That’s one version. What’s yours look like?

Rena’s Corn Muffins
Slightly adapted
(I copied and pasted her recipe and directions and edited where I changed it)

Ingredients

* 2 1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
* 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
* 1 cup natural cane sugar
* 1 cup coarse cornmeal
* 2 tablespoons baking powder
* 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
* 1 1/4 cup whole milk
* 1/4 cup sour cream
* 1/2 pound (two sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
* 3 large eggs

Directions

- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line 17 (I know, sorry) muffin cups with paper liners (or just grease the tin with some organic sunflower oil).
- Loosely measure the flours into your sifter and sift into a bowl.
- Spoon the sifted flour into your measuring cup and drag the back of a butter knife across the surface to measure (do not shake or this will increase the flour amount and make for denser muffins)
- Put the flour, sugar, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt into a largeish mixing bowl, and whisk with a loose whisk (meaning, lots of space between the wires – we’ll need this later) to incorporate.
- In a glass 4 cup measuring cup, measure out the milk.
- Add a dollop of sour cream to get the milk line up to the 1 1/2 mark.
- Whisk together well but don’t worry about the little bits of sour cream.
- In a separate bowl, combine this milk mixture and the cooled melted butter.
- Crack the eggs into a cup or small bowl (I used the glass measuring cup), and whisk until smooth.
- Add the eggs to the wet mixture, and whisk until combined.
- Pour the wet mixture into the dry (when I did this all in one pour, it made the cooled PFLOUP sound), and whisk (this is why we needed a loose whisk – it will be thick) until just blended.
- Use a 1/4 cup scoop to measure the batter into the paper liners (one scoop will fill each most of the way to the top).
- Bake for 30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. (I actually pulled them out without testing because they looked SO FREAKING PERFECT at 30 min mark – perfectly curved on top, with little cracks and just golden brown enough)
- Cool slightly and remove from the pan.

The paper liners come off without trying – it’s amazing.
Shannon said, “I can’t help but think of Mr. Crick.”
I said, “Who’s Mr. Crick?”
“That guy in Stranger than Fiction. I feel like he did when he at that cookie.”

These are the best corn muffins ever! Thank you Rena!!
I didn’t have a second muffin pan so I put paper liners in some ramekins and they worked out just fine. You can see here that we got a little distracted before I remembered to take a picture for you!

While I was putting them together, I discovered some unused fresh egg pasta that I got at Lucca Ravioli last week and realized it needed to be cooked asap. I’ve had fresh pasta in a plastic bag in the fridge get mouldy within two weeks. This pasta was only in the paper they wrapped it in when I bought it so it got a little dried out.
To me, fettucini needs to have a cream sauce so I set about to make the following alfredo from scratch without a recipe. It turned out really well.

Addy’s Alfredo
2 T butter
2 T unbleached all purpose flour
1 c Half & Half
1 c stock (whatever kind you use, know that you will taste it a little bit. I used Low Sodium Organic Chicken stock)
1 1/2 c shredded mixed cheeses
I used – 1/4 c fresh parmesean, 1/4 c or 1 oz cream cheese, 1/2 c monterey jack & 1/2 c cheddar
1/2 t salt
1/2 t black pepper (or to taste)
1/8 t nutmeg

- Mix the half & half and stock together and take the chill off them. You can heat them or they can be room temp – I haven’t found it makes much difference as long as they’re not cold. Set aside.
- Make a roux with the butter & flour.
- I do this by melting the butter over medium heat until it’s foaming and, using a whisk and only ever a whisk, sprinkle the flour in slowly & uniformly, until the entire thing is uniform and foamy. It’s okay, and even recommended, to let it brown a touch, but it’s more important to get everything whisked together quickly and without lumps. And, by no means, will you let it burn!
- Still over medium heat, slowly and steadily add the stock mixture in a steady stream until it’s all incorporated. You should go slowly enough that you’re able to make a consistent paste that gets thinner and thinner as you add the stock. You’ll see what I mean as you’re doing it and if you’ve never made a roux before, it might take you a couple of tries before it makes sense. But it’s SO worth it – it’s the base of so many great sauces and is really easy once you know how to do it.
- Stir with the whisk for a few minutes still over medium heat. The sauce should thicken within 3-5 minutes.
- Once it’s got a nice thickness, take it off the heat and stir in the cheese until it’s incorporated. This will thicken the sauce a bit more.
- Mix in the salt, pepper and nutmeg.
- Pour onto thick, flat pasta like fettuccini or tagliarini and enjoy!

We had some left over grilled chicken so I chopped that up and added it with 1/2 a bag of frozen peas and it was quite a treat.

Was pretty unimpressed until we got to the SECA Art Awards Exhibit and the Face of Our Time | Four Shows exhibits.
The former is up until May 10th, the latter, April 26th. Go see them.
Here are some samples (it’s still so strange to be allowed to take photos in museums – I feel like I’m breaking a rule…)

Tauba Auerbach – the whole alphabet, from the center out, digital VI

Leo Rubinfien – Wounded Cities – Casablanca, 2004, in the Casbah El-Habous

Judith Joy Ross – Nancy Tate, protesting the US war in Iraq, Bethelehem, PA

The next two are in the permanent photo collection…

Harold Eugene Edgerton – Jackie Jumps the Bench

Terry Evans, Field Museum, Spartina, 1857

Next month, I hope to spend more time there… I think the permanent photo collection needs a bit more perusing.

On Sunday, we went to Baker Beach

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and grumbled at the Blue Angels flexing their military muscle all over our supposed-to-be quiet day. Eventually, they landed and we were able to take a nap that left us hungry.
Hungry and near Clement Street


(which might as well be China Town West here in San Francisco) meant that we were on a hunt for noodles. Part of the hunt included trying to find noodles to cook at home.

And boy did we find them! The May Wah Supermarket made our night. We got oodles of noodles, veggies, soy milk, tea, a wok cleaning brush, some nice porcelain soup spoons, lots of different versions of bean paste filled cookies, a small bottle of sake and one small can of basil seed drink.

Below, you’ll see two photos (I have SUCH a hard time deciding!!) of me and the latter two Asian market finds.

Ahh, basil seed drink. I was pretty nervous to try this stuff, hence the drink not quite hitting my mouth.¹

Mmm, nigori sake in a pretty pink bottle. It was a half bottle so my huge hand is actually not huge.

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¹Once he did it…

…I couldn’t back down!

It’s actually filled with these little gelatinously coated black seeds that taste vaguely of basil. The juice that they float inside tastes mildly of banana flavoring and the fun part was chomping down on the strange little seeds – it was easier to do so when only a small mouthful is ingested at a time.

The technique of filling the mouth with a big gulp and then trying to catch the seeds between the teeth…

…didn’t work so well.

i found the bathroom topic to be intriguing for a few reasons.
the first being that i love the bathroom here at my boyfriend’s apartment and was excited to photo-document myself in it.
the second being that scene in Say Anything when James Court gets into his empty tub, with all of his clothes on to cry about how his world is collapsing around him. that scene has always made me cry with empathy.
the third reason takes the second reason into consideration. i’ve been going thru a lot of changes emotionally and mentally and find that i gain solace when in the bath.

in these photos, i attempted to capture the strong, yet emotionally challenged state i’ve been existing in for the past few months. it just so happens that these two images were, respectively, the first and last photos i took for this challenge.

while you were away
by Richard Newman

I thought about sex. I turned 40, drank beer
on the back porch by myself. Called an ex.
Last night, the woman across the alley, the one
with that green porch light, suddenly appeared
in a white and black Dalmation-spotted bathrobe,
bare legs, and slippers and shuffled down wet bricks.
She may have seen me, but she also saw
our other neighbor’s Datsun gone, that guy
she dated once or twice, out all night,
and so she quickly shuffled right back home.
From the front side of the house, across the street,
a guy kept yelling, “April! April! April!”
He pounded on the door, “C’mon, April!”
I am also sick of the month of March.
The season sucks us out of our houses, pulls
us onto porches and down damp alleys. We keep
testing our breaths against the cool night air.

This afternoon I made corn chowder, baked bread,
roasted asparagus for the Bollingers,
the mother deep in chemotherapy
for the second time. Their ten-year-old daughter
plays sweeper on the fifth-grade soccer team.
I wonder if the couple still has sex,
and if they do each time feels like the last.

Tonight the neighborhood is quiet.
No dogs bark. Everyone must have been
sucked back inside, maybe licking their wounds.
Our neighbor’s light still burns a fungus green.
The roots begin to stir in the cold March rain.
I feel like I’ve been 40 all my life.
My daughter is at her mother’s, and tonight,
you are so much farther away than sleep.
I finish another High Life, go upstairs
and crawl beneath the covers, shiver, naked.
The dog’s been on the bed, smelly but warm -
the only warmth tonight, so I’ll take it.

we ate brunch inside and then decided to go to the park.

we saw my bike messenger friend by the video store.

we all decided to get ice cream and then go to the park – my friend would meet us there.

i chose honey lavender ice cream – one scoop, in a biodegradable cup. my roommate got one scoop of chocolate and one scoop of roasted banana – they were yummy. I liked mine much more but noticed that after eating a bit of the chocolate, I could taste the honey a lot more in mine.

my bike messenger friend didn’t show up so we went to the park without him.

there were a lot of people, in little groups, sitting in the sun, on the grass.

i trod carefully to avoid stepping in any poop. i didn’t see any poop, nor did I tred in any.

we took a couple of Polaroids before we figured out that we wanted to take shots of our hands against nature.

my bike messenger friend found us – he’d gone to get a 20 oz of some hand crafted beer, which he opened with a key.

I saw someone I’m friends with, sitting a few yards away and I waved and smiled. but I did not rise and go say hi. then we talked about park/beach/public lounge area protocol regarding seeing friends and acquaintances.

a man walked up and passed out next to us, on his back, with his face smartly covered by his hat. he lay there with his arms out and his legs splayed, like a baby, and snored. we secretly took a Polaroid of him.

my bike messenger friend got to see a girl’s butt as she put on her bikini under her little dress. that made him happy.

my roommate and I continued our quest for Polaroids of our hands in front of nature while we made our way home. at one point, my roommate was on the ground with the camera and some guys drove by and yelled “i’ve fallen and i can’t get up!” it was funny.

when we got home, we put the Polaroids on the wall where we’d put the tree branch and leaves stickers. the Polaroids look like they’re leaves falling from the tree branches. We like it.

Ventilation and Awe