"Carry a Poem in Your Pocket" Day

Today is "Carry a Poem in Your Pocket" day. A very, very long time ago, I gave my first love a poem to carry in his pocket.

Parting   By Emily Dickinson My Life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

Biscuits

My dad is an expert biscuit maker, and we had them frequently when I was growing up. Later next month I'm going to see him, and will get the REAL recipe! But until then, this will have to do! The key thing is to handle the dough as little as possible to make a tender biscuit with the maximum rise. Using the food processor to do the mixing of the flour and butter seems to avoid activating the gluten in the flour. And that's a very good thing when you are making biscuits!

Biscuits

Makes 10

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the board
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, very cold
3/4 cup buttermilk

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Put the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times until the are well combined.
3.Cut the butter into several pieces -- say 12 -- and add them to the flour mixture. Process until the flour resembles coarse meal and the butter is completely mixed in.
4.Pour the flour mixture into a bowl, and add the buttermilk. Stir with a fork, and the dough will come together.
5.Turn the dough out to a floured counter, and, handling the dough as little as possible, knead it a few times until the buttermilk is totally incorporated.
6.Gently pat the dough into a round about 1/2" thick.
7.Using a biscuit cutter, cut the biscuits. Take care not to twist the cutter when you are cutting the biscuits as doing so will inhibit the biscuits from rising.
8.Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Why I Love Steampunk

Steampunk, a design style that based on how Victorians would have visualized the technology we have today, is one of my most favorite design styles. It is all about brass fittings, glass, gears, and  articulated arms.  And it has been, since I was a little kid! One of my earliest favorite toys was "Mr Machine." I got one for Christmas when I was about 5 years old. When you wound it up, you could see all the gears moving as it moved across the floor. I loved it! It also came with a little wrench, so I took him all apart. Of course, it was beyond my ability to put him back together. So Mr Machine went into a paper sack, and then, without my knowing, my mother threw him away! Tragedy!

My family was kind of Steampunk, as well. For example, we had lots of strange machinery. My father was an engineer, and he could make anything, if he had enough parts. So we had an old Teletype machine, and in the early 1980's, dad turned it into a printer for the microcomputer that he built. Dad used to say about the Teletype machine, "It looks bad, it sounds bad, and it smells bad." We also had an old organ (that was in Eastlake style) that he had connected to an old Electrolux vacuum), so that it was a pipe organ. The vacuum clearner was kind of loud, but the organ was louder!

My father also had a large collection of antique telegraph keys. Recently he started to slim down his belongings, and he sent me one of them. It is really a beautiful thing. So you can see, there was no chance that I was going to escape a love for Steampunk style.

As I grew up, I developed a love for Thomas Mann jewelery. Thomas Mann is a designer from New Orleans, and he describes his style as "techno-romantic." It is all gears and brass and rivits. Here's a sample of his work from his website.

I also love skeleton watches. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with watches, mostly because they seem to break on me all the time. I can't keep one running. Now I only wear one when I am traveling and need to check what time it is so I know when the torture (flying) will stop or when I need to get to the gate or if I have time to go to the bathroom (again!). Unfortunately, they don't seem to make skeleton watches for women.

Anyway, all these diverse loves and attractions have made me a sucker for all things steam punk!

Kickstarter Project: The Manual

I love Kickstarter, a site for crowdfunding creative projects. Here's a project I have recently supported: The Manual. According to The Manual's creators, "The Manual is a new, beautifully crafted journal that takes a fresh look, in print, at design on the web. Published three times a year—with the first due this summer—each issue will have six substantial, beautifully illustrated feature articles, along with several additional pages of rich material."

Take a look at their video, and checkout Kickstarter.

When Civilization Collapses, Brunch Will Be At My House

We are having quite the week. J flew south to help out with the grandchildren when her son had to have a minor surgical procedure. Upon arriving, she became very sick with the cold and inner ear infection from hell. I have spent the last couple of days pacing around trying to figure out how to get down there to be with her -- a totally fruitless endeavor because all it would accomplish is probably getting me sick.

So it was a big surprise for me to see in my inbox a question about Book Club. At my house. In three hours.

Lucky for me, the house was clean. And I had some ginger cookies that I had made the day before. A quick scan of the Internet turned up a recipe for brownies, a few tweaks, and we were in business.

I am so glad that I can cook things from scratch. The brownie recipe is actually only marginally harder to make than opening a box. You have to measure the ingredients, but other than that, it is the same as a mix. And I know what is in there. No mystery. I keep sugar, flour, baking power, cocoa in the house, so when I have an overwhelming desire for something chocolate, I can whip something up.

Here's the recipe. Give them a whirl and enjoy the feeling of being all pioneer womanish!

Brownies

 Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chopped pecans 

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x9 inch baking pan. 

In a medium bowl, mix together the butter, eggs, and vanilla.  

Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, and salt; gradually stir into the egg mixture until well blended. Stir in pecans, if desired. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan. 

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Let them cool, then cut into squares.

Francesca Woodman

Yesterday I learned about the work of an incredible artist photographer, Francesca Woodman. You can see her work here. It is incredible to me that she only lived to be 22.

To me, what separates art from what is not art is that art makes you feel what the artist is feeling. Francesca Woodman's work surely does that. You can feel the torturous quality of her life.

Who else do I know nothing of?

Here's a link to a book about her work.

Cold Snowy February Day

J and I went out shooting on Saturday. We have been having such a snowy cold winter. I don't remember one like it in the twenty five years I have lived here.



I got a new lens for Christmas, and I was all hot to use it. So we went to the Rochester pier at Charlotte, and shot these pictures. It didn't take very long for us to be chilled right to the bone. So even though a couple of guys came by and told us that there was an eagle at the end on the pier, we couldn't force ourselves out to see it.


And of course the wide angle lens that I had was not the right one to use for the eagle, but climbing over the snow bank to get back to the car to change the lens, with my fingers all stupid from the cold, well, it just wasn't going to happen.



I'm counting the days until spring. I can't wait for my new bulbs to come up. And for some temperatures above 20 degrees.