Tracy Durnell

Baked lemon blueberry loaf cake – used butter and cow milk. Cut the sugar in the cake to ¾ cup, seems fine. Rubbed the zest into the sugar first. I think half a batch of glaze would suffice (see puddle). Dried the blueberries before coating in flour and they didn’t all sink! 🙌 Baked 75 minutes.

📚 Library haul!

• The Plenitude of Distraction
• Changing the Subject: Art & Attention in the Internet Age
• Witch Hat Atelier 1
• More Than Words
• Deep Dream
• Possessed
• Let’s Do Lunch
• American Book Design and William Morris
• The Naughty Secretary’s Club: The Working Girl’s Guide to Handmade Jewelry

Baked buttermilk spice muffins. Usually I can get away with going shy on the sugar but I missed the tablespoon or two I shorted in the batter 🤷‍♀️ Baked 20 minutes, should have pulled it a min earlier, a touch on the dry side. (Batter also seemed dry so I added 1Tbsp buttermilk, maybe shouldn’t have.)

Baked snickerdoodle blondies 👍 Quite sweet but very tasty with good texture. I subbed butterscotch chips because I dislike white chocolate. Baked a bit over 40 minutes. Yeah we each scarfed three pieces while still warm 😂 Could probably skip the mildly annoying inner cinnamon sugar layer?

📚 Library haul!

• Peacock and Vine by AS Byatt
• Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow
• Revision and Self-Editing for Publication
• Dangerous Fictions by Lyta Gold
• Suri’s Dragon by Jo Rioux
• The Pantry: Its History and Modern Uses
• The Arts and Crafts Movement: A Study of Its Sources
• In Harmony with Nature

Baked orange cranberry sourdough scones 👍 Half gone before I remembered a photo 😉 I did a cream wash instead of egg wash for the turbinado sugar topping.

📚 Library haul (still haven’t finished my last haul oops 😅):

• How to Steal a Galaxy by Beth Revis
• On Writing and Failure by Stephen Marche
• Wanting
• Strange Divisions & Alien Territories
• Chronicles of a Liquid Society by Umberto Eco
• The Mediterranean Dish
• American Backyard
• Japanese Interiors

New personal policy: when I come across a blog without an RSS feed or a newsletter that I’d like to subscribe via RSS, I’ll email them instead of shrugging and saying oh well. I’ve done it twice in the past month so that makes it a thing, right? 😉 Be the change you want to see in the world lol 🌈

Brunch! Avocado toast with mushrooms, sauteed cabbage, sweet potatoes and arugula salad - inspiration (though it took me a lot longer than 20 minutes 😂). I never had sauteed cabbage before, but will again! I skipped the curry powder and added chile powder to the sweet potatoes.

Baked sourdough blueberry muffins to Blue Train this morning. Needed to add 6Tbsp (butter)milk to get the batter a good consistency. Tossed (frozen) blueberries in cornstarch and 1/4tsp cinnamon and folded in at the end. Baked 30 minutes. Pretty sweet, could cut the sugar by a tablespoon or two.

📚 Today’s library haul:

• The Ordinal Society by Marion Fourcade & Kieran Healy
• What We Do Now: Standing Up for Your Values in Trump’s America (from 2017 so may not be useful but worth a shot 🤷‍♀️)
• Hearts of Oak by Eddie Robson
• On Community by Casey Plett
• On Browsing by Jason Guriel

📚 I’m trying a themed set of books on consumption for my first library run of the year:

• Scorched Earth by Jonathan Crary
• Elements of Taste by Benjamin Everett
• All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld
• The Ugly History of Beautiful Things by Katy Kelleher
• The Joy of Missing Out by Svend Brinkmann

I’m working on a series over at my main blog that I’ve been working up to for the last year or even two 🦾 I tried to write it back in March, but didn’t have a good thruline. It finally came together under “the mindset of more.” I’m psyched about the most recent post, on taking control of my reading.

Baked pumpkin cream cheese sourdough muffins. Made 18. Baked 22 minutes but probably should have pulled at 20. I went shy on the filling because I was worried about spillover but should have done the full Tbsp - the batter’s not very sweet but the filling is. Added extra cinnamon and ginger.

Baked sourdough coffee cake. Took 80-90 minutes to bake in my 8x8 pan. I added 1/4t ginger powder to the topping, cinnamon flavor was overwhelming though. Wonder if one of those Tablespoons ought to be a teaspoon? I liked the gooey filling layer. Skipped the icing. Overall tasty.

📚 This week and last’s library selections:

• Radium Girls (comic version)
• Seen and Unseen
• Age of Revolutions
• Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India
• Where We Meet the World
• The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy
• The Crumrin Chronicles Vol 1

Do you have a draft blog post you want a second opinion on? I’m offering to do a developmental edit for 5 people this month as a gift to the indie web community. Details on my main site.

Darn it, we did a big grocery shop yesterday then the storm knocked our power out 😾 (along with most of the Seattle area). Fridge items are toast but I’m hoping the stuff in the freezer makes it 🤞 Sounds like it could be a few days to come back on.

😑 ate a (rinsed) raw carrot with lunch, an hour later got an email they’re being recalled 🤦‍♀️ Just got home from travelling so I’m not up on the news.

ICYMI, the NY Times tech guild is on strike and asking people to not visit NYT Games or Cooking websites or apps ✊

📚 Today’s library run:

• CCCP Underground by Frank Herfort - this caught my eye from a staff display
• A Shining Beacon by James Albon
• Dear Sophie, Love Sophie by Sophie Lucido Johnson
• Ways of Seeing by John Berger - oh dear, this is set in bold type 😒

Requested too many books from the library again 📚😅

I was telling my buddy he needs to read Maus but commented I read it too young and would understand it better now, and he suggested I reread it. I read it in 1994, so a 30 year revisit 😄 Wish it weren’t on my mind though.

My printer ran out of toner so I had to make a run to the library sooner than usual, but at least some holds came in!

• Entropy
  
• The Strategic Designer
• The Bauhaus Ideal: Then and Now
• Floral Fantasy
• Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen

Alas, the pruning book I really wanted wasn’t there yet.

📚 Library grab bag because I forgot to re-pause some holds 😄

• Sohla’s cookbook! Start Here
• The Lantern and the Night Moths, a poetry collection recommended by my fav author Courtney Milan re: her latest
• Shikake: the Japanese art of shaping behavior through design
• Navigational Entanglements