you know something, there are so many neat people out there. i'd love to meet them and say "let's be friends!" like little kids do...
i've spent the last, what hour and a half? (sheesh) wandering through random blogs. it started off with me looking for a chocolate chip cooking recipe that calls for raw sugar ('cause that's what i've got) and one page lead to another. it's a little like wandering from kitchen to kitchen, hearing snatches of conversation, then out to the back porch and through the living room, then on to the next one. just enough to give you the slightest feeling of connection and "you know, we probably like a lot of the same books" or something similar. then you get to the bottom of the page and have to decide whether to keep peering into their lives or to move onto something different...

*sigh*
...virtual reality...

this vid was passed along to me, and i wanted to share it with ya'll. while i don't agree with catholicvote.org's (tacit?) endorsement of the gop candidates, the point they make with this video is a valid one. as catholics we have a duty to be active citizens and as americans that means voting.i'm interested in hearing what you think...

cookery is my therapy... did you know that 8800something-ish words comes out to about 20 pages of writing? i turned in what was in my mind an obscenely long assignment for only being 40% of the grade by 1pm yesterday, which left me with a mostly-free afternoon.

so i made beef, barley and vegetable soup (inspired by this), green tea oatmeal sugar cookies (inspired by this), and nectarine sauce (from here). they all came out really well - next time i'll get my bh to take some photos...

it was a good afternoon.

so last week while at the grocery i compulsively picked up three winter pears - they looked soo good. the thing was they weren't ripe yet...so i dropped them in a brown paper bag, tucked them in a safe out-of-the-way place and pretty much forgot about them. fast forward a week and the pears have gone past the nice juicy stage and into "i'm going to disintegrate in your hands when you pick me up" stage. which leaves you with only one thing to do: make sauce.

honeyed pear polenta
(yes i know i said sauce, trust me on this)

* very ripe pear
* water
* honey
* cinnamon
* cornmeal, coarse is probably better

depending on how ripe your pear is either chop into desired size pieces or scoop pear mush into small-ish pot. add some water, enough to cover the pear. add some honey, three or four spoonfuls. depends on how sweet your pears are and how sweet you want this to turn out. add corresponding amount of cinnamon. bring to a low boil and let simmer for a long while; stir often enough that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. once the pear starts to break down, add some cornmeal, maybe three or four cupped handfuls. add more water and stir until the stuff stops spitting at you. add more water and repeat. add just a bit more water and let cook for a bit longer, again stirring to keep from sticking/burning. it should be pretty much done at this point. eat warm or cold.