In Which There is a Cover, and Sometimes-Questionable Harmonies

A conversation with my grandma about Deathcab for Cutie:
Grandma:  I don't know, they sound like they'd be kind of violent...
Me:  I think you'd actually like them!  Their music is really mellow and pretty, not like their name at all.
Grandma: What did they write?
Me:  They've got this one song, it's so sweet, it goes, "Love of mine, someday you will die--"
*Long pause*

I gave up on choir too early, and as a result, the ability to harmonize seems to me like some kind of strange sorcery.  Where do harmonies come from?  What are they made out of?  Local alchemists can't be certain, but I've been doing my level best to figure it out.  For my first serious foray into this black art, what better choice than Deathcab's sweetly morbid 2005 classic 'I Will Follow You into the Dark'?

You can stream or download my cover here.

And in case you're wondering, I still have yet to figure out how to properly use Audacity, so the entire harmony track is composed of a series of 10-second clips.  It took two screen shots to fully capture the madness:

T

In Which There is Failure, then Banana and Chocolate

Yesterday, I was really hoping to get a song recorded, but my recording software was driving me crazy.  I use Audacity, which has the advantage of being very user-friendly and available as a free, legal download.  It has the disadvantage of sucking.

That isn't really fair to say; it's perfectly adequate in a lot of ways, but if you want to record one track over another--say you're trying to add harmonies or something--you soon realize that Audacity records at a slightly faster speed than playback, meaning that inevitably, after a few seconds, the tracks won't sync up.  The only way to fight this that I know of is to add any additional tracks in tiny, 10-second intervals before the phenomenon becomes apparent.  However, this takes forever, and it can still sound off.

So until the day some engineering angel descends from the heavens to sounds of perfectly mixed trumpets and fixes Audacity--or until I just pony up and ask my boyfriend for help--here instead is a recipe for orange-chocolate banana bread.


Aw yeah, technical incompetence has never tasted so delicious.

Just after my freshman year of high school, we moved to a new state.  In an unfamiliar land and with no friends to speak of, I handled my feelings of isolation the way so many fifteen-year-olds do: by obsessively baking banana bread.  Cooking Light had recently put out an article featuring seven variations on the classic quickbread, and I powered my way through all of them in our temporary apartment kitchen.

The best version, in my mind, was always the marbled chocolate.  However, it calls for eggs and yogurt, so when I moved into the co-op, I knew I'd have to find a cheaper, more vegan-friendly version.  The solution was simple: take the perfectly delicious orange banana bread recipe (which uses OJ rather than yogurt to activate the baking soda) and adapt it to my needs.  Since most of the moisture of banana bread comes from mashed bananas anyway, it veganizes pretty well.  Eggs become egg substitute, and butter becomes margarine, with no loss to flavor or texture.

From there, all you need to do is follow the chocolate marbling instructions from the other recipe, bake it at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean, and serve it warm with peanut butter.

In Which There is Polymer Clay and a Lot of Free Time

So on Wednesday I made this:


Meet Esilana DeVries--opera singer, spy, revolutionary.  Also: less than two inches tall.

A quick rundown on how the tiny diva came to be.  She's made of polymer clay, a marvelous product that comes in many colors and hardens in the oven.  My current favorite is Sculpey Premo; it combines the malleability of Sculpey III with the firmness of Fimo.  (Kneading Classic Fimo is like trying to fold a brick.)

Other than my fingers, the only tools I used were an exacto knife and a bead hole maker, pictured here:


The knife I use for evenly dividing small amounts of clay--making a pair of eyes the same size, for instance.  The bead holer is good for small details, like shaping the ruffles on her dress.  I used to also have a straight pin, for texturing hair and the like, but sadly it was long ago lost to the wilds of my room.  I miss it very much.  The tip of an exacto blade just can't get the same fluidity of lines. 


The hardest part about making her--other than coming up with a ball gown that wasn't boring or hideous; I have zero background in designing clothes so it was all trial and error--was keeping her skin and hair from turning red.  For some reason, whatever Sculpey uses to give its clay a crimson hue has a tendency to stain the fingers, and then whatever else the fingers touch, including any paler clay.  If I was working on her dress, I couldn't touch her skin, and if I was working on her skin, I had to steer clear of the dress.  Does that sound hard?  It was really, really hard.

I think I did pretty well at keeping the colors separate, and I'm proud that the straps on her dress hide how awkwardly her arms are attached to her body.  I'm also pleased that the bustle turned out so well--it's a shape I'd never tried before, and I like the silhouette it creates.  Construction initially posed a challenge: that much solid clay would've been heavy, difficult to bake evenly, and a waste of materials.  Most polymer clay veterans would recommend molding the skirt over a wadded up ball of aluminum foil, but I've had bad luck with foil armatures in the past.  By the time I'm done trying to shape and smooth out the clay, there are always a few telltale silvery spots where the foil peeks through.

Instead, I just made the whole piece hollow:

She can now double as a finger puppet.  This wasn't my initial goal, but hey, finger puppets!

On the other hand, her hair isn't textured as well as I'd like, and it hangs toward her neck in a way that defies gravity.  Also, the back of her head is asymmetric, and from some angles, it looks like the whole thing is on crooked.



Seriously, what is that hair doing?

I am going to cut myself some slack, however, because I'm out of practice making figurines.


Also, did I mention she's less than two inches tall?

In Which There is Sauce and Toppings

New plan: because I like blogs that have some type of theme or purpose, I've decided I'm going to try to make a thing every day, and then write about it.  This thing may be a drawing, a humorous essay, a comic, a small sculpture of a penguin holding a single rose, an original song, a heartfelt recommendation, or a short story.  This is Day One, the first step in a journey of unknown length and destination.

Our journey begins, as all journeys do, with pizza.


Food never photographs well on my camera, so you're just going to have to take my word for it that this was delicious.

I make pizza from scratch with some regularity.  It's a great way to help clear out the vegetable drawer, and as long as some form of cheese can be uncovered, a satisfying and relatively quick dinner.  Here is my standard process:

1.  Make crust.  I use this recipe, which I'd recommend.  In this case, I doubled it, sprinkled some garlic powder on top, and baked it a bit before adding sauce, because otherwise it can be soggy.
2.  While your dough is proofing/resting/baking, make sauce.  Strain a can of diced tomatoes and run it through a food processor for a while.* Add a ton of raw chopped garlic, and then basil, oregano, and salt to taste.  (It's best with fresh chopped basil, but the dry stuff works okay, too.)
3.  Make veggie toppings: Saute onions, green peppers, and chopped broccoli in about a tablespoon of oil.  When the onions are nice and soft-looking, add the chopped mushrooms.  In a frying pan, mushrooms tend to act like little sponges, so if you need to add moisture, pour in a bit of hot water.**  When the mushrooms are nicely browned, throw in a good portion of chopped spinach.  Keep stirring until the spinach is wilted, but still a nice green color.  There's no need to cook the life out of it; the whole thing is going into the oven anyway.
4.  Optional (this was the first time I'd done it) meat toppings: Saute onions, green peppers until soft.  Add leftover chopped bratwurst***, and saute a bit more.
5.  Assemble pizza.  I used cheddar and feta cheese; it's never a given we're going to have mozzarella at hand, so you have to be a little flexible****.  As you can see in the picture, I prefer to mound the toppings on my half until that the pizza beneath it is barely visible and each bite is nearly as much vegetable as crust, but of course everyone has their own preferences.
6.  Bake at 450 until the cheese is melted and the toppings are a bit browned.


*If you have canned crushed tomatoes, they actually work a bit better, and you don't need to food process them.  Sadly, we don't keep any stocked in the co-op.  We tried to order some from our local bulk supplier once, and they sent us several giant cans of a terrifyingly uniform slop, halfway between tomato sauce and tomato paste.  The label insisted these were crushed tomatoes, so either there was a wacky mix-up at the local tomato cannery, or Gordon Food Services and I just don't see eye-to-eye on the definitions of basic words.


**Yes, the remaining oil will probably bubble/hiss/go a little nuts, but in my opinion, mushrooms retain their flavor better, and have a superior texture, when cooked in water.  The same thing goes for adding spinach to something, except you generally don't even need to bother with extra water.  Hat tip to former roommate Jenny Flack for putting me straight.

***I became a vegetarian, then learned how to cook.  I've got no regrets on either, but if I had it to do over again, I'd probably go the other way 'round, because now I have no idea how to prepare meat.  I'd originally made the bratwurst for a party this Sunday, and it was an experience best described as "harrowing."  I mean, under-cook vegetables, and they're a little crunchy; under-cook meat, and you and your loved ones could get food poisoning.  Also, I felt weird frying something that gave off fat as it fried.  In my experience, grease is something you add to the pan so that nothing gets burnt, not a sweaty byproduct produced by the very act of cooking.  The whole thing was so unfamiliar, it felt more like preparing alien food.  Also, sausage is generally a weird-looking thing, all splotchy and grub-shaped.  They smelled great, though, I'll admit it.  There, omnivores, are you happy now?


****I'm wondering now if the soggy crust factor could be eliminated by layering things Chicago-style--that is, cheese first, and then sauce.  Something to consider for next time, I suppose.  (As though I needed reasons to make more pizza...)

Adventures in Job Listings, part I

In the right mindset, there is nothing funnier than corporate double-speak.  In the wrong mindset, it comes across as some sort of nightmarish 1984-style attempt to seize control of reality itself through the careful manipulation of language, but for now, let's stick with the silly option, since I'd prefer to be able to sleep at night, and assume you feel the same.

Quick: what do Burger King, Joann Fabrics, Pizza Hut, and Tractor Supply Company all have in common?
Answer: They are all hiring "team members."

Not "cashiers," or "clerks," or "minimum-wage workers in polyester shirts who spend all eight hours at a time on their feet dealing with obnoxious customers and dreaming of a day that they might afford health insurance in the event they should accidentally slip in a puddle of their own frustrated tears."  Team members.  As if working at Pizza Hut was just one giant game of capture the flag, as if shifts are spent trading high-fives with your teammates and playing pranks on the enemy, which I guess in this case would be Domino's?  (Although anyone who's ever eaten at a Pizza Hut knows that the real enemy is hygiene. *rimshot*)

Wendy's, on the other hand, is currently hoping to hire the deliciously piratical-sounding "crew members."  Given that most of us will never take to the seas or be employed by the captain of a spaceship, this may be our only chance to ever be part of a crew.  This is the best and also only reason I've ever heard of to work at a Wendy's.

In the end, however, the real prize in the game of "call a thing what it is not" goes to Subway, and its actual job title of "sandwich artist."  I don't even know what to say about this, except that I worked at a Subway competitor for a while, and I can safely report that neither I nor any of my co-workers saw ourselves as artists. I made some ugly sandwiches in my day--and not ugly in the "good art should be challenging" sense.  I wasn't reproducing Guernica in mayo and shreds of lettuce, I was just slapping lunchmeat onto bread as fast as I could, because anything more meditative would've earned a yelling from the manager.

In a way, I suppose the job listing was a success.  It does leave me awfully tempted to apply to a Subway.  When the bell by the door chimed, in I would walk, dressed in my best black turtleneck and beret,  paintbrush and a palette of mustards in hand.  When asked to demonstrate my sandwich-making technique, I would adopt a face of supreme concentration, then hand the supervisor a stapler wrapped in bacon and parking tickets, explaining that I was going through a surrealist period.  As management escorted me to the door, I would start shouting that the sandwich art scene had completely sold out.  "You call yourself artists?" I'd yell.  "You're sandwich hacks!  Sandwich hacks, all of you!  Move that pickle slice half an inch to the left, can't you see it's asymmetric?"

At which point I would likely become the first person in history to receive a lifelong ban from Subway for "artistic differences."  Never let it be said I don't have ambition.

An Introduction, or, Man, I Really Would Make A Crappy Ballerina

In May of 2010, I graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Creative Writing, and pretty much no plan beyond "try not to starve."  I'd known from the beginning that it was an impractical major, but becoming a writer has been more or less my lifelong dream*, and I'd been told by several reliable sources to follow my dreams**.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it turns out there are not a lot of people sitting around with large sacks of money, just waiting for a proofreader or essayist to pass by.***

 Anyway, my grandma told me to start a blog, so here I am.




*Okay, so in second grade I wanted to teach kindergarten, and the following year I toyed with becoming a fashion designer (an era that coincided with wearing a hot pink beret every day, and generally a Time of Which We Do Not Speak).  Also, in the interest of full disclosure: when I was three, I wanted to be a ballerina.  Ballet recital footage from this period shows just what a pipe dream this was, though--I know it's considered good form to cut preschoolers some slack, but trust me: I was terrible.   From fourth grade onward, however, it's been writing.  There was a brief stint after watching the first Pirates of the Caribbean where I thought about going into 18th-century buccaneering, but I have a strong dislike of conflict, plus I can't swim.  Also: Lack of access to time travel.


**Many of those sources were motivational posters.  Maybe this was my first problem.


***I mean, if you see one, let me know.  Especially if it looks like it could be a leprechaun.