I am in full-on domestic goddess mode to the point of kitsch. Sunday I made marmalade, yesterday homemade puff-pastry. I can't decide whether the right image is prairie skirt and mobcap or kitten heels and martini tray.

In my medieval metaphysics course we're reading the gorgeously titled Letter on the Being of Nothing and Shadows. Even the author's name--Fridugisus--is redolent of Friedrich-ean abbeys and darkest, latest night.

The mole cake is finished--a mound of whipped cream plastered with hazelnut studded crumbs, it looks just like the burrow of a chic and cosmopolitan little creature.

The dead leaves and naked tree branches that look like the upturned roots of a bizarre and knobby vegetable should be prompting me to work--memento mori and all that. But the difficult section on the epistemological consequences of dualism stays difficult, and I'm not managing much.

***Yesterday: the worst migraine in a long time--brutal and ( Read more... )

Bustling about the apartment these days in a frenzy of folding and sweeping and rolling and rising. I'll be in full on domestic goddess mode if I make marmalade. I saw Seville oranges in the market the other day, and I'm tempted to buy some and freeze them for the next cold and empty afternoon when nothing seems more appealing than boiling, ( Read more... )

I'm feeling smugly, serenely domestic. I just pulled off a three-layer apple cake with carmel frosting and decorated it with little bits of marzipan shaped and dyed to look like apples. It would be kitsch, but something about the beige of frosting and the slight irregularity of the apples just makes the cake look un-campily precious, at least to my ( Read more... )

Monday I nearly reached the height of domestic goddess-ery: a lattice-crusted peach pie twinkling with demerra sugar. Tuesday's pie was less of a looker--tweedy streusel covering out of season apples. The crimped crust went practically frizzy in the humidity, and even a stint in the fridge couldn't turn irregular S's of pastry back into curls. ( Read more... )

Something about the burble of rain in the gutters reminds me of the wintertime hiss of the heaters, and these past couple of damp and coldish days have me aching for autumn. All of a sudden I want the (literally) obscene abundance of fall--mammary pomegranates, hippy, full-bellied pears, parsnips and carrots, squashes practically parodying a woman ( Read more... )

I passed my prospectus defense!

just another reason I love my Mac ( Read more... )