Dreamy/Inappropriate

My roommate made this recipe for Dream Cake. And it's one of the few recipes I've seen (keep in mind, again, I did not make it) where it came out looking as pretty as the pictures on the recipe promised!

Dreamy...

Supernatural 7.4 Recap: Ghost Cars Not Scary; Everyone Feels Guilty, Except Sam

If there's one thing I've learned from watching Supernatural -- and never let it be said that time spent watching this show has not taught me anything useful -- it's that haunted cars are not scary. 

Arguably the worst Supernatural episode ever (Yeah, yeah, I know) is "Route 666" from Season 1, in which the villain is a racist truck. Yes, a ghost truck. A ghost truck that is racist. A racist truck.

It's so bad that they even refer to it as the "racist truck" when they get all meta in Season 4 and discover that Supernatural is a series of cult books.

Dean: Everything is in here, from the racist truck to me having sex. I'm full frontal in here, dude.

When the Impala gets possessed in Season 6's episode "Mannequin 3: The Revenge" (yup, it's actually called that -- also the villain in that one is a haunted kidney!), they at least play it for laughs: 

  "It possesses sex dolls! This is not a sex doll!" 

Thanks to here for gifs

  So, you'd think if there was ONE thing anyone involved in Supernatural would know, it's this: haunted cars. Not scary.

Guess how S.7 episode four, "Defending Your Life," begins? 

 

Yup. Ghost car. 

Even the guy getting chased by the ghost car thinks its lame:

A ghost car? Really? It's not even a meta episode!

tl; dr intro to Supernatural recap

Okay, so I've been totally failing at recapping Supernatural. 

Why? Well... 

Meagan-y Meagan Eats!

So tonight I was determined to cook with ingredients we actually had in the house (as opposed to my usual "I can totally make this! I have all the ingredients...oh. I guess I need to go out and get star anise. And shitake mushrooms. And bok choy.  But other than that, I can totally just whip it together. Right after I figure out how to use the food processor. Oh, and coriander seeds. Need those too. Will ground coriander do? Man." (At this point, I go out to the store for the first of several trips I will make that evening).


So because we had some avocados, I made guacamole with this recipe. 
I followed the recipe exactly, 'cept I didn't use the entire half onion. No matter how finely I diced the onions, I didn't want the gauc to get onion-overwhelm and I wasn't going to take on the Herculean task of putting the food processor together. (SHUT UP I HAVE POOR SPATIAL REASONING SKILLS IT'S MEAN TO LAUGH AT DISABLED PEOPLE). So I used about a quarter of the onion. 

The recipe says to leave the gauc out for an hour, which I side-eyed. Wouldn't it go brown? Luckily, my roommate has evolved and accurate opinions about how to cover guacamole with cling-wrap, so it worked out. 


Basically, the technique involves making sure the cling-wrap is down OVER the guacamole. Allow me to demonstrate with the guac leftovers:

Just try to get in, oxygen. I fucking dare you.

Anyway, my roomie put on some brown rice in her rice-maker/vegetable steamer (no, I don't know how to use that, either. I SAID SHUT IT), and I heated the rest of the onion in a pot with some olive oil for five minutes, added some garlic, and heated two cans of black beans (using about half a cup of the bean broth) with lots of cumin, salt, pepper, lemon-pepper, and a little cayenne (also about five minutes).


Put rice, beans, and guacamole together with some salsa and what do you have? You basically have a bean bowl from Chipotle! Okay, it's also a staple meal from many cultures. But forgive me if my point of reference is a Chipotle bean bowl. 


My roomie was out when the food was all ready, so I ate before her. When I heard her come in, I waited for a few minutes, then snuck into the kitchen to manipulate a compliment out of her:

"This is so good!" she said, upon seeing me.


"I know," I said, humbly, then added: "When I was eating it, I thought it was almost as good a Chipotle bean bowl."


"I think it's better," she said. 


"I DO TOO!" I shrieked. "I JUST DIDN'T WANT TO SAY THAT FIRST!" 


I really was proud, you guys. Okay, so I used a recipe for a guacamole. (Um, it's also possible that back in the day I looked at this as a guide for making rice and beans. SHUT IT). And I didn't exactly think up the idea for a meal of rice, beans, and guacamole by myself. But...but...I didn't have to do extra shopping! And it was really easy! And it was really good! The recipe for guacamole is especially a keeper. 


So it spurred me to share some more of my vegan cooking of late. 

I didn't take pictures of tonight's meal, as I seem to have fallen out of the habit of obsessively photographing everything I cook. Maybe...because...I cook...more regularly...? So it's not as epic of an event? Or maybe because I'm not so great at photographing food and it never looks as good in the pictures as I want it to? 


But, anywhoodle, I've got a backlog of vegan recipes. As I've shared before, I'm currently a meagan, so I can go out and enjoy a burger every once in a while, but I cook vegan when I cook. 

Cooking vegan, I've decided, is awesome. Mexican food, particularly, is a bit of a revelation. 

I Want to Call This Post "The Mysterious Case of Sherlock Holmes and His Many Adaptations" but I Also Sort of Hate Myself for Wanting to Call it That

So writing this made me think about how much I love all things Sherlock Holmes -- from the original stories, to the Jeremy Brett TV show...wait.

Hold up.

Before I go any further, I've just got to blow a few minds.

Jeremy Brett played Sherlock Holmes on a well-known BBC adaptation of the stories from the 80s-90s. He was awesome and weird. He looked like this:

He was a bit dark.

Por ejemplo:

Hey, does he look a bit familiar? Something nagging at you? You know who Jeremy Brett also played?

Fucking Freddy Eynsford-Hill from My Fair Lady!

THIS DUDE:

Okay, sorry for the digression. So: if there's anything better than the original Sherlock Holmes stories, it's all the sequels and reimaginings, some of which are arguably better than the original.

Snow Mad

When you live in Arizona, you don't see snow much. Or at all. When you encounter snow for the first time, it can be...well. A little overwhelming. 

I hiked Madera canyon today, with two friends who each have a cute dog (for stats, check this snazziness out). We got up high enough that there was still some snow on the mountain peaks. My friend's dog, Rupert, had...quite the reaction when experiencing his first snow:



(There's also a close-up of my ass in the video, if you're into that sort of thing. Plus my voice). 

The thing about this video is...this did not happen once. It happened over and over and over again. He became so excited that we dubbed it "snow madness." After all, he's just a poor, desert-dwelling dog. It's natural that his first snow drove him a little crazy!

The little man-made ponds on the hike were also frozen. Being fairly stupid, I decided to tread on the ice to see if it would hold me. It did!

This looks fake but isn't.

The Secret Miracle: Don't Be A Douche

Okay, so as I mentioned, the $100 that I finally earned from folks clicking on the ads on this blog was used for a writing project--a deposit for a residency at the Prairie Center for the Arts where I'll be for a month-ish this summer (it's a key deposit--I'll get it back if I don't trash the place). So: your support here on my blog = time writing this summer. And once/if I get the $100 back, I'll totally take suggestions as what I should do with it (Bedazzling? Fine liquor? Objets d'art?).

In honor of writing, I thought I'd share that I'm currently rolling around in awesome books. I just finished Colm Toíbín's The Master, which was bliss, and I'm still reading his short story collection The Empty Family.

And for all those authors out there looking self-promote, this is why I started reading him: my friend S. lent-then-gave me the book The Secret Miracle: The Novelist's Handbook, edited by Daniel Alarcón. It's interviews with authors--divvied up by theme--about various aspects of the writing process (well, specifically the novel-writing process). 

Anyway, S. and I both agreed that some authors came off wonderfully--as in, "How insightful/charmingly self-deprecating! I'd bet we'd be total BFFs and could go down to the pub and have a pint and talk about George Elliot/insert author of your choice! And even if we cannot or should not ever develop a personal relationship, some of these writing insights are both reassuring and useful!" --while some came off a utter douches.  

My Show Wins

Okay, so I'm obviously way behind in my Supernatural recaps, and my feelings about Season 7 have vacillated between



and 

For starters, it turns out that this? This flowchart I made? Stupid show proved me totally wrong: 

Damn it writers, what's next? Sam is gonna sleep with a girl and she's gonna LIVE? STOP SCREWING WITH MY EXPECTATIONS.

 But...I have to say that Show came back from break with the episode "Adventures in Babysitting" and...I lurved it! 

30 Rock: I want to go to there.

I tried to find two clips from 30 Rock today for a Hello Giggles post: either the one where Liz Lemon is caught wearing a bathing suit as underwear or the one where she says, "I'm not sure you want to take advice from me on this. I ate a Three Musketeers bar for lunch and my bra is held together with tape." I could find neither, but I satisfactorily wasting time looking at 30 Rock clips and now I have them book marked for the right occasion!

So to celebrate 30 Rock coming back soon, here you go.

A reminder of why Jack Donaghy is the best ("It's after six. What am I -- a farmer?" is the moment I knew I was in the love with the show).

And now -- 30 Rock clips for any occasion!