Baklava

Baklava

After a somewhat wild night this weekend (in which I was lured by the promise of an excellent all-male Lady Gaga cover band who were, in fact, little better than your average garage band escapees with extra eyeliner and a disturbing habit of pulling out skinny black combs to touch up their heavily gelled hair), I am:

  1. Missing my new $50 umbrella, which I managed to leave at the club after using it for less than a day. A few (too many) drinks can make one forgetful, and
  2. Massively aching and severely bruised along my left hip, ribs, and arm from another tumble down a set of wet stairs in the same pair of dependable hiking shoes that I wore to traverse slippery, perilous rocks in Iceland when standing next to the massive Gulfoss waterfall where one slip could have resulted in icy death. The bruise from that previous fall, mind you, has not even fully healed yet. I am starting to look like a domestic abuse victim and can you imagine how that conversation would go? “What happened?” “Uh, I fell down the stairs.”
  3. And, as embarrassing as it is to admit, I am unable to fully recover from an all-nighter in less than 24 hours, with over a third of them spent sleeping.

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When life hands you lemons

Meyer Lemon Cake

Two words: cookbook overload.

It’s an overwhelming glut of new information to absorb, and even during the long holiday weekend, I’d find myself no sooner cracking the cover of one of them when I’d be called off to do something else. Bake this. Go to that martini party. Drink all this gin. My life is so hard. Boo hoo.

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And I am nothing of a builder

For all my love of cooking and baking, I’m not a kinetically talented nor handy person. The numerous faded scars and cuts from the tips of my fingers to my elbows are a testament to this particular fact.

A girl can dream, though, of being the second coming of Martha Stewart (or, more in my vein, Nigella Lawson). My bedroom, the only real space that I truly inhabit in my roommate’s pretty already-fabulously furnished apartment, is kind of a design disaster but I never seem to do much about it save for collecting things I’d one day like to showcase in some fabulous design plan that still exists, nebulous and half-formed, in my head.

There are about as many DIY projects I’d love to start as there are dishes I’d like to cook — if I ever had the time, money, and space. But unlike those things created in the kitchen, I can’t seem to rouse the ambition for any craftier, non-food tasks.

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Surprise Baby Shower Cupcakes

Surprise Baby Shower Cupcakes

“I don’t want children,” I once said to my eleventh grade Calculus teacher.

I can’t remember the context though or why it was even brought up. This may seem crazy, but I don’t usually make a habit of sharing my reproductive choices with everyone, nevermind 40-something year old, slightly balding high school math teachers.

“Ever.”

He paused a moment and then nodded once, decisively. “You are going to come back to your ten year reunion with five kids hanging off your arm, I’m sure of it.”

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