Blast from the past! A Filene’s Basement tag, found at the bottom of a box while doing some cleaning in my studio this morning:
This week the handyman we hired in May finally finished replacing our porch floor. Today Dave and I painted it. Very satisfying. Next project: making the porch into a catio.
If you are looking for a mysterious little web comic, please enjoy The Nameless Mage by Noah Mease
Drew this last night/today. I guess I’ve learned how to work around my zombie fingers :)
Hypothetical response to a real and unfortunate email: Fifty pounds of nope to this, friend-o!
Advice of the day: don’t bring fangs to a money fight.
I wish Hinė Mizushima would make a calendar of her work.
And Soul Coughing doing Super Bon Bon on Jimmy Kimmel Live? Oh, my cup runneth over.
Dirty Dancing to the Muppet Show theme is everything I didn’t know I needed this afternoon.
I usually avoid articles in the New York Times, but this one, on a documentary about Prince that we will likely never get to see, is worth the time and does not seem to be behind a paywall.
The World Under the World: half an hour of people talking about what it’s like to live with active drug addiction. Vivid and relatable. Worth a listen (and I say this as someone who hates podcasts).
I stumbled across this recipe on Smitten Kitchen, and I tried it. It’s pretty good. Having now tried three different recipes, I have come to three conclusions:
Also, the Clockwork Orange electrical outlet is still there 😀
In WRJ getting some work done on my car. Walked through downtown and visited the building where my studio used to be. I approve of this toilet makeover
End of summer. They’re going to mow down the meadow tomorrow. Photo made with a digital Holga that I found while cleaning my office recently. Most photos from this camera are so enormously overexposed that you can’t even tell what you’re looking at (which explains why I don’t use it much).
From the obituaries in yesterday’s paper:
“Mary loved to spend time at home reading, watching birds and flipping birds” 😂
Poster in the exam room at the vet clinic
“Little by little,
You will turn into stars.
Even then, my dear,
You will only be
A crawling infant,
Still skinning your knees on God.”
Tried this recipe. I liked the flavor of these cookies better than the last batch. They use a different kind of sugar (granulated vs. powdered), and I wonder if that makes a difference in the way they taste. They also have a small amount of almond extract. It definitely adds something, though I wouldn’t say the finished product tastes like almond.
They spread a little during baking, but not enough to be a problem.
I managed to open the jam jar, so I filled some of them with jam. A few hours later, they were noticeably softer than the others.
They were more porous than the last batch, perhaps because they have baking powder in them. It wasn’t a problem, but I definitely noticed them sucking up chocolate and jam.
They were also a little greasy when they came out of the oven. I didn’t like that, but it got better as they cooled down.
I think next time I’ll go back to the first recipe, but will add a little almond extract and use egg yolks instead of whole eggs. Will also stick with chocolate filling instead of jam.
(Are you bored yet? Me too! But I won’t remember this if I don’t write it down in a place where it’s easy for me to find it.)
Tried this recipe after watching people bake Italian Butter Cookies on some cooking show and having a severe attack of nostalgia. I grew up in the Boston area, where they used to be sold by the pound in supermarkets. Don’t know if that’s still true. Haven’t been to Boston in ages.
It was my first time using a cookie press, and it was easier than I expected. They spread only slightly in the oven, and kept their shape nicely. They baked in the amount of time recommended by the recipe, and came off the cookie sheet easily.
They taste okay - certainly better than the stale Italian cookies you can occasionally find in supermarkets up here, which have absolutely no butter in them. I sandwiched a few of them with melted chocolate chips, thinned with a little coconut oil, and found the contrast of textures pleasing. I wanted to sandwich some with jam, but I couldn’t get the jar open. D’oh!
There are several other recipes I want to try. I also want to try adding Fiori di Sicilia. I will report on the results, mostly for my own records.
Someday I will have an open studio again, and then we’ll see if the claim holds up that these kinds of cookies freeze well.
Every so often I remember someone in a movie saying “On a eu une crise d’oreiller,” by which I think he meant “We overslept.” But it literally translates to “One had a pillow crisis,” which I love.
At some point I rewatched all the French movies in my DVD collection, but I never heard it again.
Maybe I dreamed it?
Maybe I had my own sort of pillow crisis.
Maybe it’s French Movie Week again.
Late July. Trees dropping leaves after last week’s oppressive heat. Chili enjoying the morning air and what’s left of the grass, a rare occurrence since the neighborhood bobcat almost got her two weeks ago. We are learning to trust each other to keep her safe. Both of us making big compromises.
If the last few years of our marriage had a subtitle, it might be: More Texts About Pizza and Cats
“Failure is not just an option. It is required.”
- Adam Savage
In honor of Laurie Anderson’s birthday, here’s a link to her Norton Lecture Series: Spending the War Without You. I watched it live, and really enjoyed it.