I'll have two soups

Because I shut down mershoots for the year a few weeks ago, and I haven't been advertising any regular shoots, I'm probably safe to post my favorite photos of the year now. 

I won't have a lot. I was off an on for work this year, I did way more real estate than I did anything else, with mermaids being a close second. I want to push hard for next year, but I also don't have a lot of energy for that. I get antsy when I'm not doing shoots, and I want to advertise way harder this upcoming year, but I'm definitely worried about how badly my depression will impact my ability to work without upset. 

Anyway, here is some shit I did this year. 

Obviously this does not include any of the macros or travel photos or anything from this year. I really didn't shoot much in 2022...it's been a pretty bad depression year for me. All of my energy went to school, my kiddo (s when both of them were around), and wallowing in self-loathing anxiety, overwhelm, and depressive episodes. Not the best cocktail for going out there and doin' shit for work or fun. I will hopefully find myself medicated here shortly, so maybe 2023 will be a brighter year for me. 

Empires crumble and cathedrals flatten in my heart

So. The internship. I want to talk about it so I don't forget about it, because it really should make me super proud, and this is something I would like to remember. 

A few months ago, an email caught my eye regarding an internship with MAST Research Center. The details of the internship were right up my alley. I don't really talk about school much here, really just as a peripheral obligation that is kind of a drain on my emotional economy. It isn't intentional, I just know I'm already kind of boring in my blog, and I don't want to dive into that any further by talking about my research or my focus. I will now, obviously, but this is probably a one time thing. 

My undergrad is in psychology. I graduated with honors, magna cum laude, got a special cord and everything, so you KNOW it's real. The cord makes it legit. About halfway through my undergrad, I started noticing how fucked up the studies I was reading all the time were. How they left out so much of the population. Marginalized groups were barely included in any academic studies, and if they were, the studies themselves were designed with a deficit perspective in mind. So the representation in psychology was abysmal. My capstone paper was twenty five pages on the lack of inclusion in psychology, and how we're unable to be effective practitioners for everyone if we don't bother to see anything but the negatives in people who aren't straight, white, and male. I left psychology behind to pursue something more inclusive. Joke's on me, everything in academia is fucking racist, sexist, ableist, and queerphobic. So I've dedicated my graduate degree to applying concepts in HDFS (human development and family science) positively to marginalized groups, but my focus has been on queer and further marginalized queer youth. Every discussion, every paper, every project, every grant proposal for a program I build. All about queer/further marginalized queer youth. 

So when I saw the internship, I was like, RIGHT. GOT IT. That's my lane. Here is the internship ad, I cannot believe it's still up on MAST's website. 

Graduate Internship Program

DEADLINE EXTENDED – APPLICATIONS DUE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2022 BY 5:00 PM ET

As part of our efforts to expand and strengthen the field of researchers studying relationships and families, the MAST Center’s Graduate Internship Program aims to connect emerging scholars to our work as well as a broader network of researchers and practitioners interested in relationships and families.

Our Graduate Internship Program is open to graduate students in master’s or Ph.D. programs, as well as individuals who completed a master’s program within the last year. The internship is a six-month position from approximately January through June 2023. We seek applicants who demonstrate a strong interest in further developing their research expertise in 1) marriage, romantic relationships, and families; and 2) HMRE program implementation and effectiveness for stepfamilies or LGBTQIA+ populations.

Our team values equity and recognizes that systemic discrimination has negatively impacted the well-being of individuals, families, and communities from groups who are also underrepresented in the research field. As researchers, we aim to be accountable for promoting equity by centering the lived experiences of disabled, socioeconomically disadvantaged, LGBTQIA+, Black, Indigenous, and people of color in our research. We also believe that people who have lived experience in the criminal justice and foster care systems bring important perspectives that are too often missing in research. Hence, we strongly encourage people with these lived experiences and identities to apply.

Child Trends, where the MAST Center is housed, is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer, and protected veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

I hope this doesn't do the thing where like, there's a weird highlight on the text and it changes the entire formatting of my blog. Fingers crossed. 

Anyway, I reached out to my advisor and I was like, hey, will you write me a letter of rec for this internship? And she said she would be delighted to, that it sounds perfect for me. 

Here is the letter of rec my advisor wrote for me:

To the Members of the MAST Center Internship Selection Committee:

Ondrea (Drea) Tucci entered the Master of Arts program in Human Development and Family Science with an emphasis in Family and Community Services in Fall 2021. I have served as her advisor, course instructor (for two courses), and departmental Director of Graduate Studies. It is in these roles I have had the opportunity to interact with Drea and observe her work; thus, I feel confident in my assessment of her abilities. Given her work ethic, passion for serving sexual and gender minority families, and openness to learn more, I believe Drea is an ideal candidate for this prestigious internship.

Work ethic. Since first entering the Master's program, Drea has completed 8 of 12 courses, and has earned a cumulative GPA of 3.875. She is expected to graduate in May 2023. Because this program is entirely online, success requires strong organizational and time management skills. Students must be self-directed enough to complete the required readings, weekly discussions/activities, and larger writing assignments and projects. As her instructor for Foundations of Family and Community Services in Fall 2021 and Family Resilience in Spring 2022, I engaged with the course through discussion boards, individual feedback on assignments, announcements, and recorded lectures. After that, students must take initiative if they desire more interaction and engagement. And Drea took initiative! She was engaged, attended office hours, found other times to meet with me, and went above the minimum posting requirements to engage with the material and with her peers. Drea was punctual and thorough in her work, and she sought out additional resources to help her succeed. I feel confident she will apply this same drive and work ethic as an intern.

Passion. Drea is passionate and vocal about learning about, advocating for, and serving LGBTQIA+ families. In both courses she took with me, students were able to select a topic for their larger written assignments (including an integrative literature review, research executive summary, and program redesign using principles of family resilience) and for select readings. For all assignments, Drea selected a topic related to LGBTQIA+ families (specifically, the need for inclusive and comprehensive sex education for youth, and bullying prevention and resilience building programs for queer youth). She has maintained this focus in her other courses thus far (including Family Dynamics and Intervention, Family Crisis Intervention, and Interpersonal Relationships), so she should have a strong baseline knowledge of this population.

Openness. Her passion is strong, but not to the point of being closed to others' perspectives. In her discussions with others and in response to feedback, Drea displayed an openness to learning about other perspectives, even when they challenged her own. She would invite others to share different points of view, and she would take care to acknowledge that although her lived experience and passion led her to communicate strongly, she was curious about others.

Given the nature of the internship at your organization and Drea's work ethic, passion, and openness, I believe she could succeed at the MAST Center and further your mission. If you have any questions or require additional information about my experiences with Drea, please do reach out to me. Thank you for your consideration.

I teared up when I read that letter. I was fucking thrilled. I tried to push away the knowledge that LoRs are fluff, they all read like that, and I instead told myself that I'm a special little cookie monster that is a genius who thrives in her academic environment. I also felt seen and appreciated for the work I do, which isn't why I do it, but it's certainly a nice bonus. 

For the internship, I had to submit a letter of rec, and a statement of interest. I had to submit a few other things, as well, mostly shit proving that I'm academically capable and can conduct myself in a professional capacity. It took my advisor awhile to get my LoR finished, she was really busy over the summer, but that gave me plenty of time to...procrastinate and not put my packet together. Honestly, I stalled on purpose. I talked myself into believing that I wasn't good enough for this internship. MAST is pretty prestigious in my field, and I figured that I had less than a good chance at being considered. So I just...kind of hoped my advisor would forget to do my letter of rec so I could blame my not applying on her instead of telling the truth and saying I do not see my worth. 

Ashley submitted my letter of rec to me literally the night before the deadline to apply. September 29th. And I was like, well fuck. Now I've got to do this for real. I have no scapegoat. 

So I got all of the things I needed to get together together. A resume, a letter of intent, my letter of rec, and a personal statement. My resume is always ready to go, I just had to do the letters. 

My letter of interest took me a longer time to write than my personal statement. It is as follows:

To the 2023 Internship Selection Committee:

It is with an exceptional amount of enthusiasm that I write to you of my interest in the MAST Center’s 2023 Graduate Internship Program. My name is Ondrea Tucci, I am currently a graduate student in the HDFS Program at the University of Missouri, and I am scheduled to graduate in May of 2023.

Throughout my time as a student at Mizzou, various internship and career opportunities that are directly related to my field of study are sent out to myself and my fellow students, and it is from one such email that I was made aware of this internship.

At present, my GPA of record is 3.85, and I am driven to exceed that by the time I graduate in May. While the program itself focuses on Human Development and Family Science, I have focused my graduate studies on the queer community, continuing the focus I had during my pursuit of my BA in psychology.

Opportunities that explicitly focus on the queer community are few and far between, and it is my hope that, through this initial introduction and my following personal statement, you feel as confident in me as the perfect candidate for this internship as I did upon reading it. 

That took me a couple of hours. I didn't know what I wanted to say. I had no idea how to be like, a pick me girl, but professional. 

My personal statement, however, took me about fifteen minutes. 

Hopefully this does not start me off on the wrong foot, but I am an elder millennial. My formative years took place in the late 90s and early 00s, and as anyone else from my era may recall, we had an interesting collection of interests. Garbage Pail Kids, Gak, getting slimed on You Can’t Say That on Television, all manner of wildness and often gross topics were common on the playground. We talked about these things with fervent delight, caring not one whit about how gross or weird adults thought they, or indeed we, by extension, were. I have so many memories of being a gunked up kid, giggling and crying out in feigned horror at the gross scenarios kids on my playground would make up. And yet for all of the time we spent imagining the most horrific of things to make each other squirm, some things were quite taboo.

Gay was really the only word any of us knew back then, and as the world was still pretty freshly involved in the AIDS epidemic, gay was probably the dirtiest of the words anybody could say, both on the playground, and in real life. Kids would call each other all manner of cutting things. I was made fun of for my name quite a lot, hearing myself being called “tooshie” and “TOUCAN” would upset me quite a bit. Other kids in my class received similar nicknames, but every kid in my school, well into high school, knew that if you really and truly meant to cut someone to their very core, you only had to shout out one accusation their way: gay. “You’re GAY” was such an immediate, soul crushing insult, and I don’t know that any of us ever really understood why it was so effective.

When I was 13, a friend of mine confided in me that she was a lesbian, and she was afraid to tell her mother. What if she got kicked out? I assured my friend it would be fine, and I would do a test run on my mom to feel out how moms would react. I had no idea how to run a reputable study at 13, but I was certainly trying! I came home and asked my mother what she would say if I told her I was gay, and I won’t ever forget the look of dismay that flashed across her face before settling into concern. She asked me if I was, and I said no, I was just asking for my friend. In hindsight, this seems like exactly the thing a young queer person would say when they sense displeasure at calling in people to who they are. My mother’s body showed obvious signs of relief, and she assured me that nothing could make her love me less. Which is not quite an answer to the question, really. I went back to Krista, armed with the information that my mother said it was alright, but not having quite the assurance that being gay actually WAS alright to my mom.

I am positive this is what kept me closeted until I was in my twenties. My identities are numerous, but of the ones I proudly rattle off, queer is one of the first. It took me decades to reach a point where I could both acknowledge and love my queerness, and it is with a lifetime of experiences as a queer woman that I have dedicated my academic work to the queer community. I am in a straight passing marriage with a cisgender, heterosexual man, and I am a fiercely proud mother to three children who are also in the queer community: my oldest is 19, bisexual and non-binary, my step-daughter is 19 and pansexual, and my youngest is 15 and transgender. My life is very literally LGBTQIA+ families and family dynamics.

My interest in love, relationships, and marriage stems from a life filled with the social consequences of these things being heteronormative, and an academic history that is consistently frustrated by the lack of inclusion of queerness and its many, many intersections. Queer love, queer relationships, and queer families need and deserve to be the focus of study where the point is not to highlight their deficits, but rather to show the world how strong, caring, nurturing, and normal we are. Having the opportunity to work directly with others to ensure the inclusion of queer relationships in any arena that focuses on outcomes, or strengths, or pitfalls, or all of the above, would truly be the highlight of my academic career.

Additionally, I would bring with me a great deal of insight into step-families, as well. I have had two step-mothers and two step-fathers, and my kids have varying experiences with step-family. There are a lot of tricky dynamics to navigate, but bringing this experience with me also stokes my interest in studying the dynamics of step-families. Of course, my focus immediately goes to how queerness impacts step-families, because divorce and child outcomes are quite different for couples who are not, at best, straight passing. I would jump at the chance to ensure that queer families are not their own subject, but are incorporated into every facet of study this internship is focusing on.

I spoke earlier of queerness and its many intersections, and this is also of the utmost importance to me. With all due respect and reverence for the academic work done by all institutions, academia has a whiteness problem. Too many of our fields draw from largely white samples and focus on largely white reactions and responses. I have pushed myself, and my fellow students and professors, to include more research that focuses on diverse populations so we can more clearly see the full picture of what we’re trying to understand, especially when it comes to queerness. Which also has a whiteness problem. Equity and awareness of bias are two things I strive to include in any endeavor I undertake: academic, professional, or social. This internship would be no different.

I have spent the last five years dedicating every single aspect of my education to intersectional queerness and the impact it has on childhood outcomes, on family dynamics, on school performance, on survival rates, and on normalizing these topics to my peers. Every opportunity to write a paper, to do an academic review, to present information to my classmates, has been dedicated to showcasing that queerness is everywhere, we just need to include it in what we teach, and what we study. It is with a mix of dismay and joy that I find myself teaching my fellow students every semester about queerness, because queerness is just not represented in academia. LGBTQIA+ is my focus, because I am a member of the community, my kids are in the community, my friends are in the community. It is a community that I needed to see as more than a taboo slur when I was on the playground, and it is a community that I need to see in academia now.

 Every facet of this internship touches on a faction of queer life that is often ignored by studies and research centers. Marriage, love, relationships. Step-families. Program building to strengthen relationships. I am not so bold as to assume I would be the only person at MAST with such an agenda, and one of the things I am most eager to gain from this internship is being mentored by someone with practical, real world experience in ensuring that queerness is always included in the research to strengthen relationships and understand them better.

This internship at MAST jumped out at me the moment I saw it. It is the opportunity I have been waiting for, and it is my hope that you see me as worthy of it.

I put my packet together, plugged them into the application site, and after about five minutes of hesitating while I questioned my worth and worthiness, I hit send. No going back now!

The website said that by October 7th, decisions would be made on the applicants that would be moving forward with interviews, and that no rejection emails would be sent out. If you didn't get an email by October 7th, you didn't get the internship. I was painting my oldest's room on October 7th. All day. I busied myself with creating something to keep my mind off of checking my inbox a thousand times. 

At about 9pm, I checked my email for the first time that day. No email from MAST or Child Trends. Well there it was. I was disappointed, but not surprised. I told Derek, "well, I didn't get that internship opportunity" and he consoled me, but I honestly just felt kind of...ambivalent about being rejected. I knew I wanted it, but I hadn't invested myself in the idea of having it, because not so deep down, I didn't think I deserved it. a 3.8 GPA is fine, but it isn't the best. Graduating top 10% of my class is fine, but it isn't the best. I probably made my personal statement too personal. I should have fawned over MAST and Child Trends more. They see that I'm just...average. Being honest with myself, I was positive from the time I applied that I was below the standard they wanted to set for themselves as a research center, and applying was only ever really meant to solidify my hunch that I'm just not good enough for anything but a run of the mill MS. Dreaming big is all well and good, unless you start to believe you're capable of great things, and then it all falls down because you're lacking in every aspect that others shine in. You're just...average. These are the things I was telling myself that entire day. The entire weekend. I was bummed, sure, but bummed in a way that felt validating to my ordinary accomplishments, which weren't accomplishments, they were just...things I did. 

On Monday, I was still licking my wounds a bit. Secretly. I didn't want anybody to know how much it still stung to have someone else say, "sorry, you're not good enough" on top of hearing that in my own voice. I didn't do anything for my classes, I just had some tea and indulged in doing nothing. Tuesday, I logged in to school, and checked my email. At the bottom of my unreads, from Monday morning, was a congratulations, you're one of our final candidates! email from MAST. It was late. They had been swarmed with applicants after extending the deadline, and they ran behind schedule finding their final applicants. Of which I was one. 

I definitely cried a little bit when I read that they wanted to interview me. I felt kind of overwhelmed. Everybody I told was beyond thrilled for me, and told me they knew that me not being chosen had to have been a mistake. That I was perfect for this position, and I'm a good and engaging writer, they would be nuts to ignore my application. 

I set up a time for the interview. October 18th, I believe. In the afternoon. And then I went about researching MAST and Child Trends. Let's be honest, I should have done that first. Due diligence and all. But I read their studies. I read their class lectures from fellows at the institute. I read everything that was available to me to read, and I wrote up a bunch of questions for the interviewers. Having never done an interview for an internship...I've always been too rattled by self-doubt to see myself as a worthy applicant...I fussed to Kati that I didn't know what to do. How much history of the institute should I memorize? She assured me that they would more than likely just want to inform me of the internship, ask me questions to see how I would fit in with the research, and give me a bit of room to ask my own questions. 

She was 100% correct. 

The interview day came, I was super duper nervous. I started out by introducing myself, and saying, "hey, I have ADD and autism, please don't hold it against me if I fidget, or don't maintain eye contact, or lose track of something I say or you say. I am here, I am present." They thanked me for the heads up, but part of me does wonder if that's a bit of what ultimately cost me the internship. 

We spoke for an hour and a half, closer to two hours, I think. They asked me a lot of questions about where my interests lie, how I would incorporate diversity, things like that, and I countered with, "how do YOU incorporate diversity, because I read all of your available research, and I see so many of the problems I am actively frustrated at in academia". They said that's just the stuff on the website, they are currently working on other projects that are more diverse, and projects that are written without a deficit perspective about marginalized groups. It is worth noting they have since updated the available research on their site, and it does reflect a bit more diversity and positive framing. So they weren't full of shit or anything, and I think, in retrospect, calling that out might have cost me the internship a little, as well. 

At the end of the interview, I thanked them for their time, assured them this was exactly the internship I needed, and that above that, the internship needed ME. A bold closing note, but I thought to myself, what would a cis man say? And that was what came to mind. They told me decisions would be made in the next two weeks, they had several other applications to get through, and if I didn't hear from them by November 1st, I shouldn't be assuming the worst, that their last interview was on October 31st. That they would be in touch regardless of the outcome. 

I've obviously heard that before, a lifetime of jumping from job to job and doing interview after interview understand that the "we'll follow up no matter what!" lie is only true maybe...5% of the time.  But I actually felt really fucking good about the interview. Really good. I recorded it, and I listened to it a few times (I will not upload it here, don't worry), and I sounded professional, personable, and most importantly, KNOWLEDGEABLE. I fucking know my shit. I really do. I was impressed by my performance, and I rarely, if ever, give myself any kind of idea that I am capable of greatness. 

I followed up a couple hours later with a thank you email, of course. I didn't apologize for harping on their current research library being woefully bereft of the inclusion they so desire, even though I kind of felt like I should. Chastising your interviewer is probably not a good call. I know this from experience...I wanted a job as an editor's assistant at a local paper about 15 years ago, and I thought it would be a good idea to edit the latest edition and submit it with my resume and a cover letter expressing my interest. Turns out, nobody likes to be shown how hard they fuck up. 

I got my rejection letter the first week of November. I had not been chosen, they went with another candidate. 

Well. 

I wasn't expecting that, actually. I kind of thought I nailed it. I assumed I had it in the bag. And I will not begrudge myself being wrong about that, I love that I was so proud of myself and thought I handled the interview well enough to think I had gotten something prestigious that I really, really wanted. I let myself understand that not only did I deserve such a thing, I had done enough to earn it. 

I was obviously sad that I didn't get it, but...here's what kept me from being super duper sad:

I got consolation prizes. Really, really good ones. 

They praised me for my work, dedication, and passion for queer/further marginalized queer youth and families, and offered me a stipend for the commitment I've shown and the work I've already done to advance my community in academic spaces. A stipend of no small amount. It isn't the full stipend I would have received as an intern at MAST, but it's a sizeable fraction of it. 

They offered me mentorship. Not only would the two women...both prestigious doctors...offer me their services as editors of my thesis, but they wanted to set me up to meet with the two researchers at MAST that deal almost exclusively with queerness so I could discuss further mentoring from one or both of them, AND to discuss career growth and opportunities in the field of 2SLGBTQIA+ research for youth and families. Also, one of the people at MAST they are putting me in contact with has written a few papers that I have definitely quoted in my research. Which is just fucking wild to me. 

They offered me a pipeline into networking with other research institutions that focus on 2SLGBTQIA+ communities so I can advance my career in spaces that are designed around positive queer representation in academia. 

These were all the things I was most excited about for the internship. I wanted the mentorship. I wanted the opportunities. I wanted to rub elbows with people who could help me find my way after I'm finished with my graduate degree, because as of right now, I don't know quite what I want to do with my degree. I know I want to parlay it into helping the queer community, I just don't know where or how. I wanted to be a part of research that focused on ignored family dynamics in a positive way. I wanted to earn money doing such a thing. And like...I am still getting all of those things, even though I didn't get the internship. So in reality, I still gain something from this. I am still being recognized as capable, as providing something worthy to a larger conversation. As intelligent and driven. 

They made it pretty clear that I wasn't chosen because I am hyper-focused on queerness, and that their research space is not a research space that I would thrive in. Which is a very nice way of saying, "we don't focus on queerness enough for your focus to be necessary to us". And I'm ok with that. Not like I have a say in it, or that if I hadn't been ok with it, I could have fought my way into the internship, anyway. I think that ultimately, I want to be doing research that benefits my community as more than an afterthought, and I think that's what would be going on here. 

So...I am still walking away from the experience as a winner. I told my advisor that I had no idea that internships offered runner up prizes. She said she didn't, either, and I should understand what a testament it is to my accomplishments and passion that they are still rewarding me with exactly the things I wanted in the first place. 

She's right. I definitely see it that way. I am really proud of everything I've done, of the things I've stood for and stand for. Derek is so after me to get my PhD so I can contribute in an even more meaningful way to the things I value. He says that I should think about other little girls out there, telling their moms in roundabout ways that they're queer, and being able to see themselves as valid in that queerness because I've helped normalize it for prospective parents and people who are parents already. It's so funny that he sees that level of greatness in me, because I tell him all the time that I don't think I'd even make a ripple in academia, and that's where the changes are needed most. I love that he sees more to my contributions than I think I ever could.

But maybe now I'll see things from his perspective a bit easier. Maybe I can make a difference like the one he sees. Maybe. I suppose we'll see. 

I'm practically Minnesotan now. Take me away, Midwest!

On Saturday, Derek was complaining of fatigue, and just feeling kinda off. Saturday is our big house cleaning day, where everybody does their big chores so the house can be nice and neat and ready for destroying through the next six days, and he wasn't feeling particularly up for that. So instead we ran errands. Not a great alternative when someone isn't feeling their best, really, but here we are. 

Sunday, Derek comes down with muscle aches. Not tooooo serious, but enough that he pretty much stayed in bed through the day, and the plans we had for our anniversary fell through. Derek had a lovely day planned for us...a nice dinner that we'd make together, getting into our new 2,000 piece puzzle that we haven't had time for yet, and taking a tub, having a drink, and doing a crossword puzzle (which is our favorite way to unwind and connect, we do it all the time. Jetted tub + whatever boozy drink we choose + NYT Sunday crossword puzzle = how we keep the fires burning). We did not a stitch of that, he laid in bed all day, and I sat in the living room, quietly resenting him. 

On Monday, Derek was full blown ill. Obvious chills, muscle aches bad enough that he was moaning all day. I was starting to get worried that maybe he had covid. Derek still mostly wears his mask, but I know when he's teaching, he's a lot more cavalier, so who knows what germs he's partying with on his on weeks. I told Derek I thought maybe he had covid, and he laughed it off (as best as he could, given that he's been a joyless puddle since Saturday) and said he had a run of the mill cold. I made him take a covid test, it was negative, and he went back to his holding pattern of whining, sleeping, and shivering. 

Tuesday night, he has not improved. I made him take another covid test, because muscle aches and chills and slightly off tummy are pretty current through all of the cases of people I know who've had covid. Derek is still very insistent he doesn't have covid, but I am relentless about him taking a test. A couple of my girlfriends have had negative tests when they knew they had covid, as well, so I took Derek's crowing about his negative tests with a large grain of salt. Tuesday evening rolls around, and Derek is feeling worse than he's felt in days. He makes a rare exit from his moaning cocoon in bed to go to the bathroom, and as I was sitting in the room working on a paper, I heard him make the frustration noise in the bathroom. 

me: Is everything ok, honey? Can I help you with something?

Derek: You can't help me with this.

me: What is this?

Derek: I'm just having extreme difficulty peeing.

me:....uh. Maybe we should go to the doctor. 

Derek: nah, it's been going on since Saturday.

me: .....what.

Derek: It's just my prostate stuff, I doubled my meds, it'll get better. 

me: Derek. Are you kidding? Scale of 1-10, how extreme is your difficulty in peeing?

Derek: Extreme.

me: we're going to the fucking ER. This is why ciswomen live longer than cismen. 

Derek: Why? It's fine.

me: Uh, no. Why didn't you tell me this days ago? If you had told me days ago that you had trouble peeing, I wouldn't have thought you had covid, I would have known IMMEDIATELY you had some kind of bladder infection or a severe UTI that was turning into a bladder infection. Or maybe you have a kidney stone. But whatever it is, get dressed, we're going to the ER.

So we went to the ER. And after a few hours, some bloodwork, and one negative covid test later, we find out that Derek DID have a bladder infection. A very severe bladder infection that was moving into his kidneys. And he was severely dehydrated. So they gave Derek two IV bags of fluid, one IV bag of antibiotics, and sent him home with a week long course of antibiotics to treat his infection, and a fuckton of pain medication. 

It is Friday now, and yesterday Derek had his first day getting out of bed. I hadn't slept in the room in days, because he had been sweating in his pain cocoon, and the room smelled deeply unpleasant. But yesterday he took a shower, we washed the sheets, the comforter, everything. The room smells like a room again, and Derek smells like a person again, and things are mostly right with the world. He's functioning at about 60%, which is so much better than he's been since Sunday. 

I may have made this clear in here, but I just fucking LOVE to cook for people. If you're feeling down, I want to cook for you. If you're happy, I want to cook to celebrate. If you're feeling ill, I want to make your favorite comfort food. A few months ago, when Derek had his last procedure, I asked him what he wanted to eat during his convalescence, and he was like, I want hot fill. 

What the fuck is hot fill. 

I had no idea. I had never heard the term. So I messaged my mother in law and got a recipe for the dish Derek was talking about. 

Oh, I remember thinking to myself. It's a casserole. A midwestern casserole. 

Fast forward to Thursday night, I wanted to make Derek something hot, filling, and midwestern adjacent. Those are his roots, baby! He's from Indiana, so he grew up around all manner of things that are legally considered food, but in reality have no respect or decency for the people that consume them. 

Rewind to when I was 14: my great grandfather had passed away, and I went to Ithaca for his funeral. As is customary when someone loses their spouse, my great grandmother's rotary club friends all brought over their finest one pot dishes for my grandmother to freeze, refrigerate, and eat at her leisure, ensuring she didn't have to bother herself with cooking. One of those meals was a casserole. 

Casserole is what we call hot fill...which is actually called hot dish...in New York. And I think most people understand this as a casserole. It's a one pan meal you bake in the oven, comprised of a mish mash of ingredients that are just...rude. When I looked up hot dish to see what the difference between hot dish and casserole was, I was informed by a great many blogs from midwestern folk that CASSEROLE is the vessel in which a HOT DISH is served. So to midwesterners, casserole is just an empty hole, waiting patiently to be filled with hot dish. Casserole is not a dish you eat, it's a thing you serve your midwestern slop bucket innards in. 

Fast forward to when I was 16-17: I went back to Ithaca to care for my great grandmother, and I decided I wanted that casserole for us. It was easy, it made a lot, and I could just reheat it for a few days and not have to worry about making new stuff. Now, I was never given the recipe for this casserole. I don't even know which one of my grandmother's friends had made it so I could ask for the recipe. So I had to figure it out from memory. I had to ask my great grandmother about what the base to a casserole usually was, and she told me, I was appropriately icked out, but I forged ahead, recalling the other ingredients, and then...just...shoving them into a pan, baking them, and waiting to eat it to see if it was close to the original. 

Whether or not it was close to the original from several years before I cannot say. What I CAN say was the mess I had made was absolutely fucking DELICIOUS. I cared for my grandmother for a month before I ended up leaving and going back to Vegas...I think we ate this casserole...er...hot dish....50% of the time I was there. I brought this dish with me when I returned from New York. In Vegas, my dad wasn't really around, so I pretty much had license to do whatever the fuck it was that I wanted to do, and it also meant I didn't have someone cooking for me a lot, so I had to fend for myself. I turned to this casserole a LOT. I'm sorry, midwesterners. I know I'm meant to call it a hot dish, but I really am struggling with the change. If I osscilate between hot dish and casserole, I think you all know I'm not saying that we were eating our pyrex serving dish. Anyway, I made this hot dish a lot. Steffie and I ate it constantly. When I got pregnant with Rhyann, and I was living in California and Steffie came out to visit me a few times, each time she came we made my chicken casserole. My chicken hot dish. My chicken abomination that shouldn't be delicious, but is. 

Back to present day...well...back to present week, circa Wednesday. I wanted to make a new hot dish casserole for my Midwestern husband. My poor, suffering midwestern husband. So I texted Steffie, asking if she still had the recipe for this casserole, did she remember it at all? And I absolutely LOVED hearing that Steffie has, in fact, been making this hot dish casserole for her family for years. It's not necessarily a staple, but it is common enough that she rattled off the recipe, telling me she had changed it a lot over the years and didn't remember my original version, but I was welcome to try  her version of it. 

When I say delighted, I mean it. I was thrilled to my very fingertips that this disgusting lie of a meal had made its way into the food repertoire of one of my best friends. Because...this dish is truly my Frankenstein's Monster. I scrapped it together from hideous details, stapled them together and hoped for the best. I emulated something that I ate ONCE when I was 13, surrounded by grief, and look at this absolutely ridiculous path my food mess has taken! Twenty years later, it's a common family meal for a dear friend, and I was also about to embark on making it again. I was filled with warmth at the thought of this, which may sound silly, but I don't particularly mind sounding silly over this. 

Because that warmth and glee had to do a lot...and I mean a LOT...of heavy lifting to muscle through the absolute fucking disgust and revulsion I felt buying up all of the ingredients to make this monstrosity. I am going to share the recipe, for two reasons:

Reason 1: I do not want to forget it ever again. Steffie's recipe was fine, and it was close enough to my original recipe that I could use it in a pinch...or use it to jog my memory once again...but why do that when I can just post it here and never again need to rely on her version? 

Reason 2: I want to urge anybody who reads this to make it...exactly as stated...and tell me it isn't delicious and comforting and filling and exceptional, in spite of the ingredients. 

Because I truly believe that there are only two ways to react to this recipe. You either look at the ingredient list in absolute disgust and food paranoia, with utter disbelief that these ingredients will turn into something delicious, or you're a midwesterner that knows I'm preaching some seriously delicious gospel. 

I have no problem admitting how fucking furious I am about this hot dish. Legitimately, I am repulsed. Because I could not stop laughing every few minutes in that way you laugh to get you through a disgusting task. It was a defense mechanism. Everything about this grossed me out. And it smelled AWFUL. Have you ever just...smelled mayonnaise? It is repugnant. And yet...once it went into the oven, I was in olfactory heaven. It smelled like my late teenage years, it smelled like nostalgia. It smelled fucking DELICIOUS. When I took it out of the oven, I laughed again, this time in response to how much my body wanted to house the entire fucking thing. It smelled so. fucking. good. 

Alright, recipe time.

Ready for this? Here we go. 

2 cups mayonnaise

1 can cream of celery soup (condensed)

1 can cream of mushroom and garlic soup (condensed)

1 single serving package of Mahatma Yellow Rice, prepared as directed

2 cans sliced water chestnuts, drained and roughly chopped

1 can of corn, drained

4 hard boiled eggs, chopped

half a pound of matchstick carrots/shredded carrots

half a container of French's fried onions (reserve other half for later)

2 ounces of bacon bits

1 cup slivered almonds

4 ounces shredded cheese of your choice (I used colby jack, but the world is your dairy oyster) (reserve other 4 ounces in typical 8 ounce package for later)

1.25 pounds cooked, shredded chicken

Cornflakes (reserve for later...DO NOT MIX THESE IN)

Ok, ready for the directions?

Preheat your oven to whatever temperature your favorite tater tots need to cook. What's a midwestern hot dish without some kind of potato side? I wanted to use tater tots, but I felt compelled to make Checker's Fries instead. For those fries, the temperature was 425. 

Mix all of that shit together. There is  no right or wrong way to do this, though if I  may make a suggestion, incorporate the two cans of condensed soup into the two cups of mayo first, THEN mix in everything else. Stir it all up, make sure everything is good and mixed, with even access to every god forsaken element of this texture nightmare. 

Throw your food goop into a 9x13 pan, and spread it out evenly. It should fill to the very brim of the CASSEROLE, but it will not bubble over. If you are so inclined, you could absolutely place the CASSEROLE on a baking tray in case there is spillover and I just got lucky. 

Once your goop is good and smeared flat, evenly cover the top with the rest of your french fried onions. then generously cover the top with cornflakes. Like, you want a carpet of cornflakes. You don't even want to see that there are fried onions underneath. You forest floor that bitch with cornflakes. Be aggressive. 

A side note about the cornflakes: Cornflakes used to be the only topping. I decided on a whim last night to add french fried onions to the mix, because they are delicious and I love them, even though I can't eat this hot dish. What I used to do was crush the cornflakes up, then mix them up with...I shit you not...an entire stick of butter...then I would spread that shit on top. Steffie is the one who changed it up in the way that I'm about to give as a direction, with the cornflakes and the cheese. But if you want to JUST do cornflakes and butter, go for it. Nobody will judge you, it isn't like omitting an extra stick of butter makes this healthier. 

Cover your cornflakes with the remaining 4 ounces of cheese. 

Bake for however long it takes for your potato side to be done. Those Checker's Fries were a little soggy after almost 30 minutes, so we took them out and Derek and Alex ate them with soft little middles. If you're not making a potato side and just need to know how long to cook the casserole, there is no wrong answer. Since everything is already cooked, if you only want to throw it in the oven for as long as it takes to melt the cheese, that is A-OK. If you want to blast that bitch for thirty minutes like we did so the top is one crusted sheet of crunchy, cheesy goodness, do it up! No wrong way to make this casserole. 

Derek advises topping it with ketchup for that perfect midwestern flavor profile, but I don't think it needs it. I think, if anything, a fuck ton of hot sauce would be delicious, but when I suggested that to Derek, he said, "NO! That's too spicy for midwesterners! Ketchup. It needs ketchup." So I will defer to his better judgment. 

And that's the hot dish. I joked to Derek that I almost almost ALMOST bought the stuff to make ambrosia, because what else could you logically serve as a palette cleanser after a hot dish meal? There is no other thing. It's ambrosia or nothing. But we went with nothing, because I wasn't sure my texture sensitive brain could manage two mouth feel nightmares in one day. 

Another note about the ingredients:

I bought everything pre-made. The matchstick carrots? I bought in matchstick form. You can do those carrots any way you want. Chop them, shred them yourself, buy canned carrots, it doesn't matter. I like the crunch that raw carrots give, but if you want big, massive hunks of carrot that are soft when they go in, do it up. Cook them first and then chuck them into the mess. 

The chicken? Frozen, pre-shredded, pre-cooked. I did fry it up in the pan before putting it in the gloop. And that is important...do not put raw chicken in this. Or if you opt to put raw chicken in this, you do so at your own risk, because I do not know what the cook time on this should be if you put in uncooked chicken. Back in the day, Steffie and I used to boil the chicken and cut it up into big ol' chunks, but I think shredded is the better way to go. So if you don't want to buy a bag of shredded chicken (it is cost prohibitive if you're aiming to keep this cheap), buy your chicken in bulk and cook it however you'd like. Same holds true for the chicken: shred it, chunk it, or fuck, you could even put a few cooked breasts on top before you cover it with your topping. This is a recipe that is easy to make your own, considering I completely fucking made it up. 

I bought pre hard boiled eggs, but again, it's cheaper to hard boil your own eggs at home. 

Frozen corn? That's fine. 

And the measurements are just a guideline, too. Put in more mayo, put in less, I do not care, it does not matter. Want more carrots? Do it! Want less water chestnuts? Fine! This hot dish is so fucking flexible. Buy pre-fixed everything for convenience, or do everything yourself, it does not matter. There is no wrong way to make this abomination. 

Just make it. I beg you. Because it's like the meanest culinary trick you'll ever play on yourself if you didn't grow up eating this shit, like I didn't. But I had it ONCE as a kid and I was so obsessed with it that I recreated it and it is now a staple in my best friend's household. 

I have a feeling it will become a new staple in mine, as well. 

Because I know what I'm talking about, and Jan is full of shit.

I have spent the last week reading all of the old entries I reverted to drafts years and years ago, and turning them into posts again. I don't know how it took so long, bit my blog is back to about...65% of what it used to be. My primary takeway from this escapade is how terrible I used to be at photography. Likw, I genuinely cringed looking at my early photos. I cringed reading my accounts of people telling me I should get a website and charge people. I know everyone has to start somewhere, but I just wish I hadn't started there. Yikes. 

 I had oral surgery almost two weeks ago (two weeks ago on Wednesday), and I go in to get all of the fun sutures out of my face on Wednesday of this week. It has been an absolute fucking nightmare not being able to brush my bottom front teeth...the front six teeth. I have no been able to brush or floss. I feel fuzzy and gross in that section of my mouth, and when I sneezed in my mask the other day, I caught a little whiff and almost gagged. Derek said to me the other morning, "I can't wait until you can brush all of your teeth again". You and me both, but way to pile on. 

Yesterday was our seven year wedding anniversary. We did nothing because I think Derek has covid. I made a batzina (on the very precipice of delicious...I think it's a little too minty, but that is hardly my fault as the recipe called for "bunch of mint". That is very vague, but also suggests the use of mint is to the taste) and I also made roasted root veggies with an orange goat cheese dressing. Derek barely ate and then went back to bed. He is in bed now. He's taken one covid test that yielded a negative result, but I also know people who knew they had covid and also got negative results (I think Amber's negative results were the most drastic...if memory serves, she didn't get a positive covid test until she felt almost 100% better). His symptoms sound on brand for covid, but he has been keen to remind me that they are also on brand with just a run of the mill cold. I guess we'll see in a few days, but it was bad enough today that he stayed home from work. 

I did not get the internship with MAST, and I want to write an entire blog about that, including the personal letter of interest I sent in. I am certainly thrilled with my consolation prizes, though, and my gut says that if I were not so laser focused on queer youth, I would have easily had that internship. I think, given the scope of my consolation prizes, I was their second pick, someone else just edged me out. I didn't even know internships gave out consolation prizes to people who didn't get placed. My advisor said that she didn't, either, and it is a testament to me and how impressed the research center was by me that they are offering me the things they are (one of those things is a stipend, and of no small amount!). So I was disappointed, but I am still coming away from the experience with, ironically, everything I wanted to get out of the experience in the first place. So I still win. 

Photography has shut down for the year. I was both busy and not busy this year...busier than I thought I would realistically be, but not as busy as I wanted to be. I will, in the next week or so, be doing my yearly photo dump of my favorite photos from the year. I am hoping to burst into legit advertising next year. I already have a few mershoots scheduled (four at time of this blog being written) for spring when the weather warms up, and I have another model mershoot set up because I need couples, and this is a model couple. Cool by me! I also want to get a big ass boudoir weekend going, where I book an AirBnB for four days and do nothing but shoot, shoot, shoot, but that is presenting problems for me logistically. I want a mix of about 80% clients, 20% models, but I have no fucking clue how to go about marketing this. I know I have one client that wants a boudoir shoot in late spring of next year, and I'm wondering if I can build the weekend around that. Lots of shit to plan out. 

Perhaps most frustrating to update is I may not be able to graduate until fucking summer now. I have one class that went from being available all year to only being available every fall and summer. I did not sign up for it this semester. My advisor and I are supposed to discuss this the next time I can attend office hours, but I missed the last two because I was recovering from having dead people shoved in my face and my mouth sewn in. She says there's a way I can still graduate in the spring, which is what I have been planning on doing. If I hadn't needed a mental health break over the summer I would be graduating next month. If I can manage to get a waiver for this class and be put in another class instead and STILL graduate in spring, I would much much MUCH prefer that. I am fucking tired of school, and I just want to get it over with. Everybody knows this about me, which is why it's so frustrating to have people like Derek tell me I need to get my PhD. I did end up asking my advisor about it, and she gave me some insight, but ugh. I fucking hate academia. It's so fucking biased, it borders on caricature.

I'll write about the internship another day, I'm sure. I'm worried I'm starting to catch whatever it is that Derek has, because I feel...off.

But they never expected an Italian ghost!

 It has seriously been a blur the last few weeks. I've been slipping between extreme bouts of depression and inability to function...I am so close to winning an award for "longest time between showers by a person with full access to a shower and clean, running water"...and cooking. Cooking a lot. 

So let's talk about what exactly it is I've been cooking, because today's outing really was hilarious to me, but it made me remember that I've been meaning to blog about all of the yummies I've made over the last few months...for...well...months. 

Now I can do it all in one gigantic post. Hooray, efficiency! Depression has its benefits!!

Several months ago, circa the spring, I was foraging every chance I got. I learned so much this year about what's edible in my yard if I just...don't make my daughter mow it. I've got purslane, plantain, clover, yarrow, dandelion, two varieties of nettle, the list goes on and on. We had an abundance of violets this year, so I wanted to do something with them. I took Alex with me to grab about a quarter of our violet population...gotta leave some for the pollinators and other critters!...and I made violet syrup.

Look how pretty!

LOOK HOW PRETTY!!!! That was after steeping overnight. I boiled it down with sugar after that, and it turned a truly ugly shade of grey. So it's been hiding up in my cupboard. Derek also reported that it didn't even taste like violet, it just tasted like syrup. Well. So much for that. I'll double the amount of flowers next year. Or triple them. I picked my flowers late in the spring, so I didn't have as many to grab up, but we really did have a bounty this year. I'll easily be able to triple the flowers without starving my other yard visitors. 

I also attempted to forage a fuckton of dandelions so I could make dandelion soda, and dandelion syrup, AND dandelion jelly...at one point early this spring, our entire lawn was blanketed in dandelions. But I also went about dandelion collection too late in the season and I couldn't forage enough to make one thing, let alone three. So no dandelion goodies were made this year. Next year for sure. 

My next big make this year came after we got home from Ithaca. In one of my Ithaca recap posts, I wrote about the irresponsible amount of vodka we bought in Ithaca, and I cannot recall, but I feel like I mentioned wanting to make limoncello with them. So.

I spent 100 smackers on sorrento lemons. The real deal. The tasty yummers that are prized in limoncellos across Italy. 

In case you can't tell, these are what scientists refer to as, "honkers". Check it:

My brutishly large hands for scale. 

I made a LOT with these lemons. First, and most importantly, I made limoncello:

This batch contains vodka made from grapes from Six Mile Vineyard right outside of Ithaca.

This batch is from the Ithaca is Vodka vodka. Made from NY corn! What a treat. 

And I made a third batch, but I made that one with Grey Goose, and it did not need to be photographed. The other things I made I did not think to photograph, but I made a gallon of lemon basil switchel with basil from my garden. I made a gallon of standard lemonade. And I made about a pound of lemon curd that Alex and Derek ate on various store bought cookies. I love to bake, but I only have so much energy to expend. And those lemons really took it out of me. It takes HOURS to peel them, for real. 

When we went to Six Mile Vineyard, Derek and Caryn (those fucking traitors) both tried the orangecello that was made in house. I couldn't let that stand, so I made my own arancello with three different kinds of oranges, though it's meant to be made with blood oranges. I just couldn't get access...affordable access...to any, having blown my citrus wad on lemons from the Sorrento Peninsula. 

I also ALSO made liquore di basilico. I'm not sure why it isn't just called basilcello like the rest of the citrus liqueurs, but whatevs. I did not take a picture of that while it was steeping, because it looked fucking disgusting. Just like....sewer water. I put about a half pound of my sweet basil from my garden in it, and I am adult enough to admit that I added green food coloring when it was done, just because it needed to be green. Not grey. It isn't like, hulk green or anything, it's a very pleasant tint. It has a few more months of aging before it's ready, though it has been strained and emulsified already. All of my cellos from this year have. Now they just need to mellow for two years, and they're ready to go. My last year's batch isn't so bad, Derek and I tried them a couple of months ago when Allen was here. They need more time to deepen into themselves. Anyway, I have made a fuck ton of alcohol in the last year. I made a big ass bottle of gin from shit I foraged last year, and I should have written about that, but whoops! I didn't. I want to do it again in the spring, with different ingredients that I know more about now. so I'll document that next year. 

Moving on!

Alex had a birthday party in late July, and I made her and her friends cupcakes, but with all of the trans flag colors. I learned how terrible I am at filling cupcake liners to the proper line, and also how terrible I am at putting three different frosting colors into one piping bag. 

I wanted them to be all marbled, but instead they were messy. 

I love to bake, but I never promised that the things I bake are beautiful. They aren't. Aesthetically pleasing bakes are clearly not my calling. 

It's me! Wearing a shirt that SHOULD have said "more girls should kiss me", but oops. 

This isn't baking, but it is worth mentioning: Derek and I took a trip to Keakuk to go geode hunting. Which...if you haven't been, is a wild experience. It's where you go to a creek bed, you pay someone to be there, and then you spend hours and hours doing fucking back breaking physical labor to MAYBE get some geodes. Real white people shit. 

Our dig site!

I realize that it is going to look like Derek is the only one doing any hard work...I assure you this is not true. I took photos every time I took a water break, which was every seven seconds, but during those other seconds where I was working, I was working hard, ok? Real hard. 

You can't see the left side hole in that photo, but I dug out that ENTIRE thing. I was fucking sore for days. 

I  hit a REALLY great vein, which is why I excavated so much of this geode cubby. I couldn't stop finding geodes. 

My muddy grabbers for scale. 

We have since carved through almost all of our geodes, but my photos of those are lost, I guess. They aren't on my phone anymore. Actually, thinking while I type, I think I just moved them to another folder in my phone. But I am too lazy to check. They're all very  nice geodes, though!

Here is Derek's haul:

This is Derek's haul before he took over the vein I found. I had been hammering and chiseling and digging away for like, two hours, and my arm was tired, and I needed a break, so I was benevolent and offered him my area. In the picture below, you can see the position that I  had been in for literally hours, hammering and chiseling and getting rained on and finding geodes. Derek had been digging around right behind my blue bucket, and having none of the good luck I had had. 

I do not have a pitcure of his bucket AFTER he dug through my vein, but he got a lot more geodes. And he's since cut through them and polished them up beautifully. We are aching to go back, but we have so many other places we want to explore for great rocks a lot closer to home. We were going to go up to Haunted Ridge this weekend, but I got a few last minute shoots, so no dice. 

About...uh...a month and a half ago, Derek and I went apple picking. I haven't gone in years, and I really wanted to pluck several bushels and immerse myself in the kitchen for several days, making all kinds of delicious apple fuckery. 

"Grab as many bags as you need" is delightfully non-specific for an apple hoarder like me. I can't even fucking EAT apples and I was glee ridden at the challenge. I will take ALL of the bags, thank you. 

Isn't there something so wonderful about sun warmed, freshy apples right off the branch? 

My forever hot man piece, being an apple connoisseur, roaming from tree to tree looking for the finest Missourian apples.  

This was the lane I gathered the most apples from. Jonagolds. 

We only ended up picking two bags. Forty dollars worth of fresh apples, minus the ones Derek ate while we were picking. The orchard lanes were littered with fallen apples, and all I could think about was grabbing them up, washing them off, and making cider and butter with them. I hope that's what they do to minimize waste. Either that, or they let the deer and critters come in and eat all of the lovely floor goodies. Though I suspect it's the former, as there was an abundance of apple butter and apple cider in the little market you pay for your apples in. 

So Derek and I took our twenty pounds of apples home, and I got to work. First, I made apple butter.

I slathered six pounds of various apple varieties in sugar, cinnamon, and a proprietary blend of spices, mixed them up real rough, just like I like, and then put them in a pressure sauna for three hours. 

BEHOLD!

Mushy and spiced and truly a wonderful smell. Next, I blended the ever living fuck out of the mush with an immersion blender. 

Ta da!! Apple butter!!! 6 jars, canned and wonderful.

Alex reported it as being scrumptious. Derek reported it as being mmmmmmm. I cannot report any of it, because I cannot eat real sugar. Sad face for me. 

Next, I made pickled apples. I fucking LOVE pickled apples. Derek was not a fan, Alex didn't want to try them, and Alex's bestie Kailani did not know how she felt about them, so I'm left with a gorgeous jar of pickled apples that I can only eat one slice every few days, and that is a travesty. They're fucking bursting with flavor, they are complex and sweet and sour and punchy. They should be on everything. Like as I write this, I'm eating some kimchi jjigae and it would be gorgeous with some pickled apples and my chili oil. I just had oral surgery, though, so nothing too spicy for me. And also no sugar for the last four years and until forever, so no pickled apples either way. Booooooooooo.

I used the honey from the apiary in Ithaca for these pickled apples, too. Hooray!!

What did I make next? I made hand pies. A fucking metric fuckton of hand pies. 

 Now. 

I have been keto since November of 2018. I was SUPER STRICT for the first three years, I counted every fucking macro with precision. I wing it now, and I stay between 20 and 40 carbs per day. I am a vegetarian, but I eat vegan more often than not. 

I miss baked goods. Like, there are keto dupes for various baked goods, sure. Some of them are even good. But when it comes to fruit pies, I hadn't yet found a keto dupe that was easily made vegan friendly. When Derek and I were still on island, I saw a video about a keto apple pie using chayote, and an almond flour crust, so I splurged on chayote (they were like, 5 bucks a pop on island, and I needed three. That's a LOT of money to gamble. AND we should talk about the criminally high rate of groceries in places like Hawai'i and indigenous lands...), came home, and made my pie. It was...alright? I wasn't wowed, and for the money I spent making that pie and the time it took, I just wasn't impressed enough to try it again, or even tweak the recipe, to make it worth the cost. So I ate the pie over the course of a week and a half and felt not terribly great about the experience, and I tucked apple pie away as something I just couldn't eat anymore. 

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when we picked all of these gorgeous apples and I knew I wanted to make hand pies for Derek and Alex. I took to the internet and started digging for keto apple pie dupes. I didn't have to dig very far, I found one for zucchini. I had read about zucchini being a dupe for cooked apples, but after my chayote experience, I hadn't been enthused to experiment again. Time makes fools of us all, I guess, so I was like, fuck yeah, let's give these green monsters a try. 

You. Mother. FUCKERS. 

Zucchini hand pies fucking slap. They slap HARD. I could not tell for one fucking second that I was eating zucchini. It looked like apples, it smelled like apples, it tasted like apples. Derek and Alex were both completely fooled. We have a fucking WINNER!!!!! Oh I was so excited!!! But I needed a crust. 

So I really scoured the internet for a crust that sounded like it would be sturdy. It took me awhile to find, but on this weird little corner of the internet...the christian keto corner...I found a crust that is just god damn life altering. It's firm. It's not mealy. It tastes and bakes just like a laminated crust would. And I was gagged over it. 

That doesn't look like zucchini. It looks like chopped up apples. 

Look at my little hand pies!!!!!

Derek is folding his arms because he's so mad that it's zucchini that tastes like apples. 

These were seriously fucking amazing. I've made three batches of them since, and another batch of the crust was used for keto pumpkin pie that I spent two glorious weeks eating for breakfast every morning. Adulthood RULES. Did I take any pictures of those? I think I did, I need to check my phone. Oh delightful! I did!

Look at these little ANGELS! Except angels aren't real, and these keto pumpkin pies are. Eeeeeee!

They even have that good sink in that I look for in an excellently made pumpkin pie. Don't give me some aesthetically smooth pumpkin pie...looking at you, Costco...give me the sink in that tells me it was made with love. 

Eat your heart out. That perfectly crisp, firm bottom is everything I want in a pie. I really cannot overstate how fucking impressed I am with this keto pie crust recipe. It is fucking amazing. 

Look at that. Perfect texture. Perfect size. Perfect breakfast. I love pumpkin pie. 

Back to the apples. Obviously I made Alex and Derek hand pies, too, though Alex and her friends ate almost all of them. I made them two versions. One was apple chai, and the other was caramel apple. I was told that both were delightful. What they weren't was aesthetically pleasing. 

I didn't use an egg wash to close the pies, and I also overstuffed them. I was experimenting with different ways to seal the crust, going for ease and efficacy over looks, and succeeding at neither thing. They look like pale biscuits that someone kicked into the dirt and then spit on. Yikes. Not my finest showing, but again, they are said to have tasted lovely, and that's what counts. 

Alex's friend was spending the night one night and saw me cooking, and asked if she could help me. So Kailani and I made apple jelly together! 

Another few pounds of apples, cooking down into juice. 

Et Voila! Apple jelly! Kailani got to take home the little jar on top, not because I'm too stingy to give her a big jar, but because I couldn't taste it and I was worried it would be bad and I didn't want to send her home with gross apple jelly and then have so much of it go to waste. Thankfully, everyone said it was truly tasty. Hooray! I'm the  best. 

My next big cooking project was keto cinnamon rolls made with ChocZero "honey", and this was an absolute fucking undertaking. I believe I called it a saga when I told Amber about it. I took about fifteen minutes worth of video while I was making the cinnamon rolls and I can't lie about this: I was positive they were going to be an absolute fucking disaster, because I fucked up the recipe. I put the fake honey in where it didn't belong. 

But they were a smashing success, and I ate them for breakfast every day for a week. It was meant to be twelve servings, but again, I am an adult, and I get to define what that means. SEVEN FUCKING SERVINGS IT IS. Well, eight, because I ate one the night I baked them. I want to make them again, but I am still on the mend from oral surgery. The tail end of the mend, but the mend just the same. I don't quite have the energy. I worked out today and it was a chore. I'm amazed how like, connected my face is to the rest of what my body goes through. I felt the same way after I broke my arm. The things I couldn't do after that were astounding. The things I STILL can't do, all these years later. Thanks, I hate it. 

I have also been tinkering with tiktok copycat recipes made keto and having a great deal of fun. Mostly with macaroni and cheese. I was obsessed for a bit with jalapeno popper mac and cheese, though I kind of accidentally stumbled on that recipe myself more than I copied it. When Derek and I go and have a day in STL, we try and center it around a meat cheat day for me so we can it up Salt and Smoke. I want to like Pappy's so bad, but the brisket at Salt and Smoke is superior. I am so sorry, Pappy's. Anyway, I order two pounds of brisket, take it home, then make make and cheese with it. I add jalapenos to it, and the keto mac and cheese bechamel uses cream cheese, anyway, so bam! I'm ahead of the curve, tiktok! But I just saw french onion soup mac and cheese and immediately had to try it. And I did that Saturday, and holy fucking holy. It is absolute divinity. I don't even want to imagine my life before french onion soup mac and cheese. 

I tried to explain it to my dad and he was very confused, but he also wouldn't stop talking over me long enough to hear my explanation of it, so h e can remain in the dark. I'll make it for him in a few months. 

Cooking is a thousand percent my love language. Cooking for people and creating for people. I painted this on Rhyann's wall in their room:

It isn't perfect, or finished the way I personally wanted it, but Rhyann said they liked the blue band without anything in it, so I left it the way they preferred it. After all, it isn't ME sleeping in there. The door is still in need of finishing, and now I've only got about four weeks to finish it. Yikes! That's pressure. 

This, and school, is everything I've been up to lately. I suppose I should do an update on what's been going on with school, but I'll save that for another blog. This has taken me literally days. Maybe weeks. Time to publish this and be on my way. I can't fucking believe it's almost time for a photo rundown of the year's sessions. Where the fuck has the time gone. 

Speaking of, I think I've had this blog for ten years now. I put a lot of them into drafts, mostly because they were silly, and others because they were about Dan and how much I was pining over Dan, and I feel a deep sense of shame about those particular blogs. I am thinking about resurrecting them, just because like...I shouldn't be ashamed of how I felt, or how I needed to write about it, or how I expressed myself in my mid  to late twenties. I've grown a lot, and I hiding the things I've grown from doesn't make them any less real, it just like...perpetuates the idea that we should hide the things we consider bad, even though it can definitely be a tool in showing others that growth happens and we're all human, nobody gets it right all the time. 

But uh. I will be re-reading all of those blogs to double check. I think a lot of them also have just like...startlingly bad photography in them. From a time when I thought I was so good and I was just...really not. I wonder what I'll think of my photography in another ten years.