Really rainy day

I needed to stay in today anyway -hours of writing and edits and cooking to do- so am really enjoying the rainstorm we're having. Have been having. Are to continue having. Percy and I took a walk during a dry interlude and at one point I also donned my magenta raincoat to quickly cover my favorite delicate plants with a wide variety of bucket, but right now, my gutters are overflowing, the pets are snoring next to me on the couch, and I'm in a peaceful yet productive stupor, lulled by the concert of white noise coming at me from the outside. www.em-i-lis.com

I finally made a batch of the vanilla fig scones that I love and having been dying for, finished a first-round edit of a lengthy doc for school, bathed Percy, kinda tidied up and am about to make a strawberry cake. I noticed that my Perfect Coconut Cream Pie is featured in a Food 52 article on 12 Eats for Easter. Nice!!

Nasty night leads to better things

Y'all, last night was the absolute worst. A pox on that flu shot! I woke up at 2:00 am on the precipice of full-scale puke, feverishly chilly, shaking and sweating concurrently. For nearly two hours, I just huddled under my comforter, shivering and increasingly wet and trying not to bother T. I think my chills woke him up though because he offered to get Advil, and I said "yes, please." It helped some, and I got back to sleep for a couple hours. When I awoke, I felt as if I were on another planet, and good god almighty, you should have seen my hair. I looked like a wilting Medusa. Ugly! www.em-i-lis.com

A few hours later, a good pal came over so I could teach her how to make Nanny's cranberry sauce. It was so nice to spend time together in such a way, not least because we talked without being interrupted the whole time. After she left, I made my own batch and then boogied to school to help sketch the background set for the second grade play. My adobe buildings were better than my forest. Fortunately, my friend, C, was there too, and her pines were totally redemptive. At one point I looked at us, spread out on huge, bright blue, taped-together paper, and thought bemusedly, "we are two very well-educated women, and here we are on a floor, sketching a Native American backdrop at 2pm on a Thursday and kinda stressing about proportion and scale." You just never know where life will take you. It was fun frankly.

www.em-i-lis.com

Back home, and Ol and I made vanilla fig scones for a breakfast I'm hosting tomorrow. I need to get on the cherry-spelt scone bandwagon too, but first there is the pasta (made the dough an hour ago) I need to roll out and the underlying nausea (still!) with which I must deal.

Who joins me in a shout-out to the Senate for passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act today?? Finally, it is illegal to discriminate when hiring on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. And we've got marriage equality in IL! Yee-haw!

**PS- now taking orders for holiday-time Cranberry Sauce!

A good day for baking

It's gray, and my migraine is still visiting, like your worst-nightmare house-guest. Fortunately, the boys are at school and I've just puttered around quietly, organizing those flipping Legos (a never-ending task that I should leave solely to J but know that if I do, it's my feet that will suffer as I check on him during the dark night or forget to look down as I walk into his room each day), and replenishing my baked good freezer supply with blueberry muffins and vanilla-fig scones. vanilla fig scones

I've just had a war with the muffins which refused to photograph well; as such, I refuse to show you even one of the rather dreadful pictures. So there, you pesty muffins. These scones, courtesy of fiveandspice (a food52 cook), are some of the best I've ever had. Today I experimented with substituting a cup of whole wheat pastry flour for that much of the all-purpose called for, and you would never know. Why I bothered in light of the butter, cream and crème fraîche is beyond me, but it just feels nice to know there's something whole grain going on.