Category: life

Resolutions: Eat More Daim Cookies

Almond toffee cookies with a lick of chocolate.

As I write this, it’s December 13th, the day after the glorious last full moon of the decade (1990 was THIRTY YEARS AGO), and I am listening to a potent combination of rain, sleet, and drizzly snow hitting the new skylight on my new roof that, up until two weeks ago, had developed a leak.

There is a spice cake in the oven for Sarah, owner of Yoga Tree Baltimore, and I am not quite sure what to do with myself while I wait for the cake to cool. I have been thinking about the year that is coming to an end, and it’s taking up a lot of mental space (as you can tell by this sentence, which is less than stellar, if I am being honest. Which I always try to be.).

I have been, as is my wont and millions of others’s, too, as the clock winds down the calendar, reflective. I am not one of the people who shun resolutions, but I don’t also have a lot of faith in them either. Case in point: last year’s (2019) New Year’s resolutions. Other than using my time more effectively and exploring Baltimore a little more (very little more, as it turns out), I accomplished exactly zero of these resolutions.

In fact, 2019 was precisely nothing like I thought it would be. The summer was chaotic and sad, money was tight, a good friend died, and my house started falling apart (a lintel fell off, then the roof leaked).

In 2019, between housing issues and taxes, I spent $30,000 on unexpected expenses. Which is enough to make it impossible to travel or go on retreat or any of the things I had planned.

On the other hand, I published two poems and was accepted into my first juried art show (won second place!), and I am going on retreat to The Woods with Writers & Words and Ink Press Productions in January. I submitted a ton of work, got some good acceptances (and some terrible rejections), but also constructive, positive feedback on a few of my pieces.

Khristian and I built a camping platform on our land in Canada, and we have found an ally in one of the other homeowners there, kindred Canadian spirits who I met accidentally on a walk and am so glad that I did.

I am not here to tell you how to set resolutions or change your life. I am no expert, no self-help guru, and I would not presume to tell you how to live your life. I have had years when things went closely to plan, and others when nothing I planned worked out but other things rushed in to fill the void. Turns out, sometimes when a plan goes awry, it makes space for new discoveries and serendipitous occurrences.

These cookies, or the name at least, is one of those. They are your standard lace cookie, and I made them one night when I needed something sweet but was too lazy to hit the store and the cupboards were mostly bare. So I whipped these up in 30 minutes and had to remove myself physically so as not to eat them all.

Sicily tried them, and said, “Oh, these are Daim cookies.”

You may or may not be a visitor to IKEA, but they have these candies in their shop, Daim, that are bits of toffee covered in chocolate. We used to buy them all the time until they changed the recipe and they tasted off so we stopped.

These cookies taste exactly like the original Daim, a happy accident that nevertheless takes me exactly where I want to go when I want a delicious sweet thing with a bare minimum of ingredients and effort.

Enjoy.

Daim Cookies

(makes between 18 and 24 cookies)

Ingredients

1 stick butter

2/3 cup lightly packed brown sugar

3/4 cup almond flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

optional: 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add sugar, flour, salt, and corn syrup, cooking and whisking constantly until sugar has dissolved and ingredients are combined. Turn off heat and whisk in vanilla extract. This may make the mixture appear grainy, but that’s ok.

Let mixture rest ten minutes (it will become thicker as it cools down). Preheat oven to 350°F.

Line baking sheets with parchment (I used three baking sheets). You could also use silicone baking sheets.

Spoon teaspoons of mixture onto sheets (leave 3” on all sides) Bake for six to eight minutes until golden brown around the edges. Cookies are done when they are no longer bubbling.

Do not walk away. Burning happens very quickly. #askmehowIknow

Allow cookies to cool for five minutes on the baking sheets. If you don’t have more to bake, you can leave them to cool on the baking sheet, or you can transfer to a wire rack.

You can eat these as they are, or you can melt chocolate chips in a saucepan and either paint to bottoms of the cookies with a thin coat of chocolate, drizzle it over top, or sandwich two cookies together (use a little more chocolate for this than if you were just painting a single layer).

Cover and keep on the counter for three days or in the ‘fridge for up to a week.

31 Day Social Media Fast: Day 11

In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.

“Because in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things…joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our live and the lives of everyone and everything we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.”

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights

31 Day Social Media Fast: Day 6

In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.

As seen in Woodberry at a green light (with no one behind me).

Today I start out with grant writing for City Ranch. This is the second grant I have written for them – still waiting to hear about the first one, sometime in April. If I get these two grants I will consider my year as successful. That will be $30,000 raised for this organization, which is so deserving and does such good things in Baltimore City.

Side note: If you want to support City Ranch, they are having a fundraising event on March 23rd. I will be in Canada, so if you go or donate, that would be awesome. This year I was going to fundraise on The Facebook for my birthday (last year for my birthday, friends donated $700+ and I matched it for Everytown For Gun Safety. This is, thus far, the only solid reason to break my fast, but I’m still not doing it.).

After the grant writing and the dropping off of The Child at work, I pick up another potential client and then go see a house that is…interesting.

More on that later, perhaps. Or perhaps not.

That is all. Except for this quote by Albert Camus from yoga last night:

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

Clear and cold but sunny. Nearly spring. Still pushing back.

31 Day Social Media Fast: Day 4

In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.

There is no caption to adequately describe this. Please just watch.

Today’s post is not a happy one, brought to you as it is by the horrific history of American slavery and the manner in which we continue to perpetuate racism in this country.

In addition to reading The Book of Delights, I have been reading White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard To Talk To White People About Race.

Spoiler alert: If you are a white friend of mine, you may be getting one or both of these in the mail in the near future. I know reading actual books is unfashionable, and if you get the latter book you might feel defensive or insulted. It will be ok. Please read it anyway.

In one of this morning’s essays, Ross Gay talks about the genesis of the phrase “hole in the head,” and then tells the story of Vertus Hardiman, a man who, at age five, was experimented on with radiation.

Because here in the U.S., we experiment on black children. We enslave whole generations of people, break up their families, and blame them for the racist structure of the country.

We experiment on black children. I cannot put into words the grief I feel over this.

And then there is this:

Sorrow Is Not My Name
By Ross Gay
—after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.

If you share nothing else that I write, if you comment on nothing or barely pass by the words that I put down, if you cannot even be bothered to click the little “thumbs up” on your Facebook page, please share this post. I don’t care on what channels you share it, I don’t care what caption you place on it or if you are horrified and disgusted that I would post this and want to write about how awful I am.

Good. Share it anyway.

Death Of Light: Green Tomatoes, Two Ways

Chow-chow, nearly done.

Things fall apart in the fall. It is the season of death and decay and the gradual fading of the light (fall back on Saturday, November 3rd. Take the country back Tuesday, November 6th).

It is also a time of powerful transformation and intention setting and a season of acceptance that comes after grief in the face of extraordinary change.

This is clearly reflected in nature. Leaves litter the sidewalks and the grass wears a morning tiara of sparkling frost that melts away with the rising sun.

In the garden, overgrown green turns spindly and the last vestiges of fruit struggle to hang on the vine. This is the last call for the summer garden – last call to bring in any kind of harvest before the sun barely crests the horizon and night falls before dinnertime.

Green tomatoes are a unique by-product of the scraggly fall garden. Tart and bright, they are everything you need when the light dims.

Here, two recipes: Green Tomato Chow-Chow and Roasted Green Tomato Soup. The former a staple in the south, the latter a bright ray of sunshine in a darkening fall kitchen. If these don’t do it for you, give last year’s ode to fall a whirl. You can’t go wrong with any of these.

Green Tomato Chow-Chow

Use this uniquely southern condiment on greens, black-eyed peas, pork chops, chicken, BBQ sandwiches, and in salad dressing (or stir it into the soup that follows). Add finely chopped white cabbage if you like. This recipe scales up easily and can be canned for winter time. This particular recipe makes one pint.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups chopped green tomatoes

1 or 2 Thai chilis, diced

1/4 cup diced onion (about 1/4 a large-ish onion)

1/4 cup diced celery (1 stalk, give or take)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon mustard seed

1/8 teaspoon turmeric

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

5 or 6 black peppercorns

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup drained tomato juice

Optional: 1/4 teaspoon fennel and/or coriander seed

Method

Dice the green tomatoes, Thai chili, onion, and celery. Place in a glass bowl and add salt. Stir, then cover with plastic wrap and let sit, at least four hours but preferably overnight.

Place a mesh sieve over a bowl and strain the vegetables, reserving the liquid. Pack vegetables in a pint jar. Measure spices and place on top of the vegetables.

Heat sugar, vinegar, and a 1/4 cup of the reserved tomato liquid in a heavy saucepan until sugar dissolves. Let cool slightly, then pour over vegetables. Let cool to room temperature on the counter, then refrigerate. Only gets better as it sits, but unless you preserve it, eat in a month or less.

Roasted Green Tomato Soup

This soup is quite accidental and made from the bits and bobs of my CSA, herbs grown on my porch, and stock made from vegetable peelings from the summer. This particular batch of stock featured corn cobs and fresh fennel, both delicate, subtle flavors that actually manage to lift the soup to a whole other level. Roasting the tomatoes and caramelizing the onions coax the last bit of summer’s sweetness from both. As with its red brethren, this soup goes well with a buttery, gooey grilled cheese.

Ingredients

2 pounds green tomatoes, cut into quarters for roasting

Olive oil

3 cloves garlic

1 medium onion, diced

1 tablespoon fresh thyme

3 cups vegetable stock

Salt and pepper to taste

2 cups arugula (ish)

Optional garnish: thinly sliced scallions

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss green tomatoes and whole garlic cloves in olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 40 minutes.

In a large stockpot, heat another two tablespoons of olive oil. Add onion and cook on medium-low until caramelized (around 30 minutes, so start these when you put the tomatoes in the oven).

Add roasted tomatoes and garlic and stir to combine. Add fresh thyme, salt, and pepper and cook for two minutes. Add stock and arugula. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 to 15 minutes.

Use an immersion blender (or regular blender) to puree the soup until smooth.