Food Happies

I know I’m sporadic about postings these days.  Trying to do too many things and something languishes.  Which is here and the podcast.  However, something is also fermenting in the background.  That’s right, my thoughts don’t sprout and grow, they putrefy or ferment.  Muwhahahaha.

I go through quiet stages when I’m evolving.  I like to think that’s what we’re all doing, or trying to do.  Not just exist, not just live, but evolve.  Become more.  Expand to the very edges of our skins and revel in our uniqueness and in love.

Universal love, baby.  It is where it’s at.  In all its nasty, decaying, looming, laughing, sparkling, dancing glory.  Because love has never been just Valentine’s love.  It’s always been cleaning dirty diaper love, on babies and on parents because that’s love.  Or should be love, but that’s an entirely different digression I choose not to make today.

Love has always been messy and painful, uplifting and clarifying.  It’s always been the worst torture and the only reason for existence.

Evolve.

To become One with Universe.  To be the Embodiment of Love.  To just get something done freakingly awesomely well.

Because that is all it takes.  Embrace the things that make you feel grand, completed, living a real and connected life in this crazy, fucked up world.  Do what you love and do it again and again and again and watch yourself getting better at that!  Revel in that.  It’s never been about where you get to, though that’s good too, it’s always been about how you get there.  In your time.  On the path that you need to take.  That leads you in a direction that refines you into Love.

So tonight’s meal is brought to you by sliding into the Land of Capable After All, past the City of And You Thought Living Like This Was Too Much Work and settling into the County of Being Really Connected To What I Do Makes Me Feel Great and Damn It’s Tasty Too.  It is a lot of work.  You have to love the results, desire, craze, long for the results.  Otherwise you’re only bothering because someone else told you it was good for you.  And even here Fake It Till You Make it works.  And so does accidentally trying new things until you find yourself in the position you never really considered yourself either capable of or simply not one of those people who did those kind of things.  I feel a bit like I’ve arrived and it’s good.

What I did is really no big deal for most people.  I made soup from scratch, shredded chicken and sprouted rice with quinoa soup (using homemade chicken stock) and desert is lemon blackberry jam swirled cheesecake on cocoa cookie crust.  Yes, I’d made the cookies previously too.

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And that’s what makes this so amazing.  I was a lousy or lazy or just non-existent cook growing up.  My tendencies combined with other cooking siblings and a family that at the time was not overly insistent about food in any extravagant way, made for one insipid avoidant cook.  Food was not inspiring to me growing up.  I had favourites but I felt no call to cook.

This means that I’d never made chicken stock before.  Hel, I roasted my first chicken less than 6 months ago.  And yes, the chicken stock was made from another chicken I roasted (because it really was pretty damn easy and sooooooooo tasty and I could buy a chicken that was free range, organic, etc).  And now I’ve made chicken and rice soup from it.  Even the rice wasn’t just rice!  It’s TruRoots sprouted rice and quinoia blend.  As to how have I never made even chicken noodle soup before?  Well, not big on soups and didn’t grow up with it all the time (sometimes we had homemade, many times we had Lipton) and well, I just didn’t see it on my list of easy capabilities or something.  I don’t know, k, it’s just weird.

This was, however, not my first cheesecake (I’m braver with baking than cooking, but not my all that much).  It was, however, the first one where my cookies became the crust.  They were really good cookies too, with extra cocoa, semi-sweet chocolate chips and white chocolate chips, that were super soft and crumbly.  So I embraced the crumbly.  And the jam?  Well, that I didn’t make, but my friends did.  Lemon Blackberry jam and don’t doubt for a second that they picked every one of those blackberries.

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This was a full wholesome meal, made frame scratch.  With scratches in the scratch!  And I think it’s the scratches in the scratches that are making me feel pretty damn proud.  The realness of it all makes me feel connected and healthy.  And the gift from friends?  That just makes me feel loved.

Love to you All, too.

~The Abysmal Witch

p.s. I only cut my finger once and I’m so much faster at bandaging these days.  😀

p.p.s.  While starting to clean up from dinner I then have this absolutely happy moment and yes, I feel like I’m bragging, I’m just so damn happy about it!  And yeah, kinda proud too.

FB moment:  “That moment when you look at your wall of mead and think “shit, I’m going to have to start drinking some of this, I’m out of space and there’s almost no more storage in the closet”. And then you stop. Realize what you’ve just said to yourself. “Holy Fuck, I have a FULL WALL of MEAD!” That’s a good moment.

(To be fair, though, only 4 rows of shelves are mead, the other 3 are my magical library so it’s not as much mead as it may sound like. Oh, still a lot, just not *that* a lot. Which actually makes it harder, not many bottles left of any individual mead, so I can’t just drink them *casually*. Snort. I’m a hoarder, and in this instance I’m almost okay with it.)”

Wanna see?  Well, for now you get a Samhaine picture of it with poor lighting, an unsteady hand (it was really low light! lol)  and angle to really showcase it because the only other pic of it I have handy would be incriminating for friends of mine.  In appearance, only, mind.  😉  Someday I will have a better picture, but that!  That is NOT THIS DAY!  Happy trials!

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