Upside-Down Cake and Square Cookies. The world has gone mad!

Betty Crocker, you are a crazy, crazy woman. I used one of your iconic recipe cards (seen here) to make Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and it was a trip. People loved it. I did not. It was easy to make but just too sweet. I made a pretty design with fruit and followed the very simple instructions. 

Here's the deal.

All you need is:

• A box of yellow cake mix (I used Duncan Hines)
• A stick of butter 
• A cup of brown sugar
• Sliced pineapples (I used Dole pineapples slices in juice.)
• Maraschino cherries

Melt the butter in the pan. Make a layer of sugar and create a fun design for the fruit. Pour in your cake batter and TADA!! 26-30 minutes later you have a cake. 

Don't forget! Flip over the cake at least 2 minutes after you take it out of the oven and leave the pan over it for a bit. Everything sets and you can serve it. 

Like I said, not my favorite thing I've baked...far from it. 

Here are a few of my new favorites:

About 2 weeks ago, I decided to go nuts and make chocolate muffins. I was given Sally's Baking Addiction book for my birthday. I love the book and all the recipes. I made Sally's chocolate muffins and holy beans, I never thought I'd like chocolate muffins and I love them! Search her site for the recipe or buy her great book. It's worth it for the pictures.

Now, I needed cookies...I didn't want to bust out my mixture and I wanted something different. I remembered reading about these strawberry cake mix chocolate chip cookies. I googled and found this very simple recipe. It needed more moisture so I added some milk..about say...1/4 of a cup.

I had semi-sweet chocolate chips and white chocolate chips and wanted to party so I added them both to the batter. I again was pulling the lazy card out of my nonexistent pocket. I decided to smear the batter on parchment paper and bake. My stroke of brilliance still brings a smile to my face. 

Be careful when baking. Since it's one sort of thin homogeneous blob, it cooks rather quickly. Check frequently!!

Slice it with a pizza cutter and viola! It's fake strawberry and chocolate delightfulness. 

Make them soon or now! 

Post...life

As many of you noticed from my last entry....I've been through a breakup. I am sad, some would say devastated. I wish it wasn't so but it is. I need to move on and put a positive spin on it. A relationship happened and I can smile about that. As A. A. Milne says: How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. That's how I feel about it. I wasn't all good but I am focusing on the good to get me through.

To help me get my mind and soul get into a better space, I am finally going to turn my blog into something!!!!!  Yes, friends...A Decadent Discourse will now be a food blog. I am going to bake stuff and critique it and maybe review restaurant dishes.

Hello..kids..A Decadent Discourse is going to now be an even better and clever(er) pun.

Yes. It's happening. I am excited.

I will finally write more and it will be fun. It may not be every week but it will happen.

What happens when you fall...

I loved/love him so much it hurts, but he doesn't love me. So now, I sit here and ponder all my missteps and mistakes and it hurts even more. Yes, I didn't trust him but I was trying. I was learning. I don't really trust anyone. I wanted to so much to trust him. I still do. My mistrust pushed him away. He fell out of love. I guess. Yet, I was the one to say...I'm done. I could see it. I could feel it. 

So, now I sit here and hope. I have no feelings left only the thoughts to know I love him. I hope my love can help and fix this. I can't think of all the what if's and could have's. I know my heart... I know I screwed up like I screw up everything. 

I'm scared for tomorrow and for all the days after that. 

The feelings flood in and I get lost. I am lost.

He made me so happy. I want to be happy again. 

I'm not done. 

I love him. 

OuliPost: Exit Interview

Oulipost Exit Interview: Oulipost Ends Where the Work Begins

Question 1:

What happened during Oulipost that you didn’t expect? What are the best (or worst) moments for you?

My addiction to it. I loved it which was surprising. I felt like a writer again. I was surprised as to how much I loved it and how some of the prompts came naturally to me.

My best moments were any Belle Absent poem we did or a poem that involved using all the letters of the alphabet. It was super fun. The poems involving math really confounded me at times. I found that later in the month I struggled more because it became more difficult to manage my time and...the prompts were harder.

Question 3:

What does your street look like?

Busy. Upscale. Pot-holey. Pretentious with a side of modesty.

Question 4:

Who is your spirit Oulipostian?

Valérie Beaudouin

We almost have the same and she's super cool and brilliant..hello..a whole book on meter and rhyme in verse. I wish was still in grad school...I would use her for my thesis!

Question 5:

What are the top three poems you wrote during this project?

Wow..

Okay..I chose 4. These were hard..but I am pretty proud of these.

1.Quote Cento
2. Headlines
3. Tautogram
4. EPITHALAMIUM

Question 2:

What questions do you have for your teaspoons? What questions do your teaspoons have for you?

Why do I always loose you? Why do you always end up in the garbage disposal? Do you like being plunged into the brown sugar so much? What's your favorite spice?


Why do you us so much? Can you please keep us together on our keyring? We are a teaspoon family.  Can you stop losing us? Do you not like us? We like you. Can you keep us in the brown sugar from now on?

Question 6:

What will you do next?

Well, I am dog sitting in a few weeks. Bask in my pride. In all honesty, I do not know what my next writing adventure will be but I do have a plan for a submission to the Found Poetry Review. And..I am seeing Bill Nye on Sunday.. what??

OuliPost...I am really happy we had a chance to meet.

OULIPOST #30: PATCHWORK QUILT--The Grand Finale

The prompt:
Conclude the project by writing a poem that incorporates words and lines from all of your past 29 poems.

The process: 
I pulled full lines, and then just some words from each poem and I worked backwards. The first word is from April 29th and last word is from April 1st. Sometimes, I pluralized a word..sometimes I didn't. 

So long Oulipost, it's been real...

The result:

Quilt

Chief clumsily lingers
Vaporized by 
Elements, 
read like a mystery novel
Revenge

Another postcard
For friends

Don’t be afraid
Blessing has the burden
Until it’s all a happy memory

Lived it.
Around-the-clock

Capsules appear
We run

Pain
A lack of heart
We must be strong
Half fatal

Critics swiftly confirm
Chief,
Earns their praise
While urban disunion rises
There was a problem

Radicals faced with a particular group
May day


People are still angry

OULIPOST #29: MILLER HIGH LIFE

The prompt:

The name of this procedure is taken from the soft drink marketed as “the champagne of ginger ales.”  (Or in my case...Miller High Life..the champagne of beers.) The drink may have bubbles, but it isn’t champagne. In the words of Paul Fournel, who coined the term, a Canada Dry text “has the taste and color of a restriction but does not follow a restriction.” (A musical example is Andrew Bird’s “Fake Palindromes.”)  Be creative, and write a poem sourced from your newspaper that sounds like it’s been Oulipo-ed, but hasn’t.

The process:

Well, since I didn't have any direction, I just took one. I wanted to use some rhetorical tropes. I was lame and just used alliteration but I may have spelled something with the title and the letters at the beginning of each line. Can you guess what it is?

The result:


Oh….

Child chief calls
Replace recently received 
An April agency allowed assaults
Potentially playing pledges

It’s impossibly improving
To the terms toll
Stepping state safety short

Other ones old or only open
Very vocal violations
Elections encourage everybody
Rising reporters record Republicans 

Source:

The A section of The Boston Globe. 29 April 2015. Print.

OULIPOST #28: MELTING SNOWBALL

The prompt:
A text in which each word has one letter less than the preceding one, and the last word only one letter. From your newspaper, select a starting word, and then continue adding words of decreasing length from the same source article or passage. Challenge yourself further by only using words in order as you encounter them in the text.

The process:
I wanted to get creative with this. I thought of real snowball and how it takes a bit for it to start to melt. So the title is 11 letters and then the next 2 lines are 10 and the next to are 9 and then it really starts to melt.  I also tried to abide by the rules and with using the word in the order that I found them. I think I did a pretty good with that part.

Also, it melts...

The result:

Resignation

Technology
Infections
Materials
Decisions
Clumsily
Suffered
Similar
Modern
Chief
Call
Who
To,
I
?


Source:
Borchers, Callum. Nanomedicine could improve surgical implants. The Boston Globe. 28 April 2014. Web.

Several other articles from the homepage of The Boston Globe. 28 April 2014. Web.