Toes chopped off so as to stand closer to the stove

Sometimes I do wonder how I even make it as a contemporary woman. I mean, I barely am capable of keeping my eyebrows shaped and trimmed. In the last few months I've worked hard to stop biting my nails as much, though they never are very long. So entrancing is the care and maintenance of nails that I can spend over an hour or two doing them when I have no other obligations. And, this being the first week of classes, obligations I have few. Unfortunately, I am terrible at painting my nails. A (guy) friend of mine, astonished at my utter lack of fine motor control in this case, asked if he could sometime paint them, just to see if he could do any better. Sure, give it a go, man. I mean, I'm not sure anyone could do worse than the job I do when I choose to polish them in a color. I'm just about over the sickness I got the moment I left my folk's house, my room was super-clean and now the floor is buried under clothes and papers. I have two more classes on Monday, and am still trying to find one more job for the semester as a teacher's aid for foundation sculpture classes, which I've done for two semesters in a row now. Funny enough, I wasn't made to feel stressed out by filling out my entire time-line for thesis in my day planner during class early today. I dropped off a copy of my higher ed resume for review by a member of staff here in student activities. Right, darts night! Gonna go scrub up my hands and doll up and drift out!

Domestic drudgery? I think not.

Photos of yesterday's domestic deliciousness with Sima, and photos of my lovely curtains in a bargain-bin cotton-lycra uhpolstery fabric my mom found at JoAnn's. If you know me, you know that this moddish floral print is myself in textile form. And the Pink Lady organic apples at Whole Foods were on sale and are AMAZING (fresh from Washington). Enjoy!

Yay for early thank-you's!

As a present for helping around the house with all of the preparations for my moms' knee replacements (yes, both of them, at once), after making falafel for dinner and retiring to my room to let muscle relaxers kick in, I dropped by the kitchen to see how the food went over, and sitting on the counter was this. "An early thank-you present," mom said. I couldn't believe she'd gotten this for me! It's coming back to Baltimore and will take up residence in my studio this next semester.

Mysteries of my adult life.

The following is a list of information and knowledge that continues to evade me, despite my grown-up body and highly-educated mind. Why do men smell simultaneously gross and fascinating, and why do they seem utterly unaware of this fact? My father, expecially. As an adolescent, I constantly purloined my fathers' short-sleeved work shirts, but ultimately returned them due to the comforting, but all-pervasive, musky odor. Why do I hoard things like papers, books, fabric? Why do I still try on boys' last-names like a middle-school girl? What makes the kitchen so comforting? When I have a house of my own, I will make the kitchen open to the living room, like in the second house I lived in. For me, the kitchen is where it all happens. At all the best parties I've been to, there were constant replenishings, new things being brought out, etc. Why not make them the same place? Lots of wonderings the past few days, lots of work being done, lots of printing. Right now, I'm working on pot-holders that look like matzo, and am going to make an apron that says "My Knish Is Delish" and big ol' matzo-looking quilted pockets. It's my personal armor for next monday's crit, and I'll probably cook something K for P for my classmates, since a huge part of my personal armor ("Oh please don't hate me") is feeding people. Hag sameach! Happy passover!

And then, we made cupcakes!

As promised to Lisa of Pittsburgh Needs Eated fame, my latest cooking exploit was the other night making Magnolia Vanilla Vanilla  cupcakes from the recipes posted on recipelink.com.  We halved everything due to my only having one muffin tin instead of two, (it being college and all)  but here it goes: Magnolia Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes Makes about 2 dozen cupcakes (depending on the size of your cupcake papers and muffin tins) CUPCAKES: 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened 2 cups sugar 4 large eggs, at room temperature 1 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake papers. In a small bowl, combine the flours. Set aside. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about three-quarters full. Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes in the tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack before icing. At the bakery we ice the cupcakes with either Vanilla Buttercream or Chocolate Buttercream. And then the frosting: The vanilla buttercream we use at the bakery is technically not a buttercream but actually an old-fashioned confectioners’ sugar and butter frosting. Be sure to beat the icing for the amount of time called for in the recipe to achieve the desired creamy texture. Makes enough for one 2-layer 9-inch cake or 2 dozen cupcakes* 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened 6 to 8 cups confectioners’ sugar 1/2 cup milk 2 teaspoons vanilla extract Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Add 4 cups of the sugar and then the milk and vanilla. On the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat until smooth and creamy, about 3-5 minutes. Gradually add the remaining sugar, 1 cup at a time, beating well after each addition (about 2 minutes), until the icing is thick enough to be of good spreading consistency. You may not need to add all of the sugar. If desired, add a few drops of food coloring and mix thoroughly. (Use and store the icing at room temperature because icing will set if chilled.) Icing can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days. The result was a frosting that was a little on the sweet side for someone like me who generally makes a cream cheese icing, but the cake was not overly sweet, the organic sugar was a well-made substitution for the much-cheaper Sav-A-Lot white sugar and gave a less chemicall-y aftertaste than the Sav-A-Lot variety as well. Anyway, the cake was pretty transcendent, though the batter is a little thick, and I had to buy 5 lbs of self-rising flour for the less than a cup that I ended up using. But, for someone who has never baked cupcakes from scratch (gasp! horror!), this was relatively painless and pretty rewarding. How rewarding, you might ask? Better than going all the way to NYC and standing in line for hours for the same thing! I don't know if I'll go free-range on the eggs next time, as it hurt my wallet pretty bad.