Running Into Joy

It wouldn't be a self-care blog if I didn't talk about my plans/intentions/resolutions for the new year, would it?  Moreso than usual, it seems people are debating the purpose and efficacy of the ever-popular New Year's Resolution. As 2020 brought many of our plans to a grinding halt, it feels a bit strange, perhaps even like tempting fate, to make any big plans for 2021.  And yet... I, for one, cannot resist the feeling of turning over a new leaf, however manufactured something like the shift in calendar year may be. I love a reset, a fresh month or year in the planner, the chance to imagine new possibilities. And while it doesn't need  to be a new year to make some meaningful changes, I continue to feel drawn to the invitation to reflect. This year, I'm calling them intentions, not resolutions. It's semantics, mainly, but I think bringing an intention into a new year sounds a bit less like something doomed to fail, in a world where resolutions bring to mind sw...

 A happy holiday season to you all, dear readers!  This week has been one of those strange, slow weeks where I repeatedly lost track of what day it is. Not that it isn't a common occurrence in these pandemic times, but I had an extra dash of holiday time off to add to the confusion. I'm very lucky to work in higher ed and receive a nice long winter break around the holidays, and adding a few vacation days to round out the year means that Wednesday found me searching for things to do.  Then it hit me. There are no rules here. I can do my bake on Thursday!  Those who celebrate Christmas might note that Thursday was Christmas Eve, and since we had no place to go and it did indeed snow, snow, snow, I decided to spend the morning in the kitchen with my next recipe: bitter chocolate stout cake!  The past few weeks have been a strange leadup to Christmas, with gifts coming in the mail sometimes disguised as ordinary Amazon packages which I accidentally opened early....

What a week it has been!  This Wednesday, we had a massive snow storm here in Pittsburgh, with around 10 inches of accumulation here in Brookline. My general orientation to snow is that I love it on the day of, provided I don't have to go anywhere. Unfortunately for my snow enjoyment this time around, we very much had somewhere to go--Azula's vet, for her appointment to get spayed.  If you know me IRL, you know that I'm pretty anxious about pet-health, so this date has been looming large in my mind for a while. Wednesday dawned with the promise of snow and thoroughly in the worst of my PMS-heightened anxiety, so my brain got to work running circles about all the imagined possible outcomes of Azula's relatively routine procedure.  Thankfully, there were only three surgeries on the docket for the day, so before I'd really worked myself into worry mode, the vet called me to say Azula was out of surgery and doing well. Because of the snow, they said we could pick her up...

 It's BUNDT week, bakers!  Okay, maybe that's not actually a thing. But this week, I was very excited to pull out my brand spanking new Bundt pan and bake my first Bundt cake.  And thank goodness I had something to look forward to, because our semester officially ended on Friday, and it has been without a doubt the strangest, longest, most unpredictable semester in my career as an educator.  As I begin working to wrap up grading and post final grades before the deadline on Monday, I am overwhelmed at being asked to put a letter grade on the act of surviving a first semester of college during a pandemic. It feels very strange to have to quantify that. We survived, and I want to give them all gold stars and be done with it.  But alas, that isn't an option. So I've been working through how to grade fairly and compassionately while looking very much forward to the stress-relieving activity of baking that loomed on the Saturday horizon.  This Week's Bake: Lemon ...

 Welcome to Week 3, bakers! Er... readers! l If you're new here and need to catch up, you can find the introduction to this project here , and catch up on Week 1 and Week 2 at the respective hyperlinks.  Cake time marches on, this time moving away from the loaf and into the territory of springform pans, stacking, and curd! Join me on the exciting adventure of continuing to zest the everloving daylights out of more lemons than I ever dreamed.  This week's recipe: St. Clement's Orange and Lemon Drizzle Cake The Prep Looking over this recipe after last week's loaf, I was equal parts excited and terrified for the dramatic uptick in difficulty. Pouring batter into a loaf tin isn't particularly challenging when you've done it plenty of times before, but this week's cake boasts several new techniques and tools.  The list of ingredients is also decidedly heftier, so I decided to take a separate shopping trip later in the week to avoid asking Andy to add 8 lemons an...