If I may say so myself

I make awesome food. I'm eating my second piece of a Kuchen I just made with fresh blueberries, cherries and raspberries. The decision to make one just came out of nowhere. I was sitting at my computer an hour and a half ago and decided I wanted a to make a Kuchen while blasting Wotan's Farewell out my laptop's speakers, so I did and the Kuchen is awesome.

Wagner approves. I'm sorry, were you expecting a picture of a Kuchen? Too bad. Wagner's creepy over-the-top-happy death mask it is.

Mind you, as thrilling as spontaneous Wagner baking sounds, this is nowhere near my best baking story. My best one happened in second year, back when I was slowly losing my sanity in a basement unit of a triplex. I was making some cookies and I had just put the first batch in the oven and was getting another one ready. As this was happening, my roommate walked by the kitchen and deeply inhaled while simultaneously performing a brief first arabesque.

I'm not a ballerina. At least, I haven't been since I was ten and I quit before having the pleasure of wearing pointe shoes.

What a beautiful story. It starts with baking cookies underground and ends in ballet. Now, here's the punchline - a second before my roommate walked by the kitchen, I farted. My roommate didn't make any indications that something was amiss, so as far as I'm aware, she didn't notice. Either way, this is both my best baking story and my best fart story.

Now that you're one step closer to achieving Nirvana, goodnight.

Come see how pretty I look!

I finally got around to making a real layout/I played around with the templates and came up with something I like. I took the background picture myself. It's some foxgloves at Stanley Park in Vancouver (just in case someone thought I meant the Stanley Park in Kitchener). I would love a fancier camera than the one I have, but it's just not in the cards. That being said, the quality can only be so good when the maximum file size for backgrounds is 300 kilobytes. Still, it looks freaking awesome.

I'm getting closer to being able to make a decent loaf of bread. I found a different recipe and made modifications so that it wouldn't be too sweet or too dry. It tastes alright, but I can never seem to slash it correctly. It always ends up torn by the oven spring on one side with pretty slash marks on the top. I'm wondering if the water I'm brushing on them isn't cold enough or if the slashes are too short. Maybe I should actually take a trip to Home Depot and get a pack of razor blades (and cheesecloth while I'm at it) because my kitchen knives, while very sharp, are still not sharp enough for the task. Maybe the flour I'm using sucks, or I get too tired to knead in enough flour (although that's not the worst thing because too little flour is always better than too much). Maybe it's all of those factors. Trial and error, dammit.

I really miss waking up in the morning, doing something productive during the day, coming home in the evening and sleeping at night. I never thought I would. There is nothing worth doing after 11 pm aside from this job, which, although part time, is wearing me out. I hear friends of mine in other jobs and even coworkers who don't work in the kitchen complain of boredom. What a luxury it must be to complain of boredom and get paid for it! I'll take that over nine hours without even standing still for a second and waking up with legs and feet so sore I can barely balance on them. I am so ready to be done with that for good but I can't afford it yet.

It's late. Gross.

Over the last few days...

I've been meaning to post more. I've been going back and forth between Waterloo and Whitby over the last week and a bit and I just haven't got around to it. I will predictably start with the garden.

The tea plant came in the day after I made my last post. All five seeds are planted and hopefully they will all have germinated by September. Apparently, it takes at least a month and I have to keep them moist. Not having to pay for tea in three years will be amazing. Speaking of tea, I forgot to take some oolong from home before I left...

I now have more strawberry fruits, blossoms and buds than I care to count. I won't even bother counting the tomatoes. The chamomile is also blooming like crazy and I have enough fresh herbs to last a while. The sunflowers are getting big, but the marigolds don't seem to want to germinate - apparently, putting plastic wrap over the pot will prevent the soil from drying out too much as long as you remove it once they sprout. Perhaps I'll try that.

As for other things, take a guess as to what this is.

If you guessed a blueberry and cherry Kuchen, you're right! I made one last night. Here is a picture of it from farther away. It looks much more appealing from that distance.

I didn't get a picture of it before it ended up half-eaten because it looked and smelled so damn good. Tasted just as good, too. I got the recipe from this book here:

Isn't that cover ridiculous? Closeup on the photo of the authors:

Oh my. Now, this picture was taken from my camera phone, so it doesn't quite capture how ridiculous this is. But seriously, look at that hair! Look at that shirt! (Or pillowcase?) Look at those necklaces! I can't even identify the era this book was written by their clothes. I just can't bring myself to believe that was ever in style. I can imagine those ladies looking at it all these years later and saying, "What were we thinking?" Perhaps they still dress that way. That is scary to think about.

My curiosity got the better of me and I looked them up on Google images. They don't. Existential crisis averted.

Just before I left to go back to Waterloo, there was one small piece left. I had three pieces myself. I brought back with me my mom's like-new pastry cutter that she used just once when I was a baby (if I was even born then). The next thing I use it for will be buttermilk biscuits, which I will have with my breakfast over the next few days.

If you have not yet figured it out, I like baking and making fun of out-of-style outfits on cookbook covers. I'm pretty good at both.

And that's it for tonight. I am tired.

The next day...

Is it just me or has Toronto been a trainwreck in the last few days? I'm glad I haven't been there for either of them. As a side note, I had a dream I lived in an apartment that was attached to the Eaton Center the other night.

As I type, some homemade ginger muffins are in the oven. They smell divine and I can't wait to eat one.

Anyway, I picked up my free box of John Frieda Precision Foam Hair Colour in medium golden blonde at Shoppers. It that was the lightest blonde they had. It turned out to be a coppery colour in the end, but I actually like it. My hair is really thick and strong and always takes longer to colour than it says on the box, which may be the reason it turned out darker than I expected. The box said 20 minutes, but I had it in for almost an hour. I probably could have kept it in longer, but I was worried about overprocessing it.

No exciting updates today on the garden front, but if I feel like it and have time before work, I might just post some pictures of it. I'm pretty proud of it so far.

There is a walking path near my apartment that I like to take whenever I can, and I did on the way home from picking up the box. It is covered by trees and has a lot of wild rhubarb. When it matures I'll pick some and make a pie. There are lots of trilliums, but the flowers were already wilted when I discovered them - kind of abates the barely existing temptation of being all badass and picking one.

Anyone curious about how I came across my free samples that I mentioned yesterday, I found them with the help of a site called Munchkin Sandwich. Click on your country in the sidebar and knock yourself out. I expect this to be a means of cutting down on my living expenses, which is important when you're a dirt poor university student like myself.

My muffin was delicious, by the way. Who needs coherency when you have a good muffin?

Anyway, it is quite late and I really need to try to go to bed earlier than, say, an hour and a half from now - not so easy to do when you sometimes work this late. But since that will be delayed by the fact that I now have a cat on my lap, I might as well write a bit more before heading off. My apologies if it is dreadfully boring, but nothing exciting has really happened in my life recently.

I'm in the midst of finding a second/replacement job. My only complaints about my current job are that I don't get enough hours and the late nights are really doing me in. There will be a new Walmart going in at a nearby plaza in the next few weeks, and I'm hopeful that I will get in there.

And now that the cat is finished with laying down on my lap, I can get to bed. Goodnight, world! Catch you later.