Brownie bites with fondant and hearts

I was dying to try this recipe I found for fondant that actually tasted good and didn't cost a fortune, so I did. I had no reason to be baking, nowhere to go, and no one in particular to feed them to (except, of course, for myself and my hunny), but that didn't stop me. I used my classic brownie recipe to make brownie bites and the fondant recipe here on Bake at 350. The fondant was sticky and messy, but way cheaper than buying gumpaste or fondant at the store, and tastier too. I made the hearts by cutting a (new, clean) pencil-top eraser into a heart (which I've done a few time for paper stamps) and dipping it into gel food coloring. I think liquid food coloring might work better because it would be less bunchy. I used corn starch to make it less gel-ish and more stampable. I brought these little nomables to my friends at Honey's Salon, which I have decided is my new experimental test kitchen.

 

So that plate. It's a random plate my partner picked up at a thrift store eons ago. We have no idea who Carla is, and it's a little creepy that it's positioned so perfectly to look like some Carla-person made the brownies.

Exhaustion and empowerment

On Monday, my work husband called to see if I had a meeting with our boss. We both had meetings scheduled, but the way they were laid out led us to believe he was being laid off and I was not. I baked him four dozen of his favorite cookies (molasses) and brought them to work. As we thought, he was out of a job by Tuesday. Much of his work will fall to me, but more than that, we'll lose his energy. His main purpose over the last two years has been to keep pushing us forward and to refuse the status quo. I don't mean this in my usual lefty radical sort of way; I mean that he pretends not to understand explanations when they sound like excuses, and he's good at motivating a team even if he's not actually leading it.

We had lunch on Tuesday and I felt a very strange feeling of loss. We talked again Wednesday, planned to meet Thursday but then cancelled that when various other things came up. Since we've both been working from home for the last year, it felt very much the same as usual. Except with a cloud over my head. It feels as though my best friend is moving away.* B, my now-ex coworker, has been laid off nine times in his 30 years since graduating college. Nine times. He's used to the drill, but I've never been in a company that had layoffs before. He knows what to do, who to call, what to talk about, what forms he needs. I asked him how our boss and HR director seemed when they were meeting with him, and he said they seemed sad and a little nervous. Our boss was so shaken up (though B was the first of four layoffs, which is about 10% of our staff) that B felt like he might need to support our boss. At the end of the day, those of us who remained had a meeting with the executive director (who is my boss) and the HR director, who let us know that yes there were layoffs (not everyone was aware), but they're done for now. They had made changes in benefits last year (bringing us from really good benefits down to average for our industry) to avoid layoffs, but not this year. They could do any more.

On Wednesday I emailed our HR director and my boss to tell them that I appreciated how they dealt with it all. I felt an equal balance of compassion and professionalism, and they look more like they'd lost a finger than dropped dead weight. This is the nonprofit I've worked for since I graduated college four years ago. They hired me to run a program, trained me to write grants, then gave me a promotion. They've invested in me, even when I've had run-ins with coworkers and supervisors (and when I had a staff, with them too). Every time I think about leaving, I remember that it does feel like a family (and that my retirement account isn't fully vested for another year and some).

When my best work friend (and former boss) left two years ago, it was at the same time that I was being promoted out of her department. She moved across the country, but my job was so different, it felt like a friend moved, not like my work environment had changed. At the same time, we hired B, so I had a whole new nuclear family. I feel like I'm on my own again...and I feel like my whole organization is back where we were two years ago. We're back to survival instead of growth...or at least that's how it looks from my perspective. I had trouble sleeping all week. Which is to say, I either had insomnia or struggled to stay awake until I went to bed at 11 p.m., several hours early for me. I couldn't focus, I could barely finish specific tasks. I felt lost...like I wasn't quite sure what my job was anymore.

I had been planning to take Friday off for a belated anniversary celebration of kayaking on the Broad River, and I went ahead with those plans. I feel guilty for surviving the layoffs, especially because someone so close to me did not. It took me the first full hour, maybe two, to stop thinking about work. About three hours in, a thunderstorm hit, and we kept on kayaking through the rocks (that I called sea monsters) and their semi-choppy water (that I called slow-pids). Half an hour later, some fellow kayakers convinced us to get out of the water for fear of lightning, and we spent half an hour feeling dirty, cold, and awkward. We got back in and were done about an hour and a half later.

It felt badass to be on the river, in a kayak, in a storm, with the thunder and the rain. I felt strong. When we first saw that clouds were rolling in, I was annoyed and a bit anxious. E asked if I wanted to pull off onto an island until it passed, but I didn't. So we just kept going. I realized after a while that since I was already wet and in a river, the rain wasn't such a nuisance. What was it going to do? It wasn't windy, the water wasn't choppier, the river wasn't rising much (and it was so low to begin with anyway). It was just that the water was coming from above instead of just the sides and below. I'm sure that's a metaphor for life, but after the week I'd had, it just felt good to be doing something. I knew I wasn't in control of it, but I had a pretty firm grasp on the paddle.



*This is compounded by the fact that my best friend actually is moving 1,500 miles away in a few weeks.

Love Cakes

I keep wanting to pre-cook food for the week ahead, and we've slowly been doing that. We made black bean cakes for lunch using a modified recipe from the Flying Biscuit cookbook. Flying Biscuit serves them with a garnish of raw red onions, tomatillo salsa, feta cheese, and sour cream. We modified them by adding cheese, then ate them as burgers with melted cheese slices and ketchup/mustard. FB also serves them with eggs and potatoes for breakfast. Prep time is about 20 minutes because of all the mashing, but they cook up in about 5 or so minutes.

Servings: 8 burgers, 16 small patties (served two per person)

Ingredients:

• 2 (15 ounce) cans cooked black beans
• 2 tablespoons canola oil                                                                        
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tablespoons minced yellow onion
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup medium white cheddar (or similar)
• 1/4 cup masa de harina (finely ground corn meal)

Directions:

• Rinse and drain black beans in a sieve.
• Sauté 1 tablespoon of the canola oil over medium heat and onion, garlic, cumin, and salt until onions are translucent.
• Combine drained beans, cheese, and onion mixture in a bowl and mash with a potato masher until well combined.
• Gradually add masa, allowing mixture to absorb it before adding more. You’ll want to do this mixing with your hands, as I’ve never found another combine it well. Keep adding masa until dough doesn't stick to your hand and holds the shape of a ball.
• Divide dough into 16 small balls or 8 medium balls and flatten into cakes. Warm the remaining tablespoon of canola oil and sauté cakes until lightly browned on each side, about 3 to 5 minutes per side.
• Garnish and enjoy. Patties should freeze well, but we'll find out later this week when we try out the ones we've frozen.

The Target boycott - "When I throw a brick, I want to know who's going to say 'ouch'"

Everywhere I turn, someone is talking about boycotting Target. Friends on facebook, a coworker in the office, an email from moveon.org (and let's not talk about their last email, which was filled with agenda-pushing misinformation). Here's the story, as I see it:

Supreme Court strikes down limits on corporation spending for campaigns. Target gives money to a big-business PAC to the tune of $150,000. The PAC supports a pro-business, super-conservative, anti-gay candidate in the Midwest. Everybody freaks out.

The first person to bring it up to me was a coworker and my response, in short, was "I'm too far left to care." I'm not saying we shouldn't sweat the small stuff, or that we shouldn't fight something just because we can't fight everything. Boycotts are effective when they build your own political consciousness, when they satisfy your personal morality, when they make a direct, large, and specific hit to corporate profits (including the mass sell-off of BP stock of the last 107 days), or when they are large or loud enough to be heard inside the top-floor corner office of a building with solid-gold walls. I have yet to hear an articulation of why this is the time to boycott Target. What, exactly, are we mad about?

My coworker said he hopes they fix the situation soon because he loves shopping at Target. But when I asked what the "fix" would look like, he didn't know. When the guy loses? When Target asks for the money back? When it's apparent that nothing is going to come of it? When the admin of the facebook group forgets that he's the admin and stops updating it? I get that this is something my coworker and many others care deeply about, and I applaud his proactivity in sending letters, doing the math of how much money Target would lose if all 30,000 facebook supporters really do boycott, etc. If it's about satisfying our morality, that's fine, but let's be clear about that. Let's not confuse masturbation with an orgy. I think there is benefit in political action, even if the outcome is not achieved. But if we put all our energy into a short-sighted issue, we need to recognize that we're maintaining the status quo.

Last week, I had lunch with a local progressive colleague, the Executive Director of Southern Energy Network Stephanie Powell. She mentioned a story about trying to stay focused on a target (no pun intended, I swear) when planning a direct action campaign: "When I throw a brick, I want to know who's going to say 'ouch.'" Who's going to say 'ouch' at Target? And what do we want them to do?

I also asked my coworker why it's this issue that got him so interested. He agrees that the Citizens United case is a big issue, and this is one of the first giant gifts to come after it. I asked why he isn't opposed to giant corporations for the typical crappy pay and benefits, for centralizing profits in an extremely wealthy few, for using exploited labor in other countries, for razing public housing and turning entire towns into single-employer compounds. He didn't really answer, except for saying that he knows those are problems too. My boss has told me that he gets frustrated with his partner because his partner only seems to care about specifically gay issues. When seniors in Atlanta are getting screwed, my boss cares because it's his job and because it's his passion, and he doesn't ask if those seniors are gay (some presumably are). Why do we only care when we're the ones getting screwed, even if it's someone gave money to someone else who gave money to someone else who supports us getting screwed? Low wages, ghost towns, poverty, public housing -- these are all issues that affect queers and trans folks, and probably affect more of us than a single candidate's not-so-unusual views.

Why aren't we worried about the fact that Republicans are blocking legislation that would address the outcome of Citizens United*? Why aren't we boycotting every big-business, anti-healthcare corporation out there? Or every corporation who gives an amount over $2,000 to any candidate? Why aren't we boycotting every corporation that doesn't pay a living wage, or that gives money to local candidates to get zoning variances? Hell, why aren't we against the idea of being pro-big-business at all?

This is capitalism. This is what we've got. Big business and creepy homophobic conservatism are not strange bedfellows. They are the very same bedfellows that go home to each other every night; we just haven't been paying attention.

*Let's remember that the Supreme Court doesn't decide what's moral or ethical or right -- they decide what's law. I don't know the decision as well as some, but my understanding is not that no legislation could get at the same aim, but that the particular way the legislation was figured was unconstitutional.

Anniversary gifting

I realize the last week has been all "my partner this, my hunny that, my boyfriend's so cool, blah blah blah," but the fact of the matter is that he IS, and it's our anniversaweek. I glow about him pretty much always, but this week, I'm doing it more often.

Anyway, we're in the habit of giving each other birthday and xmas gifts, always very personal, and usually handmade. For example, it's been at least two or three gifting times that E gave me tickets to a show and the newest album by that performer (first was Madeline, second was Nana Grizol). For things like our anniversary or Valentine's Day, we like to do things together to make it special, which may or may not include making/buying things. For our first Valentine's Day, E surprised me with this, pinned into a large cigar box that says "The heart is a muscle the size of your fist." This year, I made him a mini-book of 52 reasons I love him, with the reasons pasted onto each card in a deck, and bound with binder rings. I really love that our gift-giving isn't out of obligation. It's always about what we want to do to celebrate each other, and I gotta say, he gives me lots to celebrate about.

This week was a few bundles of surprises, beginning me cooking a pancake breakfast in bed on Monday. He went to Atlanta to take a friend to the airport on Tuesday and came back with a book I've been wanting to read (really, it's a book that I wanted to write, but it seems someone else already did an awesome job). I spent the last few days making a needle case out of materials he likes, which was actually an afterthought. He had planned to make himself a glasses case, but his dyed yarns didn't come out like he wanted, so it never really took off. So instead, I sewed him this one:

The outside is brown corduroy and the inside is green microsuede. The mushroom top is also the microsuede, and the stem is corduroy inside-out. The eyes are tiny beads, and the stitching around the edges and on the glasses and mouth are single-stranded black embroidery thread. It's open only at the top.






 E found this locally produced wool roving that's dyed a complicated and beautiful set of purples that cannot begin to be shown in this photo. It's in a cute project bag, and he's working on making me a drop spindle! (Our drill's battery craps out after about five minutes with the circular bit.)

That's some pretty awesome metametacrafting. Making the drop spindle to make the yarn that will be made into something else. Now all we needs is the goats/sheep to make the yarn! Alpacas? Bunnies? Anything snuggley.

Why bother with satire when there's the news?

I happened upon two stories from The Daily Beast tonight. When I read aloud the first line of the Palin one, my partner's face froze. Then he said, "Why do I even bother with satire?" The facts...they're just too ridiculous. My headlines, Daily Beast's lede.


Former half-term governor Sarah Palin uses a Spanish word, prompting universal facepalm

On Fox News Sunday, the ever-spirited former governor of Alaska lambasted President Obama for his lack of "cojones" on immigration reform, insisting that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer possess the, er, mettle to secure America's border.

Arizona's police force is too busy comparing skin tones to crayon colors to keep inmates in prison

On Friday night, three convicted murderers cut a hole through a fence and escaped from a medium-security northwest Arizona prison before kidnapping two truck drivers at gunpoint and using a freighter as a getaway vehicle. 

Picture courtesy The Daily Show

Fuck your fascist beauty standards, OR, Nike and my ass

My ass is amazing. It's not really a big ass proportional to my chubby body, but it's not a tight little tiny ass either. My partner's got a nice ass, too, and I think his is cuter. Body image is tricky, and I know no one who has sailed into a positive body image, regardless of our relative sizes or shapes or genders. So when I saw this post when it was shared by a friend on Google Reader, I bristled. Yes, I like images that support women, our body images, our agency, and our needs. But no, this ad doesn't do that, nor does the little bit of commentary around it.

Stop using my body to sell things. When you're saying nice things about my lovely ass, or when you're telling me it's too big, shaped funny, doesn't look good in these jeans, whatever, you're still using my body as an object to pump up your bottom line.

Between the model's skin and hair color and the fact that the ad is about her ass, Nike clearly means for us to assume it's a Latina ass they're objectifying. Great, because women of color don't have enough media attention focused on their bodies? (My mind is a puzzling place, but this called to mind Queen Emily's post from last year about visibility and invisibility, particularly this quote:  "...to whom is one visible, and why? Under what circumstances, and in what light?") Hyperfocused approving attention is not an antidote for hyperfocused disapproving attention. The point is that we pay attention to the bodies of women of color in a way that is overly sexualized, fetishizing, and creepy.

To add more race fail, the model is wearing a cutoff tank top and too-small spandex shorts. If you're so proud of her ass, why is she wearing shorts a few sizes too small? Do you not make them bigger? The cutoff tank top looks like something out of a sexy version of West Side Story, complete with people (especially women) of color wearing clothes that are too-tight, "urban," and torn. Her hands are wrapped like she's boxing or overly prepared for a streetfight. (In productions of West Side Story, including the 1961 movie, the white "jets" wear light, cool colors and are prim and proper with tucked-in shirts and clean sneakers. The Puerto Rican "sharks" wear warm colors, torn clothes, black jeans, and boots.) 

She's standing on her toes. Her shoes are flat sneakers, made for running and jumping and doing athletic things, and she is standing on her toes, as if she's in high heels. What are high heels for? Oh, to make our calves and asses look better. (Or to make us totter like we need assistance crossing the street. I love my high heels, but that doesn't negate the sexism of their cultural significance.)

The post's author opines that this ad is "exactly the type of message that women need to hear and see." Oh, so the author is a woman, perhaps a woman of color as the model appears to be, who has struggled with body image issues and is relieved to see a positive, butt-approving ad, right? No. The author appears to be a moderately sized trim white dude, and his blog is about fitness and being a personal trainer. Please, sir, tell me more about what I need to hear and see. (To be fair, he says it's what he "thought" when he first saw the ad, and he didn't state it as objective fact. Fine, whatever, he can have half a point back.)

At the end of the post, the author writes, "I’m so sick and tired of seeing models with no ass, no muscle, and no shape being touted as the ideal 'look' for women to aspire for.  Why not just get a 2×4 and put a dress on it?" Aside from the fact that the woman in the ad still has a figure that is unattainable for the vast majority of women, why do we have to hate on skinny women? Eating disorders and unhealthy body images are not just the business of fat women. Some of the smartest body image talk I've heard came from a friend who battled an eating disorder for a good part of her life. She told a story about grabbing available food for lunch on her way out of the house to go to her job at a feminist health clinic one day. As she sat down to eat the cheesesticks and tofurky that were the easiest thing to bring with her and eat on a short lunch break, a coworker of hers began bemoaning how she could never eat so little and not be hungry, and she wishes she was as skinny as my friend. That is not a compliment; that is not helpful. It took years for my friend to gain weight, and even more years to be ok with the fact that she did. And clothes shopping is still a trigger, and cooking is a trigger, and eating in front of other people is a trigger. Let's quit with the question of who has it worse. Any "perfect" size is still going to be oppressive for every woman who isn't that size (and is likely oppressive for that woman as well).

I know, I know, it's a Nike ad. It shouldn't be touted as the new perfect ad campaign, but what more do I expect for products made in sweatshops that exploit workers (who are often women and/or people of color)? How about this? "these were made in a cooperatively owned factory" or "we pay a living wage, support a unionized workforce, and would like for you to buy our products, thanks." Maybe "these shorts will keep you from chafing" or "these shoes provide great arch support." That might convince me to buy an overpriced pair of shorts or shoes. But "hey, look! New standard of beauty, complete with new and improved racism and sexism"? No, that's not going to sell me anything.