers Market, which is close by and would not require gas usage that would poison the environment. Plus I'm not organized enough to remember to budget out an hour or more every weekend to drive out to a farm and pick up produce, quite frankly. Imagine how fun it will be for me to blog about my weekly farm share/take pictures of me being overwhelmed by kale (I don't like kale, it's my greatest fear that the farm share will only include kale), thereby solving the problem of failed contest idea number one for the bargain price of approximately 300 dollars. Genius!

I'm just going to give myself a 5 star awesome rating for today

Wrapping things in plastic makes me feel like Dexter. I spent a lot of time wrapping and re-wrapping the pain au chocolat dough this weekend. As per usual, a multi-day baking adventure, with a totally delightful and oh-so-pretty result.

But will they transport me back to breakfast in Santorini?

I tried to do my taxes yesterday. I have to file in 3 states. I don't know what crazy person invented the tax code, but it is mind boggling to me that I owe Delaware $100 but get money back from Ohio. Pennsylvania and I are apparently square. But this post is not about taxes. It is about temperature measuring. I finally buckled under pressure and bought a Thermapen. These things are like the fanciest pants thermometer in the world; foodies love them, nuclear physicists love them (I assume they have to measure reactors and things), sides of beef love them. They also cost $89. They don't go on sale. So it came in the mail on Thursday, from England via the distributor in Utah. I have been trying to decide what it's maiden voyage will be, after measuring the ambient temperature in my apartment and the temperature of my fingertips; both hovered at 68 degrees. I may or may not have mentioned that I recently bought two pounds of yeast at Costco because (a) it seemed like a good value and (b) one of my goals for 2012 is to increase the amount of baking I do with yeast. It is always important to measure the temperature of water used to proof yeast so I decided I would kill two birds with one stone and make a yeast bread recipe this morning. I am carefully ignoring the voice in my head that is reminding me that I have never measured the temperature of the liquid used to proof yeast in my life, other than by sticking my finger in and seeing if it felt lukewarm. This method, although inexact, has largely been successful. So I decided to make pain au chocolat. I've been on a French bread making kick recently and made brioche a few weekends ago (without the thermometer, the horror)! I did some googling and the Jacques Torres recipe seems to be popular. The best part? His recipe calls for cold water to proof the yeast. No thermometer required. Of course. I'm going to do it anyway. I might even take some pictures.

The Container Store: Love it or Hate it?

I believe it is possible people at the Container Store can be divided into two distinct groups; those whose anxiety is reduced by the storage options, or those whose anxiety is increased by the storage options. I fall into the latter category. There are things in there that I cannot even conceive of what their purpose is. Do I really need boot fillers to keep my boots in shape? Really? Or things to hold my flip flops together? The food storage container section sent me into a panic attack, literally floor to ceiling tupperware. You might ask yourself, Self, why is Nicole in the Container Store if it causes so much distress? And I would say, well, there are certain weird things I like to be hyper-organized about. When I bake cookies, I like for them to be evenly placed in rows on the cooling racks, and when I put them away, I store them in pairs back to back. So they don't feel lonely. I also have been dreaming of reorganizing my spices into those cute little stainless steel containers. Plus all my spices are in a drawer because my cabinets are too tall for me to see the spices on the shelves, and I was forced to use a sharpie marker to write the type of each spice on its lid. So messy.

I spent a productive day at work today making some labels, and then I drove to the Container Store in our BIG SNOWSTORM and picked up my spice canisters. The guy asked if I was using them for "clips." As though I need 36 small containers for paper clips? I threw away some spices that were perhaps from Stah Mahket in Boston (which marks them as no newer than oh, 2001 or so, because it turned into a Shaw's before 2003). I found some weird crystals in my coriander, and discovered I had no less than three jars of allspice. So yeah, now everything's all pretty and nice and four canisters fit across in the drawer perfectly like my drawers had just been waiting for me to turn all obsessive and tidy up the spices.

The best part about this? Now I won't know when my spices expire, so I can feel free to keep the Chinese 5 Spice Powder that I never use for another 10 years, and not feel like I'm ruining my (something you might use Chinese 5 Spice Powder in).

The month of December in brief

Heavens to Betsy! A 31 day lag. I tried to write approximately 12 Christmas posts which all sounded trite. The gist of them: give back to others during the holiday season (and all throughout the year, really). I have a lot to be grateful for, when many others are struggling and that is never more noticeable than during the holidays.

Since my last post, my sister turned 29 + 1 and that brought me back to the east coast for the first time since I left. Now, I have never lived in NYC, but lots of friends (and one sister) have, and I have been there many times. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had chosen NYC like all the other VC grads, instead of Boston after college, but we will never know... So I have really been enjoying Cincinnati and not been too east-coast-homesick, but when I flew into NYC, it pulled at my heartstrings and I felt a pang of jealousy for all those people who got to stay on the coast. We toured NBC Studios and the page told us some tales about Dr. Oz and his talk show, including the swab he did of the bottom of a lady's purse that was germier than a NYC toilet and had 2 different strains of Hepatitis on it. Later that night/early the next morning I was strolling down the sidewalk and slipped on a laminated menu on the sidewalk. All I thought as my bum hit the sidewalk was, eww, I wonder if I am as a germy as the purse now. And then I was kind of ready to leave the big city and head back to my Midwestern semi-suburban life...

Christmas came and went, my brother and I sustained a well-deserved loss in the annual gingerbread house decorating contest. The Christmas craft project was successful, and the sweatshop was much more productive and efficient than in years prior. Keep an eye out for the link to the Etsy shop! We saw the house where The Christmas Story was filmed, on a street full of houses with leg lamps in the window. We had a snowball fight, and made a snow lady, and went for a lovely, if not freezing cold walk in the Metroparks.

And then I tore myself away from my home (the DSM-V is rumored to have adult separation anxiety as a diagnosis and I will proudly be first in line for that one), made the drive back to Cincinnati, slept for 3 hours, and made a 6 am flight to Albuquerque (which I have practiced spelling) to see a friend from grad school and celebrate the New Year.

I love green chiles. I have always loved green chiles. I should move to New Mexico because they have a lot of them there. We had breakfast at Frontier, famous for many things including their green chile hash browns. I literally could have eaten a bucket full of them but was trying not to appear to be a huge fatty, and because I knew I would eat well over the next few days. My friend and her boyfriend have an impeccably well stocked kitchen. She has traded out her Kitchen Aid mixer (over which we bonded when I stayed with her during grad school interviews) for a Cuisinart stand mixer, which I will forgive, but what I cannot forgive is the assertion that Thomas Keller's chocolate chip cookies are better than my Rolo Chocolate Chip Cookies. Thomas Keller should stick to French Bistro cooking and leave the lowly chocolate chip cookie to me. We had a spa day, visited the Albuquerque Costco, ate grilled pizza, went to Sante Fe, ate blue corn enchiladas at Maria's, stopped in the heroin capital of the US for a bathroom break, and arrived in Taos at twilight on New Year's Eve. My friend made me sleep in the garage. We woke up at 7.30 am to go skiing at Angel Fire. I had not been skiing since my very early 20s. I am not sporty. I worry about injury on a daily basis. I asked the ski technicians if they had a padded suit I could wear. I jokingly complained about skiing and head injuries and broken legs. One guy, who looked like he hadn't showered or slept in days, said, "Are you familiar with the power of the mind?" I said, "I am," and wondered what piece of stoner wisdom was coming my way, and he said, "It's really powerful." Why yes, sir, yes it is. I donned my helmet and rode the chair lift up, got off the lift, stood on the precipice, and skied down the mountain. And loved it.

And so, with the mountains of New Mexico as my inspiration, 2012 will be a year without complaints and fear. I will do the things I think I cannot do, I will learn from them, and I will confront the voice in my head that tells me it will be okay to put it off til tomorrow. The irony of the fact that I was supposed to take a Pure Barre class at 12 and it is 12.31 and I am typing this does not escape my notice. I will totally go to a class tomorrow.

Only a match made in heaven if somebody kills me first

When I started this blog, I mentally made a promise to myself to try not to be mean spirited or to talk about dating. This post might be a little bit of both. I live in a very nice looking condo. However, it has walls made out of tissue paper and floors made out of something else that has really good noise conduction/really bad sound insulation. My downstairs neighbor and I have a significant difference of opinion on how loud he should be. I asked nicely once, and passive aggressively twice, and he basically told me he had no intention of being considerate and neighborly and turning his music/sound system/chasing his dog around and making weird noises down. I think he plays Call of Duty on Tuesdays and Thursdays (with the headset), turns his hip hop music on at 9 am (he wants to be a "balla, shot calla, 20 inches rims on my Impala") on the weekends, and apparently my tiny request that he turn the bass down a tad has "ruined his enjoyment" of football. I contemplated multiple options of revenge and retribution. I gallop and stomp around in my heels. I pondered poisoned baked goods, but such a waste of baked goods for such a meanie. He has old lady perfume as an air freshener or incense or something and it wafts through our shared duct work and inexplicably under my kitchen sink. It makes me want to keep the heat off and wear three sweaters. And earmuffs to block out the noise. It makes me literally crazy. The other thing that makes me crazy is internet dating. Dr. Neil Clark Warren's personality algorithm matching system is all kinds of broken. Because I got matched up with my downstairs neighbor. True story.

Walking in a winter wonder...cake

I don't often think about my baking in food blogging terms, with words like luscious swoops of snowy whipped cream that make you think of the magic of Christmas, and the time of year when you believe that every wish you ever make can come true as long as there's a light snow falling and the twinkles of Christmas lights on a woodsy fir tree... and words along those lines. But I baked this cake this weekend for a holiday party and that is exactly what I thought. It is like a Christmas candy land cake. And I totally forgot to have a bite of it at the party. I did check in on it at one point to see how it was doing (i.e., see whether people were gobbling it up and providing me with validation) and the top two layers had sort of slid off the bottom two layers (whipped cream frosting does not provide a lot of structural support). I believe my reading public will be proud to know that instead of trying to prop the cake back up again and looking like a crazy person, I just went and had another glass of wine.

The recipe: Devil's Food Cake with Peppermint Frosting
The only thing I did differently was to ditch the marshmallow frosting, because it is a colossal pain, and doubled the white chocolate cream frosting instead. I don't regret that change for a minute. And my arms thank me for not hand whisking egg whites for 15 minutes.

Turkey, traffic, and textiles

Last Thanksgiving, I drove from Philly into NYC via the Lincoln Tunnel, picked up my sister on the Upper West Side, drove back through the Lincoln Tunnel, and we continued on our way to Ohio. Lots of traffic, but I don't mind the Lincoln Tunnel, despite the lack of organization to the merge. I foolishly believed that upon moving to Ohio and leaving behind the most congested portion of the 95 corridor, my Thanksgiving travel would be a breeze. The drive between Cincinnati and Cleveland looks really innocuous; bucolic farmland, Columbus to break things up in the middle, outlet malls, truck stop after truck stop after truck stop, flat and generally pretty boring. And totally unpredictably crazy, stop-and-go, Lincoln Tunnelish traffic.

I had the best intentions of blogging Thanksgiving dinner, which obviously did not pan out because I spent half the day chopping root vegetables. The essence:
Successful turkey! Not dry, cooked all of the way through, tasted good. Science and methodical recipe research do pay off.
We made lamb tongues, a popular Syrian dish around the holidays. They don't taste like chicken.
My favorite pie crust recipe
I made French macarons that looked pretty and tasted better, despite all the drama on the blogs that they are très impossible!
I bought a mandoline (the slicer, not the instrument) and attractively and creatively sliced an apple, since we were all out of root vegetables.
I knitted 2 1/2 hats.

I was and am thankful for many people and things this Thanksgiving holiday, except for the rain and traffic that prevented me from getting back to Cincinnati in time to have knitted 3 hats.

How the "smoky evening eye" plays out at Costco

So I'm going to totally come clean on why I have not been blogging: my recent attendance at an ethics CE course on social networking, etc. Sometimes I think it would cause me much less anxiety in multiple realms of my life if I had just gone the bakery route. They don't have confusing and vague guidelines about what is actually my private versus professional life. I really like blogging. It makes me sad that I'm not sure what the best way is to continue to do it. I'm not giving up yet, just pondering.

In other news: I had a birthday, which I did not blog about because for some reason, for the first time in my life, I felt kind of bummed out to be growing older. And this is definitely not a sad sack blog. I did, however, treat myself to some makeup and a trip to Costco on my birthday. Costco is really close to the mall and every gal likes to look pretty when doing warehouse shopping. I seem to have developed seasonal allergies during my stint in Philadelphia, so I decided a jaunt to my favorite store to buy Claritin D in bulk was in order. Some of you may see where this is going. I have said before that I have a what feels like a freakish amount of education and am sometimes sadly lacking in common sense. They don't sell things that can make meth in bulk. Even at Costco. Duh. I made do with some bottled water (not Aquafina, I'm so sorry) and a giant box of instant oatmeal. 34 promises to be a good year, filled with plenty of hot cereal, congested sinuses, and enough bottled water to get me to 35.

The first date that almost happened

Yesterday, after a delicious, healthy, farm-raised, organic brunch with my friend, I decided to go with her to look at the gym she was joining. This was after she'd asked if I belonged to a gym, and I responded with wild suspicion and paranoia that she had overheard conversations I had with my sister about how I should join a gym. Let me just get this out there: I hate exercise. I don't get a runner's high. I don't like competing with myself on the treadmill. I am not driven by the pure, unadulterated joy of endorphins, and I don't believe everyone can run a marathon. I mean if you're training for a marathon, I believe you can do it, just not that I can or should. This might be because I am not from an intensely athletic family and was not raised to enjoy the spirit of competition... It might be because I'm kind of nerdy, and did better at the brain-based competitions like math contests than I did at the sports-based competitions. I don't know. It might be just that I'm lazy and I don't like being sweaty. Anyway, so I went to this gym with my friend, and it's pretty cheap. And I need a gym, you know, so I can go work out and be healthy and not be lazy. So I toured the gym, which had a lady's workout area for "religious reasons or something," said the salesman. Hmm okay. And a fancy free weight room, with weights up to 125. The five pound ones make my arms quake in terror. The selling point for me was the cinema workout room: movie on the big screen, lots of cardio machines, and it's too dark for me to see the other people running faster and/or looking more coordinated than me. I have often compared my running gait to a wounded water buffalo so the fewer people that can see that the better. So then all of a sudden we're sitting at the tables being presented with price packages; $59.99 with the "all you can tan" option. Perfect! Or $24.99 for the bare bones membership... sounds good to me; not so expensive that I can't convince myself it's okay to skip a day here and there. So I'm all ready to say, great, I'll think about it (i.e., stall another two months) and it happened so fast and it was a deal that was only occurring that day and if I didn't do that it was going to be one million dollars a month and so here, sign here, on the dotted line. I read the fine print of the contract: I am in violation of gym rules if I (a) have body odor or (b) do anabolic steroids. Good to know. So then they try to schedule me for a personal trainer consultation. At this point I'm so far outside of my comfort zone. I haven't gotten to ruminate on the gym membership at all, I just impetuously signed up. And now I have to meet a personal trainer?? I took his card and promised I'd call... in a month, when I worked through my motivational issues and decided the gym would be a good place to meet a man friend (I mean get in really good shape so I can lead a long and healthy life). And so now it's today, and there were four missed calls on my phone from an unknown number. So I answer it, finally, and it's the personal trainer from the gym. He says, "Oh, hi, I'm just giving you a call to see if you want to schedule your initial consultation." I say, "Umm, sure. Let me just check my very important and busy schedule." He says, "I am here tonight. What time do you want to come in?" Stop! Too fast! Slow down buddy! I get so flustered and randomly pick 7 pm. He tells me, ok, make sure you don't eat for an hour before and we'll do your orientation session. Which sounds suspiciously like a trick. I'm not ready to work out. Don't these people understand joining their crazy gym was a big step?? I 100% bailed out on my personal training session tonight. But I at least called to cancel, and told him I got stuck at work which was a big fat lie. But I totally promise I will consider going to the gym tomorrow. Maybe.

Too bad Siri can't paint

Do I blog about the my new iPhone, with which I am obsessed or my recent home improvement projects, which have left me exhausted? Perhaps a bit of both. First, Siri is all she was promised to be. It fascinates me that people hate on Apple so much, and were so overwrought there was no major design change with this new phone. Our expectations as a society are totally outrageous - first world problems, says the girl who had her loving brother pre-order the phone at 3 in the morning last Friday so I could get the phone with a minimum of standing around in the Apple store, and bought a Kate Spate case for it to boot. I've really been talking it up to people, which I think is probably making me sound like a huge dork. An example: I asked Siri to "wake me up at 8.30 tomorrow" and she set the alarm for 8.30. I said "thank you," and she said, "your wish is my command." Indeed it is. Just please don't come alive in the middle of the night and terminate me.

On the home improvement front, I spent the last two weekends doing some painting. My bedroom put me over the edge. On or about the 415th square foot of wall I sat down on the floor and internally began to sob. About 200 square feet earlier, I'd broken the roller and had to tape it back together again, which caused me to have an awkward arm motion while painting. Some people might have gone to the hardware store to buy another roller, but I was afraid I would just give up if I left. As I was sitting on the floor, considering whether I could live with a 4 foot square area of white in the midst of a yellow (I know! Brave!) wall, I got some sort of superhuman strength and finished it up. Two bathrooms, a living room, and kitchen to go! Or perhaps I'll just leave them white with their color sample squares for some pizazz.

My room before (that purple square on the back wall is a color that didn't make the cut because I don't like to sleep in a tomb)

My room after (look at all that wall space!)
Benjamin Moore Ylang Ylang

Guest after
Benjamin Moore Limesickle

It's fall because...

I made pumpkin chocolate chip bread. That is more predictive than equinoxes and weather as far as I'm concerned. I don't know why fall is so pumpkiny tasting. I was going to type I don't know why pumpkin is so fall-y tasting but my typing produced the first version instead. Oh the wonders of the subconscious. The leaves are changing here in southern Ohio, and the weather has vacillated between freezing cold, quite pleasant, and hotter than is to be expected in October. I'm not complaining... winter is around the corner, which tastes peppermint-y, in case anyone is wondering.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread
3 cups white sugar
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
4 eggs
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground nutmeg
* You could probably also use 2 tbls pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon and nutmeg)*
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips (or regular sized but the minis disperse better in the batter).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease three 9x5 inch loaf pans. In a large bowl, combine sugar, pumpkin, oil, water, and eggs. Beat until smooth. Blend in flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Fill pans 2/3 full. Bake for about 1 hour, or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Cool on wire racks before removing from pans.

For me, the recipe makes 2 big loaves + 12 mini muffins. You can always throw extra batter (or all the batter) in muffin tins. My one piece of advice: do not overfill loaf pans; they take forever to cook, the outside gets burned and the inside is uncooked. Don't fill more than 2/3 full. Mini muffins took about 18 minutes. The loaves take about an hour.

Never paint with a dry roller, indeed

I went to Ace this morning to get some paint. I'm basically color blind, so I brought in a swatch of fabric and forced the Ace employee to find me a color that matched and/or accented. He picked out Limesickle. I told him the room was 12 x 10 (meaning 2 walls were 10 feet across and 2 were 12 feet across). He told me I needed 2 quarts of paint, which he quickly mixed up for me. Anyone who has painted before or doesn't have a learning disability in spatial relations like me will quickly realize this is not enough paint. So I get halfway through my little adventure, go back to Ace, and discover that I have to buy a gallon of paint (because one more quart wouldn't be enough). As I was painting, I kept thinking of my friend who was forced to helped me paint my bedroom in Miami, who gave wise but repetitive advice: don't paint with a dry roller. Yes yes, I know. But I still ignored it today. Plus I was clearly running out of paint early on so I was trying to make it go really far. After a few sweaty hours of masking and painting I stepped back to admire my handiwork. And... there were big patches of white showing through because I didn't keep the roller wet enough. I hate being wrong.

Ohio wins again

When I was a kid, I used to love watching things bake. I don't know if I actually did this (I assume I did because my memory is freakishly good on a bad day), but I remember sitting in front of the oven watching the things I made bake. My attention span never made it from beginning to end, but I still find something extraordinarily comforting about watching something go from batter to cake, or dough to cookie, or brownie batter to only slightly cooked brownie batter. Plus, it's warm near the oven and it usually smells pretty good. I discovered recently that my oven here in O-H-I-O has a light! I can see into the oven! For the first time since my youthful baking at my parents' house. I'm baking for a bake sale at work. I'm making the Rolo cookies (quelle surprise!) and cupcakes (the same ones my "friend" commented looked like dog poop on a cupcake). Based on his helpful feedback, I went and got some decorative pastry tips today at Sur La Table (my love for that place is big enough for a post of it's own and there wasn't one in PA or FL so score another point for OH) so that I wouldn't be known as the girl that brought dog poop cupcakes to the bake sale. Myself and the kitchen are covered in chocolate frosting due to my manly grip and my generic brand ziplocs that burst at the seams, but all the baked goods have been decorated, individually wrapped, and put to bed. Perhaps I'll take a picture of my next baking project with a new iPhone since I totally don't care that it's a 4S instead of a 5. It's only not a "5" because they used an S instead. Semantics. I will miss the robot voice that says "Droid!" a little bit... I wonder if the iPhone has an app for that.

Just because it's reggae music doesn't mean it's warm outside

Yesterday, I went to the Reggae Run, which is a popular 5K here in Cincinnati. Make no mistake, since moving to Cincinnati, I have not begun running 5Ks. I must maintain some semblance of my old life. You can buy a ticket just to the party, without having to put forth the effort of running uphill through Ault Park. So with your admission to the party, you get access to all the food and drink booths, as well as a freezing cold night of reggae music. All without running the race. I should state though, that we parked really far away and had to walk forever so it was kind of like I did the race. That was what I told myself as I enjoyed fried pickles, avoided goetta, and tasted the other bounties of fair-food that were offered. I was talking to some people who were asking when I moved, where I moved from, etc. and at some point it came up that I had lived in Ohio before. Typically, when people ask where I'm from, I flub around a bit. At this point it is easiest to say Cleveland given my current geographical location. So if you tell someone you're from Cleveland, they ask what part, because most people don't actually live in downtown Cleveland. So then I say Chagrin Falls, but I say it in this way of, oh you've probably never heard of it. The thing is, here, people have heard of it. So here I am in this huge group of people bopping along to reggae music, spilling beer everywhere, and 99% of them are wearing Ohio State sweatshirts, or Cavs hats, or Browns t-shirts and there's a tiny mental shift that occurs where I realize I live in Ohio. Again. And so far, that's not such a bad thing. They have fried pickles here!

Not BW's waffles

I have five or six drafts of posts I've written over the past few weeks that I haven't posted because they haven't made me laugh. That is how I decide what posts to post- they have to make me giggle a little bit, whether because they're actually funny or because they border on absurd. One was about how I house/dogsat for my parents last weekend, had a great dinner with two of my oldest friends (fun because it's them and funny because I spilled margarita mix all over the kitchen floor), almost got my fingers snapped in a mousetrap in the liquor cabinet (funny, but also kind of sad), and got a huge speeding ticket on the way home (so far away from things that make me laugh). I finished my first full week of work, and spent an inordinate amount of time putting tabs on my brand spanking new DSM-IV-TR and arranging books on my bookcases. I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books. You may have heard I live in Cincinnati now and I'm doing a lot of exploring. I went to Findlay Market this morning; it's a lot like West Side Market if you're a NE Ohioer, Reading Terminal Market if you're a Phillyian, etc. etc. I like markets like this because they have a local feel, they're more locally sourced, and it seems like there is one less step between the food and the customer in terms of processing. I wandered by Taste of Belgium, which offered waffles and crepes. They'd been mentioned on Twitter by the coffee shop I like here, Coffee Emporium. I'm totally a secret Twitter stalker- I do not do my fair share of tweeting to balance out the number of tweets I read. There I said it. Anyway, I had coffee in one hand, it was crowded, and I determined I was not going to be able to handle a crepe, but people seemed to be holding the waffles in one hand. Since I'm klutzy and don't balance well, I ordered a waffle. They were made out of dough, not batter! With big chunks of sugar in them. Delicious. I wonder if this is what I was supposed to be getting all these years when Belgian waffles were advertised in hotels at their free continental breakfasts. I demand a refund!