I Facebook too much. Livejournal is boring, and I blather on way too long there. All my other blogs are lapsed and inactive. I am burned-out on blogging, I think, and yet, I am completely unable to keep my online mouth shut.
Oh yes! (e:strip)! I think of you all often, and then, don't come. I apologize for that.

So I will share a recipe here, to chase away the winter blues a little bit. It's not even awful for you!! Just old-fashioned. On LJ after considerable debate we decided that the woman in the recipe's title, Blanche, is my first cousin twice removed, since her mother Esther was the sister of Mabel, whose daughter Elizabeth was my mother Christina's mother. But then... I don't know why Blanche is called "Aunt" in the title, and was introduced to me that way. Except that my mother's folks weren't so big on extended kinship reckonings.

LOL I just hit "paste" and instead of the recipe, I had a really long excerpt from a novel I'm writing in there. Have you ever played that meme? Just, wherever you are, no cheating, just hit "paste" and see what comes out. Often it's hilariously out of context.

Anyway, the promised recipe.

Women of the Rotary Apple Cake, from Aunt Blanche 1955.
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking powder
Sift together, and rub together with 1 Tbsp butter.
Beat 1 egg well, and add to above.
Add 1 cup diced apples, and a few nuts. Spread in well-greased pie or cake tin, bake at 375 for 20 minutes.
Note: serve with whipped cream or ice cream, and can be mixed in pie plate so as not to dirty a mixing bowl.
(I made this last night just to fill up the oven, so it wouldn't be on just for one single side dish; I dirtied a fork, a pie plate, and a half-cup measure, because the knife and cutting board were already dirty from dinner prep so I only had to wash them once. It was pretty ace. I also used up some sad-looking bruised apples to make it, for bonus thrifty points. I'm sure you're supposed to peel the apples, but I didn't because I am lazy and because most of the nutrients are in the skins, and I assure you it was fine.)

Cannot stop watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" on Hulu.com. Just can't stop. Am up to Episode 8 or 9-- just watched the one where he opens with "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." His point being that we are all made of elements formed in the deaths of stars, which is fascinating to know. But the best part is that he immediately goes to cut the apple pie and serve it onto a plate, and it being a freshly-baked apple pie, it does what apple pies do: it crumbles into chunks and looks like absolute hell on the plate. Then he goes to cut the piece, not a wedge so much as a chunk, in half to illustrate his next point, and it's too chunky for the knife to go through and it cracks and crumbles and smushes into this big old mess. I found that immensely amusing, in this day and age of choreographed perfection on TV.
In an episode I watched yesterday (7, I think, which was about the problem of travel at near-light-speeds) he falls off his bicycle trying not to run into a horse and cart, to illustrate a point, but not with a whole lot of grace. I don't know why I enjoyed that so much.

What I really like about the show is that it is an extended lecture on basically a single topic: he diverges widely, and makes a number of tangential points, but he is pursuing a single thesis, and the well-written script follows the digressions with a purpose toward wrapping up said thesis. They are essays, these lectures, and it is wonderful to be so entertained and enraptured whilst following a complex and yet well-illuminated topic. Part of another episode (6?) is actually filmed excerpts of a lecture that he delivered to a classroom of sixth-graders. Fascinating, yet not condescending.

But, above all, Carl Sagan looks and sounds a lot like Kermit the Frog, and it's very soothing.

I asked Z, who is cross-stitching again, to make me a piece featuring Kermit in a Carl Sagan wig (and beige corduroy blazer) posed in front of a starscape, with the subtitle below of "billions and billions". I think that would be the sweetest thing ever. I am going to have to make it myself, though, because Z does not understand how unutterably sweet this would be.
Instead he is working on a piece about the Oregon Trail video game. Which is also sweet, but not *as* sweet.

I am sitting on the couch with a beer and an ice pack and a bag of Cheez-Its, which sounds relaxing, but it isn't. It isn't relaxing because I have an enormous goose-egg of a bruise on my left shin, a friction burn through tights caused by my shin's abrupt contact with a swiftly-rolling skate wheel. It is a perfect little crescendo of pain, stinging and hurting and even tingling slightly; I have tried to numb it with the ice pack but that is only making it unsettlingly unpleasant.

The things I suffer for derby. At least (e:Zobar) got me this beer before he went to bed. But I am in a lot of pain, and know I cannot really move around on my feet until this subsides a bit, so I am distressed because I just remembered it's garbage night and our shit really needs to go to the curb and the truck will be by first, first, first thing tomorrow morning, and I can't do it right now, I just can't.

It was really excruciating when it happened. I had just executed a well-timed block, holding and pushing the opposing jammer to the outside line, but there were no refs to call it, and she broke free and escaped before my pack could come help me. I teetered off-balance for a second, and then an opposing skater from the oncoming pack smacked into my upper body and knocked me over and I don't know whose wheel burned me, but it hurt real bad. The jam was whistled, coincidentally, to a stop, and I sat on the floor literally bouncing up and down because it hurt too bad to sit still. I tried to get up and couldn't, and someone asked if I was OK, and I bounced a bit and said "It's a bruise" in way too high a voice, and I got up and sat down and got up and skated a lap and it hurt hurt hurt.

So it really hurts now, and is enormously swollen and discolored. I can put weight on the leg, though, so the bone's not compromised.

This is how I suffer for the sport I love. And I have to remember that i love it, and I do love it.
I am skating in the next bout, which is on January 23rd, and I think everyone should come and see me. Thinking of how much fun I am going to have on that night is getting me through at the moment. Because it hurts too much for me to drink my beer. And that's a tragic waste.

Remember that post aeons ago wherein I sent a photo of this vintage bar manual I got from my Gram? And we were all like, ooh, we should have Vintage Cocktail Night? And I was like... oh, everything in this book is awful?

We're drinking a recipe now, which isn't horrible. That's the best endorsement I can currently give it. (After two or three more I may change my tune.) It's called the Queen Ellizabeth.
The current debate is whether it's named for number 1, or number 2. (#1 reigned until 1607; #2 is currently reigning and is on the Canadian money, remember her?)
The book was initially published in 1934. So, there's that. I know QEII was born by then, but would she have been well-known enough to have a drink named for her? She certainly wasn't crowned yet, and thus wouldn't have been Queen yet, but...
Anyway.

The drink recipe has no actual units given, just proportions, which is fine. Except I don't know what a dash is unless it's salt. How to add a "dash" of absinthe is beyond me. I rinsed the glasses with it and then dumped it into the shaker, that's how I measured a "dash". Then I added a little more, because I like absinthe.

1 dash absinthe
1/4 Cointreau
1/4 lemon juice
1/2 gin
Stir well over ice; strain to serve.

It's not bad.

New Year's Eve, for us, is usually about exotic drinks. It's (e:zobar)'s birthday, so he gets to decide what we do. If he wants to stay in and watch Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, we do. If he wants to go to an (e:strip) party, we do. If he wants to go to a slumber party at his buddy's house, we do. If he wants to go for a hike around Goat Island at midnight in the rain, we do. So I'm not sure yet what we'll do, but I'm up for whatever he wants, because he always does whatever I want on my birthday. Also he's thirty today so that only happens once and that's awesome, and all.