Ginger scones to soothe abandonment upon discovering your parents are really enjoying their retirement

Phone: (rings)

Father: Hello? 

Daughter (me): Hello, Father. I have a question about my taxes. 

Father: Okay. 

Daughter: (Explains daunting tax issue.)

Father: Hm. I dunno about that one. You'll have to call H&R Block.

Daughter: (Sighs) Okay. 

Father: Guess where your mom and I are.

Daughter: I dunno. St. George?

Father: (chuckles to himself) Sitting on the beach in Hawaii.

Distraught Daughter: ...

These are the kind of scones you make during times such as this. You will gratefully use the good, spicy ginger your mother brought you as a 

"Heh, heh, well we-are-retired-now-gift and we knew you guys would want to come, so we didn't tell you" gift. 

You are crushed knowing that your parents now have a life outside of home and family, but you soldier on.

Maybe they're thinking they can return to their lives of youth and leisure that they possessed before they had children. 

It's an awkward thought.

You'll console yourself about never having been anywhere tropical by eating too many of these spicy ginger scones. Your mother will tell you to stop being over-dramatic because you've "traveled all over the world." 

Whatever that means. 

You'll want to top these scones with some rich, salted butter, and maybe some jam. You really don't want to take away from the spicy-tropically-gingeryness of the scone itself. You'll probably need to stay in bed with a pot of tea a bit longer than usual.

(On an unrelated side note, this vintage table cloth has the same pattern as my tea pot!)

Brown Butter Blueberry Muffins

Thank you, Joy the Baker. Thank you for existing. Thank you for creating these blueberry muffins so perfectly crafted with brown butter, the Goddess of all butters.

    I made these muffins at the beginning of my spring break last week. They were just the excuse I needed to not exercise and not leave my house 'cept for stocking up on baking ingredients. I did a lot of baking that week. Sometimes I wonder why I haven't dropped out of university yet to fly to Paris and enroll in pastry school. Heaven knows it's all my heart really wants. But the sensible part of my brain has insisted that I stay and finish my Linguistics degree. The unsensible part of my brain, the portion not wanting to run off to Paris, keeps tacking on new,  exciting minors, ensuring I never graduate and remain a professional student (bordering on spinster aunt/cat lady) forever. Pray this doesn't happen for real. I'm not going to be bashful about admitting that one of my listed hobbies would be "planning my school schedule." I'm sure my advisors are pretty tired of me asking if they know what the class schedule will look like for Fall 2014.

   Regardless of study stresses, whether or not you have them, whether or not you are a grown-up with a grown-up job, (what I wouldn't give for a sunny office as head librarian!) you should make these muffins. I promise they'll help wash down any Type-A control-freak issues you may be having.

I tweaked this recipe just a teeny tiny bit. I found the batter to need a good 1/3 cup more milk and the topping to need double the amount of butter, melted, not cold. I'll post said recipe later. For now, enjoy your Sunday morning!

What Posses Me: Downton Abbey

Oooh yeah.

happy spring & easy chopped garlic tutorial

 These lovelies are real. 

So are these. Real flowers for realsies. 

Winter, 

You are always welcome as long as there are fires to be had, tea to be sipped, fatty things to be baked. You offer a chance to reflect upon the year and excuses to sleep in. 

Buh-bye now. 

This is real, too. And lovely & easy. And convenient. And smelly. Here's the deal...

You: hate peeling and chopping garlic, nay despise it, 

but have an abundance of fresh garlic on hand

 left over from the summer farmers markets. 

What you are going to do is chop it up, 

chop all of it up, and drown it in olive oil. 

Put it in a nice glass jar. 

Refrigerate it.

     Don't skimp on the amount of garlic you get to peelin' and choppin'. You want to chop so much garlic that your hands will reek for days. That's how you know you've done a good job. And then at the end of your ordeal you can sit back and rest assured that you'll have fresh garlic

a'waiting your culinary imagination to spark without the hassle of preparing the cloves individually. 

You are welcome. 

17 Steps to Having a Great Sunday Afternoon

1. Turn on the Joy the Baker podcast.
2. Be grateful for the unspoken, yet obvious, observations gleaned from listening to Joy the Baker, e.g., That Guys Don't Ask Girls Out Anymore (Joy the Baker podcast #38). Thank you, Joy and Tracy. Someone had to say it.
3. Destroy half of an old loaf of rosemary sourdough bread, e.g., turn it into breadcrumbs.
4. Toast the breadcrumbs in a 350 degree oven.
5. Notice very old bananas in fruit basket.
6. Whip up a batch of chocolate chip banana bread.
6 1/2. Contemplate whether "chocolate chip" should be hyphenated.
7. Become suddenly ravenous at the most inopportune time to become ravenous: 4:00 pm.
8. Notice stalk of brussel sprouts. Legit brussels sprouts, still on the stalk.

9. Annoy cat with said brussel sprout stalk.
10. Break out your new All-Clad pans you got at a screaming Williams-Sonoma sale by frying brussel sprouts in butter. Do not attempt to fry sprouts in olive oil or any low-fat alternatives. They are stupid.

11. Boil shrimps (the correct plural usage of "shrimp"). Take shells and leggys off shrimps. Add to pan.

12. Add leftover whole wheat penne pasta for quick fry-up.
12 1/4. Contemplate whether "whole wheat" should be hyphenated.
12 1/2. This leads to contemplations over all of life's many mysteries.

13. 4:15 pm. Eat.
14. 4:20 pm. Commend yourself for being so spontaneously brilliant in the kitchen.
15. Take a brief moment from your strenuous afternoon of being so brilliant by enjoying a cuppa of black currant tea and a slice (or two) of your banana bread.

16. Attempt to work on homework before the evening's cooking spree involving sourdough breadcrumbs (see steps #3 and #4) begins.
17. Steps to having a Great Sunday Evening to follow.

"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

I believe in bettering oneself. 

I believe that memorizing poetry is an exceptional method for bettering oneself. 

Therefore, I memorize poetry.

     Or so I've begun to. I can't help myself--Whitman, Tennyson, and Keats (always Keats, always) have had my heart lately.

     I don't know what it is about Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", and in particular, this section below, that gets me so. It must be something to do with the grandiose way Whitman idolizes New York: All boroughs, all citizens, all hills, all towers--not a thing is beyond him to love. Or how, in section 8, he veers away from his proclamations of love for the city to humanly love: 

deep, meaningful, undeniable love. 

Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (1856)

Lines 93-100 are what most goad me. If the text is unclear to you, it reads: 

What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and 

         with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my

         nighest name as I approach? 

What is more subtle than this which ties to me to the woman or

         man that looks in my face? 

Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?

We understand then, do we not?

What I promis'd without mentioning it, have you not accepted? 

What the study could not teach--what the preaching could

          not accomplish is accomplish'd, is it not? 

Le sigh!

afternoon

Chopping vegetables in like a salve for your brain. The methodic movements calm nerves and create plenty of safe space in one's head for sorting out the day's emotions. Thus my Sunday afternoon. I made this spiced chicken soup with chickpeas a few months ago and have been thinking about it ever since. Thoughts of this soup haunted my one o'clock literary history class. No more, for I have enough to last for a week's worth of lunches. Pair it with a loaf of crusty rosemary sourdough and you've got yourself warmth and comfort in a bowl.

Need something edgier? Did that afternoon nap you took erase pent-up stress of all the weekends homework you're sure to leave to the last second? Make dark chocolate lava cakes to share with friends while gripping each other in girlish-fashion at the conclusion of Downton Abbey.

Finally, the Valentine my sister made me. She's alright.