Do I Have to Grow Up?

Over the Christmas break, my hometown had a glorious snowfall. The whole town was thickly blanketed in fine, perfect snow. It wasn’t very good quality for packing, but there was a huge amount of it, so I bided my time. By the third day, it had very slightly melted and settled, so that the entire yard was my toolbox. I arrived home earlier than everyone else from work, and slipped out to make my mark on the neighbourhood. The results were great:

SNOW GOON!

By the time my parents rolled into the driveway and my brother sauntered down the path, the yard held a few surprised for them in the dimming light.

GOOD GRAVY, THERE’S ANOTHER!

My brother was reasonably impressed with my homage to Calvin and Hobbes, and my dad was apathetic. My mom smiled a little, and then told me that at one point, I would have to grow up.

My first inclination was to stamp my foot and declare that I certainly didn’t need that, which perhaps proves her point. There’s a precedent to my outrage, though!

I criticize myself most of the time with admonishments to stop being so quiet, and prim, and sensible, and boring. I’m naturally pretty introverted, and very comfortable being alone. I enjoy the company of my friends and can be goofy and sociable with them, and I assuredly miss them when they’re not around, but I never feel lonely. I don’t need much to entertain me, and I can be amused and diverted by the simplest things. This is all to say that hanging with me doesn’t usually entail a totally wild time; one of my friends described it as “adorable homebodiness” and is continually trying to get me to break out of my comfort zone. I’m continually grateful for her efforts, because I always enjoy myself immensely when I do; I’m just not great at thinking of and initiating other social activities besides coffee dates. I will have you know, I am great at coffee dates. If anyone ever needs someone to chat with over coffee, I am your woman.

So when I do get an idea to do something even slightly wild and interesting, I’m quite pleased with myself. Making stupid snowmen doesn’t seem like much, but it’s out of character for me. Even that idea is ludicrous, but that’s how I feel.

This summer, I’m planning to run wild in the neighbourhood; I’m going to to the beach (it’s 15 minutes away from my house that I’ve lived in since I was 9, and I’ve been only twice; this is unconscionable), I’m going to frequent the local movie theatre to see the cool foreign films they show every week, I’m going to play badminton on the front lawn with my brother for hours, and I’m going to hang out with my friends outside of a coffee shop whenever I can. I’ll be working full-time as well, but on my hours off I am going to ignore the fact that I’m otherwise a cool, confident adult. I’m going to have fun! Good gravy, last summer I worked two jobs and didn’t even have time to read a book; I’m never going to willingly repeat that experience. I really don’t have to sacrifice my maturity and regress to childhood in order to justify having a little leisure time to goof off in.

My adulthood is my second childhood, only in this one I’m conscious of what a great opportunity I’ve been given. Let’s live it up!

Nostalgia Mondays: Printed Dresses

I WAS DOING FLOWER CROWNS BEFORE THEY WERE COACHELLA-ED.

Spring is in the silky warm breeze this week, and I’m ready to cast off my Mom-jeans and slip into some spring dresses. Spring dresses are necessarily printed–most often with flowers! I really only have one printed dress (okay, so I just bought another today in a roomie shopping trip, but that’s another blog post), but it’s in my closet at my parent’s house, so I can’t whip it out to wear in the glorious weather that I feel is

almost upon us here in Montreal. As I’m trying to decide on whether I should eschew a coat tomorrow in anticipation, I’m gonna roll on back through my memories to any and all printed dresses I had in my childhood that I still covet.I can really only think of two: the flowered number up at the top there, and this groovy blue dress covered in a fruit pattern. I wore the heck out of that blue dress; if I had a grown-up version today I’d wear it constantly. The flowered dress was my “good” dress, for school picture day, or for going out for dinner, or for visiting somewhere; it’s hard to see in the picture, but it had a row of buttons down the front and a full skirt. If I had it today, I’d wear the heck out of it too.

Ooooh. Time to vanish down an internet rabbit hole in search for replacements!

In a sort of cross between the two of them, here’s a shirt dress from Topshop.

Dress from Topshop.

And here we have something collarless, but in the same vein as the “good” Sunday dress that I used to have:

Dress also from Topshop.

And finally, this is as good as it’s gonna get:

Dress by Betsey Johnson, but I can’t find a homepage, only a Google Image.

None are quite right. Maybe I could get a loose knit polo dress and stamp it to make a print, for the blue one? And maybe just find some nice flower-printed cotton and sew myself up something nice for the other one?

I leave you with a lovely pair of Pooh-Bear pyjamas:

Fierce! Work it gurl. Scrunchie-time.

 

Nostalgia Mondays: Gluten-Free Austrian Gugelhupf Recipe

Half was eaten before I could take a picture. The bundt pan skinned the top off of it when I tried to pry the cake out of the pan.

When I was a kid, I lived for six years in Austria (birthplace of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mozart; if you’re thinking of Heath Ledger and kangaroos, then you’re thinking of Australia). Neither of my parents are Austrian; no one in my family has any connection to the country. This is all to say that Austrian cooking was no great part of my childhood in Austria. We did not cook according to our country. Anything Austrian was cooked by someone else, at a restaurant, or a roadside stand, or at school; my family was, and continues to be, Canadian carb monsters in our cooking. Because Austrian dishes were so rare (and delicious!), they stand out in my memory. The greatest of them all is the Gugelhupf. This is not some fake thing that only tourists eat: real Austrians make this stuff, and it’s delicious!

My memory of the Gugelhupf of my childhood stems from when I was about seven or eight, and was going to meetings at my friend’s house to prepare for my First Communion. We had been organized into groups, and the parents of some students had volunteered to lead these groups in discussion and worksheet-doing. I have no memory of what I was taught or what we discussed; my educated guess is that it was basically Sunday school (there was no regular Sunday school at my church). I do, however, remember the glorious Gugelhupf that my friend’s mother made for us. Lightly dusted with icing sugar and marbled with cocoa, it was beautiful.

A Gugelhupf is basically a bundt cake. As I said, I’m not Austrian; I am sure there are specific qualities that set this beauty apart from your basic bundt. I don’t even have a cherished family recipe to follow; I just adapted a couple that I found on the internet. The one my friend’s mother made was marbled, so that’s how I made it. I’m also gluten intolerant, so this is a gluten-free recipe. Celiacs rejoice! If you’re lactose intolerant, sub almond milk or coconut milk (sooooo tasty) for the cream.

This recipe is adapted mainly from the New York Times’ ‘Old Vienna Marbled Guglehupf’ recipe, which was apparently adapted from Ulli Stahl, the creator of Ulli’s Bisculli, a dessert biscuit. That’s all the info I have. I don’t even have a link. God, I’d make an awful journalist.

A couple of Classics friends, Romans, countrymen, to eat the Gugelhupf.

GUGELHUPF (pronouned GOO-gel-HOOpf, with hard g’s)

1 bundt pan, greased with butter (dust the buttered pan with flour for extra non-stick properties)

4 eggs, separated

2 cups rice flour (or 2.5 cups normal flour, if you wanna be all wheatie)

0.25 cup potato starch (ignore if you’re a wheatie)

1.25 cups sugar

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup heavy cream

0.5 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/3 cup water

optional: 1 tablespoon booze of some sort, rum or Cognac (I didn’t have any, and I didn’t miss it)

RECIPE

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter the pan and dust it with flour.

2. Beat egg yolks with sugar and booze until creamy

3. Sift flour with baking powder and stir alternating dollops of yolky sugar and the heavy cream.

4. Using clean everything (bowl, beater), beat the egg whites until you see stiff peaks. This is going to take some time. If you’re a drinker (I’m not), you might want a swig of that booze to keep you going; your arm is going to hurt.

5. Spoon egg whites into batter. Stir it up a little. Divide resulting batter into two bowls.

6. Mix cocoa powder with water to make a paste. Stir this into one of the batter halves.

7. Spoon 2/3 of the plain batter into the bundt pan. Spoon cocoa batter over this. Spoon remaining plain batter over the cocoa batter. Do not mix. It does it itself (MAGIC!).

8. Bake for about one hour. When a toothpick, inserted into the centre of the cake, emerges clean (a few crumbs on it is fine, you’re just trying to avoid gooey, raw, middles) remove cake from heat, invert onto a plate, and let it stand for a couple of hours. Yep, that’s right: a couple of hours. I skipped this step and tore the top of my cake off: cake massacre.

9. When cool, cut into thick chunks, dust with icing sugar, and share with friends.

Mine came out slightly dry and sweet, but it didn’t crumble into nothingness, as gluten-free recipes often do. I think it has to do with the separated eggs: what a revelation! My baking will never be the same! I’m separating ALL THE EGGS. If I’m going to completely disregard any cultural authority on this recipe, I would suggest adding a dollop of apple sauce to make it a bit moister.