Where was I?
Oh. Wednesday — volunteer gig at the hospital. I did not entirely remember my lines — or, at least, I remembered the lines I had been given several weeks ago, but they were no longer the lines that were required. An interesting day therefore was had.
I arrived home to the happy news that my reading corner rug had arrived!
Have I mentioned here that I was renovating the corner of my office where my the cats’ rocker had been located, and making it into a proper reading corner? In fact, it’s a project that has been going on for a number of months, as I haunted Marden’s and estate sales and sale-sales. I finally located the perfect chair at a doable price at the local furniture store’s pre-Labor-Day sale*. It was, naturally, the floor model, and it is a lovely chair indeed. I’m very happy with my purchase**.
So, anyway, more window shopping and turning the Internet upside down, looking for the deals in its pockets finally turned up a (machine loomed) Turkey carpet at an incredible price, and that? is what arrived on Wednesday. I immediately unrolled it and set the unabridged dictionaries along the roll-edge to flatten, because this is exactly why god gave us unabridged dictionaries.
Yesterday — Thursday — the final piece arrived — a full-spectrum reading lamp. The corner is now complete — and I may never leave.
Today! Because Central Maine persists in withholding raisin bread with white icing***, for which I’ve had a strong yen, ever since getting back from Maryland — I will be making raisin bread with white icing. *snaps fingers under universe’s nose*
I’m also jonseing for smearcase (schmierkase in the proper German), but I’m pretty sure the universe is going to win that one.
All that said — I have a question for y’all.
Miri and Liz appear together in the stories “Fighting Chance,” and “Misfits;” they also appear in Agent of Change. Are there any other stories with a strong Miri-and-Liz dynamic?
Here are some pictures of the renovated reading corner:
___________
*No, I don’t know why you’d have a big sale before Labor Day, but Maine is a different country. GM used to do model changeover in August, which meant that all the dealerships had stunning sales on Last Year’s Models, so perhaps there’s something similar that goes on with furniture.
**The tags on the chair allowed it to be a La-Z-Boy from the so-called “Designer’s Choice Collection.” A friend on Facebook offers the further information that it is a “high-leg recliner” and is most likely the Woodmont model. *hits Google*.
Uh. Yeah, that’s it. I am, for the record, a Shopping Goddess.
***I asked the baker at the local supermarket if they ever had raisin bread with white icing, and she stared at me blankly before offering up the information that, at Easter, they make hot cross buns. All of the pieces of my childhood are evaporating before my eyes. I think this is how people die; when the last thing thins out into fog, so do we.
You could try telling the baker: “Try it. People will buy it. It will sell.”
Can’t beat raisin bread with white icing. Toasted. With the icing doing down the sides. Hope you are successful!
Yes. Or you could try, “If you bake it, they will come. People will most definitely come.” (It helps if you are wearing a baseball cap when you say this.)
You can take Sharon out of Maryland, but you can’t take the Maryland out of Sharon!!!
dry cottage cheese cake (may not be what you were thinking off)
* 1 brick farmer’s cheese
* some sugar or sugar substitute (optional – amount depends on mood and if you are going for savory or sweet)
* a little salt
* 2 eggs or more
* a little milk or cream – goal is to have a batter which coats spoon if you are tossing in left over dairy (see below) you won’t need it.
* a little bit of apple cider vinegar This gives it a little tang and is instead of letting it ferment. I use the top of the apple cider vinegar container and fill it to the first thread…
mix everything until it is very well blended
Family recipe is to cook in a water bath, but as I have overfilled the water bath to disastrous results and or burn myself fiddling with it I just cook it in a greased casserole very slowly (300 or so).
I let it go until the top is cracked and brown. Maybe 2 hours? I do not preheat the oven.
I have been known to add whatever dairy in the fridge is getting on the old side (plain yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, ricotta cheese, marscapone, etc)
I think vanilla makes it taste weird. It does taste better if you let it sit before you cook it, but I’m always worried I’m going to give us an overdose of bacteria…
@Elizabeth Moon: That depends on whether the baker’s establishment values new ideas. It never fails to shock me when someone’s boss has a “don’t tell me what to do” attitude towards new information, but alas, it is all too common.
Sharon, don’t repine! The internet is full of smearcase. So full I daren’t even offer a link, I found so many kinds when I hit Google. Change the spelling or add a modifier like “recipe,” “maryland,” “german” or “amish” and get many sorts of different results.
I certainly don’t remember any other Miri/Liz stories, and given that they’re two of my favorite characters I would think I’d have noticed. I’d definitely like to see more from them, such as a story detailing exactly how Liz ended up in charge of port security on Surebleak.
Of course, you probably wouldn’t be asking about them if you didn’t intend to feature them in an upcoming book, so yay there. 🙂
I should point out that Hot Cross Buns (in Britain) have expanded from Easter and are intending to take over Halloween and Christmas.
Nearest our bakers have to what you want is Iced Belgian Buns
The title to this post made me giggle, as any reference to “sufficient unto the day” always does. See, one of my besetting sins as a child, teenager, and young adult was a tendency to worry the “what ifs” to death. What if I forget the route and I get lost walking to school on the first day of the new school year? What if I can’t find a parking place when I go to take the SATs and so I miss the test and I can’t go to college? What if I walk all the way to the store and they are all out of ground beef?
My mom’s response to my catastrophizing was always to say “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”. The problem with this reminder to dial back the manufactured worries is that the first time she said it to me, I was about four years old, and the vocabulary and syntax were beyond me. I puzzled it out, though, yes I did! And concluded it meant something like “the devil makes every day horrible”. So for 20 years, I’d say “What if???” And she’d say her line, and I would, once again, wonder why she was telling me life sucked.
Until one day when I was in graduate school, and someone else said that line to someone else in a different context, and I was able to hear it anew (and not just as part of my mom’s parental inscrutability). And all of a sudden, I applied my adult Englishing skills and for the first time understood what she’d been trying to say all those years.
So yeh, this post made me smile even before I started reading the details. Nice chair and rug, btw! Your shopping skills are awesome!
http://baltimorestyle.com/8437/hoehns_smearcase_cake/
I’ve only lived here in the Baltimore area for 19 years, and DH is also a transplant from Texas, so I was unfamiliar with smearcase, but it appears to be a Balitmore thing. The link above is the third hit from Google. Looks a little complicated.
I think your reading corner may need a plushy footstool, but that’s just my own personal quirk.
The chair is a recliner — built in footstool, that doesn’t clutter up the (somewhat limited) floor space when not in use.