#and i have two rectangular chunks that will be leftover

[exculis]

and i already know what im gonna do with the leftover foam from my cushion project bc i had Inspiration come to me on a walk.....

[bequeerpraisegod]

St. Luis Cake / Gooey Butter Cake

     This is a recipe that is very near and dear to my heart.  (It is also very easy to make!)  I got this recipe from my grandma, who passed it down to my mom who taught me how to teach it.  There is nothing inherently special or fancy about the ingredients.  The special thing about it is the people you have it with!  It was a tradition in high school where I made this for the last day, and sometimes throughout the year.  The most recent time I made this was for the young adult group at my church, and I brought the leftovers in the next day for a volunteering event that mostly grandma’s showed up for.

     For this devotional recipe I want to focus on Jesus’ Parable of the Great Banquet as it is recorded in Luke 14:15-24.  The chapter context is that Christ heals someone on the sabbath and is accused of breaking the law by the Pharisees.  And then He tells a series of parables that challenge the Pharisees’ legalistic theology.  The parable is as follows:

That triggered a response from one of the guests: "How fortunate the one who gets to eat dinner in God’s kingdom!" Jesus followed up. "Yes. For there was once a man who threw a great dinner party and invited many. When it was time for dinner, he sent out his servant to the invited guests, saying, ’Come on in; the food’s on the table.’ Then they all began to beg off, one after another making excuses. The first said, ’I bought a piece of property and need to look it over. Send my regrets.’ Another said, ’I just bought five teams of oxen, and I really need to check them out. Send my regrets.’ And yet another said, ’I just got married and need to get home to my wife.’ The servant went back and told the master what had happened. He was outraged and told the servant, ’Quickly, get out into the city streets and alleys. Collect all who look like they need a square meal, all the misfits and homeless and wretched you can lay your hands on, and bring them here.’ The servant reported back, ’Master, I did what you commanded-and there’s still room.’ The master said, ’Then go to the country roads. Whoever you find, drag them in. I want my house full! Let me tell you, not one of those originally invited is going to get so much as a bite at my dinner party.’" (The Message)

Recipe Time

Ingredients:

One 18 oz box of yellow cake mix

One stick of butter

Three total eggs

One 8 oz thing of cream cheese

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Four cups of powdered sugar (or confectioner’s sugar)

Directions:

Gooey Butter Cake consists of two layers.

Preheat oven to 350

Grease a pan.  I tend to use a 10″ by 2″ circular pan.  I see other online recipes recommending a 9″ by 13″ rectangular pan.  The height isn’t terribly important because it does not rise much at all.

This is the bottom layer. Melt butter.  You can do this on the stove or in the microwave.  Stir together melted butter, yellow cake mix and one egg.  I like to mix the butter and cake mix together before mixing in the egg out of fear of cooking the egg prematurely.

The mixture should now have a playdough like consistency.  You can stick the entire thing into a your greased pan(s) and spread it out.  There is no shame in that.  But what I like to do is tear portions of the dough off and place throughout the pan.  And when you finish tearing the dough apart, press the pieces together to form the layer.  This method has helped me to make sure the dough is even across the bottom of the pan.

Additional Tip: You can slightly wet your finger tips to help prevent the dough from sticking to your hand too much.

Now for the top layer!  Mix together the cream cheese, remaining two eggs, vanilla extract and just one cup of powdered sugar to start.  I like to mix by hand with a fork, but mixing it with an electric mixer is also perfectly fine.  Cutting up the cream cheese makes mixing it with the other ingredients easier.

Add the remaining three cups of powdered sugar in one at a time.  The batter should be almost entirely smooth and easy to pour when completely mixed.  It is okay if small lumps remain, but there should be no large or divisible chunks of powdered sugar or cream cheese.

Pour the batter on top of the first layer in the pan.  Bake for 30-45 minutes.  When it is finished baking, the top should have a thin golden crust that has slightly browned in certain areas.  In my experience, the tooth pick trick doesn’t work for this coffee cake because the “gooey” top layer of Gooey Butter Cake will stick to the tooth pick.

While waiting for the cake to cool; take some time to reflect on the knowledge that you are loved, wanted and needed in the Kingdom of God and Body of Christ.

Make sure to let cool before cutting.  It is the easiest to cut after allowing it to sit in the fridge.

     This should easily feed 5 people who are very hungry an 10 people who have smaller appetites'.  This recipe is kosher and halal.  The best cream cheese to use to know for sure it is kosher and halal is plain philadelphia branded cream cheese.  This recipe does contain gluten, eggs, dairy.  Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or feedback!

One of the grandmas from the volunteering event I mentioned earlier asked me for this recipe.  She was so incredibly sweet.  The next time I saw her I was wearing a “Trans Liberation Now” shirt.  She cornered me to ask me if it meant transgender liberation.  Then she asked if the church I went to was LGBTQ affirming.  I clarified that it did mean transgender liberation and the church I go to is queer affirming.  And she responded with “that’s nice, I agree with that.”  There are not too many instances outside of God’s church where I would share recipes with someone else’s grandma and talk about transgender liberation.  It was most certainly not the interaction I expected to have.  But I felt like the Lord had opened the doors to the banquet and let us in.  God invites different and unexpected people to sit down and have meals together, and They grow strangers into friends. I pray that you know there is always a place where you are not only welcome, but invited.

[cannibal-wings]

Betta Fish Blues... Ok, I need some advice from betta fish keepers. This is my boy Geralt. I’ve had Geralt for almost a year now and things have been really up and down. The first picture is when I got him, in October of last year. The second photo is about a month or so later, maybe December at the latest. He had stopped eating all food and got really sick and lethargic and his tail withered away to nothing rapidly. I immediately starting treating for fin rot and noticed his condition improve immensely. The next two photos were from three months later, when his tail had finally started to grow back and he looked much better. The last two photos are from tonight. Once again, I’ve noticed his tail has started to wither dramatically, it went from being full to like this over the course of two days. I’ve resumed treating for fin rot. Here are his tank conditions: 10 gallon standard rectangular aquarium, glass cover. Established tank, 0ppm ammonia, 0ppm nitrite, around 20ppm nitrate. pH is roughly 7. Water tests performed with an API Freshwater Test Kit. Water changes weekly to biweekly. Tests performed before water change. (same schedule my axolotls are on) Heated, average temperature 78F, 75F on colder nights. Filtered. Half planted, half plastic. Driftwood log added in December to increase tannin in the water, another was put in a few months ago. Sand substrate. No sharp decorations. Only tank mates have been ghost shrimp used for food cleanup. Feeding schedule is frozen brine shrimp every day with a day or two of rest on Friday or Saturday. Sometimes I feed leftover frozen krill chunks from when I thaw krill as a treat for my axolotls.  I’ve kept betta fish for years, and everyone I’ve had has lived four years or longer, save for R fish who died because I failed to properly heat his aquarium during a cold snap last year, and I felt terrible about it. I’ve never had a fish like Geralt who seems to crash every three months. Is there something I can do to prevent this? Are some fish just more predisposed to sickness? Should I increase water changes to twice a week? He’s on daily changes now with the medication for fin rot. Is his diet the issue? Should he be getting something other than brine shrimp? Are the live ghost shrimp somehow eating his tail? Get a stronger heater? I’m at an honest loss. I thought maybe he could be a tail biter so I increased the number of plants in the tank thinking it would make him feel more secure, but... I have no idea. He went from being on the mend to another crash and I don’t want him to get as bad as that first one. He still eats, in fact today he greedily ate his fill. But I’m worried he’ll get really skinny again like in December. Any advice would be appreciated.

[toddlazarski]

Last Suppers Vol. 2

Shepherd Express

In the days B.C.(Before Covid), when normal life, and more importantly, sports, proliferated and dotted the rote landscape of daily routine, I held a superstition with any of my real or fantasy teams: they wouldn’t play well if I actually watched. It was best I averted my eyes, distanced my associative bad juju. Nowadays, I do the same, except with the only statistical options: infection rates and confirmed cases and total deaths. I don’t look at virus numbers all day, then, when the house is quiet, the dishwasher humming, the lights half-off, I sit at the tiny kitchen table with a spoon and a pint of something chocolatey and my desperation and my phone and the giddy anxiety dread of a fresh-inked boxscore. It’s like I’m an immunologist with a gambling problem. Some combination of the ultimate-stakes card game scene in Casino Royale and the uncontrollable absurdity of Kramer betting on which flight lands first at Laguardia. Come the eventual loss, and then the shoulder-shrugged resigned finger-stabbing, the desperate working of the back triangle, the scrolling down, there is always a path to the only spot of hope in any news source today: an updated list of open restaurants and takeout offerings.    

This is how I eventually stumbled on MobCraft, or, rather, remembered it was there, barely safely social distanced outside my once-normal morning cycle of coffee and work, just another place before, another option, yet another in a too long list of new breweries, one I didn’t know how to take seriously before all this because I have a middle-aged mistrust of anything “crowdsourced.” In my mind it suddenly began burgeoning like a lighthouse, with the irresistible notion that homemade craft beer, and nearly equally curated pizza, could be brought to my car as I idled with my Spotify playlist and the safe removal of the other half. There are plenty of places to get either, there are plenty within blocks—Fixture has better pizza, Indeed has better beer—but here is both. Two birds, one stone. Or, as the day-appropriate analogy runs: two vices, half the infection chance. 

Later, as I ignored common sense to waste ever-precious paper towel squares on wiping down the rectangular boxes, I noticed the packages are ink-branded: ‘Hidden Kitchen.’ How apt. In the age of hearth-cooking and HGTV-backed open concepting, how hidden they’ve suddenly all become. Though here I wouldn’t really know, as I’ve still never set foot even on the curb outside. And, really, you’d think no one has, judging from the streets on a recent beer and pizza run evening. There was a couple with matching face masks at the corner of 5th and Bruce, and one guy on a bike, also in a mask that maybe you could convince yourself was a scarf, if you wanted to make it all seem less Cormac McCarthy, which I often struggle to do, telling myself the usual: “Well, it’s Sunday.” You could also just blame the weather—there’s still time in the season for that. Everyone just wants to be inside, sure. Or maybe he is, maybe they are—maybe we’re all—bank robbers. But getting off the Hoan at the Lakefront, circling up Clybourn and through the Third Ward, by the shell of the Public Market, a cold Colectivo, the only sign of life or movement is generally the streetcar, empty, running like a phantom reminder of how petty all our social media grievances once were. The city looks like a darkened backstage set, waiting. It feels recently completed, clean, ready, an up-and-comer, Cream City brick and Rustbelt charm and hints of the river rubbing against new development, Shake Shack and West Elm framed by turn-of-the-last-century port city industriousness. It’s an attractive potential leading man, wizened but spruced, primed for today, for a turn in the spotlight. To play part, the setting and co-star both, in the historic naming of someone—whomever!—to lead us out of this national nightmare. Now tumbleweeds blow down Water. 1st Street’s major pulse is two just-hanging-on taco trucks. Instead of simply taking the bikes away, Bublr has placed plastic bags over each individual docking station, they billow in the wind like a line of waiting ghosts, emphatic in doom declaration. Steny’s, empty, makes it feel like it’s too early. Anodyne, empty, like it’s too late. The expectation, the possibility here, is only for pizza and beer to take back to your little abode that by now feels half sanctuary, part jail. 

And once you are home, hands washed, boxes washed too, psyche shaken of the jarring urban emptiness, distracted just enough by HBO or Netflix, what is there but to eat and drink and discuss said eats and drinks? Yet, first, as a collective, writers, judgers, hall monitors and such, very clearly, as a commandment or some other kind of religious term, should agree: objectivity is rightly dead. There should currently exist no pretense of criticism. Any words spent on food or drink should simply be a celebration that we are still around, have health and funds enough to still eat and drink. Every meal is worth only the comfort it brings. My recent birthday dinner selection was Pizza Shuttle, and was met not with laughs, scoffs, but gentle understanding nods. This is for your soul, not your tongue, forget your mind. None of us are seeing our doctors for normally scheduled tire-kicking and blood death panels anytime soon anyways. In that spirit, Mobcraft might be the greatest restaurant in the world right now. 

Opening the boxes reveals a sort of paradigm of the flat bread-y, happy hour shareable brewpub pizza. It is in some way reminiscent of those things we are all missing the most: where you don’t feel like going out after a long day, then you go out anyways, and have something hoppy and local and loosen up, and unexpected alliances are formed by ABV, and there are ‘nother ones, and excuses made to selves and to significant others, and the coming weekend seems suddenly endless, eternal, what, in hindsight, feels almost, yes, maybe, blessed. And there is the realm of “one more” and somebody orders something from the bar to share, and everybody gets a wedge and pulls without cootie and corona paranoia, and the collective cheese pull is beautiful, pizza delivery commercial Instagrammable. The soft, deep, focaccia-like layers house typically creative topping combos: mac n’ cheese with pulled pork, a pungent gyro number with shaved lamb, a reuben pie with sauerkraut for those that prefer to sleep alone. Or there are more standard takes—pleasing marinara and pepperoni, with stretchy, blankety mozz, pleasant dusty crust flour fallout that snows softly down on the sweat pants and couch, lovingly sprinkled oregano flecks, cheese and edges just going brown toward crisp, but everything immeasurably pillowy, like a salty, saucy padding to smooth life’s edges just a bit. The “Pollo” has become an overnight favorite, featuring chicken chunks, the underutilized brotherly punch-in-the-arm of poblanos, bacon bits, velvety, guilt-inducing Alfredo sauce. It’s neither Italian or Mexican, craft or common. It is simply a feel, that of comfort pizza done with deft touch, a happy taste experience, now especially, arriving on the nostalgia spectrum somewhere between a Grandma slice from a Brooklyn street corner, whatever doughy carb-and-sauce bomb you used to get way too late at night in college, and elementary school cafeteria pizza day square. 

But you also can’t leave a palate sodium-parched. So there is the accompanying, expected microbrew tome of types and tastes—a cranberry farmhouse ale, a coffee brown brew, things fermented in barrels, limited offerings of ideas pitched by the public and then voted on by any Joe Six Pack with the internet, the flavor winner then brewed in house—most any to be jogged to your car in the ultimate “this is more like it” lesson we can take away from pandemic times. But it is mostly the distinct, pungent mouthfeel of a hazy IPA—”Squeezin’ Juice,” dry-hopped and 6.7% potent—that acts as total counterpoint to the state of existence right now. There is something of a citrus dance, a zest, a subsequent scrunched-up-face of bitterness showing reaction, any kind of reaction really indicating a defiant act of living. Even if it comes from a sip taken sitting on the couch, in the basement, solo cheersing another year gone by, alone, knowing everyone in the world is mostly doing the same, is in some state of either worrying, or sleeping, or dying. This is probably why even the fizzy astringency of kombucha tastes good to me right now. And probably why the thought of a crowdsourced brewery, whatever that really means, is totally fine.  

By the time the pizza is done and the ice cream too, once the music and news of the day has been faced, when the blindfold is ready for donning, it’s like the next year wish all sports fans know too well. Tomorrow, for sure. The numbers will tumble with lead boots-weight in the right direction, a vax will appear imminent, a treatment will truly show promise. If not, there will be some leftover pizza. And maybe one juicy IPA to sink down with.