Blueberry Pie + Haikus

Pie-kus

It'd been just three weeks

Since Farmer's Market ended;

I couldn't take it.

I missed the rolled dough

And the finicky top crust

Well, not that so much 

An empty crust says

The world is yours to fill

With art or berries

The outside seems good,

The filling inside needs work.

It resembles me.

This blueberry pie marks the first pie crust rolled out on my marble board, and that definitely merited photos.  Though our kitchen has an much natural lighting as a cavern, I love taking photos of the food I make.

Food is an art form, I am convinced.

My favorite medium is pie. 

- Grace

The Only Way to Write (Like You're Running Out of Time)

"How do you write like you're running out of time?  How do you write like tomorrow won't arrive?"
Alexander Hamilton's creative process astounds me.  I often wonder what made it so easy for the treasury secretary to spill words onto paper, especially considering that I would likely spill the bottle of ink before finishing one page.
Hamilton had internal and external motivations to write, the revolutionary war, and his political involvement and successes being the main ones.

I have much different ones, obviously: the knowledge that accomplishment will feel good, the joy of growing word counts (even when I edit away 30% of what I write), and feedback from those who read what I write.  Unfortunately, I think the only things that have a 100% success rate in motivating me to write are looming deadlines.  If it doesn't have a date on a calendar, odds are that it won't be a priority.  This means that college writing assignments get done on time. Always. They have to, after all.

Any creative writing pursuits, though, those are the ones that get pushed off.  Between reading and writing, I'm used to choosing the book.  Between blogging and working on my own story, well, here I am, nice to see you here as well.

When it's winter and I escape to the bookshelf-surrounded couch in our basement, hot chocolate in hand, writing seems to come easily. This phase lasts roughly from Thanksgiving to New Year's and dies a painful death along with my joy for life once spring semester begins. Between March and October, I don't think I wrote anything that wasn't academic.  It was weird.  I missed it.
I think the reason I have a hard time with it is because writing is simultaneously my most relaxing and most difficult hobby.  I just got back into my story recently (I'll refer to it as The Story for now).

The Story has the potential to be novel length, and will be the second piece of fiction I've ever written.  I never realized how much fun it could be to write what you want to read.  On the other hand, writing is a grind.  I give props to the people who make it through NaNoWriMo (writing 50,000 words in the month of November), because my record word count in a single day is around 1,300 words.

But I go back the next time and write 800.  When I have a few spare minutes, maybe I get 150 words.  And then 500, and 257, and 48 here, and 386 more that I typed into a note on my phone before I forgot the idea.

Sometimes it's barely a sprinkle of words, other times it's a flood.

How do you write like you're running out of time?

You write.  Period.

Happy writing!

- Grace

October // Side B

It's not the second week in the October, but it is the second installment of my music recommendations.

You can find all of this month's songs here: Weekly Mixtape

Angela by The Lumineers
This was one of those songs I listened to where you think, "If I keep listening to it this much, I'm going to hate it forever."  We're now 11 months into that experiment, and so far it's not true.  The Lumineers are one of my go-to bands, and this easily ranks in my top 5 of their songs.  It fits the "let's go somewhere, anywhere, across the globe or across the state" vibes, so it's on my road trip playlist.  The details of the lyrics are what I love;
Favorite lyrics: "When you left this town with your windows down and the wilderness in sight", "but you held your course to some distant war in the corners of your mind", and "home, at last". 

Flicker by Niall Horan
I probably won't cover the same artist, let alone the same album in consecutive weeks, but this album just dropped and it's been the majority of what I've listened to since Thursday night at 11:02 pm EST.
Acoustic guitar fingerpicking is the way to my musical heart, but lyrics make or break the song.  You can't write a ballad for a girl and have it be a menagerie of cut-and-pasted, overused Pinterest quotes (@ too many artists to list here).  Funny story about misheard lyrics: I initially thought the line was "I think of the stars, and it echoes a spark," so I put it on a playlist envisioning an crisp autumn night, looking at stars.  As it turns out, I heard wrong.  The song is still great. 
Favorite lyrics: "Then I think of the start and it echoes a spark. . . Then I look in my heart, there's a light in the dark, still a flicker of hope that you first gave to me. . ."

Autumn Leaves by Ed Sheeran
It's Ed Sheeran.  It's all of the fall vibes.  This is not surprising in the least based on the title.  I love it when song titles say what they mean.  It's like the introduction of a paper: it's main job is to tell you what the rest is going to say.  Don't be like Fall Out Boy and make your entire thesis statement the title, (or something random to avoid a lawsuit).
Where were we? Right: Ed Sheeran.  It's an extra track off the deluxe edition of +, and it's a great addition to your October playlists.
Favorite lyrics: "Another day, another life passes by just like mine"

Poison & Wine by The Civil Wars
Just do me a favor and appreciate the simple harmonies, the beautifully paced build-up, and the soft drum cadence this song offers.  It's a work of art for your ears.  Good duets are in short supply, what with every compilation lately being a bad mix of syrupy pop vocals and autotune.  If you know of any and you're so inclined, my comments section is always open for suggestions -->
Favorite lyrics: "I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back" and "I don't have a choice, but I still choose you."

All Too Well by Taylor Swift
I'll spare you the saga that is my thoughts on Taylor Swift, but here's a summary: I listened to the new single.  I laughed.  I went back to the Red album because it screams fall with every part of its being.
To me, All Too Well song is the climax of Taylor's songwriting.  There were good songs written before it and after it, boring tracks early in her career, and some rather confusing ones recently, but this song stands alone.  It's poetic the descriptions are vivid and tell a story.  You hear it and envision "plaid shirt days" and "dancing in the refrigerator light."
Favorite lyric: 'Cause there we are again on that little town street. You almost ran the red 'cause you were looking over at me.  Wind in my hair, I was there, I remember it all too well."

My personal favorite attribute of this song is that it's five minutes long. Let me explain: In this era of music, most songs are written with the hope of being radio singles.
They are 3.5 minutes long.
Snappy intro. Verse 1. Chorus. Verse 2. Chorus. Maybe a bridge, rarely a key change. Chorus again.
Recycle.  Reuse.  Repeat.
The method works; look at 1989.  Thirteen songs, six singles: all top 20 on Billboard, three of them hit #1.  Song lengths range from 3:13 - 4:10.
Now go back to Red.  It had seven singles out of sixteen tracks. However, the song length ranges from 3:12 - {5:28 minutes}.  There are four songs that are over 4.5 minutes long.
Does this mean that short songs are bad, or the reverse?  No, it's not a measuring stick for quality, but I use it to guess the purpose of the song.  All Too Well was, so I'm told, 10 minutes long initially.  It had to be shortened into it's final form, cutting excess verses, but still coming out with a number of them.  In fact, from looking at the lyrics alone, it's hard to segregate verses from pre-choruses, bridges, and transitional lyrics.

The song is a masterpiece because it tells a story without worrying about how catchy the chorus will be.  The chorus is the heart of the song, but the verses are the rest of the story, and they aren't forgotten when the repeating lyrics come back around.

Honestly, I don't think some of my friends imagined a day when I praised a song by Taylor Swift, but here it is.  You know who you are.

- Grace

My Spirit Animal is a Chicken

Somewhere between the early bird and the night owl on the avian sleep scale is the lowly barnyard hen.  There are no poems about her, no sayings using her sleep schedule as motivation to wake up earlier, or work later into the evening.

The hen isn't up before dawn with the sole intention to chase worms, or staying out after dark to prey on night crawlers. She's too far down on the food chain for that nonsense.

No, the chicken has her own routine:

She wakes up, jumps down from her roost, and eventually makes her way to the nests, where she lays her (almost) daily egg.  The rest of the day she is eating, drinking, being pestered by our one-year-old border collie/heeler mix, scratching the seeds out of my garden, looking for bugs, or whatever else her tiny heart desires.  As the sun goes down, the chicken will make her way back to the hen house along with the rest, and by dark she will be sitting comfortably on her roost.  The next day is like the one before it.

I appreciate the chicken's way of life:
Eat when hungry.
Sleep when it's dark.
Lay an egg most every day.
Sing when happy.
Chase insects because it's fun.
Run from danger.
Let the world know when you're distressed by making obnoxious noise until something is done about it.

I think I've found my spirit fowl.

So, I will take the unspoken advice of the barnyard hen.
I will follow my daily routine because it is useful to me,
and beneficial to the whole,
however simple or repetitive it may seem.

"It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life." - J.R.R. Tolkien

- Grace

October // Side A

Playlist-making is one of my favorite art forms.  I'll compile them for any event, occasion, season, time of day, mood, or weather.  My friends usually ask me to for music suggestions, so they recommended I share it here.

It's a misty, cool October Day, and all of the changing leaves are under a week of on-and-off rain, but the autumn vibes are still in the air, college football is on our TV, and these songs are all on my fall playlist.
Spotify link: Weekly Mixtape

Landslide by Fleetwood Mac
It's a classic for a reason.  Stevie Nicks is somewhat of an idol of mine, and my reasoning for that can be summed up in the simple elegance of her vocals on this track.  A good song tells a story.  A great song tells a story well.  A work of art uses every note to make the story known, every word and its inflection to show you the story in detail.  From the intro, the piano accompaniment is used to provide movement, the song rising and falling with the repeating melody, giving life to the lyrics about climbing mountains and about being brought down by them.
Text painting is an underutilized tool in modern music, but this song is a great example of its importance.

Suit And Jacket by Judah & The Lion
It's your average screamo, hip-hop song with folk instruments, summarizing the millennial generation's collective abhorrence of being told to "trade their youth for a suit and jacket."  It regrets that life moves quickly, but recognizes that tomorrow isn't promised.  While mourning how many people have exchanged their dreams for practical pursuits, the lyricist is comfortable to stand alone in clinging to the idealistic visions of his youth.

It is a fact that I watched Peter Pan too many times growing up, but this song resonates with me for many of the same reasons that caused me to wear out that VHS tape.

Gone, Gone, Gone, by Phillip Phillips
I judge songs by their percussion, and this one caught my attention the first time I heard it because of its driving beat throughout.  This eventually building towards the lyric "like a drum, my heart never stops beating for you."  This was the first song I heard by the unfortunately-named songwriter, but it wasn't the last.  Who knows, he might show up on another of these posts in the future.

Speed of Sound by Coldplay
You know Viva La Vida.  If you're my parents, that's where your knowledge of Coldplay begins and ends.  This song just sounds like a fall evening to me, the dark skies and the cold nighttime air.
There are times when I choose songs because of their deep, poetic lyrics, but other times I choose them purely for the vibe they create, much like instrumental soundtracks.  This is one of them.

Too Much To Ask by Niall Horan
This is the most recently released song on this week's mixtape.  You've probably heard it on the radio if you listen to any stations of the pop/rock variety.  There are plenty of singer-songwriter ballads in the world, many of which I could live without, but this one pulls me back in with its unique vocals (his Irish accent is more noticeable on this song than his other tracks) and soft electric guitar slides which remind me of one of my favorite artists, John Mayer.
There's an explicit label, but as it exists, I think it's a beautiful song.


I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on these songs, so feel free to drop them in the comments.

- Grace

Apple Products & The Apocalypse

*Thwack*

Another apple falls on my head. 

The season is appropriately named.  

We have two very small trees, each just three years old, which have produced a grand total of approximately eight apples in their short existence.  Maybe down the road my future kids will be able to pick from these trees.

For now, I'll be thankful for neighbors who let me drive over whenever I'm out, hauling away bushel baskets of apples for free so long as I pick them myself.  

Before

If you're looking for "after" you won't find it because I got distracted convincing one of the guys in my family to help me carry it in the house.  I fully support "independent women who don't need no men" but I will also never turn free labor-I mean help-when I can get it.

This peeler is the best invention since the bread slicer.

It peels.  It cores.  It slices.  It's named as such.  It's a magical tool. 

We have two: one from my dad's grandma, one from my mom's grandma.

One works. One I misplaced.  Unfortunately, those are the same.

I found this spiffy, brand-new version of the same gadget in a thrift store.  I bought it because I understand its value.  The store selling it did not, but I didn't feel the need to explain.  

Future Apple Pies

I've been fascinated with canning since I made strawberry rhubarb jam for 4-H in sixth grade.  Now I make it to sell jam at the farmer's market.  At least three times this summer, well-intentioned adults asked me "did your mom make this"?  No, actually, because I, a millennial, not only know how to make food from scratch, but I enjoy doing so.

For the record, mom and I both processed the apples pictured above, Train's Save Me San Francisco album providing background music.  She probably helped me because I told her I'd do the rest of the steps if she'd run the Peeler-Corer-Slicer thingy.  I told you it was a magical tool.

I love canning.

You make food, you seal it in jars, you put it on shelves and use the contents when it suits you. 

It doesn't take up fridge or freezer space.  It's the ultimate in food prep.

If there's a zombie apocalypse in our future, guess who has three varieties of salsa in her pantry? That's correct, I do.  Even if there isn't an apocalypse, you can still have apple pie from your neighborhood orchard in March. 

That's reason enough for me.

 - Grace  

Hallmark Scripts & Coffeeshop Chats

Last weekend, I ventured to the middle of somewhere in Nebraska to visit my best friend, who doubles as my coffee date.  We had talked for weeks about the places we'd visit.

The chain stores and the originals.

The barista with purple hair who didn't miss a beat if you wanted a drink off the menu, but with seven alterations from the normal recipe.

The one where you couldn't order to-go because the vanilla bean lattes are better in real mugs. 

The newest location for a town favorite. 

The list was long, but we pride ourselves on drinking coffee like Gilmore Girls when we're together. 

It's been ten days, and while I miss most everything about that visit, the coffeeshop conversations play back in my memory.

Every story has three things: a main character, a best friend, and coffee. 

Oh, wait, that's just every Hallmark film. 

Regardless, those are the trinity of their script-writing, and I can see why.

It's the only real plot that Hallmark uses.

Two friends sit down with giant, steaming mugs of coffee.

Forget the beauty-&-brains friendship common of storytelling, these are all about person with a problem and her counselor.

The main character is the one who begins the movie single and glasses-wearing, or with a guy who wears a suit.  Nearly seventy-five percent of the way through the movie, she will ditch either the glasses or the CEO, depending on which one she starts with, and end up with the small business owner/single dad/guy she liked in high school, you get the picture

But how, HOW does she make the life-altering decision to break off an engagement with a future billionaire or switch to contacts permanently? 

Her counselor friend helps her decide over coffee.  Without these conversations, the stories would never climax.  So, the coffee scenes in Hallmark movies will continue.  They will change settings, problems, and maybe even have peppermint hot chocolate in-season, but they will be there.  

We will be here to mock them while enjoying our beverages and discussing our own life issues.

~~~~~

But these photos aren't from my road trip through no-man's land; they're from my lone trip to our local coffeeshop.

It's a relatively new place on the corner of main street in a gorgeous, renovated brick building.  To be honest, it looks straight out of a movie.  I normally grab my coffee while I'm running errands or something and don't stick around.

This past Saturday, though, it rained.  To be clear, it had rained for four days, and I can only take so much of my house before I lose it, so I grabbed a book and went to the coffeeshop. 

It was actually fairly dead, the only sound apart from the owner's shoes being the door as the previous lone customer left, and the ISU vs. OU game playing on the the big screen.  Thus, the quiet, hipster coffee shop mood you've envisioned dies, and is replaced with more realistic, small town Iowa vibes.

I traded my six-month regular order, an iced english toffee white mocha, for something more worthy of the dreary, fall weather: an iced salted caramel white mocha.  I'm a creature of habit.  

And so I spent part of my afternoon reading a book on my list entitled: Books I Should've Read Growing Up, But Never Did.  Yes, I plan to read them all.  Yes, I'd love to discuss them afterwards.  Yes, if you spoil something for me, I will hate you forever.

Coffeeshops will continue to be beautiful places to me.

With friends or in solitude.

In big cities or small towns.

Rain or shine.

Hot or iced. 

- Grace

A Berry Out of Its Element

Strawberry Sweet Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting

A baking post, huh?

Will it be *spins the wheel of fall desserts*
1) Pumpkin Spice
2) Caramel Apple
3) Apple Spice
4) Pumpkin Caramel
5) Pecan-whatever-Starbucks-invented
6) Peppermint from someone far too gung-ho for Christmas this early in the year

Nope.

Food is the one thing for which I tend to follow the seasons.  Late spring tastes like fresh peas and new potatoes.  June is for rhubarb, summer is for berries, fall is for chili and cinnamon rolls, and the cycle continues.  The rhythm of the foods in my garden is as regular as the days on our family calendar.  But then there are days when you look at the gloomy, we've-had-rain-for-three-days weather, and you think "I want food that doesn't make me wish humans hibernated."

For everything, there is a season, and for strawberries, it is not October, but yesterday, I didn't care.

This past week, one of my dear friends gifted me this marble board.  It's without a doubt the coolest kitchen item I've ever used.  If I had an espresso maker, this might be a more difficult statement to make, but as it is, it's the coolest.

I love dough.  If I didn't, I wouldn't make pies for the farmer's market all summer, so this is fairly obvious.  It's one of my great joys in life and the biggest wall between me and eating paleo, or keto, or any of those diets which are probably fantastic for overall health.  I choose joy.  I choose white flour pastries.

None of the recipes I found on Pinterest really fit what I was looking for, because canned strawberry pie filling does not float my goat.
I took strawberry pie and cinnamon roll recipes from two friends and combined parts of each into one of my proudest original creations.

Ah, the difficulties of kitchens without natural lighting.

Strawberry Sweet Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting

{INGREDIENTS}

Sweet Roll Dough:
1 C warm milk (105-115 degrees F)
1/3 C butter, melted
2 eggs
4.5 tsp yeast
4.5 C white flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 C white sugar

Strawberry Filling:
1/2 C white sugar
1.5 TBSP cornstarch
1/2 C water
1 C strawberries, fresh or frozen, hulled

Cream Cheese Frosting:
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 C butter, softened
1.5 C powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

{DIRECTIONS}

Option 1: Place all dough ingredients in a bread machine on the "dough" cycle (skip to step #6).

Option 2:

1) By hand, or in a mixer with a dough hook, stir together the milk, butter, half the flour, yeast, salt, and white sugar

2) Mix in the eggs.

3) Add the remaining flour, and stir to combine.

4) If you're using a mixer, allow it to mix for 4-6 minutes.

If you're making this dough by hand, you may have to dump it onto a counter (or snazzy marble board) to incorporate all of the flour.  Knead by hand 4-6 minutes.  

5) Allow to sit, covered, for 10 minutes. 

6) Stir together sugar and cornstarch in a small saucepan.  Add water and strawberries, and stir.  

7) While cooking over medium heat, crush berries with a potato masher. 

8) Bring to a boil, and then lower temperature and cook for two minutes, stirring often, until thick and translucent.  

9) Roll out dough into large rectangle, roughly 20 in. by 16 in. 

10) Spread strawberry filling thinly, leaving at least 3/4" of each long wise uncovered.  You may have extra, but too much filling makes it impossible to roll them up.  It's okay, we'll get to the leftovers later.

11) Roll up, starting at one of the long sides. Pinch seam closed.  

12) Slice using thread or a knife, into 12, 18, or 24 rolls depending on preferred size.  

13) Place in 2 buttered 9 x 13 pans, cover with towels, and allow to rise for one hour.  I preheat my oven and let them sit on the back of the stove where it is very warm. 

14) Bake at 375 degrees for 17-20 minutes or until lightly browned. DO NOT OVERBAKE. 

15) Cream all frosting ingredients together and spread onto cooled rolls. 

Have fun with your baking adventures, friends.
May they be delicious, and as in-season as you wish them to be.

- Grace