Hot ant on peony action!
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Another busy week, but as far as you know, this is a fresh post! Ha!

Ready? Set?

Purple

This was another request. The original recipe called for a cake mix, but I’ll have none of that. If you’re going to make cake, then by all means make cake.

Rum Cake
Cake:
4 eggs (room temperature)
1 cup butter (softened)
2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1-3/4 ounce (4-serving size) instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup cream
1/2 cup Bacardi dark rum
1 cup chopped, toasted pecans or walnuts
Syrup:
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup Bacardi dark rum

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Butter and flour a bundt cake pan or a tube cake pan.

Beat butter until creamy. While butter is being beaten, whisk together dry ingredients. Beat in sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs. Add vanilla and lemon zest. Add half the flour mixture. Mix. Add half the cream. Mix. Add rest of ingredients. Mix.

Pour into prepared pan. Sprinkle nuts on top of the batter. (Original recipe called for nuts on top of cake/bottom of pan. I prefer this.)

Bake 60 50 75 minutes.

While cake is baking, make the syrup. Melt butter in saucepan. Stir in water and sugar. Boil 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and carefully stir in rum.

Note: The rum will cause steam. Be careful not to burn yourself.

After cake as cooled for 5 minutes, carefully turn out cake from the pan, then carefully return the cake to the pan. With a bamboo skewer or similar tool, poke holes through the cake. Allow cake to sit for a couple hours, then you can remove the cake from the pan again. Wrap.

This cake freezes extremely well.

Quirky Liberal Alpha Female.

Of course I am.
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skulk
intr. verb 1. To lie in hiding, as out of cowardice for bad conscience; lurk. 2. To move about stealthily. 3. To evade work or obligation; shirk.
noun 1. one who skulks. 2. A congregation of vermin, especially foxes, or of thieves.

I didn’t know the second noun definition, but I am definitely going to have to add this to my vocabulary.

“The discussion was overrun by a skulk of Republicans.”

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It’s Armed Forces Day.

Thank you to all those who have served in the military, past and present.

Thursday night was dark.

I don’t mean it was rainy or overcast, I mean that I was dark.

It was an extremely strange feeling–one I hadn’t felt since my dissolute and wild college days.

By the time we got home from the gym, Michael and I were both exhausted and neither of us wanted to make dinner, so we convinced Grandmom to go out to eat. We eventually ended up going to IHOP, and it was there that the darkness fell.

Mind you, the IHOP is relatively new and in good shape, so what I felt was not a reaction to my surroundings.

As I sat there, I felt a despair fall over me, as if a piece of the Snow Queen’s mirror had fallen into my eyes, and like Kay, wherever I looked I saw ugliness and hopelessness.

A grandmother walked by with her grandson, and all I could see was how wrinkled her clothes were–as if she was trying to look nice but had fallen short and instead looked simply worn and tired.

The girl in the booth across from us was heavy, and all I could notice was that her shirt had ridden up in the back, and a roll of pale fat was bubbling over the top of her jeans. Her companion was scrawny and his pants were falling off. His hair was greasy, his face unshaven, and he spent more on his ball cap–cocked at an asinine angle–than he did on any part of his wardrobe, including his ratty shoes.

A mother walked by with her kids, and all looked dirty–not filthy dirty from playing outside, but as if a dust had fallen upon them, turning everything slightly gray.

A group of teenage girls walked by to their table, and all I could see was over treated hair, too much makeup, and faces that would too soon lined with cares and worries for their futures at that moment were not bright and hopefully, but instead the struggle of living on the edge with too many kids too young and not enough education to pull them out of the hole.

The life and hope and joy were drained out of everything I could see, from the ripped number on our booth, to the dead leaves and branches on the trees outside.

It was all I could do to continue to sit at the table, to try and choke down my meal.

Thank the gods the despair lifted and today was a relatively good day.

But the darkness still lurks, just out of the corner of my eye, waiting for a moment of weakness to surge back and lead me to despair.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

I will fear no evil.
I will fear no evil.
I will fear no evil.

This week I want to talk about one of my favorite authors: Charles de Lint.

In my opinion, Charles de Lint is a master of the short story. Some of my favorite books are his short story collections, and if someone wants to start reading, that’s the direction I recommend them.

Many, if not most, of his stories are set in Newford, which is a small city that may be in Canada, but may be in the northern US instead. Not that it matters, because the important border of Newford is the border with the magical realm–the world where coyote and the moon walk and talk. Newford is a city where fairies and crow girls can live and interact with us mere mortals. Newford is the place where I’d love to live, even if I couldn’t see into the magical realm that is so close there.

His world is also a place full of music and beauty, where many of the characters are artists and musicians and writers. But don’t the wrong impression, it is most definitely not all sweetness and light. His characters are runaways, recovered junkies, and abused kids. Most of the characters are damaged or outsiders, but throughout the stories there is hope. Not ‘wish upon a star’ hope, but the hope that comes from hard work and effort.

Although Charles de Lint writes many short stories, most of those stories are set in Newford, and they tend to have a recurring cast of characters: Jilly Coppercorn, Geordie, Christie Riddell , Sophie Etiole and all the others I’ve come to love. Each short story is a vignette into the lives of the people who live in Newford, and you can read any story without having read any other story before it.

He has also written several novels set in Newford (and also some novels set elsewhere as well). Although you can read any of the Newford novels at any point in time, I personally think they’re more enjoyable if you have the background of the different characters and know their histories.

If you wanted to start with a short story collection, I would highly recommend Dreams Underfoot. Moonlight and Vines is probably my second favorite collection, and you could easily pick up either collection and start reading and delve into the characters.

If you’d like to start with a novel, you may want to start with Jack of Kinrowan (which is a reissue of Jack the Giant Killer and Drink Down the Moon. The stories are not set in Newford and contain none of the usual characters, but the feel is the same–of magic just around the corner, or glimpsed out of the corner of your eye.

His books also contain a great deal of folklore and folktales. There are fairies and goblins, but also coyotes and crows and other trickster figures, who act as you would expect trickster figures to act. The earthy coyote of folklore of drinks and steals and takes advantage of women when he can. These are the characters from folklore–not the characters from the cleaned up fairy tales.

Charles de Lint also writes excellent young adult fiction. And by young adult I mean very good fantasy that has teenage characters. (I have to say that some of the young adult fantasy out there is better than much of what you find on the shelves in the SFF section of the bookstore.)

If you have even a passing interest in folk lore and folk tales, then you would almost certainly love Charles de Lint’s books. If you enjoy short stories, then you will also want to read his short story collections and then get pulled into his novels based on the characters in those short stories. ANd if you enjoy good writing and would like to see how you feel about urban fantasy, you should check out Charles de Lint. I’ll admit he’s not for everyone–Michael has never been able to get into his books and stories–but if he is your thing, you’ll end up loving him.

Wolf Moon (1988), The Harp of the Gray Rose, The Dreaming Place (1990), The Little Country (1991), Dreams Underfoot (1993), Into the Green (1993), Memory & Dream (1994), The Ivory and the Horn (1995), Moonlight & Vines (1999), Jack of Kinrowan (1999), Tapping the Dream Tree (2002), The Onion Girl (2002), Waifs and Strays (2002), Spirits in the Wires (2003), The Blue Girl (2004), Widdershins (2006), Promises to Keep (2007)

It’s that time of the week again!

Ready? Here you go:

nap

(For those who don’t use MS products [and right now I hate you] QuickCorrect is a MS term.)

I got a request for my recipes for Amaretto cake and Rum cake, and thought: easy posts!

Although I generally dislike cake, I do like these cakes, because they are extremely moist.

Amaretto Cake
Cake:
4 eggs (room temperature)
1 cup butter (softened)
2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp lemon zest
1/4 tsp salt
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
Amaretto Syrup:
3 cups sugar
3/4 cups corn syrup
1 1/8 cup water
1 3/4 cup amaretto

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Butter and flour a bundt cake pan or a tube cake pan.

Beat butter until creamy. While butter is being beaten, whisk together dry ingredients. Beat in sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs. Add vanilla and lemon zest. Add half the flour mixture. Mix. Add half the cream. Mix. Add rest of ingredients. Mix.

Bake cake at 350 F for 60 to 75 minutes.

Cool cake for 5 minutes.

While the cake is baking, make the amaretto sauce. Combine sugar, water, and corn syrup in a saucepan. Heat until simmering. Do not stir until syrup is at a full boil. Boil until liquid is clear (sugar id dissolved). Cool for five (5) minutes. Carefully stir in Amaretto.

After cake as cooled for 5 minutes, carefully turn out cake from the pan, then carefully return the cake to the pan. With a bamboo skewer or similar tool, poke holes through the cake. Poke a lot of holes, because there is a lot of syrup. Slowly pour the syrup over the cake. It may take awhile to absorb. Allow cake to sit for a couple hours, then you can remove the cake from the pan again. Wrap.

This cake freezes extremely well.

Just a small update on how things are going.

They’re going.

I don’t feel as bad as I felt for the past couple months, but I also don’t feel over this latest bout of depression.

It’s easier to laugh at things (primarily myself and my own mistakes) but I don’t really feel a lot of joy in the little things they way I used to.

I’m still tired, and still pretty damned anti-social, and still don’t feel up to dealing with stressful situations or difficult people, but I am managing both.

Mostly the depression is still manifesting in a lack of interest in doing anything, and a wish I could hide in the house and not have to talk to anyone for a week or two or more. Or do much of anything really. You’ll notice that it took a month but I finally made a new poll, and also changed the countdown. It’s the lack of interest in the little things that lets me know things still aren’t great. I even have a new design for my main page I want to roll out, but can’t get the gumption to finish it.

But depression is like that sometimes.

Just have to see where things go from here.