Celebrity Crush

I'm totally head-over-heels for Prince Naveen. We maybe watched The Princess and the Frog twice in 24 hours. I'm still laughing.

Hope springs eternal

I'm an optimist.

I manage to hope that even after a decade of dermatologic distress, my acne will clear up. I'm always optimistic that tonight will be the night I get eight (or heck, even six or seven) uninterrupted hours of sleep. I like to believe that I will have time for the many projects I want to work on, or that today I won't waste a single second mindlessly surfing the internet.

None of which ever happens.* (That last one may have an effect on the second-to-last...)

So that should explain why after several banana bread fiascoes (all different recipes), I thought tonight's endeavor would surely succeed. I fully anticipated two plump, mouthwateringly moist loaves of bread emerging from my oven.

How disappointed I was.


"Moist" is an understatement; the interior was entirely gooey and the whole thing was utterly inedible. (We tried to choke it down; I hate to waste.)

I think the culprit of our baked goods woes is the questionable age of our leavening agent. Anything in my kitchen marked with an H was donated by a generous roommate many months prior to my marriage. In a moment of unusual culinary insight, I considered that perhaps baking powder loses potency over time.


Indeed. With a recommended shelf life of just 6 months, I don't think my "Best by May 2005" Clabber Girl can bubble up quite the way she used to. (This is my totally inexperienced hypothesis.)

Tonight's treats were donated to the birds who frequent a neighboring field:



Baking powder is on the grocery list, so hopefully next time my bread is worthy of being delivered to the human neighbors.

*After years of various face washes and prescriptions (including two rounds of Acutane) and a cruel cycle of being acne free for periods barely not long enough to let old scars heal, I finally seem to be making some headway -- and just by changing my pillowcase every night. That's right. It's been that simple and that cheap. I'm hoping it's a permanent improvement -- hope springs eternal, after all.
(Of course, just about the time my skin started clearing up I developed this strange eczema around my eyelids. So now instead of looking like a pimply teenager I look like I've contracted the bubonic plague. So much for my aspirations at cosmetics modeling.)

UPDATE:
After many commenters have pointed out the age of their baking powder, I'm worried that I can't blame these cooking catastrophes on an old ingredient, but that the fault lies elsewhere (like with my incompetence.) Any help from my expert bakers? Charly?? Jan???

Writer's block

I've mulled over many post topics in my head, but when I sit to write them out, apparently none of them are worth pursuing.

So here's a picture of my kid instead.


...

For the record, the topics I've been chewing on:

cycling
South Texas
acne
metablogging
"identity boxes"

Boring all. But I may squeeze something out of them yet.