Teen Witch

I was such a good goth in my teens. I guess I still can be. And I’ve got headshots to prove it. I wear mostly black, am pale as can be, and still listen to Skinny Puppy.

But I also occasionally sport some pink(crazy!) and will admit my ipod has a song or two by Justin Timberlake. Although Nine Inch Nails still occupies more bytes than any other group. Even Siouxie and the Banshees. Even The Cure. No really, I swear I’m over it. Let me just go blow out those black candles.

I did the requisite dabbling in Wicca that was befitting of my teenaged goth splendor. But now, I’m no witch. I appreciate the exultation of nature that is part of Wicca, but could never quite get behind the whole god/goddess thing. Although my friend Meow and I had some splendid nighttime rituals using the bench in the park as our altar. I’m surprised the cops never came to break up our candlelit honoring of the four elements. Hmm.

All this is to say I own The Wicca Cookbook. An old therapist of mine gave it to me. Don’t ask. She also gave me really cool dragon stockings.

The Wicca Cookbook is divided into chapters by the sabbats, or Wiccan holidays. Each recipe has some sort of explanation of a part of the holiday and how the food relates to it, often with a little chant or, um, spell to go with it.
I was flipping through the fall equinox chapter since that just happened last Saturday. I wanted to celebrate that from now on until December the night is getting longer. I prefer night. No really, I swear I’m not goth. Let me just finish this glass of blood and we can chat about it.

Oh, the recipe.

I realized I had everything I needed for the Enchanted Grape Salad. The Wicca Cookbook never quite explained the enchanted part but talked about fall and harvest of grapes and gave this last bit of advice before the recipe:

“Offer the grapes in this salad to the Great Goddess and, if possible, party in a vineyard with passion and abandon”.

I’ll take some passion and abandon. And some grapes.

Enchanting Grape Salad from The Wicca Cookbook by Jamie Wood and Tara Seefeldt
1 cup of greens(I used spinach)
1 cup chopped green apple
1 1/2 cups grapes
1/2 cup crumbled feta
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar(good balsamic)
Toss it up. Exult. Enchant. Ellen-ify. I have no idea what that means. Blow out your candles before you leave the house.

Fit for a princess

I act because I like to be other people for just a little. Or at least get inside their heads. This Saturday I’ll have the terrifically taxing role of a playing a woman at my own birthday party and…she’s into being gluten-free. That part will be quite the stretch for me.
When I was little, my first acting was probably in the make-believe games I’d play. I liked to play royalty. We’ll get back to that.

So I needed to use that citron vodka from all my Cosmos
.
That and this sounded like it could be a manly girl drink, not in name but in hard alcohol ingredients. I do love a good man-girl drink, like the mo-ellen. Oh did I just mention that?
Really guys, I am going to keep trying to get attention for the Mo-Ellen until I see it on a bar menu.

The name of this drink, “Little Princess” I don’t love. I am not a princess.
I’m a queen, always have been.

Back to playing make-believe.

My friend Anne and I used to play with my mom’s dusters when we were quite young. Imaginative sorts that we were we used them like scepters and pretended we were royalty.
Me mum had two dusters, a slightly raggedy feather one and a poofy wool one dyed in orange hues, if memory is not totally failing me.
Now naturally we both wanted the pretty colorful one. Why?
That was the feather queen’s scepter. Total duh!

But I was such a brat. I always insisted on having that one and being feather queen and Anne got the tattered one and was merely the feather princess.

I am surprised we are still friends. Fortunately I got a wee bit more giving as the years wore on.

For instance, years after she moved away she came to visit one summer, and I shared my gothic splendor with her. We were about 15. She had white-blonde hair when she arrived and I put her back on the plane with jet-black hair.

I’m surprised her parents let her still be my friend.

Enough. Here is the drink. It’s tasty, maybe even better than a straight up vodka martini, but the name blows. I’m gonna go chill out with a duster now. On my couch(I.e. throne).

Little Princess from The Bartender’s Companion

1/8 oz. dry vermouth
1 3/4 oz. citron vodka
Lemon twist
Stir it up and garnish with the twist.
Please don’t wear a tiara.

Not a winner but lost nothing

I entered the kcrw(Los Angeles’ NPR station) pie contest. With my pie. The pie.

There were 285 entries this year and I think most were in the fruit pie category. Next year maybe I’ll enter the art-based category.

Everyone made one pie for the public, whom we served ourselves, and one for the judges.

I got to taste the fare of the people I was serving next to: a caramelized onion and Roquefort tart(need that recipe), a cherry pie with a chocolate crust(adore the concept but the crust was sort of like mediocre chocolate cake, not crust, a sweet and sour cherry pie(solid), and a shoo-fly pie that was not like the types I’d seen recipes for. It seemed more like a pecan pie without pecans but better texture. I’m getting her recipe. I’ll blog that shit up, yo.

I met Joy the Baker! She was one of the judges. Super nice, super humble that Joy.

But I did not win. I am not sure how the judges narrowed down the hundreds of pies but they did and I was not one of the chosen ones, which is too bad because I always have said I make the best pie.

After it all, when we contestants went to collect the pies we’d sent to the judges, we tasted more of each other’s wares but by that time I’d been in the sun and heat for two hours, and eaten nothing but sugar and coffee and nothing I tasted stood out. And I just was feeling loser-ish.

But.

At the end of the day. I
got home, tired and sweaty and started eating the remains of my pie and had a revelation:
Hot DAMN. I make amazing pie.

Possibly the best.

Balls. Too late.

Gosh durnit to heck. I made this for a party weeks ago. And put off posting it. Then suddenly everyone has been posting balls and non-cook things and I feel like I am just hopping on the bandwagon. Like when I spent a year waffling things then a couple weeks before my waffle week waffles were everywhere. Fortunately I had this pumpkin waffle entry written way back when I conceived the idea to prove I did it first. I mean good golly, I admit it when I decide to be a joiner.

Does it matter? What matters is that I made balls and they were tasty so screw it. Here they are. And the entry I wrote ages back when I made these:

Averie loved veggies and yoga. Then she decided she liked dessert more.

Smart woman. Whilst still writing under blog title Loves Veggies and Yoga, she crafted these lovely balls.

I had festivities to contribute to that only had one gluten-free attendee but seeing as she was also host, I thought I better cook in that vein. Vane? Vain? Dictionary.com time…vein.

Too hot to cook. Note made now: it is still too hot to cook, doggonit!
So I scrapped any notion of baking the chocolate bars I had made to woo my Midsummer cast and made the dough balls instead, using brown rice flour instead of regular. And they were good. So there. I’ve got balls too.

Go try em here and say hi to Avery for me.