The Yums and Yucks

I was asked to bring dessert for Thanksgiving, so I decided I'd make a couple pumpkin pies. I know, that's totally cliche...but when you think about it, so is turkey. Because I had lots of time, and because I didn't want to venture out into the snowy world to buy a pie crust, I decided to make my own. It was surprisingly easy. Not the healthiest thing in the world (hello, Crisco!), but it's not like pie has ever had a healthy reputation to begin with.

I had a little extra pumpkin filling, so, as you can see, I made a couple mini-pies.

Two little heart-shaped pies. Isn't that romantic? Let's just gloss over the part where I eat both of them myself.

Well, the pie crust recipe made enough for three pies, but I only had enough pumpkin for one. So I sat there, looking at the leftover pie dough, and decided to make chicken pot pie, because that's one of my comfort foods. I just made everything up as I went along, so it wasn't the best ever, but since I was the only one eating it...it was good enough.

Well, I still had more pie dough left over, so I decided to decorate the top of the pie. My sister told me that a few nights ago she decorated her chicken pot pie with some snazzy leaf cookie-cutters, and I was not about to be outdone by her domestic goddessness. So I looked high and low until I found some cookie-cutters of my own.

Unfortunately, all I found were Christmas shapes and....the state of Idaho.

See those lumps at the top? Those are potatoes. I'm so clever, it kills me.

I enjoyed the irony that I was making a pie to celebrate this state I'm living in, while inside I was cursing the first settlers who ever decided that this place was inhabitable in the winter time. It's NOT.

Anyway, I decided to make another dessert, since my plan to bring 2 pumpkin pies fell through. I rummaged around and found a red velvet cake mix.

I don't get red velvet cake.

Like, why is it red? I would understand if it were tomato cake. Or beet cake. Or blood cake (caked blood?). Yeah, I know...that's nasty. But at least we'd all understand why it was red.

What if we made the red velvet cake and just left the red out? I think I'd understand just velvet cake. But since mine was a cake mix, the red was there to stay. Oh well.

But one day, I'm going to make two cakes: one red velvet cake, one not-red, red velvet cake. And then I will gather up some friends, blindfold them, and give them bites of each. And they will all be like, "Oh, Tara! They taste the same! I feel so dumb to think that I was eating superfluous red dye my whole life!" And I'll be like, "Yeah, that was pretty dumb of you." And then they won't be my friends anymore, but that'll be okay, because that means more leftover cake for me.

Anyway.

I saw online that red velvet cakes are often frosted with a butter roux/cooked flour dressing. It sounded weird, but I decided to embrace the weirdness of this whole red velvet cake situation and just make the frosting.

My first attempt resulted in a big glob of paste. How perfect...if I'd been making a paper-mache red velvet cake, that is.

So I tried again and got a fairly decent roux. The problem came when I added the butter and sugar. This picture doesn't do it justice.

It looked like curdled...something. Plus the vanilla gave it a really weird brown color. It tasted fine, but there was no way I was going to frost a cake with that...not even a red velvet cake.

So I turned to my trusty ol' buttercream, and thus my red velvet cake was saved from weird, curdled disgusting frosting.

Oh, I should also add that I burnt a cake in the microwave today. Those 5-minute chocolate cake in a mug thing is not as easy as it looks. I think it did say "Kids, ask your parents for help." Guess that's what I get for not having a grownup nearby.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know, I know, two posts in two days. It's purty clear I'm on break and have nothing better to do.

Oh, wait. I do have better things to do. Like taking care of the pile of dishes by the sink. Or cleaning my room. Or starting on school. Psh, whatever.

I just wanted to link to a fantastic Thanksgiving article by the one and only Lisa Anderson.

Thanks for Nothing | Boundless Line

Really good perspective on thankfulness.

And along those lines, I've decided that I'm glad it snowed so much this week, because if I have to learn to drive in snow, the best week to learn is break week. I don't learn well with other people watching me. I'd rather figure it out by myself.

And if your first thought was "Uhhhh, why does she keep talking about snow?"....well, then you just need to get used to it, because snow is taking over my life.

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving. To my dear family, I love you all, and I really, really missed you.

Mumble, grumble

Since I last updated, my dad and I have driven across the country. It was fun. Somewhere between Georgia and Kentucky, we had a conversation about this blog. I have a love/hate relationship with blogs. I don't want to talk too much about school on here, for the sake of other people's privacy. I don't want to talk about work, for the same reasons, as well as the issue of reader interest. ("So today, I stamped five letters and took them down to the post office. And then I e-mailed some people, and I even scanned a few documents!!!!) And since basically all the events in my day are connected with school or work, what else is there to blog about? Only all that stuff that happens between my two ears.

Hence, posting has been scarce.

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A few months ago, a friend of mine e-mailed me. She hadn't heard from me, and the best explanation she could think of was that there was a young man in my life. I had to write back and tell her that no, I'm just a lame friend who forgets to respond to e-mails.

But what's funny is that I apparently think I'm in a relationship. A few weeks ago, I was sitting in library, talking to my roommate, and these words came out of my mouth: "You know, if I were single..."

I was about to continue my sentence when my roommate helpfully reminded me that I am, in fact, single.

But I don't feel like I am. Nope. I'm in a deeply committed relationship with School. We're together all the time. To be honest, he's a bit possessive. I feel like I'm always taking care of him, and he never lets me go out and do other stuff. He insists on dates every night except Sunday. I'm constantly trying to make him happy. Sometimes, I just want to dump him. In fact, our relationship has been on the rocks lately, so we're taking a week break. And we are definitely NOT spending Christmas together. I'm going to catch up with an old buddy of mine named Sleep. School gets jealous and tries to keep us apart, but we always find ways to meet secretly. But in spite of his possessiveness, I really do like School. Somehow, we always patch things up. Still, I'm planning to break up with him in about 2.5 years...that is, unless he breaks up with me first.

I'm pretty sure that entire paragraph is proof that I need to get out more.

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Sometime this autumn, I decided I wasn’t going to grumble about the upcoming winter. It didn't make sense. Complaining wouldn't change anything, and I might as well get used to winter weather. After all, God brought me to Idaho, and He could very well lead me out of Idaho and into another land equally cold and snowy. No sense in kicking and screaming. And you know, I don't even really want to live in FL for the rest of my life. It would be far more exciting to find a job in some random state (country?) and move there. When opportunity knocks, I don't want to be too fettered by snow-hatred to answer the door.

I do believe "fettered by snow-hatred" is one of the weirdest phrases to pop out of my brain and onto this blog. The more I look at it, the less sense it makes. Anyway.

Say I get married, and my husband take a job in Snowville, Utah. By the way, I don't know anything about that place; I just really (dis)liked the name. I've seen women bitter about their husbands moving them to hot, humid FL (a bitterness which I don't understand), and I really don't want to be like that. And since I have a slight problem with people leaving their spouses for better weather, it looks like the only option is to cheerfully accept one's circumstances.

And it looks like I wouldn't be ready to do that, since I apparently can't even cheerfully accept my circumstances when I'm the one who moved myself out to Idaho in the first place. Clearly, some sanctification is in order.

Grumbling is grumbling. The fact that I'm from FL doesn't make it okay for me to grumble. (It does make it okay for me to utterly fail at driving in the snow.) God created snow, and there's a side of Him that I'm not appreciating when I hate snow. It's closeminded.

And so, with all these thoughts percolating in my head, I was all ready to attack this winter with a perky, Pollyanna smile.

And then….we had our first snow. And the first words out of my mouth when I got up that morning and saw the white world waiting outside my window? Let’s just say they weren’t exactly, “Thank you, Jesus.”

It's not that I utterly despise snow. There are a few things I like about it. It’s fun to play in. It makes nights brighter. It’s pretty. It makes me feel like I’m living in a Hallmark Christmas special.

But I hate driving in it. I don’t enjoy unearthing my car every time I want to go somewhere. I don’t like scraping ice off my windshield. I don’t like slipping and sliding all over the road. I don't like not being able to see, because I feel like I'm driving in a snow globe. I don't like feeling like I could get into an accident at any second.

All of this after one day of driving in it.

But you know, I feel like I've come a long way, since I distinctly remember saying that I'd never be able to drive period. But that's another blog post for another time. I'm sure - with time - I'll figure this whole snow-driving thing out. It's just frustrating. I'm hoping my Florida license plate is functioning like one of those "STUDENT DRIVER" magnets, because I need extra grace from people on the road.

And all you people back home, now that I’ve bared my soul to you …just know that every time you gloat about the 80 degree temperature, you’re causing your weaker sister to stumble. So there.