Serenity & Spice

There was a time when the world thought eating alone was good for your mental and emotional well being. It gave you a break from constantly interacting with other people. You didn’t feel like you had to smooze or make conversation.  You could just enjoy your food. I have eaten alone roughly 700 times this year, give or take, and most of those meals were filled with stress and crushing isolation.  At any moment, I could lose my job, my apartment, my boyfriend, and I almost did. That’s why, for the last post of the year, I wanted to make something delicious.  Shrimp Fra Diavolo is quite possibly one of my favorite dishes.  Spicy tomato sauce with succulent shrimp on a bed of linguine, or any variation thereof, makes my tummy happy. I used the recipe from Chili Pepper Madness . As spicy red peppers are hard to find this time of year, I used a teaspoon of Italian Bomba Hot Pepper Sauce from Trader Joe’s.  A little goes a long way, but so worth it. Who else thought 2020 was going to be the

In my last post, I talked about taking pressure off yourself to save your own sanity during the holidays.  It just occurred to me that I may be a bit of a hypocrite as this time, I have probably created the most involved and expensive baking project to date. I present to you traditional mincemeat pies .  Why do I use the word traditional, you ask? Since the Crusades, mince pies have actually included meat until being phased out of the recipe during the Victorian era. The modern version without meat remains a Christmas staple in the United Kingdom. The reason they didn’t quite get the same iconic seasonal status here in the United States is because we were colonized by Puritans who hated Christmas and anything fun. The first step in this three-step process was making candied citrus peel .  Some of the ingredients for the pies were hard to come by, and as no grocery store here carried these, I followed the suggestion in the recipe to make your own. Each step is simple but requires time.

Now that Thanksgiving has been canceled this year, this may be the perfect time to take off some of the pressure we tend to put on ourselves for our own emotional and psychological well-being. We don’t have to roast a turkey or talk about the election. Now that we can’t gather in groups, some of the normal holiday stressors are almost non-existent.  Maybe that in itself is stressful. This weekend, Lost Forty Brewing came out with their annual triple barrel aged Nighty Night Imperial Stout. Usually, there is a big festival with games and booths, but this year, it had all been extremely scaled down for obvious reasons.  The release had been delayed by a month.  As the festival and beer are zombie-themed, it usually takes place around Halloween. For this year, they rebranded and called it the Year From Hell.   Social distancing guidelines were strictly enforced with pre-sale available online beforehand.  I, like most people, picked up my order and went home.  There was a coffin with a slo

I have decided recently that I am going to stop planning my future.  That’s not to say that I won’t save money for a rainy day or contribute to a retirement fund.  I’m going to stop trying to answer the question, “where do you see yourself in five years?” I’m going to stop chasing after jobs I will never get.  Stop looking up houses on Zillow and fantasizing about a future that might not happen. Let’s face it. It’s pretty risky for most people to be making big financial decisions right now. We could be living in a zombie apocalypse come January.  For right now, I think I will stay where I am and focus on what I can control.  It’s where I might need to be.  I think I will write a book this month. For those of you who don’t know, I will give the obligatory breakdown of what NaNoWriMo is. The goal is to write 50,000 words during November or one novel. This will be my first time participating even though I have never finished a book before. Usually, there is the initial phase of excitement

As you can probably guess, the name I use is a nod to my German heritage. My grandmother's family was German, but it begs the question, what kind of Germans were we? Were we the good Germans? Were we the kind that just wanted to drink beer, listen to Beethoven, and not kill everyone? In the last few years, I have found myself reacquainted with the beer culture that I had grown up with. I have always felt that this is a world of joyous camaraderie. The people aren't petty or bias. Brewers usually let their beer speak for itself.  Despite personal differences, there's always a hearty congratulations when someone has made something truly special. For this post, I made beer pretzels using The Hunter Oktoberfest from Lost Forty Brewing . This isn’t so much of a challenge, but food for thought; pun intended. I found the recipe on one of my favorite food blogs, Half Baked Harvest . Sadly, we did not make the chipotle queso. I say “we” because this time, my boyfriend joined me.  J

“Savory, tasty, scrumptious, delectable, succulent, mouth-watering.” When I have the rare moments of euphoria and clarity, I realize that any time is the time things can happen.  All you have to do is make them happen. It’s hard most days.  My attention is usually on other priorities.  Clinical depression gets in the way.  It’s always easier thinking about doing something than actually doing it.   My first cooking challenge will be to make caramel éclairs. I’m going off the recipe I found at Little Ferraro Kitchen . I have wanted to make these since I was 14 years old and saw the movie Simply Irresistible . It stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, at the height of her Buffy fame, playing a chef who incorporates everything she’s feeling into her food, which in turn causes everyone who eats it to feel the same way.   If that concept sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same concept as Like Water For Chocolate . Magic in the kitchen. That’s where the similarities end.  Like Water for Chocolat

When I was about 18, I wanted to become a rock writer.  I saw Almost Famous and thought that was what I wanted to be.  I didn’t identify with Penny Lane, but with William who felt awkward and unsure of his place in the world.  I wanted to be something more than a groupie or feel like I’m kidding myself.  I think the reason I wasn’t very good at it was because I wasn’t a particular type of fan.  I loved going to shows (still do) and have always enjoyed various genres of music.  Music was something I shared with my dad, but I was never the uber fan.  I believe they call them stans now. I was never the teenaged girl screaming the moment she saw her favorite band and covering her walls with their posters.  The other side of that coin is the cynical musical snob who, for all of his knowledge and criticism, works at a record store or bookshop while he practices with his own band at night.  I use the pronoun “he” because this person is usually male. These were my friends back then.  Always o