First of all, I'm not dead! I can't even say I've been busy, so I'll blame the one-year hiatus from my blog on ADD. My latest cooking project has been in preparation for Halloween: an edible graveyard made of brownies, marshmallow ghosts, cookie gravestones and spun-sugar spiderwebs. I hope it all turns out, I did the marshmallows already and I'll put the rest of it together before work on Monday. I've been on a candy-making kick lately: so far I've made two kinds of fudge, fleur de sel caramels, nougat, and marshmallows. These have all been fun to do and not terribly difficult with a little patience and an abundance of sugar. I even have some stockpiled for Christmas. I asked my chef how well these sorts of things keep in the freezer, he said they're fine for a good six months. He's right, too. I defrosted a few of my first batch of marshmallows just to see how well they held up. I couldn't tell the difference between those and the new batch. Whenever the whole thing gets done I'll take pictures. It's really been a cool project. Not many people make their own candy anymore. Another project of mine that harks back to the days of yore is canning. This past summer I canned enough blueberries and brandied peaches to see us through the zombie apocalypse!
At the end of September, I moved in with Ethan. We've been cohabitating for a month now and it's going well. It's nice to have someone else to think of. Living solo one tends to put up with a lot more disarray. With another person in the house, I try to keep a higher standard of order. It's so nice to have someone to come home to. I remember a few weeks ago, I'd had a rotten shift at work, culminating in me dropping a whole gallon of blue cheese dressing all over the floor. It had been rough up until then, this just upped the ante. I texted Ethan "Having a rough night. Stick in Triangle when I get home?" he wrote back "Sure, we'll watch it after the game." When I got home that night, after a Packers victory (and discovering he'd washed the dishes,
he washed the dishes!) we snuggled up on the couch even though I was still probably filthy from work, and stuck in the most cuddle-worthy episode of the X-Files there is. Needless to say, I felt a whole lot better. One other cool part about moving in is getting to meet Ethan's friends. They seem like a good bunch, I'm glad he's had people like that in his life that he's stayed in touch with. They strike me as the type that I could get along with, too. What would really be fun is to have them all over for dinner sometime, I bet they have some good stories!
On that subject, I've been writing more fanfiction lately, and have done the math and am faced with the fact that I've been doing this for ten years. It doesn't seem like that long, but I still enjoy it, it's a huge stress-reliever and it gives my mind a place to wander to. Anyone brave enough can find it on http://www.fanfiction.net/~doec Yes, I'm a geek, it's on my profile and everything ;-) I remember writing one scene in a restaurant, putting about as much detail into the restaurant itself as the rest of the story for that scene. That was fun, it made me realize how easy it is to blend worlds. I had a dream once a long time ago that told me "Food transcends worlds, that's why you can get into so many of them." It made sense in the dream anyway.
And it's 2am and I should be in bed. Good night, and I hope there are still readers out there!
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