The classic fork-dressed peanut butter cookie recipe is 1C pb + 1/2C sugar + 1 egg. I wanted to improve it, and also make it easier to prep. At least in that one makes less mess. Have you ever tried to measure 1C of pb? But that's dumb when you could just weigh out 250g. So there's that reason gone. Anyway. We like these.  They taste like food.

Preheat oven to 325F & grease two cookie trays/half sheet pans.

Prep get

• 400g of lightly salted snacking peanuts. 
• 100g of roasted almonds (not salted).
• 250g of white sugar

Put all of that in a food processor and whiz it up until it's gone past powder and is starting to clump up again. At this point I turn it out into a mixing bowl, then add

• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Use a scraper or disher to mix thoroughly. It will get extremely sticky.

Use a spoon or a disher to portion balls of dough onto the trays, leaving some room for expansion. Use a fork to smash them flat. You'll probably need to grease the fork or it'll stick.  

Bake at 325F for 11-15 minutes or until they smell done / are lightly browned.  Remove with a spatula (which will probably also need to be greased). Let them cool on a rack for 10 minutes to firm up.

Edited to add: if you want them to stay soft-ish, put them in a covered container after they cool down. If you like them crisp, let them stay out for a while. At least this works in the winter when the humidity is low.

A recap of episodic things from our list. Netflix unless otherwise noted. 

• Ted Lasso (Apple) is fantastic. 
  
• Madoka Magica, anime. Dark subversion of Magical Girl genre.  Excellent.
• Sailor Moon Crystal, anime. Fluffy, unintentionally hilarious. Watching it across from Madoka Magica was really something.
  
• DS9. We never watched it all before, so we started fresh.
• My Love. Slow paced, pleasant doc of very old people who love each other. 
• Way of the Househusband, live-action anime (fansub). Brilliant.
• Squid Game. Bailed out after one episode. Antiheroes everywhere, glorified gore fest.
• Headspace Guide to Meditation, short doc episodes. d likes it.
• Aggretsuko, anime. Starts off goofy, gets deep, but also hilarious.
• Age of Samurai, live-action doc. It was okay, if gory. Too many white people narrating though.
• Korean Cold Noodle Rhapsody, food doc. Interesting history but watching people cram wads noodles in their face was not pleasant.
• Eden, anime. Short futuristic series, lovely visuals. Cute, pleasant.
• Chef's Table BBQ, food doc. A bit "look at these people" but interesting.
• Masters of the Universe: Revelation. It isn't She-Ra but it made the man-children angry so worth a watch.
• High on the Hog, doc about Black influence on American cooking. Highly recommended.
• Legend of Korra, we tried, we really tried, but the voice acting is just so bad, and the characters act so inconsistently and stupidly.
• Nadiya Bakes, British baking doc. She's irresistably perky but much of what she bakes we can't eat.
• Taco Chronicles, food doc (en español). This was wonderful.
• Black Lightning, superhero. Really well done but didn't stick for us.
• Lupin (en français), heist. Honestly just watch Volume 1 and imagine they capped it off rather than put in the final twist. Omar Sy is great tho.
• Luna Nera, fantasy (Italian). Didn't stick either, a bit grating at times.
• Raja, Rasoi aur Anya Kahaniyan (India), food doc. Season 1 is a wonderful tour of the different regions of India, their cuisines, and how the various ruling classes affected what people eat.
• School Nurse Files (Korean), fantasy/horror. Didn't stick.
• Midnight Diner / Tokyo Stories, short stories in Japan. This is pretty good stuff in general, though some episodes are uneven.
• Umbrella Academy, superhero. We choose to believe that everyone dies at the end of Season 1, and are glad there won't be any more.
• The Good Place. Oh fuck yes.
• Stranger Things. This is pretty good!
• Food Wars, anime. We bailed, it was kinda boring.
• Street Food, doc. This series is very good.
• Korean Pork Belly Rhapsody, doc. Two episode series, quite interesting.

Well that's what Netflix said we watched in 2021.

I've been posting a lot of these for Pride Month over on hellsite and other venues.

The covid response in Ontario is nearly as much of a cluster-fuck as if they were intentionally trying to kill people.  For all I know, they are, but they are not as good at it as I'd expect competent mass-murderers to be. So, it's probably not malice, just the standard intentional incompetence of big-c Conservative/Republicans trying to ruin faith in government.

Anyway, the vax rollout has been just a god damn circus with a tidal wave of clown cars. Multiple appointment systems, different vaxxines with different providers, different eligibility criteria, changing literally by the day. 

I'd signed up to be notified when appointments were available for the "less desirable" AZ vax at my local pharmacies, but since these computer-based systems can't make instantaneous appointments when people who are supposed to be there simply don't show up, and given that a lot of low-information people are simply refusing their opportunities to get the AZ poke, I figured I'd just walk over to a pharmacy and just camp for a while and if someone didn't show up I could take their shot instead.

This turned out to be a winning strategy; in fact for the half hour I was at the pharmacy filling out forms and post-poke waiting to see if I had an allergic reaction, no one else came in for vax at all, which is appalling. 

People's risk-assessment for the blood clots a few folks people have got from AZ is really off-kilter. Undoubtedly due to the relentless hunger for media to have something, anything to talk about. Oh noes, danger! Danger!

The way I saw someone on the twitters talk about it, a Black man is 1000x more likely to be killed by a cop than anyone is of getting a blood clot from AZ, but I don't see them pulling cops off the streets.

I WISH THEY WOULD THOUGH.

Anyway, I was not expecting to get poked anytime soon but, there we go!

It should be obvious that when an enormous weight is lifted from your shoulders, your natural reaction is to want to sleep for a long time. The body, so used to having that extra hit of cortisol and adrenaline, now doing with less, realizes that shit comes with a cost.

Making goodies for a local friends holiday treat swap; my choice is usually fudge. (Real fudge, the boiled sugar kind.) The ingredients are cheap, it doesn't require making a lot of dirty dishes or heating up the oven. There's almost infinite variety of flavours. You can scale the recipe up and down trivially. And people frigging love it. 

What's new this time is that we don't have a cooktop. (I may have mentioned this before.) Not even a hot plate. What we do have is an Instant Pot. Turns out the IP's sauté function turns the thing into a versatile stovetop pot simulant. There are three temperature settings more or less corresponding to low, medium and high heat on a modest burner. The pot insert is heavy so even with the bang-bang thermostatic control, there's good thermal inertia for the ingredients. Anyway, so, yeah, making fudge with an IP. It's a thing.

First batch was a buttercream. 3c sugar, 1 cup 10% cream, 1/2c butterscotch ice cream, 1tbs butter, pinch of salt. 

Second batch was a lactose-free maple. 3c sugar, 1/4c dark-ass maple syrup, 1c almond milk, 1tbs butter, tsp corn syrup, 1/2tsp maple flavour, pinch of salt.

Tonight I'll be making chocolate, which will probably be something like 2c sugar, 1c semisweet chocolate chips, 1/4 cocoa, 1c cream, and a pinch of salt, toss in some vanilla once it's cooled.

And tomorrow it'll be Saskatoonberry cream, most likely 2.5c sugar, 1c Saskberry jam blended with 1c cream, and a pinch of salt.

How I fudge with an Instant Pot:

• Put the stuff that needs cooked in the insert, stir it up, and set sauté program on low until it starts to bubble, stirring occasionally.
• Stir a bit, scrape down the sides, then set sauté program to medium.
• Get your candy thermometer out and watch it like a hawk until you reach 234F then immediately turn off the IP.
• Remove the insert and put it on a trivet to cool, somewhere it will absolutely not be fucked with in any way.
• Wait about an hour, during which time you prepare your fudge receiving tray. I use a large springform pan with the removable bottom wrapped in clingfilm, strapped in tight. A little oil on the sides to help.
• Get your rubber spatula, toss in any adjuncts that don't want boiled or melted, then pick up the insert and tilt it and start beating the crap out of the fudge mixture.
• After about 2-3 minutes (may be more, may be less) it will get harder to stir and that's not just your arm, because you can see the shiny surface of the sugar is starting to look a little bit dull here and there.
• Immediately pour it all into the tray, scraping out everything.
• Let the tray cool for a couple hours until it fully sets, then if you are me you can pop open the springform and gently peel the plastic off a pizza-sized circle of fudge. Divide and place into a reasonably airtight container.
• Fudge tastes better the next day.

Scraping out the bits from the instant pot is cook's privilege, though of course you can assign the chore to anyone you'd like to have a sugar rush.

We get a farm food box every Saturday. It's a good price for what's in it, and also supports a non-profit that gives food to folks who can't pay for it. So that's cool. Anyway, sometimes we get a bunch of cilantro, so I make pesto. Here's the recipe!

• About a quarter cup of almonds. Maybe third cup? Into the food processor.
• About a tablespoon of sea salt. That's too much. But it's pesto so who cares.
• A teaspoon-ish of assorted dried "italian" herbs because I'm lazy.
• Okay chop that up for a bit until it looks like breadcrumbs?
• Now put in the cilantro. As much as will fit.
• Chop that up until it packs down.
• The rest of the cilantro now. Yes, all of it.
• Chop chop chop chop.
• Add like a quarter cup of olive oil?
• And a tablespoon of lemon juice, or lime if you got it.
• Whir it up for a while until it holds together.
• OH YEAH don't forget a tablespoon or so of minced garlic or like 4-6 cloves.
• Pulse and scrape down and pulse until it looks like pesto.

Remember don't lick the sharp thing.

Everyone's got their own recipe I guess.

There are barely two months left before the American election is stolen. The only way for the people to keep the republic from descending into fascism is a mass general strike. And don't bloody wait. Do it now. There's no more time to sit on the sidelines. You have to do it, and hold it, until they crack, and impeach the fucker before the election. Not after.

Every day I make some art. Sometimes I hate it, or just don't care about it. Sometimes it's really good.  I find it somewhat disturbing how much I get out of other people liking my art. And also disturbing that I find it disturbing. Why shouldn't I feel good when my efforts are validated by others? We are social animals; acceptance by the tribe is an essential brain nutrient.

I really like acting. I haven't been doing it since I moved to Toronto. But I am reminded because acting on stage gives that kind of instant acceptance/validation. I've done a little work on camera but since I honestly can't stand to see video of myself (or hear recordings of my voice) it doesn't mean much to the wee little narcissist in me. If I was to take up acting again I'd have to find those few shows where the director isn't too particular about having every line delivered every time with the exact same words.

Choir is really nice but like any kind of live performance, extremely not recommended until there's a vaccine for the pandemic. 

I'm specifically not freaking out about how it's basically September.

I guess that's it for now.

I'm still making the plotter art.  I post it elsewhere and haven't the energy to echo it here (and those of you who see it elsewhere shouldn't have to put up with that).

Also, I told Instagram to go shit on a post and slip, partly because it's incredibly artist-hostile by design, but mostly because it's part of Facebook, which is a major player in the white-supremacist internet complex.

If you'd like to get regular doses of my art, you can follow me on Twitter at @PhotoPuck, except there you also have to deal with my political rants and random garbar, or on Tumblr at plotterprints.tumblr.com, or on Mastodon at @smerp@mastodon.art. I probably should mention the online store also at plotterprints.square.site.

I'm at least a hundred prints behind on posting. I usually make like 6-10 a day but only post 2. I'm not sure what to do about that. I think it's fun to see the art evolve, but also some of my recent stuff is so much better. 

I mean that's all I do, pretty much. I make art, I exercise, I perform basic bodily functions, I socialize online with people here or there, and sometimes go outside to run errands. We're still under a state of emergency here.