10(0)1 bunnies

i don't know what to say, except that the prospect of blogging feels overwhelming to me.  and so i just have stopped doing it, clearly.  any time that i sit down with my computer, i have to fight with bean, because she wants to sit on me and lick my hands while i type and oh my GOD sometimes i just need to not have another living creature touching me, needing me, being close to me, breathing the same air as me.  and jesus christ she is so persistent....i will pick her up and put her on the floor, and she jumps right back up on top of me, and starts licking me, and we repeat this forever.  here i'll start documenting it. 

i just put her on the floor, and before i could finish this sentence, she is back in my lap.  and licking.  now she's in the floor.  now she's in my lap.  now she's in the floor.  ooooh wait she is walking away!  oh nope, here she comes, she's looking at me, aaaand she's in my lap again.  now she's in the floor.  OOOH GOODIE SHE LEFT THE ROOM! that means i probably have about 3 minutes to enjoy my solitude before she comes back and demands my attention. 

my life is unmanageable.  i haven't cooked all week.  my exercise regimen absolutely shits the bed.  there is a dead mouse outside of the back door that one of my little precious creatures deposited for me, and i still can't bring myself to deal with it.  DEAD MOUSE. that's just disgusting. 

but to be fair, my financial situation is much less dire than it has been, and apparently my divine mother listened to me when i threw up my hands a couple of weeks ago and was all "OK UNIVERSE I NEED SOME FUCKING HELP HERE BECAUSE THIS IS GETTING RIDICULOUS AND THINGS ARE EITHER GOING TO HAVE TO TURN AROUND SOON OR I'M GOING TO BE A STRIPPER."   aaaaand - i have a job interview tomorrow!  a real one!  not to be a stripper, or a merry maid, but to have a REAL JOB!  that requires a master's degree!  WIN WIN WIN!  bean just jumped in my lap and is licking. back in the floor.  back in my lap.  back in the floor, and PISSED at me.  you might think i'm exaggerating for effect, but i'm not. 

lots more to say, but no more time.  bean is pouting in the other room.    

what happened to my blogging?  i feel so disappointed in myself!  why can't i keep up with ANYTHING on a consistent basis???

oh wait, except i'll tell you what i can keep up with on a consistent basis - cooking brunch!  i have way more recipes to report on than i did at last writing, i am proud to say.  so settle in and pour yourself some whiskey into your hot tea, because that's what i always do, and prepare for the wonders of brunchland, courtesy of morgan and isa.

curry scrambled tofu with cabbage and caraway
admittedly, i was sort of reluctant to make this recipe.  normally, caraway doesn't make me just want to jump up and down and shriek jubilations, and so a recipe with caraway in the title is not going to be at the top of my list of recipes to try.  but see, that's why this whole cook-every-recipe-in-a-cookbook project is good, because i have to make recipes that i would normally skip over.  also - cabbage?  even though i actually do really like cabbage, for some reason whenever cabbage is in the title of a recipe, i get kind of freaked out and want to turn the page.  buuut, i sucked it up, and made this recipe, and it was very good.  it calls for red cabbage, but i had a whoopsies moment and bought green cabbage instead, and i think that was fine.  it would have been more visually stimulating with red cabbage, but whatever. if i make this again, i'll just leave the caraway out.  cuz it didn't change my mind about caraway...and it is otherwise very tasty. 

pumpkin pancakes
alright, so when i made these, i had big time pancake FAIL in my kitchen.  i think this is because i tampered with the recipe, because i was irritated by the prospect of using 3/4 cup of pumpkin, and then having an open can of pumpkin with no designated purpose.  also, i used spelt flour, in the interest of jess's belly.  and i swear to god, i cooked these pancakes for an ETERNITY, and i still couldn't get the center to cook.  it was all mushy like and weird.  the flavor was good, the texture was real bad.  but i don't think i can blame the recipe.  i think it was operator error.  i'm gonna make these again, and follow the recipe like a good girl, and i think we'll be alright. 

red flannel hash
oh god.  if the idea of beets and potatoes and onions all sauteed up with some salt and pepper and liquid smoke, and then popped in the oven to get crispy and finish cooking, doesn't make you all flushed and excited, then there must be something wrong with you.  this was phenomenal.  i happen to love beets, so i was pretty enthusiastic about this concoction, but i also fed it to two non-beet fans (beet?  who eat a beet??) and THEY LOVED IT TOO.  mmmmmmmm and it was so red and pretty and crispy and tasty.  served it with the curry scrambled tofu mentioned above, and it was lovely and synergistic and pleasing on every level.

roasted portobellos
it is hard to go wrong with a portobello mushroom, marinated in the usual marinade-y stuff, and then roasted.  not rocket science.  i'll say, the marinade was particularly good, and it was a little hard to resist just pouring it into a cup and drinking it.  buuut, i'm a sucker for vinegar-y, salty food.  when i was little i loved to drink vinegar and eat bouillon cubes.  i'm just saying.  i even put some of this marinade on the biscuits i served along with the mushrooms (see below!), and shoo lord, i was a happy little biscuit.  with my biscuits. 

zucchini spelt muffins
you may find this hard to believe, but prior to making these muffins, i had never baked with zucchini.  i'd cooked with it plenty of times...but never any zucchini bread, zucchini muffins, etc.  these were lovely, dark, dense little muffins....pleasantly spicy, and not all that sweet.  the kind of muffins that you can eat for breakfast and feel like you are being healthy...even if you melt a little soy margarine on the top.  nice.

cornbread biscuits
i'm sad to say this, but i think these were a biscuit fail.  good flavor, poor texture....and i followed the recipe exactly, so i can't assign the blame to myself this time.  i'm pretty bummed about the whole thing, because i was really excited at the prospect of cornbread biscuits.  meh.

i actually have more recipes that i've made in the past week or so (i know!  aren't you proud and excited?!), but i'm tired of writing.  and tired in general.  i guess the whiskey in my tea cup is doing its job.  reliable, dependable, lovely whiskey. 

ps - i was tired enough this weekend that i apparently slept through a bean licking session.  she licked my skin raw, and now i have a scab on my arm.  what the fuck is the matter with my fucking cat, and what am i going to do with her?  also, she has started eating my hair.  while it is still on my head.

whoops!  my really consistent blogging has fallen by the wayside, perhaps due to my head cold and subsequent feelings of malaise and discontent, both physical and mental. 

i have been applying for jobs with renewed gusto this week, but unfortunately my applications have not been met with any perceivable gusto on the employers' end.  hmph.  here are the jobs to which i have applied since monday: religious education assistant, research analyst I (infectious diseases), research assistant I (surgical oncology), nanny/personal assistant, tutor, case manager for plwa, and case manager for people with spmi.  oh!  and prn hospice chaplain.  i will give you ONE guess as to how many responses i have received, after applying for this bevy of jobs. 

ZERO.  zero responses.  now, since npr tells me that there are six people looking for every one available job, then that means that out of the MORE THAN six jobs i have applied for this week, at least one of them should be MY job.  MINE.  i feel like i could make a logic problem out of this: 

if morgan has 4.25 cats and 1 dog, drinks 2 glasses of wine every night, and is applying for 3 jobs every day, then how many days will it take before morgan turns into a cat?

speaking of turning into a cat, remember how i talked about how bean has taken to licking a LOT?  well, jess is somewhat of a heavy sleeper, and has been waking up with raw places on her arms and hands from bean licking her.  and when i say raw, i don't mean a little bit red...i mean that after a day or so, a SCAB forms.  so when i said that bean would lick my skin off, if i let her?  i totally was not kidding.  and as if on cue, bean just jumped in my lap and is licking my hand.  see, LOOK:

the endless licking.

my head feels like it is filled with fog.  but i've done such a good job of posting every day that i feel compelled to blog SOMETHING, even if it is useless. 

i've been reading a return to love.  while there is some theology and philosophy and psychology in there that i don't find to be especially sound, there is also some good shit.  so i'm taking what i like and leaving the rest, as they say.  here's some of the stuff i like, so far:

when williamson talks about what happened after she had a nervous breakdown.  she writes: ...you keep trying all your old tricks, the ones that never did work but that you keep thinking might work this time.  Once you've had enough and you can't do it anymore, you consider the possibility that there might  be a better way.  That's when your head cracks open and God comes in.  i don't know what my deal is, but i like imagery about things cracking open.  like my skull. 

also, when she writes about how there is no such thing as a literal "devil," she says: While it's true there isn't an actual devil out there grabbing for our souls, there is a tendency in our minds, which can be amazingly strong, to perceive without love.  hooo boy, is she right about that "amazingly strong" tendency.  hot damn! 

and even though when people start talking about the holy spirit, and ESPECIALLY when they attach a male pronoun to the holy spirit, i start to want to mash my thumbs into my eyeballs, i like some of what she says about the holy spirit.  for instance, that it is "a bridge back to gentle thoughts," and it is also "the inexorable drive toward wholeness that exists within, no matter how disoriented or crazy we get.  Something within us always longs to go home, and [the Holy Spirit] is that something."  see, except where i put [the Holy Spirit] she put HE and WHY WOULD YOU FUCKING DO THAT.  why garbage up a perfectly good bit of theological insight with gendered fucking language?!  BAAAAAHHHHH.

and lastly, i like this prayer, and i am going to pray it a lot: Dear God, I am willing to see this differently

i think i'll leave it at that.  oh, i made the fridge-clearing lentil soup, and it is phenomenal.  absolutely phenomenal.  go clear out your fridge, and make the fucking soup, and then come back here and tell me you love me.  TELL ME YOU LOVE ME. 

this was the story of the day from storypeople, and it might as well have had my name in front of it with a colon.

stable as long as nothing else in the whole world shifts (so don't get your hopes up)

since it has been rainy and dreary and COLD in nashville for as long as i can remember, i am feeling obsessed with soup.  i LOVE to make soup, and it is wonderfully easy, and always makes lots of leftovers, and makes my belly feel warm and fuzzy.  i was looking for a new soup recipe to try for the weekend, and found one called "fridge-clearing lentil soup."  and it really is intended to do exactly what it says - clear the fridge.  of basically any vegetable that needs to be used up.  smart!  and perfect, because right now i have some sad looking celery, and half of a head of cabbage, and some spinach, and some wilted kale, and one (ONE??) lonely potato that is starting to sprout monsters.  into the soup pot with you all, you pitiful little veggies! 

i'll bet the compost opposum would be sad to know the goodies that will NOT be getting composted this week, beause they will be getting eaten by ME.  NOT HIM.  with his opposable thumbs.  blech.

i'm also sort of infatuated with the idea of having a soup swap.  this is an event where everybody brings soup, individually packaged in plastic containers or mason jars or what have you, and then you get to take home a container of everybody's soup!  and then your freezer is filled with delightfulness!  oh, and you also eat soup while you are at the soup swap.  SOUP SOUP SOUP!!!  the only problem i'm running into, as i plan my soup swap in my head, is that a considerable portion of my friends do not cook, or at least do not like to cook.  or are terrified of cooking.  ahem.  but then again, maybe they could contribute wine.  or good bread.  or lap dances. 

who is on board for my soup swap???  oh and ps if you put meat in your soup, you are automatically disqualified.  do not pass go, do not collect a soup bowl. 

i got in my car this morning to take jess to work.  i had on my slippers, with sweatpants, naturally, because i am a slovenly housewife.  so we're driving, and chatting, and i realize that my feet feel very cold.  and not just cold, but very....wet.  and actually, the more i think about it, the more i realize that they aren't a little bit wet, they are SOAKING wet.  so i look down in the floor of the car, and surprise!!  there is an inch of water in the floorboard of my car.  there is so much water in the floorboard that it is covering my rubber floor mat.  this is totally inexplicable to me, because the rest of my car is NOT wet.  and yes, it has been raining in nashville for the past kabillion days, buuut....how did that water get there?  and not anywhere else??  and am i losing my fucking mind???

i dropped jess off, and drove home, with my freezing cold, soaking wet feet.  when i got home, i took the rubber mat out, and in the process dumped even more water into the floor of the car.  i went inside and got a beach towel, and folded that up in the floorboard in hopes that it would, uh, fix the problem.  and i also incorporated galoshes into today's outfit, so that i wouldn't catch swine flu from having my feet wet all day.  oh, and later on in the day i realized that the standing water is also in the floorboard of the backseat, on the driver's side.  neat.  i went and played with babies today, and when i came home i took the beach towel out of the floorboard, and it was literally dripping, DRIPPING I TELL YOU, with water.  like, if you are thinking that i mean it was damp, you are totally not understanding the scope of what i'm talking about.  i mean, if i had to give a conservative estimate of the amount of water that is currently saturating the carpet in my car, i would say five hundred gallons.  easily.  i think also i neglected to mention that it is starting to smell NOT NICE in my car.

what the fuck am i supposed to do about this?  and WHERE did all the water come from?  and why does little annoying bullshit like this happen when it seems like my whole life is already going down the pooper??   

oh and ps, i won bingo last night at the gay bar, and a drag queen with bright blue hair told me she would pull her peepee out of her ass so she could go on a date with me, and then i was like "oh honey, i don't like peepees, just leave it up there" and then she was like "oh my gawd are you a LESBON?  you are the PRETTIEST lesbon* i have ever seen!"  i don't agree with her, but it still made my whole night.  i love being complimented by drag queens...it makes me feel all warm inside.  especially when i'm drinking wine. 

*please note, this is not a typo.  lezz-bon.  lesbon.  lesbon!   

today the knot in my stomach is bigger and more painful.  i will ignore it, and write about brunch food instead.  haven't made much....but there have been some keepers.

tofu omelets - grilled marinated asparagus filling
i already wrote about the tofu omelet recipe in general (it is great), but this time around instead of the mushroom spinach variation i did grilled marinated asparagus, which was excellent.  i love asparagus, and i never cease to be amazed at how quickly it can make my pee smell bad, and how INCREDIBLY bad it makes my pee smell.  phenomenal.  the marinade for this was simple - really just balsamic vinegar and olive oil, with some garlic and salt and pepper.  i cooked it in the marinade, and would have eaten it all up right out of the pan. 

i'm going to pause and say that bean is licking my wrist right now, and i'm about to go out of my mind.  if i put her down on the floor, she sits and cries, loudly, until i let her back in my lap.  and then she licks me and licks me and licks me.  i just took a picture of her licking me, using the camera on my macbook, but it turned out to be kind of a boobie shot, so i'm leaving it out.  anyways, i'm going insane. 

oh! and i almost forgot!  this time around i used black salt in the omelets (that stuff i bought at the international market).  it DOES lend a sulfuric taste.  i used slightly less than the recipe called for, because it smelled SUPER strong, and i was sort of scared.  some of that tones down in the cooking process - so don't be too scared.  only slightly scared.

polenta rancheros
this might be one of my favorites in this cookbook so far.  i've actually never had huevos rancheros, so i can't speak to whether or not this is anything like the "real" thing.  but it is *super* tasty, and lightening fast.  the polenta is soft polenta, and then the black beans are all nice and sauce-y...very comforting.  the only change i would make is regarding the spices.  the recipe calls for cumin seeds and coriander seeds, both of which you toast.  eventually you blend the sauce that has the seeds in it, but the coriander seeds were still pretty whole...so when i make this again (and i shall!), i will crush them.  plus, then i'll have a reason to use my mortar and pestle, which makes me VERY happy.

miso tahini sauce
as suggested in the cookbook, i made this to go on top of the omelets mentioned above.  very simple sauce - 4 ingredients popped in the blender, and that's it.  it was nice, and did complement the omelets well, but i think i wanted it to be slightly more miso-y and slightly less tahini-y.  there is tinkering to be done.

wow.  pitiful.  i didn't realize that was all i had made out of the cookbook recently.  i bought stuff to make zucchini spelt muffins, but haven't gotten there yet.  and i intended to make cashew sour cream to go with the polenta, but i was lazy, and plus i didn't look at the recipe and you have to soak the cashews for kind of a long time.

when i start to crack and fall apart, i lose my appetite.  i also lose my energy, and so i fall back on easy recipes that are familiar and that i've made over and over and therefore require almost no thought or effort.  or i just have wine and chocolate for dinner, instead.

i did finish a collage today, and i did something significantly different.  well, it probably won't look significantly different to anybody but me, but by god - it seems significant!  maybe tomorrow there will be pictures of it....who knows!!

dear universe: please help me not to feel empty inside.  thanks, morgan.    

it may or may not be clear from my blogging, but these past few days my emotional state has varied wildly, and in the course of one day i can feel quite steady and normal, and also feel like i have fallen off the edge of reason and am thrashing around in total insanity.  so i think i'll talk about some slightly brighter things.

like the fact that it thrills me beyond belief when i get to redeem my punch card for a free coffee at portland brew.  the way it works is that you get a stamp every time you buy a coffee drink, and then after 10 stamps, you get a free one!  a free whatever you want!  you could order a 27 shot latte with every kind of syrup they make, and it would be free free free!  i haven't tried that, actually.  i just get a large soy latte instead of my usual plain ole coffee.  anyways, today was free latte day, and for just a minute, i felt really happy.

another thing that brings a little sparkle of happy into my current trance of despair is red wine.  ohhh red wine, i love you, and you love me, and i love that you love me, too.  what a beautiful relationship.  and dependable!  somehow when i'm drinking a glass of wine, everything feels slightly more romantic, and less horrible, and i also feel like a grown-up.  like by god, if i can go out and buy myself a glass of wine and sit and drink it, then i can fucking handle whatever life throws my way!  i actually don't think that the ability to buy myself a glass of wine has any correlation with my ability to cope with life's bullshit, but DRINKING the wine DOES make me feel more confident, at least for a minute.  actually, slightly longer than a minute, which is nice, because along with the confidence comes a little bit of clarity, and a little bit of hope, and an increased ability to just be where i am. a brief moment of relief from anxiety and desperation.

i finished reading the wind in the willows, and i'll devote a post to it when i have slightly greater capacity for being sensible.  i liked it a lot, though - needless to say.  now i'm reading a return to love, because i'm sort of desperate to read something that might shed light on what i'm feeling.  sooo...anna karenina will remain unfinished, for now.  OH, and i also started running with scissors, because i thought it would be good to read something funny for a change.  and though there are funny bits, and augusten burroughs is a tremendously funny and wonderful writer...it is still about some really fucked up, awful shit.  so.  not quite the funny i had hoped for...but naturally i love it anyways.  fucked up, awful shit is my favorite! 

my goal for right now: to tolerate ambivalence.  without letting it drive me totally insane.  to let all of my emotions be what they are, and let other people's emotions be what they are, and not try to make any of it make sense, because it DOESN'T.  and it WON'T.  tension. ambivalence. totally unavoidable.  and right now - that drives me crazy.  but i'm not allowed to have my glass of red wine until the sun goes down.  DAMN IT.