OH SWEET CATIE.  WHERE HAS THIS BLOG BEEN ALL MY LIFE?  THANK YOU.

This blog.  I hadn’t checked it for a minute, and now I just want to take the day off to bake stuff.

tobeginwhereiam asked: Do you have a favorite lemon curd recipe? I'm not sure why, but something tells me that you do, and I need to make a pavlova topped with lemon curd and berries or else I'll die.

Business voice: Nigella has one on her blog that a reader submitted.  It’s basically the one I use.

Spitting-milk-out-my-nose-laughing voice: GURL!  We has GOT to have some of the same chromosomes!  Seriously, can I come over?

**edit**

The recipe doesn’t mention it, but garnishing your finished product with lemon zest adds instant fancy points.

thepennilessfoodie:

Today I began using a new camera, a Canon T2i, which I am borrowing from a friend.  I honestly don’t know much about photography other than if you take 100 pictures, you can usually weed them down to one good photo.  At least that’s what I do.

Well I was sitting around trying to figure out what I should make for the inaugural usage of this camera and then it came to me.  Peanut butter cookies… except I wasn’t craving peanut butter.  In fact I almost hate peanut butter.  So what do I do with a craving which heavily relies on an ingredient I personally have disdain for?

Google, “almond butter cookies”.

And up came this NPR article about baking cookies with almond butter.  On top of that the recipe is wheat-free and there isn’t any added fat or butter (if you’re into that kind of thing).  Really its just a few ingredients, almond butter, sugar, egg with a pinch of this and that and some chopped up almonds and chocolate chips.  It couldn’t have been easier.  And, they were really tasty.  So enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 cup almond butter (unsweetened)
1/2 cup light or dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat almond butter with the sugars until combined. Add egg and mix well. Beat in baking soda, maple syrup, vanilla and salt until dough is smooth. Stir in almonds and chocolate chips.

Measure dough into balls about the size of a tablespoon and place evenly spaced (about 2 inches apart) on a cookie sheet. Flatten slighty. Bake for 10-13 minutes, or until cookies are lightly golden brown. Remove from oven and let rest on the pan for 5 minutes, then remove cookies from the pan and allow to cool completely on a cooling rack.

—jk

godthings:

“Our lives are lived in relationship to words, written and spoken, sacred and mundane. They are manna for the journey. As embodied beings we take our whole bodies with us into the act of reading, which, at its best, is spacious, full-bodied, wholehearted, and infused with the breath of life.”

— Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies (via bookofwriting)

Jenny Lawson rocks the free world.

SEE???  I’m not the only person who likes to think up dinner party lists!  This woman and I share certain neural pathways, I’m sure.  Go read her blog, posthaste.

Once you read it, the next bit will make sense:

• Michelle Obama
• Regina Spektor
• Emma Thompson
• Michel Martin
• Click and Clack
• Hugh Laurie

recycledsoul:

Remember, I had always wanted, above all things, not to be ‘interfered with.’ I had wanted (mad wish) ‘to call my soul my own.’ I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight. I had always aimed at limited liabilities. The supernatural itself had been to me, first, an illicit dram, and then, as by a drunkard’s reaction, nauseous. Even my recent attempt to live my philosophy had secretly (I now know) been hedged round by all sorts of reservations. I had pretty well known that my ideal of virtue would never be allowed to lead me into anything intolerably painful; I would be ‘reasonable.’ But now what had been an ideal became a command; and what might not be expected of one? Doubtless, by definition, God was Reason itself. But would He also be ‘reasonable’ in that other, more comfortable, sense? Not the slightest assurance on that score was offered me. Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me. The demand was not even ‘All or nothing.’ I think that stage had been passed, on the bus stop when I unbuckled my armor and the snowman started to melt. Now, the demand was simply ‘All.’ 

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”

C. S. Lewis, from Surprised by Joy

alaina:

“Do you have any books the faculty doesn’t particularly recommend?”

one of Flannery O’Connor’s drawings from high school or undergrad, which will be included in this forthcoming book devoted exclusively to her artwork

(via wesleyhill)

molls:

Does it count as “going to therapy” if you think about what your friends tell you they talked about in therapy for a total of three minutes to five minutes plus sometimes when it’s taking you a long time to start peeing?

TOTALLY.

fyeahwomenartists:

Jen Davis
Clemency, 2003
Chromogenic print 

(via Self-Portraits : Jen Davis Photography)

(via xkcd: Hotels)