Here’s the fruit of my late night labors, a pumpkin streusel pie. We do Thanksgiving as a sort of potluck where everyone brings their speciality. There’s usually no less than 10 desserts, but my humble contribution still doesn’t stand a chance.
We’re hitting the road in approximately 31 minutes, so I have to scoot. Let the record show that I’m thankful.
Wow, interesting how much spam the title “Homeschooling Myself” attracted. That may have been a record.
This weekend, I went over to a friend’s house and four of us did a lot of canning. We made pickles, pickled eggs, and pickled beets. I haven’t tried the last two, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. In theory, I should love pickled eggs, at least. I love eggs and everything that went into them. I’m still scared, though! We also made some jam. We had to improvise, because we didn’t quite have enough berries. We rounded the fruit table out with some grapes. The jam appears to be a loose set, but that only makes it more versatile, right? It can be either jam or syrup this way.
Aren't they pretty?
I’m very glad I went. When I originally got the email, I almost declined, simply because I’m tending to be reclusive right now. Prying myself out of the house generally ends up to be a good idea, but when social settings are involved, I worry that I’ll make people uncomfortable if the subject gets too personal. But these friends have been very understanding and treating me like I’m still a normal person, not a contagious leper. They talk to me, and ask how I’m doing in a way that tells me I can talk if I need to, or not. Also, this type of adventure in kitchen science are my type of domesticity.
Trying new foods is always fun. I told the girls that I drew the line at pickled pigs’ feet, though. Those things smell rank. I am really a very finicky eater, so it took a long time for me to become adventurous. I used to be the kid who took Burger King into the Chinese restaurant because even the compromise food – tempura chicken – yicked me. Now in my wise old age, I’ve learned that the more new things I try, the more I discover I like. It’s easier to avoid the common food that disgusts me if there’s some alternative I can find.
Learning how to do something from scratch is something I put a high value on, too. Soap is next on my list of things to learn. Yes, often I’ll learn how to do something, and decide it’s too much trouble to do on my own. Tortillas are a good example of that. I have friends who swear tortillas are easy, but I’ll save myself the 6 hours of rise time and spend $1.50 at the store. No matter what, it’s still worth the learning. I mean, the apocalypse is right around the corner! Anyone with any brains knows the fate of the world is in the hands of the Mayan calendar, after all. And I’ll be the merchant who is able to provide paper, yogurt, crackers, body lotion, and scarves to the poor souls that survive.
Continuing to follow my tales of my addiction to caffeine, and my search for more palatable, inexpensive, and less sugary distribution systems, I finally come to the point. I’m trying to acquire the taste for coffee right now.
I’ve always glamorized coffee drinking in my mind. Older, wiser people I wanted to be like when I grew up drank it. It smelled so good, that the taste was a huge disappointment. I remember my first cup vividly. After I begged him to pour me a cup one time, my Peepaw poured me a cup of milk, put about a tablespoon of coffee in it, and handed me the sugar bowl. He told me to put “maybe 4 big ol’ spoons rite cheer” which I did. Heaping spoonfuls. (This is the same set of grandparents that let me add as much sugar to my cereal as I wanted. Including Raisin Bran! Yeah, they were cool.) I took a drink, and all I could taste was bitter, like a pecan pit. “Add more sugar, baby.” He finally stopped me at half the sugar bowl, and I gave the cup to my brother, who gladly slurped it down.
For many years, I never tried coffee again. Coffee flavored ice creams, coffee in pastries, any of it, made me gag. I figured I just took after Daddy, who hated the stuff too. Then, around the time he turned 40, he started drinking it too. I thought it was part of a midlife crisis, because around that time he also started wearing jeans that already had a washed finish and quit looking for non-buttoned down collars on all his dress shirts.
About a month ago, one of the game night regulars, let’s call him Vonapier, came early. I was sitting around, mopey and bummed, and he said, “I know what will cheer you up! I’ll be right back!”
He ran to the store and came back with two Starbucks frappucinos. These were the bottled kind, which were basically coffee, sugar, and cream. One was mocha, and the other vanilla. “I want you to start drinking coffee, T.”
I have no idea why, but I took it as a challenge. It was something to do, right? I have always liked the idea of being a connoisseur, and this was much cheaper than wine or cheese tasting classes. Plus, it kept me going in the mornings, when I’m inclined to go back to bed many days lately. Oh, but those frappucinos were gross, both flavors. But I tried to like them, and I ordered a coffee a couple of times when I needed a buzz in the mornings. I wasn’t sure what I was getting, though, and didn’t know how much sugar or cream to add to things at all. I’d drink maybe a quarter of the cup and then throw it out.
And then when Mom came up the next time, she stopped by a Starbuck’s and got a frozen frappucino. I ordered an iced green tea, which she made a weird face about and asked, “Isn’t that bitter?” After I laughed at her for drinking coffee and asking that question, she offered her drink up to try, and it was yummy! I’d overcome at least the aversion to the coffee taste! Woot!
I spent about a week making homemade frappes with instant coffee. But I knew I was making basically what amounted to a cheap milk slushy. So I broke down and bought a coffee maker and excitedly ground some of my very own Starbuck’s French Roast. Heck, I like dark chocolate, so I should like the bolder coffee, right?
Oh, wrong. So wrong! That crap tastes like ashes!!! I can find no redeeming value for this junk. It doesn’t even give the apartment that delicious coffee smell! Instead, it smells like I burnt some fudge.
I didn’t dive in with my normal research like I should have, that’s for certain. I now know that the darker roast means, well, duh, that they roast the beans longer. That translates to less coffee flavor and more smoke. No wonder that stuff gagged me out and set me back to square one. I’m cheap, though, so I’ve been trying to make do all week. I’ve read up on how to brew the best pot of coffee in a home pot. Brewing it right helped a lot, but it’s still insufferable. I was adding… oh, 4, 5 teaspoons of sugar, and who knows how much half and half, and sometimes cocoa powder. And I’m still holding my nose while drinking it. Luckily for me, all the research I’ve done tells me I’m only supposed to keep coffee about a week before it goes stale. So I have an excuse to try again.
Having done my reading, my next purchase is going to be the highly acclaimed Eight O’Clock 100% Colombian. It’s been very highly rated, and is cheap. The medium roast should allow me to taste the flavor of the beans and have that yummy smell I was expecting. I hope so, because I’m actually leaning on the freeze-dried instant coffee I bought to make those first frappes lately. And, sad to say, thanks to my need for caffeine, I’m starting to like the instant stuff. It only takes one packet of Truvia or spoon of sugar and a spoon of half and half to be palatable.
So, all of you coffee experts, help! Lay your best tips on me. I’ve got to do something, before all my efforts at becoming a coffee snob actually turn me into someone who only likes junk coffee.
When I went off to college, most of my friends thought drinking coffee was super cool. That wouldn’t have bothered me, but someone actually tried to pressure me with the sentence, “Everyone drinks coffee!” Peer pressure is a major turn-off for me, for some reason. Plus, it tastes disgusting, so I passed. My husband even had coffee maker that I mocked him for, until he quit trying to like coffee himself. Then I commandeered it to make Earl Grey and other forms of hot tea or herbal tisanes.
Game nights, which started around that same time, are the big consumption time of the week. Even if it’s been beans and rice all week, we manage to pig out most weekends. They have historically been alcohol free, though. The youngest of the group just now turned 21, and my husband is definitely Lawful in his alignment. Anyway, drinking doesn’t always make for the quickest thinking, and some of us are rather attached to our characters. My characters would get naked a whole lot more if I drank on game nights. Wooo! Not that they don’t have plenty of opportunities anyway, but it might get to a distracting level.
Anyway, our beverage choices for years consisted of copious amounts of water, sweet tea, Dr. Pepper, Coke, and whatever anti-freeze colored drink we could consume to keep ourselves from crashing. At some point, one of our more caffeinated friends started bringing energy drinks. This has met with some entertaining results and memorable quotes, such as, “But it’s Jared’s fault. He fed me strange caffeine!” and “I’m so energetic now, I bet I could beat Michael Jackson at basketball!!”
Uh, yeah dude. Bet you could. This was at least a year ago, by the way. It would be even more hilariously inappropriate now.
Anyway, it took a while for the boys to find an energy drink that was easy to come by and I would tolerate. I hate Red Bull and all the knockoffs. There were grand experiments. They tried agave flavored drinks since I do drink tequila on occasion. Bleah. Eventually, we discovered two that worked for me. The passion fruit flavor of Sobe’s Adrenaline Rush combined well with the caffeine bitter. A close second was NOS, which is also passion fruity.
In addition to game night, I began to drink one of those choices or a 5 hour energy paired with a Coke to get me through double shifts of never sitting and always smiling when I worked at the Village Tavern. Sarah pointed out in the comments yesterday that B vitamins can produce good results, too, so I should mention how much I really enjoyed the 5 Hour Energy. The niacin flush is part of it, but I’m sure I look like a beet. I’m the only redhead I know who gets the Asian flush after drinking half a drink. It’s a bit embarrassing, but there it is. I’m very sanguine. There is also a game around here wherein people get points for every time I blush. I often win that game without even seriously competing. I say the most wildly inappropriate things at times!
Also to respond to yesterday’s comments, Shadowhelm is exactly right, Mexican Coke made without corn syrup is delicious, yummy, scrumptious crackrock! I rarely can find it, but when I do, it’s delicious and wonderful and I bet it might even be nutritious! I could happily drink that every single day. Not exactly a cheap solution, but one that definitely holds a temptation. I will definitely seek it out the next time I’m in the Pig.
This is getting to be long. I’ve got to spend some time with the kids, so I’ll pick up again later. I’d never have guessed I had so much rambling in me on the subject of caffeine . Maybe the oral fixation really is more pronounced than I realized. And trust me, I was aware of it before… 
Sunday I chillaxed with some girls, watching Disney movies. We’ve all been running on empty, so one of my friends invited us over to just watch our favorite cartoons and veg. We were also supposed to discuss A Clockwork Orange, but strangely that didn’t exactly fit in with the rest of the day. I’ll try to make up for that by writing about it later on this week.
For my contribution I brought cookies. They’re from a super simple recipe from an old cookbook. I was (am) low on groceries, and didn’t really have enough white sugar or milk or all sorts of ingredients for most of my recipes, so I went off searching and found something that was brown sugar based and wouldn’t require a whole lot of improvising. The cookies were a hit, and the book is out of circulation now. It’s a shame to let something so simple and yet so yummy go to waste. Plus, I was asked for the recipe. Here you go!
From A Collection Of The Very Finest Recipes Ever Assembled Into One Cookbook, 1979:
Brown Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Directions
Note: A vanilla or caramel icing is good; or sprinkle brown sugar or coconut on top before baking.
Maybe you can already tell that they’re basically a cookie-biscuit hybrid. Yum! I didn’t have enough shortening or butter to complete the recipe, so I subbed butter for half the shortening. (I’ll get groceries soon, I promise!) The photo I’d planned is unavailable due to their nomminess, so I’ll describe them. I could have gone the cookie cutter route because the batter would have been perfect for that, but instead I made tablespoon sized balls that I flattened with a spoon and topped them with green sugar crystals. Visually, they were rather boring, being a dark beige color. They really would have benefited from nice contrasting icing or more colorful sprinkles.
What’s your favorite Disney movie? I’m not really sure what mine is, but I picked Sleeping Beauty. I particularly love the stylized look of that one, plus Maleficent is one of the best UBGs* ever! I’m glad that I picked that one, too, because we gravitated towards newer ones for the rest of the day. After skipping the television for a week, five movies was quite a pendulum swing. A full 24 hours later, my brain is still stuck singing Disney lyrics, especially Beauty and The Beast. Sometimes you just need a day to zone out and eat junk.
*Ultimate Bad Guy (aka Big Bad or Boss Monster)