#my mom makes homemade jam most summers and it is the best thing

[siriusblackmakesmesoft]

oh my gosh i loved soft so much!!!

if i could perhaps request a remus lupin fluff, maybe with similar vibes to the sirius one you wrote ! young!remus x fem!reader

maybe after the full moon he convinces madam prince to let him leave the hospital wing early, and he goes up to y/n (ravenclaw)‘s room, ending similarly to your one before if that’s possible :) very soft !! thank you so much my love!

Remus Lupin X Ravenclaw!Reader

A/N: thank you for your request babe! You’re the first :) I’m really sorry this took so long, I’ve been in a slump :( Also thank you for requesting Remus because his birthday was this month and I cried all day :,) love him so much my sweet boy!! Also also thank you for requesting ravenclaw reader because that is all i know how to write :)  kisses to you i adore you thank you :* Also also also I Might write one similar to this and Soft about James potter just to complete the trio :) Requests are open for The Marauders right now, though I’m willing to write someone else if you want just ask :) 

Warnings: Tooth rotting fluff dude call your dentist, a few physical descriptions? Glasses and longish hair and pajamas, reader being the absolute softest love of my life, sad Remus being anxious, reader is head girl bc that’s what I am when I shift so its all I know sorry, use of she/her pronouns, use of the nickname bunny bc I’m obsessed, this long speech about soulmates, food and eating mention, pretty freaking long sorry I got carried away I just love remus so much

Word count: 2801

enjoy :)

Remus was tired.

Madam Pomfrey had told him it would be a good idea to stay in the hospital wing at least one more night, to assure he get the rest he so desperately needed. Despite loving and caring about Madam Pomfrey, Remus was beginning to become claustrophobic in the tiny bed he was ridden to whilst staying there. He asked kindly, quietly, if she would be so kind as to give him the potions he should need and let him go to his own bed. She had made him promise to come to her immediately if anything were to happen, and with a less than convincing smile and a sarcastically cheery “Of course I’d come to you Pomfrey, you’re only the best,” she let him go. 

The walk to his dorm was slow. He was having no physical pain, apart from the dulled ache in his bones, yet he felt like he weighed a thousand pounds, and his bag was a thousand more. He trudged through the hall, hoping no one was in the dorm right now. It was unlikely, at almost noon on a Saturday he doubted his friends would be inside their room still. Remus loved his friends, more than he loved most things, but the thought of seeing them now was nerve wracking. He wasn’t in the right mindset to listen to them talk about a new prank plan, or a new sneaking out plan, or how lovely Lily’s eyes are, or how good their last shag was. Remus loved his friends, but he needed quiet. He needed a good book, a chocolate bar and a cozy sweater. 

The dorm was empty when he got there. He felt guilty for feeling relieved, for feeling part of the weight leave his shoulders because his friends were absent, but he also knew they would understand. They were good people, good friends who cared about him and his problems. Remus had been working on his guilt, telling himself that these people caring about him was a good thing that he shouldn’t feel bad about putting them through the things he does, that they do it because they love him and whatever issues he comes with. He hadn’t believed it yet, but he kept saying it.

He flopped face down onto his bed, dropping his bag to the floor and wincing when he remembered his book was in there. His bed felt nice compared to the cot in the hospital wing, a soft knit blanket James’ mom made him for christmas and cozy pillows she bought all the boys for their birthdays. Remus loved James’ mom, loved how she included him in their family events, loved how after Sirius moved in with the Potter’s she called Remus her son too. He had spent lots of holidays with them, sleeping in a guest room that just happened to have photos of all of Remus’ friends and posters of music he liked, a seemingly homemade bookshelf with James and Sirius’ initials carved in it. Sirius said when he first moved into the Potter’s his room was magically decorated too, and that Remus shouldn’t think too hard about how or why it happened. He knew it was his friends, brothers seemed like more of an appropriate title at this point, but he didn’t say anything for their sake. It was a sweet gesture, it made Remus cry a bit the first summer he spent there, so he let them have it.

Getting out of bed was a tough feat, but he needed a shower. He opened his trunk, grabbed his biggest sweater and favorite sweats, and headed for the shower. Remus loved showering. It was one of his favorite parts of the day. The warmth, the scent of his soap flooding the entire room, the steam dulling his senses down. It was calming, never failed to relieve his shoulders of some of what they were carrying. He relished the moments alone, relished in the sound of the water hitting the tile, the water hitting his skin, and even though he loved his friends, he relished the privacy. He didn’t get much of that anymore.

He towel dried his hair, making it messier than usual. He waited to put his sweater on, walking around in just his sweats, waiting for his skin to lose it’s pink hue from the heat of the water. He laid back onto his bed, facing the ceiling this time, and made an extensive to do list in his head. He missed 2 days of school because of the full moon, and getting caught up was something he wanted to do before laying in bed and reading all day like he planned. He also decided he should probably eat something of sustenance, other than chocolate bars and the terrible oatmeal Pomfrey served for breakfast. A trip to the kitchens was due, perhaps before studying so he could get some brain food. He also wanted to ask Professor McGonnagal about changing his prefect rounds. Telling third years to stop snogging in the halls after curfew gets tiring after a while. When he had his plan, he stood up off the bed. He put his sweater on and put his hands through his hair a few times to tame the mess. He picked his bag up, taking out some things and putting in some others. He decided he would do homework at his desk in the room, go and get some food and come right back. Nodding to himself and his plan, he put his shoes on and left the dorm. 

He had a bit more of a light step after his shower, feeling as if he washed most of his stress off. The trip to the kitchens was routine at this point. Sneaking in was muscle memory, after doing it for so long. It was a little difficult without James’ cloak, but he survived just fine. He made himself toast, spreading jam across the bread, and looked through the cabinets for some hot chocolate. He sat on the counter to eat, criss cross, right next to the sink. He thought about the elves that worked in the kitchen, how much they did. The ones who cleaned Hogwarts too, they did a lot for him, probably more than he was even aware of. It was a different kind of affection, unknown, prescribed almost. It was nice to think about. 

He stopped at the library on his way back to his room, wanting to get an extra book as a source for his herbology essay. He stopped to talk to Madam Pince, asked her about a book he had heard Sirius talk about, and went to find it and his herbology book. He found them quite quickly, Remus has come to know the library like the back of his hand. He put them both in his bag after checking out, and went to head back to his dorm, and then he heard James and some friends yelling across the hall. A guilt filled Remus again, he loved James, loved him like family, but he didn’t feel like he could handle the attention, the loud voices. As James got closer, Remus felt stuck again. The claustrophobic feeling that caused him to beg Pomfrey to let him leave the hospital wing a day early. He walked quietly, tiptoed across the hall, and when he was sure he had gone unseen he went the opposite direction of the Gryffindor dorms.

He ended up at the Ravenclaw tower door. His feet taking him here was inevitable really. He usually ended up here on a rough day. Today wasn’t too bad, he’d be the first to admit. It wasn’t great though.

“What has hands, but cannot hold anything?” Out of all the things Remus loved about the Ravenclaw tower, the Eagle spouting riddles at him when he just wants in is not one of them. He shifted his weight between his legs, picked at his nails for a minute, his bottom lip next. Terrible anxious habits that he cannot help, he looked at his watch for the time. Half past two.

“A clock.” The door opened slowly, revealing the Ravenclaw common room to him slowly. Bookshelves to the ceiling, constellations on the ceiling, soft piano music playing on a charmed record player, Remus loved it here. He usually would relish longer, stare at the stars, browse the books, try to figure out what song is playing, but he was still breathing shallow from his near death encounter with James across the hall. He wrung his hands, cracking his knuckles and twisting his fingertips as he walked up the staircase to the girls dorms. The charm for the Ravenclaw girls dorm stairs fell quickly from his lips, almost half way up by the time he completed it. He knew the way to the head girl's room by heart, down the hall straight until the last left door. He stood there for a moment, toe to wood, hand itching to knock. 

Remus suddenly felt insecure. He knew she would be happy to see him, her smile would be just as soft as he needs and she would say the perfect words, just like she always did. When he finally knocked the door opened very quickly, opening to a shy smile, and the top of a head.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” Her smile was small, and her voice was barely above a whisper. She had a warmth about her, the way she looked at him, it warmed up his whole body. She opened the door wide enough for him to step in and shut it right behind him. She was wearing an old t-shirt, some band that her cousin liked and grew out of, blue pajama shorts, and socks with little rabbits all over them that Sirius bought her for christmas last year when she visited the Potter’s. Her hair was down, messy as if she were laying on it, and her glasses were crooked. She looked pretty, in a realistic way. The kind of pretty that makes Remus want to make her a cup of hot chocolate, lay in her bed, and stare at her for hours. 

“Pomfrey wrote me a note that you left early, ‘was waiting for you t’come see me.” Remus stared at her, her soft smile making his resolve break easily. This always happened, he went to her broken and she was perfect and helped him fix himself. She always knew just what to say, as if she could read his mind. He wouldn’t be surprised if she could.

“Jus’ felt bad today, ‘s all bun.” His voice was quieter than he intended. He wanted to tell her everything, the claustrophobia he had been feeling all day, the dread that swallowed him when he saw James. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for this becoming a routine, showing up to her dorm needing her glue to put him back together. Remus swallowed, bouncing on the heels of his feet, and blew air out of his cheeks. “I ate though, made some toast, and I took my potion from Pomfrey before I showered, so I don’t hurt.” He smiled softly as he said it. Full moons were hard, and Remus often neglected to take care of himself after them. Telling her he had made a point to care for himself meant everything.

“‘S a good start isn’t it? Maybe we could read a bit? Got that book you wanted me to read, thought maybe you’d want to read it with me?” There were few good things in Remus’ life. He had been dealt a poor hand from an early age. But this, his girl, smiling at him so tenderly, made it all better. This made it all worth every ounce of pain he had ever felt. 

“Can we cuddle, bunny? ‘M quite tired.” Remus pouted, looking at her with the absolute worst case of puppy dog eyes she had ever seen. She had to bite her lip to stifle her giggle, she got to love the most cutest boy in the whole world. (Y/N) grabbed Remus’ hands and pulled him to her bed. She made him sit down while she went to grab the book, and when she returned she noticed he had taken his sweater off. Remus always liked skin on skin contact, once Sirius had told him no matter how much his love language is quality time, it would always be squashed by his need for physical touch. For a while Sirius’ comment made Remus insecure, like he was clingy and annoying, overbearing. But after a long conversation (and a few tears as well) he learned that she loved him, loved holding and touching him, that it made her feel the same way it made him feel. Safe, connected, warm, and loved. 

“Y’wanna lay on me, sweet boy?” Remus broke out of his daydream, nodding his head enthusiastically. She didn’t bother hiding her giggle this time, jumping onto the bed and patting her belly. Remus wrapped his arms around her waist, shoving his nose as deep into her shirt as physically possible. Her hands wound around his shoulders, rubbing his shoulder blades and mid back. The absolute bliss Remus felt was indescribable, if this was a dream he never wanted to wake up. 

Remus sat up slightly, resting his chin on (Y/N)’s stomach, looking at her with complete adoration. He stared for a while, tracing her features with his eyes. Her hands were running through his hair now, scratching the back of his neck and softly pulling the strands on the top.  She ran her fingers across his cheeks lightly, mumbling, “‘S goin’ on in that big brain of yours, sweetness?” 

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

He could see her brain working out an answer. Her eyes squinted very slightly, her mouth parted and she ran her fingers down his jaw as she spoke.

“I don’t know. I think it’s silly to think just one person is made perfect for you. I think Sirius was made perfect for you and James, but I don’t think you lads’ll get married. If there were to be soulmates there would be a thousand different kinds. You could be soulmates with the person you marry, and your best friend. And the bloke you sit across from on the train, and the waitress at your favorite restaurant. There is too much love in the world to just limit yourself to one person,” She paused, looking at Remus, dragging her finger down the bridge of his nose and booping the tip, “But if I had to choose one person to give all my love to, one person to be my every kind of soulmate, well I just think I’d pick you, Mr. Remus John.” She ended with a pretty smile, leaning down to kiss his forehead as she started to run her hands through his hair once more. 

Remus was speechless. His eyes were teary, his mouth was opening and closing as his brain screamed at him to just say anything at all, but he couldn’t. All he could do was stare. He grabbed her wrists, holding them against his face, kissing them while he thought of exactly what to say. It was a long while until he said something, just looking into her eyes with such awe. 

“I’d pick you, too, to give all my love to. Already have, honestly.” His face split into a wide, boyish grin. Bad day forgotten, he felt nothing but love and warmth in this moment. No guilt, no insecurity, no weight. If you asked him, he’d probably say he could fly with how light he felt now. 

“Well I’d sure hope so, otherwise it would be quite awkward to have you shirtless in my bed.” Her teasing made him giggle in disbelief, how one person could be so perfect he would never understand. How that same person could love him, choose to care for him and show him love, was an anomaly to him. 

“Now kiss me so I can read to you. I need you well rested as my soulmate.” Remus had never moved so fast. Jumping level to her face, kissing all over her cheeks and lips, making exaggerated kissing noises as she squirmed under him. Her giggles and squeals loudly filled the room, floating around Remus as his hands gripped her waist. He kissed each cheek one more time, leaning his head up to look in her eyes, which were closed from when she was laughing. This was another moment, where Remus forgot all things that weren’t in this space with him. The only thing in the world was her smiling under him, and him feeling utterly delighted to exist, and a few more kisses, too.

[pcychedelic]

Hello can I request for Chanyeol Baker fluff wherein chanyeol is a baker and reader is a regular customer in their bakeshop and Chanyeol has a crush on her. I will be happy if you write one for me. Thanks for writing EXO fanfic

A Light Dusting of Sugar

For anonymous

Pairing: Park Chanyeol/Reader

Tags: Fluff, baker!Chanyeol

Rating: General Audiences

Words: 2.3k

The first time you meet the new baker at Mr. Bong’s patisserie is during the first day of summer break.

You’ve been used to being greeted by Kyungsoo and his black, thick-framed glasses whenever you burst through the doors of the pastry shop for the past four years, so when you find someone completely different behind the counter, it’s only natural for you to wonder if you’ve entered the correct place.

“Hi! What can I get you today?” the new employee asks with a big grin on his face.

You eye him curiously, having to literally look up at him because he’s so ridiculously tall. The stranger continues to smile at you as he waits for your reply, and it has made you notice the endearing dimple on his left cheek. His big, round eyes seem to gleam with a sense of mischief you can’t quite put your finger on. It’s his ears that stand out the most among all his features — they stick out in the cutest way possible, especially since he’s wearing the baby blue baseball cap that goes with the employee uniform.

You snap yourself out of the trance that this stranger has put you in and you eventually manage to say, “I’m, um… I’m here to pick up an order. A whole rhubarb and lemon curd cake? I think my mom already paid for it.”

“Oh,” the man nods. “So you’re rhubarb.”

“I have a name, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me by the cake my parents made me pick up,” you retort, hoping he understands that you’re joking. Thankfully, the handsome stranger just laughs, and then he goes on to prepare your order. As you watch him, you can’t help but ask: “I’m sorry, but… do you know where Kyungsoo is?”

“The guy that worked here before me?” he asks. You nod. “All I know is that he left town to study or something. I can’t really remember, but I think that’s what Mr. Bong said. He just needed a baker urgently and I was the best he could get.”

Law school, you say to yourself. You’re happy that Kyungsoo’s out there finally living his dreams, but it wouldn’t have hurt him to say goodbye.

“Why do you look so bummed out?” the man asks as he places the cake in the center of an unfolded box. He then carefully begins assembling it, making sure that the paper box doesn’t touch any part of the cake. “Did you like him or something?”

“Am I that easy to read?”

“Well, not you specifically. Girls are easy to read,” he answers, still focused on wrapping your cake up. “I can only speak for myself, though. Maybe it’s the same for other dudes with sisters too.”

“I’m sorry, who are you again?”

He finally looks up and flashes another wide smile. You didn’t believe that hearts could skip beats, but you could swear that yours just did. “I’m Chanyeol.” He finishes your order up, tying a dainty blue ribbon around the box. He hands the cake to you. “And you are…?”

“Leaving,” you say as you pick up the box and turn around.

You can hear Chanyeol chuckling behind you. “Okay, then. See you later, rhubarb.”

— 

The first time you meet Chanyeol outside of Mr. Bong’s patisserie is during the first day of the fall semester.

“Rhubarb!” an annoyingly familiar voice calls from behind you.

You turn around in a flash only to be greeted by another one of Chanyeol’s huge grins, his dimple appearing on his left cheek like it always does when he smiles this widely. “I told you to stop calling me that.”

“I didn’t know you studied here too,” Chanyeol says, completely ignoring what you just said.

“And now you do.” You roll your eyes at him as you turn back around and continue to walk to where you’re supposed to be heading, not caring whether Chanyeol follows you or not.

Unfortunately, he does. “I thought you were just in high school or something,” he remarks as he walks beside you.

“I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be flattered or offended by that hypothesis that’s way off the mark.”

Chanyeol laughs. He’s still walking alongside you. “Where are you going?”

“Class.”

“You’re lying. Everyone’s off to lunch.”

You stop in your tracks and throw him a look of genuine confusion. “Why are you annoying me right now?”

“Because,” Chanyeol begins, “You haven’t been around the shop much and I kinda miss annoying you there, but then I saw you walking and at first I thought I was hallucinating or something, and then I realized that maybe it’s just my lucky day.”

You give him one last glare before you continue walking. “So… you missed me,” you paraphrase his explanation.

“I’m not saying it again,” he chuckles. “I know you heard me just fine the first time.”

You purse your lips in an attempt to keep yourself from smiling. You didn’t know that Chanyeol cared about you enough to notice your absence, and now that you do, that information is turning your heart into mush.

“Do you have plans after class?” Chanyeol asks after a few silent steps, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“Maybe,” you tease. This time, you allow yourself a smirk. “Maybe not. It depends on what you’re gonna say next.”

“Well that isn’t pressuring at all,” he sarcastically says as he laughs. “I was going to ask if you wanted to hang out somewhere. You know, somewhere I can annoy you that’s not the patisserie or here on campus.”

You don’t stop yourself from smiling this time around. “Sounds cool.”

Chanyeol’s signature grin spreads across his face once again. “Okay,” he says. “See you later, rhubarb.”

— 

The first time you try your hand at baking is with Chanyeol at Mr. Bong’s patisserie long after business hours during the middle of winter break.

Chanyeol always teases you about how you just sit around while he bakes for tomorrow’s sale the night prior. To shut him up, you agree to let him teach you how to bake under the guise of “wanting to help him” in baking for the shop when you’re eventually good enough, but really, you’re just there for the free sweets.

Tonight you’re making baked sugar donuts, which Chanyeol claims to be the easiest recipe he could think of. That may be true to an extent, but you know that it’s probably the least probable recipe to be a fire hazard.

“We literally have less than ten ingredients so if you mess this up, I’m really gonna make fun of you,” he says while preheating the oven to 350.

“I’m not a child,” you protest, but it probably came out as sulky and… well, childlike. “Just tell me what to do so we can eat donuts already. I’m starving.”

Chanyeol stares at you for a while, a soft smile slowly spreading across his lips, and it’s hard not to convince yourself that he doesn’t look extra cute when he’s smiling at you like that while wearing a light blue apron that says ‘kiss the chef’.

“Are you just gonna stand there and stare at me like a creep or are you gonna teach me how to make donuts?”

Chanyeol laughs, and then finally shows you the ropes: how to properly coat the donut pan with nonstick spray, why it is important to sift the dry ingredients, how to thoroughly mix the batter so that it’s smooth all the way through. Suddenly, you’re like fourteen again, back in home economics class for your first practical kitchen exercise.

Chanyeol volunteers to fill up the donut pans but you protest, so naturally, he lets you have your way. He pops them into the oven once you’ve finished filling the pans up. The timer is set to fifteen minutes.

“Who taught you how to bake?” you ask out of the blue as both of you just stare through the oven glass, waiting for the batter to rise and cook.

“My mom,” Chanyeol answers with a fond smile. “Do you know what was the first thing I baked in my whole life?”

“What?”

“Sugar donuts.”

“No way…” You turn to look at him, and he simply nods. “This is your mom’s recipe?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I was ten, I think. I kept on messing up the batter and we had to do, like, three do-overs. You actually did better than me.”

Both of your laughters are cut short when the timer lets out a loud ding. Chanyeol pulls the fresh batch out of the oven, and you can already smell the sweet scent of honest-to-goodness homemade donuts. You were about to dig in when Chanyeol chastises you playfully, reminding you that you’ll need to wait five more minutes to cool them down. He flips the pan over and lets the donuts rest.

The minutes pass excruciatingly slowly. The timer finally dings again, but Chanyeol still swats your hand away as you reach for a donut.

“What?” you whine.

“They’re sugar donuts,” he reminds you. “We haven’t added sugar yet.”

“Oh, right.”

Chanyeol laughs at you once more, tossing the donuts one by one into a sandwich bag filled with sugar. He shakes the bag lightly to cover the donuts with the sweet granules, and then he puts them on a plate when he’s done.

“Can I eat one now?” you ask, getting impatient.

Chanyeol lets out an affectionate chuckle. “Sure. Knock yourself out.”

You both grab a donut and bite into it. The sweetness explodes in your mouth as soon as you dig in, the donut almost melting on your tongue because of its softness. It has a light, airy texture to them and the next thing you know, you’re already reaching for a second one.

“These are so good,” you say, the words almost coming out a moan.

“Right? God, I could never have enough of these when I was a kid. It’s actually a miracle I don’t have diabetes now from all the sugar donuts I’ve had growing up,” Chanyeol says as he laughs. “I could teach you how to bake other recipes, if you’d like.”

You just smile at him. “I’d love to.”

— 

The first time you admit to yourself that you have feelings for Chanyeol is during the last day of spring break.

All you did over the break was help him bake in the patisserie, even if he still did the majority of the work. Mr. Bong was naturally happy about it because of the free labor. But really, it was the least you could do for him since you practically grew up having his croissants, brioches, and eclairs. It felt nice to sort of give up, especially since you’ve seen how the shop struggled sometimes throughout the years.

More than that, you liked helping out in the patisserie because you got time to spend with Chanyeol.

He’s still annoying as ever, perhaps even more now that you’ve known him for around a year, but it’s nice to have someone to exchange playful banter with, to teach you baking recipes that he learned from his mom, to tease you out of the blue.

It just feels nice when you’re with him.

“Do you have plans after work?”

“Technically, I don’t work here,” you say, “but no, I’m free after work. What’s up?”

Chanyeol fumbles with his words as if he’s nervous, but eventually he manages to say, “I, um, baked something for you. I was wondering if we could share it back in the kitchen after closing.”

“You made something for me?” you ask in confusion. “For what? It’s not my birthday.”

Chanyeol shrugs, but you can tell he did it for a reason, you just can’t seem to figure it out. “I just felt like baking something for you. You’re gonna love it, I swear.”

And so closing time arrives and Chanyeol disappears into the kitchen as soon as you flip the CLOSED sign on the door of the shop. He comes out after a while and then asks you to close your eyes. He leads you back into the kitchen, guiding you slowly as you can’t see anything, and when you both stop and he asks you to open your eyes, you find a familiar cake sitting on the industrial kitchen counter and your lips slowly curl into a smile.

“Really?” you ask, but you can’t help the small chuckle that escapes your lips. “Rhubarb custard cake?”

“I wanted to make a rhubarb and lemon curd cake, like, you know, from the first time we met but we’re all out of curd and I didn’t have enough time to make one from scratch so I just settled for custard,” Chanyeol rambles on and on, but you just stare at him with a smile until he notices that he’s babbling. “I’m sorry. I’m saying a lot of stuff right now, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” you laugh. “What’s the cake for?”

Chanyeol heaves a deep sigh, and then says, “Like I said, this was the cake you picked up — well, it’s close to the cake you picked up when we first met, and… we’ve been hanging out for quite sometime now…”

You shake your head, still smiling. “Get to the point.”

“I may or may not have had a little crush on you for a while and… this is… Well, this is me saying I like you,” he finally says. “I’m such a dork, right? I’m saying I like you by baking you a cake. Right. I’m sorry. I’ll just…”

You interrupt him as you suddenly walk toward him and tiptoe to give him a kiss. He’s confused for a split second until he realizes what was happening, and then his hands settle on the small of your back to support you.

You pull away. “What are you sorry for?”

“Um…” he replies intelligently, earning yet another chuckle from you. “I honestly can’t remember what I was saying before you kissed me.”

And so you kiss him again, and you could feel him smiling into the kiss, and you decide that Chanyeol’s lips are sweeter than anything you’ve baked with him.

[inspiringwhilerespiring]

Get to know me?

Yoooo - yall remember Myspace, and people would blog survey posts lol. Well thats me, I’m people. And I just wanna write my lil heart out and avoid all of my real life responsibilities. So found a lil questionnaire thing and I’m gonna fill it out. Also lowkey like doing this every so often so I can look back on it and reflect and see how much I may have grown/changed/shifted viewzzz ya feel? :) 

Sooo here yall go <3 

1. Who was the last person you held hands with?

My neice maybe?

2. Are you outgoing or shy?

People who know me would tell me to put outgoing, but I honestly feel shy on the inside, so it just depends.

3. Who are you looking forward to seeing?

Literally anyone lmao fuck this quarantine

4. Are you easy to get along with?

Definitely

5. If you were drunk would the person you like take care of you?

Lets hope so

6. What kind of people are you attracted to?

Kind souls <3 always notice how they talk to their friends and family, but even people they don’t know like servers or janitors, etc. that shit matters heavy.

7. Do you think you’ll be in a relationship two months from now?

Probably not

8. Who from the opposite gender is on your mind?

A few homies

9. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable?

Nah not really, just depends

10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with?

Not sure -it’s been a min since I had a “deep” connection or convo that I can remember - but was probably with my bestie R’Bo

11. What does the most recent text that you sent say?

“Google that shit” lmao me, giving advice to my friends

12. What are your 5 favorite songs right now?

TOUGH!!!! After Hours by The Weeknd is up there, Cayendo by Frank Ocean (been jamming his shit HAARD lately) and Inside Friend by Leon Bridges & John Mayer….but also been listening to albums - like Childish’s new album, Floreyyy for lo-fi shit, and also got into 070 Shake recently just to name a few.

13. Do you like it when people play with your hair?

FUCK YA

14. Do you believe in luck and miracles?

Yeah budddyy

15. What good thing happened this summer?

Idk, my bday party was lit?? And lots of river floats happened

16. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

Lol

17. Do you think there is life on other planets?

Cant deny that there isn’t so yaaa

18. Do you still talk to your first crush?

No

19. Do you like bubble baths?

Yes

20. Do you like your neighbors?

Just moved, so don’t know em

21. What are you bad habits?

Procrastination lol and biting my nails

22. Where would you like to travel?

Literally ANNNYY-fuckin-WHERE!

23. Do you have trust issues?

Hmm I wanna say generally no, but I also always keep it one hunnnid with myself, and as much as I’d like to say I don’t have any - I think I def have insecurities with myself, that have the potential to become “trust issues” in certain relationships, but overall no. I live by the whole “you have my trust til you fuck it up” mantra

24. Favorite part of your daily routine?

Coffee in the morning lately, missed it and forgot how energized it makes me - gives me time to wake up and reflect/set daily goals

25. What part of your body are you most uncomfortable with?

Stomach forever :((((

26. What do you do when you wake up?

Scroll on my phone, pee usually, or feed my cat lol

27. Do you wish your skin was lighter or darker?

Tanner maybe?

28. Who are you most comfortable around?

My mom or my best friend R’Bonney - but any of my close friends and fam honestly

29. Have any of your ex’s told you they regret breaking up?

Not directly

30. Do you ever want to get married?

Lol ok, so this is always changing…but lately (and by lately I mean the past few years) its been a no. I’m open minded though and am aware that I’m always changing my mind sooo who knows

31. Is your hair long enough for a pony tail?

yeppperoo

32. Which celebrities would you have a threesome with?

Honestly, those aren’t my “thing” lollike id prob laugh or be awkward or just have to be hellllla drunk - but like I wouldn’t mind Jason Momoa and Tom Hardy tossin me around

33. Spell your name with your chin.

hjaylkee

34. Do you play sports? What sports?

Scocer back in the day - actually went and kicked it like a week ago for the first time in YEARSSSS - felt so damn good

35. Would you rather live without TV or music?

TV, music forreeevverrr

36. Have you ever liked someone and never told them?

Lol story of my life

37. What do you say during awkward silences?

“Soooo” then probably ask a question or some shit lol

38. Describe your dream girl/guy?

Hmmm…definitely have to be funny/have a good sense of humor. They’d have to be open-minded for sure. Up for trying new things, places, cultures, food, music, etc. Just have an adventurous spirit I guess when it comes to that. Have a good line of communication/openness - and just be able to have a deep/intellectual convo about anything and everything. Bonuses: taller than me, likes cooking, and going to music shows.

39. What are your favorite stores to shop in?

Amazon lol I hate shopping

40. What do you want to do after high school?

To go back to high school :( lmao so much id re-do, cant believe its almost been a decade

41. Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance?

Hell yeah, this is life my dudes, dont take it so seriously - we all fuck up at some point or another

42. If your being extremely quiet what does it mean?

Something is on my mind for sure, or im just tired lol

43. Do you smile at strangers?

Yeah

44. Trip to outer space or bottom of the ocean?

DAMNNN WHAT so hard - I guesss if I had to pick, space…just because it’s more rare/harder to do I’d think.

45. What makes you get out of bed in the morning?

My cat lol with his meowing ass

46. What are you paranoid about?

Lowkey a lot lol

47. Have you ever been high?

8)

48. Have you ever been drunk?

Who hasn’t????

49. Have you done anything recently that you hope nobody finds out about?

naw

50. What was the colour of the last hoodie you wore?

Black probably, like half my wardrobe

51. Ever wished you were someone else?

Of course

52. One thing you wish you could change about yourself?

My bad habits

56. Favourite colour?

Yelllllow :)

57. Favourite food?

Oh gaaawwd, literally anything - lately: PB&J’s, fries, wings, Mediterranean, Mexican, pickles, ice cream, ramenzzzz

58. Last thing you ate?

Pistachios

59. First thing you ate this morning?

Cofffeeee w creamer

60. Ever won a competition? For what?

Idk, not off the top of my head - maybe something back in elementary

61. Been suspended/expelled? For what?

Nah

62. Been arrested? For what?

Yeah lmao

63. Ever been in love?

Yes

64. Tell us the story of your first kiss?

No its really not that interesting and idc to type it out

65. Are you hungry right now?

24/7/365

66. Do you like your tumblr friends more than your real friends?

Lol yes a few of them <333

67. Facebook or Twitter?

FB

68. Twitter or Tumblr?

Tumblr

69. Are you watching tv right now?

Noooo

70. Names of your bestfriends?

R’Bonney is number 1

71. Craving something? What?

Foooood, and companionship? Lol

72. What colour are your towels?

Idk, random, mostly blue

72. How many pillows do you sleep with?

A lot lol

73. Do you sleep with stuffed animals?

Lol no, but I have my one from my childhood in my room

74. How many stuffed animals do you think you have?

1 - shout out to you Mr.Fluffy

75. Favourite animal?

I am fascinated by sharks; and like gators/crocs. But I have mad respect for elephants, they’re sooo damn smart and beautiful.

76. What colour is your underwear?

Dont have any on

77. Chocolate or Vanilla?

BITCHHHH CHOC

78. Favourite ice cream flavour?

All of them

79. What colour shirt are you wearing?

Tie-dye

80. What colour pants?

none

81. Favourite tv show?

Game of Thrones prob

82. Favourite movie?

Avatar or Shawshank Redemption

87. First person you talked to today?

Sissy

88. Last person you talked to today?

Friend on FT

89. Name a person you hate?

No one, maybe Trump? lol

90. Name a person you love?

Everyone, fr fr

91. Is there anyone you want to punch in the face right now?

Nah

92. In a fight with someone?

Nah

93. How many sweatpants do you have?

Not enough <3

94. How many sweaters/hoodies do you have?

Not enough <3

95. Last movie you watched?

The Decline on Netflix, short lil foreign oil, was deep/interesting

96. Favourite actress?

Not sure-Sandra Bullock? Or Meryl

97. Favourite actor?

Denzel or Morgan Freeman

98. Do you tan a lot?

Nah not anymore honestly

99. Have any pets?

Yessss

100. How are you feeling?

Mediocre

101. Do you type fast?

Ya

102. Do you regret anything from your past?

Im sure

103. Can you spell well?

Ya

104. Do you miss anyone from your past?

Lol im nostalgic af, so yes

105. Ever been to a bonfire party?

Yes litttty tittyyy

106. Ever broken someone’s heart?

Probably :(

107. Have you ever been on a horse?

Hell yeah brother, I’m from TX

108. What should you be doing?

So much shit lol

109. Is something irritating you right now?

The fact that I ain’t doing all the shit I should be lol

110. Have you ever liked someone so much it hurt?

Yooo yes

112. Who was the last person you cried in front of?

Prob my sister or my mom?? Lol I cry a lot, idk and idc

113. What was your childhood nickname?

Hayls?

114. Have you ever been out of your province/state?

Yes

115. Do you play the Wii?

Back in the day

116. Are you listening to music right now?

Surprisingly, no

117. Do you like chicken noodle soup?

Nah, unless maybe if its homemade

118. Do you like Chinese food?

Yeah occasionally, more of a Thai food chick or Japanese

119. Favourite book?

Kite Runner

120. Are you afraid of the dark?

Low-key sometimes lol

121. Are you mean?

Hell noooo

122. Is cheating ever okay?

Ok, this is an interesting one lol I mean no, it’s not “okay” - since it usually constitutes lying/hiding/hurting someone - BUTTTT, for a lack of a better term - I wanna say it’s “normal”? But thats because I, personally, am on the fence about the concept of monogamy. Like no, I’ve never cheated nor experienced that in return - but the whole concept of monogamy and like that a person can love and only love or be with one person is WILLLLDDD and I can’t help but note that its a social construct that we, as a society, are conditioned to from the time we are born. Idk if that makes sense bc im high af lol but those are my thoughts…like to sum it up - cheating is fucked up and sucks, but at the same time its not all that surprising/shocking anymore, like borderline “normalized” just as divorces are and shit, so I feel like bc biologically we aren’t made to be with one person lol. I don’t condone it tho. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

123. Can you keep white shoes clean?

Hell to the naw naw

124. Do you believe in love at first sight?

Hmmm idk about that one, but also can’t deny it

125. Do you believe in true love?

Yeah of course, you’re talking to a hopeless romantic

126. Are you currently bored?

I guess we could say that

127. What makes you happy?

Food and close, loved ones

128. Would you change your name?

Nah, too much paper work

129. What your zodiac sign?

Cancer, with my lil moody, sensitive ass

130. Do you like subway?

I did lol

131. Your bestfriend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?

Story of my mf life lol literally all my exes are “best friends turned lovers” situation, so guess it would just depend lmao

132. Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with?

133. Favourite lyrics right now?

Lol oh godddd; ok off the top of my head - Tupac - Keep Ya Head Up is what comes to mind; just a timeless song and the lyrics are still relevant/apply to this day and idk just really resonate with the message behind that song <3

135. Dumbest lie you ever told?

Idk, but it was probably SO dumb, and told to my parents lol

136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed?

Either or, lately open so my cat can go in and out lol

137. How tall are you?

5’6 mayyybeee 5’5 actually lol

140. Summer or Winter?

Fall!!

141. Night or Day?

Def a lil night owl, always have been

142. Favourite month?

April and October for weather at least

143. Are you a vegetarian?

No but I try, and go through phases, I’m definitely mindful the older I get and more focused on my health I become

144. Dark, milk or white chocolate?

FUCKIN ALLLLL

145. Tea or Coffee?

Coffee but I like tea too, just seem to drink coffee more regularly

146. Was today a good day?

The grateful-to-just-be-alive in me wants to say yes lol but idk, felt off/unaccomplished and cried a lot, so no.

147. Mars or Snickers?

Snickers

148. What’s your favourite quote?

“This too shall pass”

149. Do you believe in ghosts?

Sure why not

150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page?

“After all, what he had always wanted was just that: to know new places.” -The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

[lovemesomesurveys]

Do you eat the crusts of your bread? Nope. Do you know who Miss Havisham is? I do not. Which body type would you say you had? Ew. Would you live in an igloo? No. Have you ever made homemade lemonade? Yep.

Is green one of your favourite colours? It is. I like various shades of green.

Are you afraid of the dark?

That is part of the reason why I sleep with my TV on. That, and I can’t have it be completely silent. I need some sound to sleep.

Have you ever flown a kite?

I think so.

What’s your preferred flavour of jam?

Grape.

What’s in your fridge?

Food.

What kind of animal did you last pet?

My doggo.

Would you ever consider becoming a nurse?

Noo. I’m much too squeamish.

Do you like elephants?

Sure.

How are you for money?

I’m okay at the moment.

Describe your best pair of shoes:

They’re Adidas.

Do you think you are more intelligent than the average person?

I’m the average person I feel.

Do you ever think about why we are here?

Yes. I think everyone thinks about that at some point.

What’s something that saddens you?

Life.

Do you like cherries?

Nah.

Name a celebrity that you admire that nobody would expect you to:

I don’t know who people wouldn’t expect me to like.

Who is the most desperate person you know?

Uhhh.

What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you during sex?

Virgin here.

Are you lonely?

I do feel that way sometimes.

What is your favourite musical?

Sweeney Todd.

Would you agree that taking drugs isn’t as cool as it used to be?

I never thought it was cool.

Animal print: yes or no?

Not a fan.

Do you suit hats?

I wear ‘em. Whether they look good on me or not I don’t know or care.

Who is the most fashionable person you know?

*shrug*

Can you use a yoyo?

I couldn’t do any cool tricks.

Do you like to colour?

I do.

What’s an instrument you’ve always wanted to learn to play?

I wish I would have taken piano more seriously when I had lessons. Maybe I could have been a decent pianist.

Would you go on holiday to a snowy place?

Sure.

Do you like Kate Bush?

Who?

Do you prefer to shave or wax?

Shave.

Are you one of those people who are constantly playing Angry Birds?

I never got into that.

Have you ever broken anything of value?

Yeah.

Would you ever have sex in a public place?

Absolutely not.

What’s a song that makes you want to check into a mental asylum?

Uhh.

What’s the worst chat up line any body has ever used on you?

No one has ever seriously used a pickup line on me.

Have you ever completely misjudged somebody?

Yes.

Do you know anybody who is pregnant at the minute?

Nope.

Who did you last speak to on the phone?

My mom.

Do you give money to homeless people?

Sometimes.

What underwear do you have on?

Blue.

Don’t you think that tattoos are just tacky?

No.

Do you like politics?

Nooo.

Is summer your favourite season?

NOOOO. I hate summer.

Do you know what OFWGKTA stands for?

Nope.

When was the last time you were inside a tent?

Never.

What’s your best memory?

Childhood memories.

Do you think Jenna Marbles’ videos are funny?

I never watched her.

Have you grown up yet, or do you still think you have some more to do?

I still have more to do.

What is your opinion on Internet dating sites?

Not for me.

Do you like Folk music?

No.

Would you like to travel to Rome?

Sure.

Are there any strange names that you like?

Not that I can think of at the moment.

Is there anybody you would like to completely banish from your life?

No.

Would you say you had pretty decent music taste?

I mean, wouldn’t we all think that since we like it?

Your favourite pasta dish:

Spaghetti or tortellini with pesto. I’ve had a few TV dinner pasta meals recently that have been really good, too, such as this spinach linguine with creamy Parmesan sauce one I had.

Do you know what the most commonly used letter in the English language is?

Vowels.

Have you ever felt trapped in a situation?

I feel trapped in my health situation.

Strangest thing you’ve ever seen?

I can’t think of a specific example at the moment.  

Ever had a crush on somebody of the same sex?

No.

Has anybody ever called you a bastard?

No.

Would you like to meet the queen?

Of England? Sure, why not.

I’m paying to take you to see a musical - which one do you choose?

Should I see what the hype is all about with Hamilton?

Lowest point of your life:

I feel like I’ve been there these past few years.

What’s your favourite flavour of Vitamin Water?

I liked the strawberry kiwi one and the lemonade zero. I haven’t had Vitamin Water in years, though.

Do you post pictures of yourself online constantly?

Nope. I very rarely do.

Who is the last person you ignored?

I’m not intentionally ignoring anyone, but because I’ve been so distant and withdrawn I guess I have been. :/

Do you know any lesbians?

Yes.

Would you wear feathers in your hair?

Maybe.

When was the last time you were well and truly scared?

I don’t know.

Do you know how to use a camera properly?

Yes?

Favourite member of your favourite band:

Chester, RIP.

Which country would you be from besides your own?

*shrug*

Are you ashamed of your own body?

Yes.

Who’s your favourite female rapper?

I like Cardi B and Nicki Minaj to name a couple.

When was the last time you received a letter?

All I get in the mail are bills.

[purplesurveys]

397

Do you eat the crusts of your bread? Now I do. When I was a kid I used to ask my grandma to slice them off. Do you know who Miss Havisham is? Only because of Gabie. Which body type would you say you had? Idk, slim? Would you live in an igloo? I’d try it out for a night, but I don’t know about live. Have you ever made homemade lemonade? I don’t think so.

Is green one of your favourite colours? I hate green. Are you afraid of the dark? Only when the dark is supposed to make things scarier, like if I’m in a haunted house or the woods lmao. Generally I’m not afraid. Have you ever flown a kite? Yes, many times. I still reached the time when kids used to play outside, so I definitely had some fun with kites. What’s your preferred flavour of jam? I hate fruits so the only jam I’ll consume is guava, and only because it’s part of my high school’s signature tart. What’s in your fridge? Frozen food, ice cream, vegetables, some condiments/spices, juices, chocolate, a cake. What kind of animal did you last pet? My doggie. Would you ever consider becoming a nurse? No. I remember there being a huge demand for Filipino nurses like 10 years ago, and it seemed as though everyone took up nursing in college. But I never considered it, not even during that time. Do you like elephants? I love elephants. But not in a exploit-them kind of way, LEAVE THEM ALONE How are you for money? I think I’ll be good this week. I get to save money because Gab and I won’t be seeing each other for our usual date night, and I only drive three days this week so I don’t have to spend a lot for gas as well. Of course, I’ll be flushing these down the toilet because my friends and I plan to drink out this Friday. Describe your best pair of shoes: My favorite is my pair of white/red/blue Onitsuka Tiger sneakers. They’re so comfy to wear and yet it matches everything. Do you think you are more intelligent than the average person? I have my moments but I obviously don’t go around vocally stating it, or unnecessarily use ridiculously big words around people. Do you ever think about why we are here? No. That’s Gabie’s question to mull over hahahah, I hate philosophy. What’s something that saddens you? Old people who are alone, when peoples shop instead of adopt, animals getting endangered. Do you like cherries? Hate. Name a celebrity that you admire that nobody would expect you to: Kendall Jenner, although t b h it is getting increasingly hard to be patient with her increasingly problematic ass. She used to be my favorite but now that title belongs to Kourtney. Who is the most desperate person you know? LOL. She recently pissed me off so I’ll put her on here: my girlfriend’s grandma. What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you during sex? Too disgusting to share with the world, so I’ll have to pass. Are you lonely? Not right now. What is your favourite musical? I hate musicals, but I have a soft spot for Miss Saigon because my mom practically made me listen to it from the womb. Would you agree that taking drugs isn’t as cool as it used to be? I never found it cool. Animal print: yes or no? Not anymore. Who is the most fashionable person you know? Kate, for sure. Sis always serves a new look. Can you use a yoyo? Duh. A Filipino made it so it’s pervaded Filipino kid culture for as long as I can remember. Everyone had yo-yos. Do you like to colour? I do. On my Christmas depression break last year I bought several coloring books and a massive case of coloring pencils, just so I can finally start on the hobby that I’ve put off for a long time. What’s an instrument you’ve always wanted to learn to play? Piano. Would you go on holiday to a snowy place? I would. Anywhere that’s different from tropical Philippines. Do you like Kate Bush? Never heard. Do you prefer to shave or wax? Shave. I’ve never had myself waxed. Are you one of those people who are constantly playing Angry Birds? Hahahahahaha 2011 called, they want their fad back. Have you ever broken anything of value? I don’t remember anything right now but I definitely wouldn’t be surprised to find out that I have. I practically break everything I touch. Would you ever have sex in a public place? Sure as long as we’re not exhibiting it on purpose. What’s a song that makes you want to check into a mental asylum? Lmao wtf? You mean a song that depresses/numbs me too much? Cos if that’s what you mean, then there’s a song on the New Moon soundtrack called Slow Life by Grizzly Bear that I routinely listen to when I’m completely out of it. What’s the worst chat up line anybody has ever used on you? I don’t chat with a lot of people so I’ve never gotten anything bad. Have you ever completely misjudged somebody? Sure. Do you know anybody who is pregnant at the minute? Nope. Who did you last speak to on the phone? My girlfriend, aka the only person I talk to on the phone. Do you give money to homeless people? Yes. If I have snacks laying around I give that as well. Don’t you think that tattoos are just tacky? Some can be. Do you like politics? I hate it, but I have to pay attention because I give a shit about my country. Is summer your favourite season? Not really. The rainy season is. Do you know what OFWGKTA stands for? Nope. Sounds like some sort of boujee rap shit. When was the last time you were inside a tent? Seventh grade. What’s your best memory? As of now, seeing Paramore, my Sagada trip, or rebuilding my friendship with Gab. I couldn’t pick. Do you think Jenna Marbles’ videos are funny? I like her old stuff; I generally don’t view her newer videos. Have you grown up yet, or do you still think you have some more to do? There’s a loooooooot lot lot of growing up to do. 20 is not a mature age at all. What is your opinion on Internet dating sites? Whatever works for you. < Do you like folk music? Some are hits, most of them I really just don’t care for. Are there any strange names that you like? Ines. It’s such a pretty name, but it also means ‘annoy’ in Filipino so it’s always sounded a little off to me :( I also saw the name Imogen once and I really liked it, but I don’t even know how to pronounce it + sounds too foreign for the PH so I doubt I’ll ever take the name.

Is there anybody you would like to completely banish from your life? MY MOM !!! Would you say you had pretty decent music taste? Uhhhh it’s fine, but I wouldn’t share it to anyone. Your favourite pasta dish: Truffle mac and cheese or carbonara. Do you know what the most commonly used letter in the English language is? E. Have you ever felt trapped in a situation? Sure. Strangest thing you’ve ever seen? A weird creepy-crawly thing that fell from the ceiling onto my laptop. Ever had a crush on somebody of the same sex? Yep, I am dating her at this moment. Has anybody ever called you a bastard? I dunno, I don’t think so. Would you like to meet the queen? I’d take the chance if offered. I’m paying to take you to see a musical - which one do you choose? Miss Saigon. Do you think that the media portrays women as being equal to men? There’s work being done but it’s still not satisfying. Lowest point of your life: Some suicidal stints when I was 12 and 18. What’s your favourite flavour of Vitamin Water? Never drank those. Do you post pictures of yourself online constantly? Never, unless Gab is in the picture as well. Who is the last person you ignored? Elis, my orgmate who pissed me off two weeks ago. Do you know any lesbians? Sure, my girlfriend is. Would you wear feathers in your hair? If it was part of an even more elegant/elaborate outfit then sure. When was the last time you were well and truly scared? Two Mondays ago. Do you know how to use a camera properly? For the most part, but I generally don’t mess with the more specific controls e.g. aperture and ISO since that part I’m clueless about. Favourite member of your favourite band: That’s unfair. I love all of them. Which country would you be from besides your own? That's not... what? < Same. Are you ashamed of your own body? Not really. I don’t care how it’s shaped. Who’s your favourite female rapper? I don’t have one. When was the last time you received a letter? December.

[ninawritesastory]

Au where tweek is a farm kid :D

Anon I need you to get out of my head because I’ve been toying with a farmboy!Tweek AU for months now.

Like, in the AU, the Tweaks get caught lacing their coffee with meth really early on. And since I headcanon that the Tweaks moved to South Park when Tweek was five or six years old, I kind of set the AU to some point before that. So, Tweek ends up with a foster family and never moves to South Park until much, much later. (When he’s nine or ten.) His foster parents operate a small family farm/homestead operation, and Tweek ends up really getting into the whole plant and animal husbandry thing.

At first, he absolutely hates the smell of the barn. His foster siblings love it, because they grew up with it, but Tweek thinks its acrid and smells literally like shit. But over the course of a few months, he ends up going a bit nose blind to it and even starts to like it as he starts to associate the stink with his new family and the more positive aspects of his new life. He discovers that mucking out the stalls is actually kind of therapeutic: he can scrap it, pitch it, and take out some of his frustrations on it and no one’s gonna complain.

Tweek eventually develops a very antagonist relationship with one of the milk cows. Her name is Satin, but he calls her Satan and she takes every opportunity to make his life difficult. She settle into her nice, clean, freshly bedded stall, look him straight in the eye, and take a massive shit right in the middle of his perfectly done pack. When he has to tie her up for any reason, she loves to smash him into the wall or the bars. She’s stepped on both of his feet within the first six months. She’ll follow him around the pen and ram her head against his backside if she was kept in for the day. She’ll shit in the water bucket if she knows he’s the one who cleaned it. When Tweek has to lead her anywhere, she either digs in her hooves and he has to drag her or she’ll practically run him over.

The real irony of it all is she actually treats him the nicest out of everyone in the family. If he’s not careful, she’ll start licking his hair or his clothes like he’s some sort of kitten. So Tweek’s the one who always ends up having to deal with her. His favorite cow is a massive Holstein named Violet. She’s a huge sweetheart who loves getting head and neck rubs, and she’s shoved Satin for bullying Tweek a time or two.

 But where Tweek really shines is in the gardens. His foster mother has a real strong green thumb, and she’s a strong believer in garden therapy. She teaches him everything about virtually every kind of plant. After his first planting season/spring with this family, Tweek knows what plants grow best together, the most effective ways to keep plants like raspberry bushes and mint from wrecking havoc and unleashing all-out-war on their neighbors, the meanings of almost 100 different flowers, and how to trim the fruit trees to keep them free of disease. When time comes to harvest, his foster mom shows him how to make jams and jellies, how to preserve and can fruits and vegetables, and all the different sorts of homemade salves and remedies he can make from the herbs and the other plants.

His foster father teaches him how to keep the machinery in good repair, and Tweek comes to have a grudging acceptance of the scent of motor oil, diesel, and sweat. He’s also taught how to drive the equipment, and how to till and sow the crop fields. He learns all about crop rotation, the best crops to plant after something else,  and how to properly irrigate the fields.

There are some aspects of farmlife he never quite gets the hang of: sending any of the animals to slaughter (he cried for weeks when they had to send off a sweet Freemartin Holstein (freemartin = female calf born as a twin to a bull; they almost never develop reproductive organs or potential) and he threw up when they had to slaughter one of the meat rabbits), the absolute miserable mugginess of the barn in summer, and pervasive paranoia that he smells like manure even after a twenty-minute shower. But he adjusts just fine, otherwise, and he’s never asked to do anything he’s not comfortable doing.

(Click through the readmore for how I see Creek playing out in this AU.)

At some point, they end up moving the farm to Colorado, and Tweek ends up in South Park. Because somethings are universal constants, and one of them is Tweek ending up in Craig Tucker’s life. By this point, Tweek’s kind of developed a thing for plaid. Sometimes he’ll come to school with soaking wet hair because he ends up face-planting in the slop during morning chores. Some days he’ll show up with bits of hay and straw in his hair and clothes. But he always smells like fresh air. He’s not as twitchy as canon Tweek, because he doesn’t have the meth or the coffee worsening his symptoms, and he’s actually on proper medication. But sometimes he’ll have twitches and spasms he can’t control, so he still ends up catching Craig’s attention.

Tweek ends up largely responsible for his family’s stand at the farmers’ market. He’s had several years of practice, and he’s really good at handling the money and moving the products. He’s typically supervised by his grandmother, but it’s more of a formality than anything else. She usually just sits behind the stand and knits or crochets while Tweek handles the majority of the business. The Tuckers go to one of the markets, because Laura’s been curious about the new set up and Thomas thinks it might be a good excuse to get the kids out of the house and away from their screens.

Now, Tweek’s family is very good at the farmers’ market thing. They go all out on their display, they sell a wide range of products ranging from fresh and canned fruit and vegetables and other foodstuffs to flowers and bouquets to more crafty type goods, like handmade blankets and soaps. They’ve had years to hone their presentation, so their stand gets a lot of traffic. Craig takes one look at Tweek, decked out in a green plaid shirt and denim overalls with tiny baby kitten in the big breast pocket and he’s gone.

He ends up at Tweek’s stand, pretending he’s only there for the basket full of kittens (they’re so small and fluffy and their little tails are just cute little triangles) but he’s trying to sneak glimpses of this kid. Some of Tweek’s siblings show up to lighten the load as the traffic picks up, and Tweek ends up wandering over to coo over the kittens for a bit with Craig. They end up talking for way longer than Tweek’s self-allotted five minute break, and his stepsisters tease him a bit about the cute boy he spent nearly a whole hour talking to. Craig makes it all the way home before he realizes he’s still got the baby calico he and Tweek bonded over. After a small display of exasperation, Thomas and Laura decide to let Craig keep it. 

And it snowballs from there. Token invites Tweek to sit with them at lunch, Clyde invites him to join in on their weekly Friday video game night, Jimmy discovers Tweek has a meme sense of humor and is living. Craig gets caught staring by his friends more times than he’d ever want to admit.

Stan’s Gang still try to get Craig and Tweek to fight, but that whole endeavor ends with Tweek punching Cartman’s lights out after he tried to insinuate that Craig insulted Tweek’s raspberry jam. (Craig is allergic to raspberries and has therefore never tried it.) Craig has never been more gone for Tweek than in that moment.

The yaoi incident still takes place, but instead of Craig angrily trying to assert his (non-existent) heterosexuality, he’s more mortified because…yeah, he really, really, really likes Tweek, but he didn’t think he was so obvious about it that the whole fucking school had him figured out. Instead of a fake break up, Tweek goes to Craig first. And since Tweek’s a lot more stable and secure in himself than canon!Tweek, he manages to get Craig to confess about a few of his insecurities with coming out. Tweek offers him his support, and it kind of turns into a bit of an emotional moment that Thomas ends up overhearing. Not wanting to be the reason his son is unhappy or scared, Thomas still gives Craig the “I like gay Craig” speech. (Because that speech is critical to Craig’s development and you can pry it out of my cold, dead hands.)

When Craig tracks Tweek down, he’s in the farmers’ market. It’s still a very similar idea: Craig offers his hand, and after a moment, Tweek takes it. But this time, Craig’s blushing like crazy because he wants this so much, and it’s okay for him to want it; and Tweek’s smiling because he’s gotten to know Craig in such a short amount of time, but Craig already means so much to him and seeing him brave enough to give this a try makes his heart hurt in the nicest ways.

[tysonrunningfox]

Tired, Hungry, and Chiefly

This chapter is my pride and joy.  You think you’ve seen Eret be bad at women?  No you haven’t, he peaks here.  Wait, no he doesn’t, there’s that time he’s gonna super awkwardly bring up marriage at a bad time but whatever. And the poor boy can’t be trusted with his little mini stoick thing he’s got going on.  Someone help him.  The baby boy.  

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“Is it broken?”  I feel stupid asking the question as I stare at the dam Sven wants help with.  I’ve never looked at a dam for this long before, of course I understand the basic idea of it, that it stops water from flowing and makes a pool that we can draw from more easily, as evidenced by the channel taking water down the hill to the fire suppression system.  But there’s also water trickling through the front of it, a smaller stream than the one uphill, sure, but isn’t it supposed to stop the water?  

“No,” Sven shakes his head, “we just need a bigger reservoir behind it, the chief gave permission for a secondary channel down by the hanger in case of fire and when we try to fill both,” he shrugs, “it doesn’t work.”  

“Ok…” I sigh, “dumb question, but why don’t we just stop all of the water coming through it?  Can’t we grab this water.”  I dip my toe in the trickle through the front of the rocks and Sven looks at me like I’m stupid.  

“If we fully dam the creek and get more rain than we expect, that’s a flood for sure.”  

“But wouldn’t it just go the new way you tell it to?”  I point at the diverted channel and Sven shakes his head, obviously frustrated.  

“Well, no, it’d flood the dry riverbed and eventually the North fields and the village itself, most likely.”  

“So we can’t do that.”

“No.”  

“What exactly do you need again?”  I rub my forehead like that’ll make it think faster or de-clutter the thoughts that are already there.  I’ve been on my own with this stuff for a week and a half now but it feels like a lifetime, or at least like I have a lifetime worth of everyone else’s problems jamming up my brain.  Bang nudges my hand and I pat his nose.  

“You ok, chief?”  

“Acting Chief,” I correct, because the opposite of what people say almost always sounds better. Acting Chief sounds ineffective when I don’t know what to do but Chief sounds like I should know what to do. There’s no winning with it really. “Just a headache.  I’m fine.  It’ll be better when we figure this out, so what exactly do you need? Again?  Again again?  Sorry.”

“We need the pool behind the dam to be bigger.”  Sven speaks slowly in a way that would usually offend me, but it’s about all I can keep up with right now.  “So conventionally, that means we need to make the dam wider and taller, but I don’t know what rock to use and we can’t spare the dragons to go off island for it.”

“Right,” I look around like I keep forgetting to, the absence of wild gronckles fluttering around more ominous than it should be.  “What kind of rock do you need?”  

“Any of the bedrock around here works best.  Big pieces,” he holds his arms out wide to tell me how big, “are good, but I’ve used them all.”  

“Big pieces…”  I think to myself for a minute, but I’m apparently too tired to be contented in thinking about a list of places I’ve seen the biggest, hardest rocks and my mind tries to wander.  The chief would know the answer, if he were saying anything other than the blandest small talk I’ve ever had to suffer through. Fishlegs might know, Hel, Rolf might now and I should probably check in on the dragon catalog anyway.  That’s just another thing that got pushed aside in all of this, that and the fact I haven’t talked to Fuse about our plan in weeks. Fuse…Fuse!  “Oh!  Fuse Thorston is about to blow out that wall at the edge of the wood bin, by the new dock, I wonder if there’s a way to make it crumble into big enough pieces for this.”

“That’s an idea,” Sven shrugs, and in some ways I like talking to him more than other people, because he tells me when my ideas are stupid instead of just taking pity on the young, frazzled Acting Chief and letting me get away with being wrong. “I’ve used a lot of her rubble before, it’s usually a little small but it’ll do.”  

“I’ll ask her if there’s any way to make it bigger.”  I swing onto Bang, “and I’ll let you know what she says.”  

“We need this by the end of summer!”  He calls the deadline after me like I’m not stressed enough about it and I steer Bang a little higher than is really necessary, closing my eyes as we cut through a cloud and cold water condenses on my face.  My beard’s getting long again, just on the cusp of annoying, and I make a note to shave it later, you know, if I have a single instant at home and awake enough to remember.  

The easiest way to avoid Aurelia and the chief’s sad, dead eyes is to get home late and wake up early. Unfortunately, there’s more than enough to do to fill pretty much all of that time, so that means I don’t see Stoick or Mom either.  And maybe that’s something I’m avoiding too, because at this point I’ve left her alone with this far too long if she isn’t as ok as she’s been acting.  I hate that somehow, I’m at this point where I’m in a position to doubt what my mom tells me, to read into it more than she might want me to.  

But she’s been ok. She’s been keeping up with the house, Stormfly’s saddle is shiny and her axe found its way back inside after spending a couple days in the demolished trunk out front.  Maybe she’s doing what I’m doing and keeping busy to avoid thinking about anything and maybe that’s all anyone can do sometimes.  

I land at the edge of the square, pointed towards the Thorston house and walking quickly enough to avoid any reasonable interruption, but when someone grabs my hand with an irrationally strong grip and crows in my ear, I know it’s not reasonable.  

“Oh, Eret, I just need to ask you for the quickest favor!”  It’s Mrs. Ack, her wrinkled arms almost mystically strong as she hooks her elbow through mine and reaches up to pinch me on the cheek.  Or she tries, I think she gets mostly beard because of her height and slumped back and the fact that there’s not much unbearded cheek at the moment.  It hurts anyway and I rub my face when she lets go.  

“I’m a little busy right now, Mrs. Ack.”  

“It’s really the smallest favor,” she drags me towards the farm stand on the other side of the square and I look almost wistfully over my shoulder at the barely visible roof line of Fuse’s shed.  It’s quiet there.  I bet if I asked, she’d let me hide for half an hour.  I wonder if she’d mind if I took a nap, honestly.  “I was just thinking to myself how I’d bought too much heavy food when I saw you landing just nearby.”  She squeezes my arm the way she pinched my face, “you just remind me so much of your grandfather.”  

“Stoick the Vast was known for his food carrying abilities?”  I laugh and try to loosen her grip on my arm, but it’s pointless. I’ve learned that in the last couple of weeks.  Vikings are stubborn and cutthroat and can’t fathom being wrong, but when it comes to Viking women, that’s all a horrible understatement.  And it gets worse with age, for me to tell a woman over eighty that I don’t want my cheek pinched at this exact instant is essentially an act of war.  

“He was always so ready to help.”  Mrs. Ack has no visible problem picking up a basket and setting it in my arms and before I can start walking towards her house, her arm is back through mine even though she’s dragging me more than she appears to need help walking.  

This is the part of being even acting chief that I wasn’t prepared for.  When I was helping the chief out, I usually had a directive, I was doing one small thing to completion to the best of my abilities.  But when I’m alone out here, I’m always being pulled a million ways at once, and it seems like the strongest pulls, literally when considering Mrs. Ack’s fingers digging into my arm, come from the least important places.  

But I don’t exactly resent the few smaller errands I end up with a day, the grocery carrying is new but there’s always a terror in Mrs. Ericson’s tree or a yak in Mrs. Jorgenson’s house that they end up wanting help with.  And they usually feed me and try to coerce me to stay for tea and even though they’re pushier than most of their husbands, they’re generally more complimentary on the kind of job I’m doing and at this point, I’ll take what I can get. If my praise is coming in the form of Mrs. Hoarkson shoving her homemade apple bread into my mouth and commenting on how I can’t keep growing if I’m running myself into the ground, at least I’m both full and tired.  

“I’ll take that back,” Mrs. Ack drops my arm and nimbly plucks the basket from my hands with one arm, setting it inside her house on the floor and shushing an old Nadder that whines when disrupted from its nap in front of the fire.  “Do you have time to come in for a cup of tea?  I have leftover pie from last night and if I may say, you’re looking too skinny, chief.  You can’t spend so much time taking care of all of us that you forget to eat.”  She pats my face again and I laugh.  

“I’m just skinny, Mrs. Ack, unfortunately no amount of pie is going to change that.”  I take a step back and avoid another cheek pinch, if only narrowly.  “And maybe some other time.  I’ve got a lot to do today—”

“Can I at least send it with you?”  She walks further into her house and starts wrapping up something in waxed parchment. Her husband grunts about giving away all the food and she shushes him.  “It’s just Eret, Sigurd, if he doesn’t slow down and have some pie he’s going to blow away the next time he takes off!”  

“I’m really fine.”  I take a step back from the door but she practically sprints after me, shoving the food into my hand and patting my arm.

“Come by any time, chief, we’ve always got an extra seat at the table since our Burpa moved in with her son last year.”  

“Thanks.”  I’m probably not going to take her up on that, but at the same time it’s nice to know I have some option to be very well fed even if tensions get too high at home.  “Have a good rest of your day.”  

She squeezes my arm before letting go and I hear her chewing out her husband interspersed with brief seconds of praise that I try and take in while they last, because if I let them sink in maybe it’ll be a cushion the next time someone directly calls me stupid or naïve or laughs when I try to tell them to do something.  I unwrap the pie almost immediately, eating it as I walk back across the square towards the Thorston house.  

“I thought Mrs. Ack was going to lock you up inside her house and never let you out.”  Someone appears beside me fast enough to startle and I drop my pie, barely catching it in the other hand and crushing it slightly.

It’s Ruffnut and when she looks at my clumsiness with vague disgust, it makes her look more like Fuse and less at the same time.  Mostly it makes me miss Fuse’s fond annoyance at my antics, even though it’s only been a few days since I’ve seen her.  

“She seems convinced she can feed me out of my skinny phase,” I look down at myself, the bony lines of my ribs practically visible through the shirt that’s somehow tight on my shoulders and loose everywhere else.  Maybe it’s a holdover from when Mom was…incapacitated and the chief was getting someone else to do all the laundry.  It must have shrunk and then stretched funny.  “I told her it’s not a phase.  What can I do for you, Mrs. Ingerman?”  

“Oh come off of that,” she rolls her eyes, “I wiped your butt.  It’s Ruffnut, whether you’re some fancy chief or not.”  

“Acting Chief.”  

“Yeah, you are acting like a chief but I’m not going to hold it against you.”  

“Do you need something?” I shove the slightly crushed pie in my mouth and almost choke on a crumb, coughing after I manage to force it down.  

“I was just checking that you’re actually that clueless,” she shakes her head, “and not letting yaks into the Jorgenson house just to check up on the misses.”  

“That was so weird,” I laugh, “it left really willingly too.  Which was good because I know about as much about livestock as I do about—”

“Women?”  She raises an eyebrow and everything about the way she’s looking at me makes me uncomfortable.  It’s like she’s both on my side and against it and I have no way of knowing which way she’s facing at any exact instant.  “Yeah, I’ll bet.”  

“I was going to say being chief but, I mean—”

“Women works better.” She rolls her eyes and shifts her basket to her other hip. She looks young like Mom, but in a different way, like she stole it from other people’s youth by teasing them until they willingly handed it over.  “Don’t let some grandma pinch your arm off before my niece comes to terms with how clueless she is, alright?”  

“I uh…” I frown, “I’m going to go talk to Fuse now if she needs help with something.  Not that I usually have more clues than she does, but—”

“That’s gotta be the Astrid part, right?”  She’s talking through me more than at me and I get that all too familiar feeling that everyone knows something I don’t.  “Hiccup figured it out eventually and it wasn’t as obvious.”  

“You’re being super cryptic and not helpful at all…”  

“Odin, that’s always weird,” she shakes her head and sighs at me like I’ve caused her great personal distress.  “When you do the…the talking thing, like that.  Ugh.  Anyway, I’m not going to ruin the surprise for anyone, so I’ll see you around. Also, just in case you didn’t know, Terrors don’t actually get stuck in trees.  They can fly, just, by the way.”  

“I know terrors can fly,” I call after her but she doesn’t stop, a fact I’m frankly glad about because I wasn’t enjoying that conversation.  “But I did think that one was weird,” I mutter to myself, licking a spot of filling off of my thumb and feeling oddly like I’m being watched. It’s probably Mom, probably ready to jump out and tell me off for my manners, because even chiefs can’t escape those.  

Right before I turn to walk up to the Thorston place, I spot Hotgut out of the corner of  my eye, landing hard in front of the forge, belly probably full of something heavy and explosive.  Fuse slides off of her and I change direction, clicking when Bang doesn’t follow immediately.  He’s been sluggish too, well, that and clingy to Mom any second I let him out of my sight.

Smitelout drops whatever she’s doing, literally, and leans over the window to talk to Fuse.  Fuse has one of those wrinkled drawings and Smitelout frowns at it, trying to smooth it on the windowsill.  

“Ok, but how does blowing up an island help anything?”  Smitelout asks at full volume right as I get there and I shush her, earning a spectacularly dirty look.  

“There’s a thermal vent under the island that it seems like the dragons are trying to get to.”  Fuse explains casually, voice low, and I hope she’s not still dwelling over Aurelia.  I hope this isn’t fake confidence, because that’s not something she’s ever supposed to have.  

“How could you know that?” Smitelout scoffs at an appropriate volume and I lean in slightly like my back could possibly shelter anything we’re doing.  The drawing is just a shell, thankfully, nothing that’d give it away as anything out of the ordinary.  

“We found some old drawings that said that island wasn’t there a few hundred years ago and now the sick dragons keep diving into the volcano—”

“Ok, ok, I get it. Let’s blow the bitch then.”  

“We’re trying,” Fuse rubs her temple, dirty bandage on her first finger stretching halfway up her nail. Her fingertip leaves a dot of soot behind next to a freckle and I don’t believe she’s ever been clueless in her life. “That’s what that baffle you worked on is for, it’s a directional amplifier and I can’t get it quite right yet. We need something really big to get a vertical fracture that’ll actually opens something up—”

“And that’s your shit,” Smitelout cuts her off and I glare at her, “and the twerp likes hearing about it, apparently, weird flirting, again—”

“Can you just help without all the commentary?”  The arm closest to Fuse feels hot, like I can tell she’s uncomfortable, like bringing up flirting makes it worse for no reason that makes sense.  Maybe it’s because it’s Smitelout and because Aurelia just did what she did, maybe Fuse feels weird trusting someone who’s clearly delusional.  

I can’t say I don’t share that fear.  

“You need six of these?” Smitelout looks at the drawing again, “I assume you can’t pay, given that this is some kind of secret…”  

“How much do you want?” Fuse rolls her eyes and I shake my head, leaning my elbow on the counter.  

“It’s Smitelout,” I scoff, “the answer is probably your house, your shed, everything in your shed—”

“I’ll do it for free if you go away, Twerp.”  Smitelout looks smug, like she pulled one over on me and I sigh.  

“I think I might be able to manage that,” I push off of the counter and look at Fuse, half frozen for a second as I dig for something in the mess of my short term memory.  “I had to talk to you about something.”  

“What is it?”  

“I don’t remember,” I laugh, “it’s been a day.  I think your aunt might have threatened me.”  

“Which Aunt?”  She frowns and I didn’t know she had more than one.

“Which do you think?”

“Oh my gods, go flirt somewhere else,” Smitelout bellows, smacking her hammer against her anvil like she can spook us away like wild Terrors, “you’re scaring away customers.”

“Nope, just your personality, Lout.”  I start walking with Fuse anyway, unsure if I should address the flirt comments or not. “I don’t know why she finds the idea of me flirting so funny. Like yeah, it would probably be a disaster, but that seems to be the only thing she can find to make fun of.  Which…come on,” I gesture to myself and wish I hadn’t said anything.  She glances at me like I’m crazy, cheeks suddenly red like she’s thinking about making the quietest escape possible and I scratch the back of my neck, “uhh, that thing I had to talk to you about though.  What was it?  I know this…”

“How would I know what it is?”  She frowns, eyebrows knit together and how did Smitelout think we were flirting? She’s looking at me like I’m the dumbest thing she’s ever seen.  

“I know you don’t know.” I smack my forehead a couple of times with the heel of my hand, “I swear, I get why the chief carries a notebook around all the time now, how am I supposed to keep everything straight?”  

“Maybe get a notebook.”

“Super helpful, Fuse, I hadn’t thought of that.”  I gripe, and I keep going back to the flirting comment, because it’s so stupid and disruptive because I know I have something real to talk to her about and now I can’t think of it.  “Wait! I remember.  Sven needs rocks to shore up a dam and I asked you to go ahead and column the corner of that wall and I was wondering if there’s any way you could like…leave bigger sized rubble when you take it down so that we don’t have to find dragons that can search for stone off island.”  

“How big?”  She slows down, dragging her feet slightly as that practical engine lights up behind her eyes.  I hold my arms out and accidentally bump her in the arm but she doesn’t notice or if she does, she doesn’t care because Smitelout is an idiot above all things.  

Some things remain the same, at least.  

“About like…eh, maybe? I think a bit bigger or smaller would be fine, but we don’t want like…pebbles.”  I sigh, “I’m not being descriptive enough, am I?”  

“No, I get what you’re saying.”  She bites her lip, snaggletooth peeking out slightly as she narrows her eyes, counting something only she can see.  “Maybe some smaller charges at the top and bottom spaced a little wider than that. There’s always going to be that vaporization bubble but if I could try and get sort of a grid on it…”  

“Vaporization bubble?”

“Some of the rock vaporizes if it’s close enough to the bomb.”  She grins, her eyes lighting up like I just told her she could blow something entirely new up.  I’m glad she’s looking better, like she’s not dwelling on Aurelia, and I’m really hoping the Mrs. Ack’s of the island hold off long enough that I can ask her about it.

“That’s awesome.”  

“Right?”  She laughs before falling serious for just another moment, “and I can try it, I mean, no promises.  I’ve never tried to control rubble size before except, you know, making it smaller than could fall on someone and kill them but…I’ll try it. I’ll let you know when he could expect it to be done when I figure that out.”  

“Thanks,” I laugh, “did you know that you make things really easy?  There’s more arguing in carrying old Mrs. Ack’s groceries than in getting you to do something crazy and impossible.”  

“It’s not impossible,” she shakes her head, “I don’t know if I’ll get it right the first time but if building materials are a thing we’re looking to optimize—”

“Something crazy then.”

“They’re not very big charges—”

“Ok, there we go, there’s the Viking stubbornness.”  I laugh and she doesn’t seem sure if she should laugh with me.  It’s frustrating, because I can’t tell if that’s just Fuse being Fuse or if she’s still upset and I wish I were funny enough to draw that line a little more clearly because all that’s left for me to do is ask, and that feels like ruining probably the only pleasant conversation I might get to have today.  But it’s the right thing to do and as I’m becoming a boring slave to that idea, I sigh and try to figure out how I can best get this over with quickly.  “Also, just…how are you doing?”  

“Why are you saying that so significantly?”  

“Because I should have just asked how you’re feeling about the whole Aurelia thing and I’m an idiot.” I sigh, trying to read her face as the question sinks in.  

She thinks about it a little longer than she usually does and shrugs, “I’m not happy.”  

“I’ll talk to her again when I see her, alright?”  

“If you’ve already talked to her, I doubt you’d have anything new to say for trying it again.”

“Not everyone’s brain works as fast as yours, Fuse, I’m frequently left coming up with excellent come backs days to weeks after a conversation actually ends, so I’d be willing to bet I’d surprise myself.”  I can feel myself talking funny, not funny like I’m trying to sound like someone else, just…odd.  It’s like I want her to correct me, to tell me that I’m smart or something, which is kind of a failed attempt from the start in a conversation where I couldn’t remember an important conversation from three hours ago.  “I won’t though, if you don’t want me to or—”

“You’re checking in on me.” She stops and cocks her head, braid falling over her shoulder.  It’s tangled and only holding onto what seems like about half her hair at this point, the rest tucked behind her ear and sticking to the front of her vest.  

“You were upset.”  

“But it wasn’t your fault.”

“Well, not directly, but…I still care when you’re upset.  You’re my friend.  One of my best friends, really.”  

She halfway smiles, brows still furrowed like she’s waiting for me to say something else and unlock a last, mystery piece of some puzzle.  

“What?”  I wipe my beard, “do I have pie on my face?”

“Thanks,” she grins, slow and quiet like her smiles ever are and I feel better for opening my mouth, for once.  I don’t have to worry how she’s feeling because I know.  “And no pie, you’re clean.”  

“Thanks,” I say because that feels like a compliment even though it’s not, really, unless I’m someone who doesn’t believe in myself to get food into my mouth without messing it up. Which, fair, but not necessarily encouraging.  

“Eret,” my mom appears beside me and rests her hand on my shoulder and I jump like she just caught me doing something wrong.  I turn to look at her and she’s giving Fuse a pointed look and I step out from under her hand.  

“What?  What’s up?”  

She raises her eyebrows at me and looks at Fuse again like it’s something she can’t say in front of her and I almost blurt out that I tell Fuse everything anyway, but that’s volunteering her for something without asking first and with my family involved? Well, it could be bad.  

“Can I come find you later?” I ask her and she looks between me and my mom, shrugging.  

“Sure, I’ll let you know what I come up with.”  

“Yeah,” I nod, “good. Thanks for, you know, making it easy and stuff.”  

“Sure…” She lingers for a second, glancing at my mom before deciding not to say anything else.  

“What?”  I turn back to my mom, trying not to let a sudden flash of irritation creep its way into my voice.  “Is something wrong?”  

“Don’t you have some work to be doing?”  She raises an eyebrow like she knows something I haven’t told her and I look over my shoulder like Arvid or Aurelia is going to be lurking there, armed with something they promised not to share when we were on better terms.  

“Like what?  Do you need something?”  

“You volunteered for this, Eret—”

“What are you talking about?”  I gesture after Fuse, “I was just talking to her about the wood bin, she’s doing something the chief asked her to before—well, he asked her to and then Sven needs rock for some dam and I was asking if she could, I don’t know, help me out with that and she said she could.”  

“And Smitelout—”

“She was overcharging Fuse for the special thing I’m asking her to do,” I half lie, “I fixed it.”  

“And Mrs. Ack—”

“Come on, Mom, you’re going to say I’ve been goofing off with Mrs. Ack?”  I roll my eyes, “she asked for my help with carrying something, I’m just trying to help people which, last time I checked, is the gist of my job.”  

She stares at me for a second like she’s looking for a lie and I scratch my face, taking a step back and looking over my shoulder for Fuse.  Maybe I should have asked about that nap in her shed, because I’m about that exhausted at this point.  

“Can Fuse do it?”  

“Can Fuse do what?”  

“Whatever you asked her to do.”  Mom raises an eyebrow, “because you were asking her to do something, right?”  

“Oh, yeah, she’s going to try.  Apparently it’s going to vaporize some rock but—”

“That’s encouraging.” She sounds angry in a way that almost means something and I wonder what I’ve missed at home while avoiding it as much as possible.  

“I thought it was kind of cool, honestly.”  I mime my hands blowing apart and make a sound like what I’d imagine vaporizing rock would sound like.  Kind of a whoosh.  “Just…as a concept.  Just…boom and the rock is gone.  And the crowd goes wild…”  

She’s unimpressed.  

She purses her lips at me and crosses her arms.  

“Have you told Sven that Fuse is working on it?”  

“Well, no, because she just finished telling me that she could do it.”  I gesture up the hill where Fuse went, “and then you interrupted the end of our conversation and that brings us up to the present.”  

“Is that an attitude?”

“Is trying really hard to be cooperative even though you’re interrogating me for no reason an attitude?” My voice cracks slightly and I clear my throat.  “Because if so, yes, this is an attitude.”  

“I like this attitude. It’s good.  Keep it up.”  She nods at me and I fidget slightly under the odd weight of her gaze, like she’s trying to scan my brain for something I missed.  

“I’m just trying to keep things together.”  I shrug, “I’m probably messing everything up but…”  

“Go talk to Sven, maybe make sure he has a secondary plan in case Fuse can’t do what she thinks she can.”

I cross my arms, “the secondary plan is send dragons off island to search for stone.”  That’s a challenge I hate posing, I hate wanting her to say something other than I know she will.  

“Well, what’s wrong with that plan?”  

“Lack of dragons, Mom. That’s one question I do know the answer to.”  

She frowns but I’ve hit the one subject she won’t argue with me about because like everyone else I’ve tried to talk to, she’s not willing to admit I have a point because somehow, that magically might make it right.  I don’t think it works that way but Hel, I could be wrong.  Maybe if I found some optimism I could turn this whole thing around. Maybe Acting Chief means the kind of power everyone wants it to be.  

“Fine.  Are you going to be home for dinner tonight?”  

I shrug, “I don’t know, Mrs. Ack did invite me—”

“You should come home for dinner.  Stoick hasn’t seen you in days.”  

“He hasn’t seen Bang in days, you mean.”  

“Well,” she tugs on the tight shoulder seam of my shirt and frowns, “you two are kind of a package deal so…”  

“I’ll be home.”  I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes.  

“Good.  I’ve got new clothes for you.”  

“Fine.”  I take a step back and she looks almost hurt, “I mean thanks. I’m sure they’re good.”  

“See you at home.”  

[happiness-in-oblivion]

Senior Szn No. 2: Thoughts on Moving

~~ Full Disclosure: This post is quickly becoming an excuse to post all the beautiful parts of this state, so get ready for more pictures than actual words. But hey, a picture is worth a thousand words ;) ~~

I am 100% sure that when it comes down to pulling out of my driveway for the last time, I will bawl my freaking eyes out. That’s because despite being an Aquarius, I have emotions.

Let’s make this perfectly clear: these are my current thoughts on leaving New Mexico (AKA the land of enchantment). I am not saying that I currently hate my state or that I never had fun; on the contrary, I’ve enjoyed all eighteen years here. But it’s time to talk a bit about the current state of Albuquerque, NM. 

Yes, the same Albuquerque that brought the nation Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The same Albuquerque that has (don’t fight me on this) the best green chile around. 

Because I don’t want to make this a post that seems to be hating on my hometown, I will begin with all the positives.

Pros

1. diversity and mexican/latin@ empowerment

The OG homies and I at the local paleteria. Let me tell you, this is the place where I come to break my healthy eating. Also, that happens often.

In 2016, New Mexico was announced as having the largest Hispanic population at 47%, with California coming in second at 36%. So I guess you could say that we slay. 

From what I’ve mostly encountered in ABQ, being cultured is something to be extremely proud of. Albuquerque is filled with multiple perspectives, and we function. Now, I did say mostly, because I have encountered some dumbasses that thought calling me “lamb chops” and telling me my Greek father had to lower his standards to marry my Mexican mom was actually funny. But that kind of ideology is quickly shut down.

I thought this kind of inclusion was extremely common. In that sense, I guess I was in this naive bubble. When I spent the summer in California with my dad in 2016, I was a bit shocked by the state with the second highest population of Hispanics.

BTW, we were staying in Palo Alto, which is definitely important to mention. We had to drive to a separate city limit to eat flautas and Caldo de Rez, which we found weird. And then, as we drove down El Camino Real and took a random turn, we found a run down street that was filled with Spanish signs advertising hair salons, supermarkets, etc. The blatant street segregation was the biggest culture shock I’d ever received.

The only true purpose of that little rant was to emphasize how wonderful New Mexico is. Although there are definitely neighborhoods that are predominantly Hispanic, New Mexico’s roots proudly seep into culture and diversity. Good segway… :)

2. proud (albu)quirky culture

New Mexicans pride themselves when it comes to: breakfast burritos, green chile, luminarias, flamenco, and so on.

Now that I’ve stated the obvious, I’ll talk about my personal favorite part of Albu-quirky. Because of the diverse community that Albuquerque fosters, we have really cool and local spots to just chill and hangout. As I write this, I am thinking about the countless coffee shops and bookstores that display a bit it of our very common quirkiness.

Pretty rad mural outside of Zendo. I often come here when I am trying to wear my cool new glasses and baby blue turtleneck, if you know what I mean. This mural is one of countless examples of beautiful downtown art.

When it comes to coffee shops, I think Albuquerque has a very desired vibe. After taking a few classes, I usually end up at Winning Coffee. Located right across the street from campus, Winning is where hippies come with their wild dogs while they gain insightful stories from homeless people. I’m not lying. it’s also located next to a movie poster store that features classics (even from Audrey Hepburn!). When you walk inside, you’re greeted by refreshing and new art on the wall with every passing week, a calendar filled with poetry slams, and a makeshift bookstore by a retired man who sells amazing vintage cover books for cheap. I mean, c’mon, what is not to love?

You see, other than Starbucks, most coffee shops around here aren’t chains, so they each have their own unique style and vibe. Depending on the mood, I may end up at Winning, or I may go down one block and sit in the bucolic setting that is Limonata (yes, like the drink). Here, you can enjoy homemade crepes and empanadas. And I don’t usually drink caffeine, but their chai’s are to die for.

Limonata: “Good Food, Good Coffee, Good People”

Also, I can’t forget the fact that this obviously looks like a house, because it definitely was. The bathroom literally has a bath tub that they have expertly filled with plants to make you experience a jungle in a few minutes.

Heck, there’s a coffee shop in Taos called World Cup that has different currencies as its wallpaper. it’s literally a hole in the wall, and people simply pin new and refreshing culture on the wall for the heck of it.

That adobe architecture though, am I right?

4. cheap concerts

Although I have not been to a concert in a hot second, that does not correlate to a decline in awesome ass shows in this city. In fact, this past summer Khalid came on over, and most of my friends hopped into the venue with at most an $80 ticket. (Let me point out that I am upset that I didn’t go and had I not been in another state I would have quickly hopped in as well)

I will admit it’s not always fun when an artist you really enjoy didn’t include New Mexico in their tour because they don’t think we’re in the country. BUT, the ones that do include us experience a great crowd. And, not being New York does have its perks. Cheap tickets for an unforgettable night? Perfect bargain.

I was in seventh grade when I attended my first concert. The tickets were $35 to see Sara Bareilles and OneRepublic. I went with my little sister and my friend and her mom. The venue was in our local casino, which includes an open view of the beautiful sky and a scenic landscape as the background. Right after the opening band, Harper Blynn (check out their collab with Sara Bareilles too), my sister and I went to their bus in an attempt to meet them, and meet them we did.

When they found out it was our first concert ever, they gave us a free signed copy of their CD, took pictures with us, and signed their names all over my seven-year-old sister’s arm in Sharpie. It was AWESOME.

5. badass nationwide events 

If there is one thing that New Mexico is known for, it is for our rad balloons. You know, as in hot air balloons?

Every year, Albuquerque is home to the International Balloon Fiesta, where hot balloon aficionados can come and either display their artwork of a balloon, or sip some Piñon coffee and eat a breakfast burrito while watching each beautiful hot air ballon go up into the most spectacular sunrise.

Seriously, to come to this thing requires a lot of might from Burqueños. I mean, I enjoy watching the balloons over the interstate on my way to school, but I am never in the mood to wake up at four in the a.m. only to wait in an hour of traffic to battle for a parking spot a mile away from the park grounds. On top of that, you’re pretending not to freeze your ass off as you slyly inch closer to the balloons with fire.

This is not the only time Albuquerque is seen internationally. We also have the Lantern Festival in October, where people can enjoy a mini version of a hot air balloon (basically). But hey, that’s not all.

I had to talk about Festival Flamenco Internacional. OMG. What a week. Every June, the National Institute of Flamenco brings incredible flamenco artists to teach classes and perform. For a week in the year, people between New York and Japan fly to Albu-quirky to learn from the hottest (artistically and literally) artists.

This picture has an incredible story, so hear me out. So all summer, my friends and I fundraised to see these amazing people and their art. Well, the opening night of the week, our director managed to sneak us into the very prestigious gala as waitresses and servers. After the amazing show where I spent the entire time internally crying, we returned to the party only to find our dance idols on the dance floor. They were regular people jamming to salsa music. It was so surreal! And then, our amazing director asked them for a picture with all of us. I am hugging Claudia Cruz to my left, who was one of my teachers for the week. Throughout the week, we had genuine conversations, and she even told me I was a good dancer with a followed wink. She messages me on facebook to remind me that I’m awesome and she can’t wait for the day to come when I visit her in Spain. Like, are you kidding me?!

(Also picture from left to right: Claudia Cruz, me, Sage, Marco Flores, Agueda Saavedra, Madison, and Jose Manuel Alvarez)

6. nature

This is another given that comes hand in hand with living in New Mexico. Although I will admit sometimes I may not be a complete outdoorsy person, I do genuinely enjoy the beauty of NM. I mean, the mountains that surround Albuquerque prevent pollution from reaching the sky that blesses the citizens with orange and red hues with every sunrise and sunset. Also, there are countless hikes to go on, and the view is spectacular. It’s a tradition with family and friends of ours to go on a weekly hike during the summer. Then, we go to Marble Brewery and enjoy tacos and beer (I don’t get any beer; oh well).

This was the view after a hike on the mountains during Thanksgiving Break.

Just a casual picture taken by my friend while hiking around Tent Rocks. Nothing too unusual, right?

Current Cons

Now that I’ve extensively covered all the amazing things that NM has to offer and have probably already lost several readers, I will go into the initial motivation behind this post. Although I admit now that after writing all the things from above, it seems like the list below doesn’t deserve to be mentioned. But trust me, it needs to be.

1. violence

Albuquerque got recognition from the NYTimes, and not the good kind. BTW, this was published in 2014, and it claims that the “rate of violent crime in Albuquerque is nearly double the national average.”

Don’t get me wrong - violence in ABQ has always been present. Before, however, it was usually localized violence. By this, I guess I mean that if you knew the places to avoid, you didn’t ever have to actually witness the gang violence or the constant murders. In other words, you could live in Albuquerque reading of the violence but never having to ever witness it. 

Well, that has definitely changed.

During this past week, a homeless man has exposed himself to my dance class, my mom witnessed a man piss on the side of my neighbor’s house while walking our dog, and a lot more serious stuff (trigger warning ahead).

Specifically, a man was hanging onto the side of the bridge overlooking the major freeway for 13 hours. This happened literally right outside of my house. As we drove back form church, we saw a herd of policemen trying to calm this poor man down. He did not yield until 1 a.m., and he was transported to the hospital safely. It was absolutely horrible. Even worse?

Two days later, my friend told our group chat that her stepfather (who is a cop) had to respond to a call that a sixteen-year-old boy was on the side of a different bridge. As the cops approached the bridge, he jumped. He didn’t die; instead, he is faced with irrecoverable brain injury. 

Like you’ve got to be fucking kidding me right now. How the hell did Albuquerque become so violent? From the influx of desperate homeless people walking down Central, to the shooting that happened right outside of my dance institute, Albuquerque has definitely become a place where violence is beginning to occur on a regular basis. And the worst part? I think I am starting to become numb to it. It’s not normal to think these things are normal.

2. 49th in education

So, this report is from 2017. Believe it or not, this is actually a step up from 2016. We were a solid last in the country for education. And I genuinely didn’t think that education in my state was that bad. That’s because, despite me absolutely despising my school, we are number one in the state for education. That means that while I was receiving a buttload of homework and a ridiculously difficult education, other public high schools would rank as an F on academic abilities. But do you know what I think of all of this? It’s fucked. 

I don’t know if this is nationwide, but I didn’t know it was not normal to spend most of the day studying for statewide tests. In other words, New Mexico had the SBA (Standardized Based Assessment). Most of my school day involved multiple choice questions and answering reading comprehension questions that would be featured on the annual standardized test. And trust me, it’s not the teacher’s faults. Most teachers were forced to stick to this because if students did not receive good scores, teachers and schools would be in major jeopardy. 

This kind of thinking didn’t end in elementary school. While I was supposed to be reading a new chapter for a striking English book in sixth grade, we’d instead sit in front of our computers, reading pointless passages about horses and spaceships that we gave no fucks over and were expected to write an analytical essay comparing the breed of horses with the flight of spaceships. You’re thinking, wtf? Exactly. It’s pointless.

**I am now begging you to actually click the link I am posting here, because it’s definitely the most important one here. Enjoy this slam poem, “Love Letter to Albuquerque Public Schools.” In it is Olivia Gatwood, a personal inspiration of mine that I got to meet and speak with in September and will see again in April.**

3. “land of entrapment” / “university near mom”

This one is really silly and I guess I put this as a comedic conclusion. I guess in a gruesome way, because of the education many teenagers receive, we seem trapped (bringing the infamous nickname above). I know that personally, before I actually took college courses outside of the state, I did not picture myself at any top-ranked college. In fact, some people around me don’t even consider a college. Not because they’re too lazy or not into higher education, but because it is not practical. It is not practical to attend college courses if you have family  members that need an income from you now, not in four years.

I hate when people judge other’s circumstances. Genuinely, Albuquerque students will often end up at the University of New Mexico, which is not a bad university at all. And yet, in this land of entrapment, it is also humorously deemed the “university near mom.”

I guess what I mean is that after all this effort and living in this weird ass situation of shootings and standardized testing, my generation still feels trapped, constantly looking to move. And that’s what happened to me. I was given a glimpse of what independence looked like, and I immediately jumped at the opportunity to leave New Mexico.

I’m glad I wrote this post. At the end of this, I wonder if anyone is actually left after this long rant that was both good and evil. And yet, I already see the day I miss this place coming sooner rather than later.

Thanks for sticking around. :)

[moayoub1]

How to Spend a Day in Fener and Balat, Istanbul

On my most up-to-date trip to Istanbul, Turkey, I did a walking tour focused on hidden architectural gems in Karakoy and Taksim. One among the opposite travelers on my tour was curious about knowing more about the city’s Jewish history, and our guide recommended that she spend a day exploring Fener and Balat (which he mentioned as simply “Fener Balat”), a colorful neighborhood with an upscale, multicultural history and a fast-growing cool factor. Well, that sounded right up my alley too, so I decided to form the trip to Fener and Balat the subsequent day.

It’s hard to draw a politician border between the 2  small neighborhoods of Fener and Balat so that they are often spoken of as one unit. Although the world has been occupied since the Byzantine Empire, Fener and Balat came into their own when the  Ottoman Empire took control of Istanbul and lots of the city’s Greek residents built traditional wooden houses in these communities, followed years later by the arrival of the many Jews and Muslims from Spain. Elements of all of the cultures remain today within the sort of religious buildings, educational institutions, residences, cuisine, and art… which makes Fener and Balat a serious draw for travelers trying to find something different in Istanbul.

I spent about four hours in Fener and Balat and would recommend that you simply decide to stay for a minimum of that long (especially if you would like to eat in one among the district’s hottest restaurants). As I mention within the transportation section below, attempt to time your visit to avoid rush-hour traffic, perhaps visiting from 10:00 to 15:00, so that you don’t spend an hour (or longer) making the seven-kilometer bus trip from the Galata Bridge.

Things to try to to in Fener & Balat Find Istanbul’s Most Colorful Houses

Most people come to Fener and Balat to see the rows of colorful houses dotted throughout both neighborhoods. While a number of the more famous streets (like the hilly Merdivenli Yokus) can get crowded with Instagrammers and amateur photographers, you'll still find colorful side streets with few crowds (like the one I snapped above). Many of the homes have had their facades refreshed with the support of UNESCO, which recognizes all of Fatih as a neighborhood of cultural significance.

See the Historic Architecture

It’s a brief walk up a steep hill to Phanar Orthodox College, a monolithic red-brick building that houses Istanbul’s oldest Greek-Orthodox school. Although a faculty has been on the location since the 1400s, the building you'll see today was inbuilt the 1880s. Inside, students still study a balanced curriculum that has the Turkish national curriculum and along with side key subjects in Greek also.

You might also want to see out Kadir Has University, one among Istanbul’s newest universities. The university’s building was originally an old tobacco factory, and therefore the reconstruction work won a gift for architectural beauty from the multinational NGO Europa Nostra.

Visit a spiritual Site

Fener and Balat are both full of houses of worship spanning centuries and faiths.  I used to be taken by St. Stephen Bulgarian Church, shown above, with its unique cast-iron facade. St. Stephen’s undergone an extended renovation and reopened in 2018, so visit while it’s still in great condition.

You can also visit the Ahrida Synagogue, but to pass beyond its red gate you'll be got to arrange entrance beforehand, for security purposes. Similarly, to enter the Gul Mosque, which was inbuilt the eleventh century because of the  Saint Theodosia Church,  you'll need to hunt the groundskeeper and convince him to allow you to the inside, which I’ve read isn't a simple feat.

Although some blogs mention Saint Mary of the Mongols Church, it’s located behind a reasonably big wall and infrequently hospitable the general public. Don’t leave of your way for this one.

Browse for Antiques & Curiosities

It’s impossible to steer quite two or three blocks in Fener and Balat without encountering the community’s famous antique shops,  full of everything from second-hand trinkets to legitimately valuable antiques. However, I used to be more curious about a number of the opposite shops I found,  just like the  Electrician of Havana shop where antique electrical items like lamps and telephones are converted into contemporary art, and Balat Bahce, where they sell quite fifty different sorts of homemade jams, jellies, and spreads, mostly featuring local and seasonal ingredients.

Scope Out the road Art

Again, follow the Instagrammers and you'll be led to Balat and Fener’s most evocative pieces of street art, including murals of mysterious portraits, perfume bottle grenades, random acts of automobiles and, yes, your standard graffiti. If you would like to ascertain art off the road, pop into The Pill Contemporary gallery, which was closed thanks to a change of exhibits once I visited, but that often features exhibitions of up-and-coming Turkish and international artists.

Where to dine in Fener & Balat

Cook life Balat

Out of all the restaurants in Fener and Balat, I used to be most drawn to Cook life Balat for my brunch during this  Istanbul neighborhood. An adorable corner cafe travel by the team behind Cook life culinary magazine,  the main target here is on fresh, local ingredients sourced from the owners’ farm outside Istanbul. I had their spectacular Turkish breakfast for one, shown above, featuring homemade bread, jams and spreads, salad, olives, cheese, butter, nuts and more.

Forno Balat

I also considered eating at Forno Balat because I could see it had a stimulating menu of Turkish flatbread pizzas, including some vegetarian options, plus soups, salads and homemade desserts. If you’re in Fener and Balat on the weekend, Forno also serves a weekend buffet brunch.

Mitis Manti ve Cafe

This was my backup-backup just in case I couldn’t get a seat at either Cook's life or Forno. With a more traditional vibe, this small restaurant focuses on manti or Turkish dumplings that they had two different vegetarian options (potato or mushroom) and three meaty options, all of which accompany a liberal covering of special yogurt-based sauce and a drizzle of their secret manti sauce.

Brew Coffeeworks

When I mentioned I’d been in Fener and Balat, one among my readers asked if I’d been to Brew Coffeeworks. Consistent with them, it's the simplest coffee altogether of Istanbul, so I used to be disappointed to possess missed it. Stop by when you’re in Fener and Balat, then come and let me know if it is that the best coffee altogether of Istanbul!

How to Get to Fener & Balat

Fener and Balat are located in Fatih, on the ECU side of Istanbul and northwest of Eminonu. To urge to Fener and Balat from Eminonu, walk to the bus exchange that's labeled “Eminönü (Turyol)” on Google Maps (zoom in and you'll see four small lanes of bus stops) and mountboard one among the frequent buses traveling northwest along Abdulezelpasa Caddesi. If you’re bad at remembering bus numbers, it’s easiest to recollect  99, 99A or 99Y, all of which can take you to Fener and Balat. Traffic moves at a snail’s pace at hour, so attempt to time your visit to avoid the push of drivers getting to, or leaving, work.

Hotels in Fener & Balat

I didn’t stay in Fener and Balat and that I don’t necessarily recommend that you simply stay here. As it’s only accessible by bus, with no subway or tram service, it is often time-consuming to succeed in other areas of the town from here. However, if you would like to base yourself in Fener and Balat because you’re within the neighborhood for private reasons or work,  you'll check out  Hotel Troya Balat, which is found during a  nineteenth-century historical building on the near side of the district, or Balat Residence for a standard, family-run hotel with self-contained apartment units.

Istanbul is one of my favorite cities on the earth, and I’ve already planted the seeds for a return visit (my third!) next summer, but this point with my mom as my travel companion! I can’t wait to introduce her to everything from Cook's life Balat’s beautiful brunch to the traditional sights of Sultanahmet.

[starrbomb]

Look i love you and shance is my jam so im telling you i am willing to die for aranged marriage shance or fake dating shance because those are my most favorite tropes in the entire universe. I hope you are not bored anymore i love you okay bye

I know you’ve sent this my way before, and before I was super hesitant to do this because of my writing ability, but you’ve been so kind in waiting for me to finally do something like this, so I’ll try my best todo is justice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lance may or may not be on the brink of an anxiety attack. Ok, he might be having it right now because finals were over. Which was great! No school, no tests, no homework. What isn’t good news is that he has to go home. And home is where his mother is. Expecting him. And his boyfriend that he’s been telling her about for months. A boyfriend that he does not actually have. That is why he is pacing back and forth in his dorm, rambling on and on about how much of a dead man he is when he gets home.

“Why don’t you just tell your mom that you two broke up? That happens all the time.” Hunk suggests. Pidge doesn’t miss a beat, adding on “especially with you.” Lance stops moving for a moment and gives Pidge an unamused glare. “This is serious guys! I told my mom that things were getting serious, I can’t just call her up and say we broke up. She’s going to ask what happened, and then my entire summer is going to be filled with her trying to pair me off with someone. Which is the exact reason I told her I had a boyfriend in the first place!”

Lance falls back onto his bed with a groan, just trying to figure out how to keep his mother from setting him up on ‘accidental’ dates with pretty much every gay, bi, or curious guy in their town. He’s glad that his mother is supportive of him, and is always trying to be helpful. But sometimes, it’s just too much. That’s why he told her that he already had a boyfriend, so that he doesn’t have to go through another summer being set up at any possible moment. He wasn’t expecting his mother demanding he bring his ‘great boyfriend’ with him for the first week of summer. He tried to make an excuse as to why his 'boyfriend’ couldn’t come, but his mother had already made up her mind and even started setting up the guest room for 'him’.

Thus the freak out. Since there wasn’t anybody to take home with him. Lance groans again even louder. Ready to just call his mother and tell her that he and his 'boyfriend’ broke up or something. That is, until he got the best idea ever. Lance shoots up and opens up his contacts in his phone. He kept scrolling through his phone, mumbling to himself how much of a genius he is, gaining even Pidge’s attention away from her computer.

“What are you doing Lance?”

“I think I figured out a solution to my problem! Aha!” Lance found the contact he was looking for and hits the call button. He holds the phone to his ear, hearing the ringing on the other line. The 3rd ring stops midway, interrupted by a disgruntled “yeah?”

“Hey Keith! Is your brother there?”

“Yeah?”

“Great! Can you put him on?”

“Ugh, fine, just make it quick.” Yup. The forever grumpy friend of their group.

“Lance you aren’t seriously asking Keith to pretend to be your boyfriend are you?” Pidge asks, getting Hunk to look away from his own packing looking at Lance like he just ate a ghost pepper. Again.

“No way. Like i’d ever ask mullet to be my boyfriend. Pretend or not.” He hears some grumbles on the line, and then another voice is speaking through the speaker.

“hey Lance. Keith said you wanted to talk?”

Lance returns his attention back to his phone, crossing his fingers as he talks.

“Yeah. Do you still have nothing to do for the summer?”

“Yeah, with Keith going on his cross country hiking trip, I’ve got pretty much nothing going on. Why?”

Lance takes in a deep breath, hoping to any gods that are looking down on him.

“I have a proposal for you…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lance drives into the driveway, making sure he doesn’t hit any of the other parked cars. He puts the car into park and looks over to his 'boyfriend’ Shiro. Trying to figure out how lucky he got when Shiro agreed to pretend to be his boyfriend for a week at his parents place. It might have been the promise of home cooked food and being able to get out of his and Keith’s apartment, but lance isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“So do you remember what we talked about on the way here? Do you want to go over anything before we do this?”

Shiro lets out a laugh, which surprisingly helps some of Lance’s nerves. “Yeah, I think I got it all. And if I forget anything, I’ll just look to you. But don’t you think this is going a bit far?”

“Once you meet my family, especially my mom, you’ll understand.” Lance retorts, watching Shiro laugh again as he steps out of the jeep onto the gravel drive way. Lance lets out a little chuckle himself and follows suit, walking towards the trunk to help get their bags out. He leads Shiro, who took most of the bags, up the porch to the door, and doesn’t even get to knock on the door before it’s flung open and large man wraps Lance up into a hug that could rival Hunk’s (not that Lance would ever tell him) and with a booming voice calls out “LANCE IS HOME!!!”. lance can’t help but laugh at his uncle Philippe, hugging back as best as he can.

As soon as his uncle puts him back down, he’s overrun with little children, all clambering to either hug him or look at Shiro like he’s some sort of wild animal. Once Lance is finally able to untangle himself from all of the tiny arms, he takes hold of Shiro’s hand, well more like his finger, and lead him inside the house. Navigating around all the aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters, Lance is able to get Shiro into the guest room with as minimal questions and prodding from his family as possible, but he can tell that Shiro has caught on as to why Lance quizzed him on their 'history’ the entire way there.

“Your family is definitely…”

“A lot?”

“I was going to say lively, but that works too.” Shiro huffs out with a chuckle, dropping the bags at his feet.

“Yeah, sorry about that, they just REALLY like meeting new people. Especially if it’s someone like a boyfriend or girlfriend. But if any of them get super weird or intrusive, just let them know and they’ll back off. Usually.” Lance reassures Shiro, knowing that he’s still a little uneasy about his prosthetic arm. Shiro gives him an appreciated smile and sits next to him on the bed. “Thanks Lance.” Lance looks up at Shiro, unable to keep his smile and his own appreciation out of his voice. “I should be thanking you Shiro, you are helping me dodge a huge bullet by being here.” Shiro looks to Lance and pats his hand on his knee. “Well I hope the food is as good as you proclaimed all the way here.” Shiro smiles and offers his hand to Lance, who takes it and leads them out of the room, back into the fray of noisy relatives and overexcited nieces and nephews.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lance wasn’t lying about the food, it was truly out of this world. Shiro scoops another spoonful of the homemade stir fry into his mouth, trying to pick out one voice from the other as everyone around the table chatters away with each other.

Lance wasn’t kidding about his family wanting to ask any question they want; they asked about pretty much everything about their make believe relationship; how they met, what their first date was, their first kiss, pretty much anything about their relationship. Shiro was very glad Lance drilled all of it into him during the ride there. A few of the kids had asked about his arm, but Lance would immediately redirects them to a game or something else, and helping Shiro if he ever needed to just take a break from answering so many questions. Lance just always seemed to know when to be there. God, Shiro does not regret pretending being Lance’s boyfriend. If only it wasn’t really pretending.

Ok. So Shiro had a pretty big crush on Lance. No big deal. It’s not like Shiro would ever tell Lance his feelings, or if Lance would ever accept his feelings. But if he could do this for Lance, than he would happily do it again.

“-iro?”

Shiro snaps out of his thoughts and looks over to Mrs. McClain who was sitting next to him. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Oh. Well, ask away.” Shiro gives her his best impressive smile, prepared to answer something about his and Lance’s relationship.

“How did you know you wanted to date my boy? What about him swept you off your feet?” Shiro could feel the blush grow rapidly across his face.

“Mom!” Lance almost screeches, gaining the attention of everyone else at the table. It grows increasingly quite as all eyes are on Shiro. “Shiro you don’t have to-”

“I guess, it was his jokes at first. I mean, yeah they were pretty cheesy, but they always helped lighten the mood. And then it was the smaller things that no one really notices. How he will always put his friends first; how he’ll take care of his friends whenever their sick or upset. He’ll make sure everyone is comfortable and happy, even if it means he isn’t all the time. And then when we shared a class, I saw how focused and passionate he is about his classes and his interests. How he’s so protective of his friends and doesn’t let anyone stop him when he gets an idea in his head, even if they aren’t the best. He sorta worked his way into my heart with each moment that I got to know him more. ” everyone is speechless with Shiro’s answer, Lance looking at him with such surprise and it was stunning, seeing Lance be caught off guard like that. His mother seems to be satisfied with his answer and goes about asking one of Lance’s sisters about her work, snapping everyone out of whatever stupor they were caught in and resuming their conversations, gladly taking the spotlight off of Shiro who went back to eating, trying to ignore the red blush that still decorate his scarred nose and cheeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was late at night, everyone else was pretty much asleep or heading off to bed themselves. Shiro was able to head out to the front porch, taking in the clear night sky and all of the stars that was usually so hard to see in the city. The front door squeaks open, and Shiro turns in his spot, expecting to see Lance. Instead, it was his mother, who happily takes a seat on the stair above Shiro, looking up into the night sky in a oddly comforting silence.

They both continue to enjoy the view in their mutual silence, until lance’s mother speaks. “When you do ask out my boy, I’m sure he won’t hesitate saying yes.” It was said so calm and so matter-of-fact, that it left Shiro staring at her, gaping at her. How did she find out? “I-I don’t know what you mean. I’m already dating Lance.” That came out much shakier then Shiro wanted it to be. Mrs. McClain chuckles to herself and looks down to Shiro. “Honey, do you really think my boy can lie to me? I knew from the moment you got here. But I also saw how much you actually like him.”Shiro tries to stammer out some sort of response, his blush growing more and more. It was probably already taking over his neck.“So just know that when you two do start dating, for real, I’ll be very happy he found someone like you.” And with that, she got up and left Shiro to his stuttering thoughts and the stars in the sky. Well, so much for fooling his family. But Shiro can’t exactly say that he’s not happy he had that chat with his mother.

Shiro looks back up to the stars, and whispers to himself “when we start dating, huh? That’s a nice idea.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tada! Finally did it! I added I some pining Shiro because why not, and don’t try and fool mama McClain, she can tell when any of her children are lying.

I really hope you enjoy this! I know I had some fun writing this!

[themanuelruello]

My Favorite Ways to Preserve Food at Home

Here it comes…

The cucumbers, beets, and tomatoes are rolling in, with the potatoes, onions, corn, and squash not far behind.

I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year.

I love it because it’s the pinnacle of what we’ve been working towards since early spring (HARVEST!), but holy moly… it can be overwhelming sometimes.

More than ever before, I feel like now is the time to have full pantries, cupboards, and larders to prepare for the upcoming winter. There are a lot of ways to preserve food, but I wanted to dive into my favorite preservation methods today.

How Do You Preserve Your Harvest?

I get that question a lot and there isn’t really an easy answer…

I use a variety of preservation methods, canning, freezing, dehydrating, and fermenting are definitely the ones I rely on the most. I also store food in the unfinished portion of my basement cellar, which sort of mimics a root cellar (check out these tips for other root cellar alternatives).

So if you’re wondering if you should freeze, dry, can, or ferment your harvest, we are going to be going through the pros and cons of each in this post.

(1): Canning Food for Preservation

I have been drawn to canning since the beginning of my homesteading adventures. It reminds me of grandmas and old-time homesteaders canning foods for the winter and it’s the perfect symbol of an old-fashioned life that I love so very much.

However, I didn’t grow up in a family of expert canners. My mom occasionally canned food when I was younger, but since it didn’t involve horses, I didn’t care to pay attention. Go figure.

Therefore, when I learned how to can as an adult, I had to start from ground zero. But the good news? Even if you haven’t had someone personally show you the canning ropes, it’s entirely possible to learn on your own.

The Resource I Wish I Had When I Started

If you are a canning newbie, I just revamped my Canning Made Easy course and it’s ready for YOU! I’ll walk you through each step of the process (safety is my #1 priority!), so you can finally learn to can confidently, without the stress. CLICK HERE to have a look at the course and ALL the bonuses that come with it.

This is the information I wish I had when I first started canning– all of the recipes and safety information are double and triple-checked against tested and proved canning recipes and recommendations.

It’s the next best thing to you coming over to my house and canning right along with me. (Which would be a blast, wouldn’t it?!)

Canning Food Pros:

The number one reason that I love canning is because it’s so versatile. I love how shelf-stable it is and that no fridge or freezer space is required (which is hard to come by in our house).

I also love canning because it is actually preserves the nutrients in the food surprisingly well, which surprised me when I initially researched this topic for my canning course about nutrient loss.

For a long time, I assumed that canning destroyed all the nutrients in food. So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that while there is some nutrient loss at the beginning, the nutrient loss slows down due to the sealed jar and storing it in a dark, cool place.

In contrast, food that is frozen might retain more nutrients at first, but it quickly degrades and loses nutrients faster than with canning (source).

Canning Food Cons:

One of the biggest downfalls is that canning heats up your kitchen. And if you’re canning in the summer (and especially in an non-air-conditioned home), it’s gonna get even hotter. However, you can work around this issue by either canning in the evening or canning outside.

Another negative to canning is that canned food is not easily transportable. Filled glass jars are heavy and take up considerable space on a shelf. You’ll need some sort of dedicated pantry space to store your home-canned food. shelves.

Finally, canning can be messy and take some time in the kitchen. Fortunately, you can get around that a bit by prepping your space beforehand with your canning equipment (check out my no-stress canning tips for more ideas) and inviting friends to help with larger canning projects.

Canning Preserving Method: Final Thoughts

I personally love canning and it’s probably my favorite way to preserve food for our homestead. As long as you follow safe recipes to avoid botulism issues, canning is extremely rewarding There’s nothing like pulling a can of honey cinnamon peaches from the basement shelf and serving it in the dead of winter.

There’s a surge in canning interest at the moment, which is fabulous but also frustrating if you’re trying to hunt down jars or lids. Try to find used jars in thrift stores or online marketplaces (although you still need to buy new lids).

Check out these articles for more of my canning tips:

Best Resources for Safe Canning

How to Start Canning with Zero Special Equipment

The Ultimate Guide to Canning Safety

How to Can Tomatoes Safely at Home

How to Use a Pressure Canner

(2): Freezing Food for Preservation

Freezing is a popular way to preserve foods, which makes sense because most people have at least a small freezer attached to their refrigerator. We have 3-4 large freezers, but they are usually packed-full of our homegrown meats, so I personally don’t like using my precious freezer space for many fruits and vegetables (but I still do freeze some of them).

Freezing Food Pros:

Freezing is preferable to many folks because it’s very simple and many people enjoy the texture of frozen foods over canned foods. For example, I prefer the texture of frozen green beans over canned green beans. You might feel differently, but most people have texture preferences for particular foods whether they are canned or frozen.

People also like freezing food since it’s often slightly less labor-intensive than canning and requires less fuss. Oftentimes you can just chop up the produce, stick it in a bag or freeze-safe container, and you’re ready to roll.

Freezing Food Cons:

It might be easy to freeze most food, but some foods still need to be blanched before freezing in order to freeze well. Blanching is a technique that quickly immerses fresh foods in hot water or oil (usually followed by some sort of ice water bath).

The purpose of blanching is to slow down nutrient loss and maintain brighter colors. It’s not done for safety, but rather for texture and color.

Personally? Blanching annoys me and I avoid it whenever possible. It often feels monotonous and fussy… even though I know it does serve a purpose.

Another downfall of freezing is that you will see a decent amount of nutrient loss long-term. Eat frozen foods within 6 months to a year to avoid too much nutrient loss, which will be more substantial that long-term nutrient loss with canned foods.

That other downside is the the freezer space. This is a big one for me because we stuff our freezers with our homegrown meat and just don’t have the space for frozen produce as well.

Finally, a major negative to freezing fruits and vegetables is that you are vulnerable to power outages. If you live in the middle of nowhere and/or deal with plenty of power outages, then freezing a lot of your food for preservation might not be for you. Consider getting a generator if you are worried about losing your food when you lose power.

Freezing Preserving Method: Final Thoughts

I mainly use my freezers for meat, but there are still a few other fruits and vegetables that I make space for in the freezer due to texture preferences or because it’s just so darn easy.

Here is a list of my favorite foods to freeze:

How to Freeze Green Beans (our family favorite way to preserve beans for the winter)

How to Freeze Tomatoes (when my tomatoes are trickling in and I’m saving them for canning tomato sauce, I freeze them for a while)

Freezing Peach Pie Filling (I like to freeze pie fillings because you can use whatever thickeners you have on hand)

Strawberry Freezer Jam (Sometimes I prefer to make freezer jams instead of canning them, it depends on my mood)

Preserving Herbs in Oil (the perfect way to preserve the fresh taste and vibrant green of herbs is by freezing them with this method)

(3): Dehydrating Preservation Method

Of all the food preservation methods, I have the least experience with dehydrating. Although I have the Excalibur, (aka the Cadillac of food dehydrators), I still find myself using other preservation methods more frequently.

Dehydrating Food Pros:

The biggest benefit to food dehydrating is that the results are lightweight and easy to store. This makes dehydrated foods excellent for space saving and you don’t need a fridge or freezer.

A dehydrator is also great for drying herbs for the winter. While some herbs are easy to dry by hanging them upside down for a few weeks in little bundles (which also looks cute and handy as decoration in a homestead kitchen), other herbs don’t dry well unless you use a dehydrator. Personally, I think basil and sage dry better with a dehydrator than with the upside-down method.

Dehydrating Food Cons:

The biggest negative to dehydrating food is that many dried foods have the most nutrient loss of all the preserving methods (source).

Another negative is that it uses a lot of energy to dehydrate foods. If you’re trying to keep your electric bill low, dehydrating might not be a good choice for you, as it often takes 10-12 hours to completely dehydrate a food for storage.

Dehydrating Preserving Method: Final Thoughts

Honestly, many of my home-dried foods have been met with mixed reviews… I wasn’t impressed with my dried green peppers (they were so shriveled and tough they were impossible to use and I just fed them to the chickens). And try as I might, I just didn’t like the dried green beans that everyone raves about either.

That being said, I do LOVE my dehydrater for making homemade jerky. I also use it to make a version of “sun-dried” tomatoes (here’s my recipe for drying tomatoes), which my kids beg for. I also make fruit leather and dried bananas,  and, of course, I dry some herbs for the winter.

All in all, I do think dehydrating is a handy homestead preservation method, once you get in your groove.

(4): Fermenting Food for Preservation

And last but not least? Fermenting (lacto-fermentation). This is the way our ancestors preserved food before refrigeration and it was used long before canning was ever even considered.

Fermenting Food Pros:

The great thing about fermentation is that it is very safe, which comes as a surprise to many folks. After people hear me go on one of my botulism rants, they assume that leaving a jar of cabbage out on your counter for 10 days surely must be unwise, but the opposite is true: the salt and natural acids produced in the fermentation process make it incredibly safe.

It’s also super good for you, especially when it comes to your gut. There are many health experts that recommend that you eat some sort of fermented food every day, as it gives you a natural probiotic boost.

Fermentation is also awesome because you don’t need special equipment. Fermenting crocks or air lids are handy, but you can absolutely ferment without them if you’re just starting out. All you need is a mason jar, a lid, and something to weigh the food down. It’s super affordable, super safe, and super  healthy.

Fermenting Food Cons:

A downside to fermentation is that it can be an acquired taste for some people. Fermented foods do have a tang to them, but my best advice? Don’t give up after the first taste. It can take a while to educate our taste buds around new flavors.

The best part about fermenting your own food is that you have absolute control over the sourness and flavor of the finished foods. Therefore, if you’ve tried store-bought ferments and didn’t like them, odds are you’ll have a different opinion about a ferment you created and controlled yourself. The difference can be considerable. For example, I don’t care for ultra-sour sauerkraut, so I simply ferment it for a shorter amount of time, and I prefer that taste much better.

Another consideration is that even though the food starts out on your counter, eventually, it will need to be transferred to cold storage at some point or it will keep fermenting and become extremely sour. Our ancestors used cold root cellars or larders to cool down and slow the fermenting process. You can use that type of cool room if you have it, or you just use your fridge.

Fermenting Preserving Method: Final Thoughts

I started out with my first fermenting adventure with sauerkraut many years ago, and I’ve been fascinated with it ever since. Every year, I like to try new fermenting recipes and I’ve fallen in love with my old-fashioned fermenting crock (read more about fermenting with crocks here).

Here is a list of my favorite fermenting recipes:

How to Make Sauerkraut (I think we’ll always have a jar of fermenting sauerkraut in the kitchen, it’s SO good!)

Fermented Pickles Recipe (when I don’t have enough pickles for canning, I love fermenting them)

Fermented Ketchup Recipe (SOOOO much better than the corn syrup junk from the store)

How to Make Milk Kefir (The best part about kefir is that you can use it as a cheesemaking culture)

Making Kombucha (I almost always have some kombucha brewing in the kitchen for a tasty alternative to soda)

My Final Thoughts on Preserving Food

The sky’s the limit when it comes to ways to preserve food, and preserving the harvest doesn’t have to be complicated.

And remember– even if you are just squirreling away a jar or two of food at a time, you’re still making progress. Preserving food doesn’t have to be an epic event every time, and the little efforts add up. Keep up the good work, friend.

More Heritage Kitchen Tips:

My Canning Made Easy course will teach you how to start canning today, even if you are a newbie

My Heritage Cooking Crash Course teaches you how to make from-scratch foods in the kitchen and enjoy it

Learn history and cooking tips for Cooking with Salt

Learn about Wheat Berries and Grinding Your Own Flour

The post My Favorite Ways to Preserve Food at Home appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

from Gardening https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2020/08/ways-to-preserve-food-at-home.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[ctbarb]

Mom’s Story

Mom’s Story

It bothers me that I remember so little about my mother’s death.  In 1971, Tom and I were planning on taking a week’s vacation in Maine and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Shortly before we were to leave, Betty had called to say that Mom had fallen and broken her hip.  She would have to go to a nursing home for rehabilitation.  I asked if I should come to Arizona and abort my vacation plans.  Betty had told me earlier that Spring that the doctor had said that Mom was going down hill and to be prepared for her death.  But now the doctors  were saying that she was not close to death and would just need time to recover from the broken bone.   I felt comfortable that Mom was not in eminent danger and so I decided to continue with my vacation.

I told Betty that I would call every day to see how things were going.   The first two or three days, things seemed to be going well.  But then on the fourth day I called and Betty said, “Barbara, I am so sorry to tell you this, but Mom passed away last night.”  What?”  I said, “ we talked and it didn’t seem like she was in danger.”    Betty said, “she seemed well when we visited her yesterday, but the Doctor says she had a heart attack during the night and was dead when the nurse checked on her.”  I was numb. How could this have happened with no warning?  A giant hole opened in my stomach.  I felt sick.

I was devastated.  I could not believe that I had not been able to say goodbye.  I felt guilty for not immediately going to see her.  I had spent so little time with her since that day in 1964 when she and Dad brought me to Cornell.  After moving my things into the dorm, we had lunch  on campus.  After lunch we said goodbye and they left in the car and I walked back to the dorm. My family has never been demonstrative. We did not hug and so there was just the goodbye.

My brother and my sister Betty had moved far away.  And when Mom and Dad’s health worsened, it was Betty who had stepped up to say she would move them to Arizona and they could live with her and her partner Maureen.  That was in my sophomore year.  John was in Wichita KS.  Margaret would move into the family house in Amsterdam and so she and I were left on the East Coast very far away from Mom and Dad.  I had visited every Christmas since then and Tom and I had driven out to see them the year before.  I was glad that they got the opportunity to meet him.    When I graduated from Cornell, only Margaret and her husband Bob came.  Mom and Dad were too far away and their health would not allow them to fly.  Now I contemplated a life without even a telephone call from Mom.  

My Mom was ….as everyone always says…the best Mom in the whole world.  She taught me to sew, to make bread, to plant and harvest vegetables, to name the birds, to recognize them by their songs, to make jams and jellies and to make that wonderful jelly roll we took to Grandma each Thursday, and to recognize all sorts of wild plants.  She lived up to her maiden name…Cook…by being superb…homemade bread, pies, cakes, cookies, Polish, Ukrainian and Italian specialties and even fudge! And I think she gave me my smile, one of my most prized possessions.

Jane Ann Cook, the oldest child of Yates H. Cook and Maggie Wright Cook, was born in 1910 in Randall, NY.  Grandpa Cook ran a general store.  He had been born in Fonda NY to Jacob H. Cook and Jane Fonda , my claim to celebrity.  Maggie was born in Phoenicia NY in the Catskills to John Wright and Sally Ann Moon.  Randall is a very small village on the south side of the Mohawk River near Fort Hunter, NY.

As the oldest child, Jane was forced to leave high school when her father died to help her mother financially.  Jane had a younger brother Yates and an even younger sister Julia.  During the summers, she and Julia worked at “the Inn” owned my Mrs. Rawlston  in the Catskills.  I do not know whether she worked full time at the inn and Julie only joined her in the summer, but I do know that Yates and Julie were able to finish high school because Mom got a job to help Grandma.  Grandpa was Grandma’s second husband so Mom had a step brother as well.    

She and Dad had met at the Mt Loretto convalescent home where he had been sent to recover from tuberculosis and she was the cook.  In order to pay for his room and board he was working for the home and one of his jobs was washing dishes after meals.  That is how they met.

Mom wanted to name me Sally after Great Grandma Moon, but Betty insisted that she was NOT going to have a sister whose name sounded like a COW!   Dad, John and Margaret sided with her!!!! So when I was delivered, Mom asked the nurse who was holding me what her name was….“Barbara Jean” she said….“put it down on the birth certificate!” said Mom.

I had been a big baby. I weighted 11lbs 1oz.  They say that large babies are omens of impending diabetes, but Mom was not diagnosed with diabetes until many years later.  When I was in high school she developed sores on her feet that would not heal.  I believe she was hospitalized twice in Amsterdam.  Each time when she came home I remember Dad changing the bandages on her feet and using hydrogen peroxide to clean the sores.  At the time I did not know that this indicated that she had lost feeling in her feet and that the sores were necrotizing.  I blame her doctor for not discovering the diabetes. Finally, perhaps at Betty’s insistence she sought a second opinion from a doctor affiliated with Ellis Hospital in Schenectady.  Immediately they diagnosed diabetes and scheduled her for surgery.  Both large toes had to be amputated which caused her gait to become a shuffle rather than firm steps.  

I am sorry that I did not go to Arizona and see her one more time before she died.  One of my regrets.

[vegancookbooks0]

Strawberry Spinach Salad

This strawberry spinach salad is full of flavor and super easy to make! Refreshing and delicious, with a burst of sweetness. Serve it as a show-stealing side dish or make a meal of it by adding some protein!

I have a weird thing about salads: I generally don’t like sweet things in them. I’m a savory salad kind of girl.

I find most people go nuts over restaurant salads with stuff like cranberries, apples, fruity dressings…that kind of thing. And those salads are so not for me! Give me a good old Caesar salad any day.

But, there is one exception. A big old spinach salad with fresh berries is so my jam. Especially during the spring and summer months. It’s so good!

I’ve been served a bunch of versions of this salad over the years at restaurants and peoples’ houses. So I started making my own version, and it evolved and evolved until it ended up as this delicious salad I’m sharing with you today, complete with my vegan version of my mom’s poppy seed dressing recipe.

Strawberry Spinach Salad Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need:

How to Make Strawberry Spinach Salad

Make your dressing first. You can find the complete recipe for the poppy seed dressing here. It’s super easy!

Prefer to save time and use a store-bought dressing? I get it! You can look for a bottled poppy seed dressing, or try a balsamic or berry vinaigrette. Any of them would be delicious with this salad.

Before assembling the salad you’ll want to clean and hull your berries, chop your pecans, and dice the avocado.

Place everything into a big salad bowl, with the spinach on the bottom, everything else on top. Give everything a good toss. Drizzle the salad with poppy seed dressing and toss again. That’s it!

Variations

I often switch up the ingredients in this salad depending on what kind of mood I’m in or what I’ve got on hand. Here are a few versions to try:

Add more fruit. In addition to strawberries, I love adding some blueberries, orange slices, or mango chunks. You can even totally switch out the strawberries with one of these varieties of fruit if you like.

Switch up the greens. Spring mix or arugula work great as alternative to the spinach.

Switch up the nuts. Walnuts and slivered almonds are delicious in this salad.

Add your favorite vegan cheese. Try some store-bought or homemade vegan feta or fresh mozzarella.

Spinach Strawberry Salad Tips & FAQ

This salad is best served right away. If it sits too long the avocado will brown! If you want to do some prep work in advance, chop the nuts, clean and hull the berries, and store everything in separate containers. Dice the avocado right before serving, then add everything to a bowl and toss.

Use fresh ingredients, and sweet strawberries! How can you tell if your strawberries are sweet? Look for plump, bright red berries with lots of sweet fragrance.

Is this salad gluten-free? It is!

Serving ideas! I often make this salad for company and serve it before dinner. Want to make a meal of the salad? Add some protein and bread. Try this lemon & herb baked tofu and this vegan cornbread.

Like this recipe? If so, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter. And please stop back and leave me a review and rating below if you make it!

Strawberry Spinach Salad

This strawberry spinach salad is full of flavor and super easy to make! Refreshing and delicious, with a burst of sweetness. Serve it as a show-stealing side dish or make a meal of it by adding some protein!

Prep Time 10 minutes

Total Time 10 minutes

Servings 4

Calories 380 kcal

Author Alissa Saenz

Ingredients

8 ounces fresh spinach

16 ounces fresh strawberries, hulled, cleaned, and halved

1/2 cup pecans, roughly chopped

1 avocado, diced

1/2 cup poppy seed dressing (or as needed)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

Place the spinach into a large salad bowl, then place the strawberries, pecans and avocado on top.

Drizzle the salad with dressing and toss to distribute the ingredients.

Sprinkle the salad with salt and pepper to taste.

Divide onto plates and serve.

Recipe Notes

Serves 4 as a side dish.

Nutrition Facts

Strawberry Spinach Salad

Amount Per Serving

Calories 380 Calories from Fat 300

% Daily Value*

Fat 33.3g51%

Saturated Fat 4.4g22%

Sodium 119mg5%

Potassium 866mg25%

Carbohydrates 27.6g9%

Fiber 8.6g34%

Sugar 14.7g16%

Protein 5.4g11%

Calcium 125mg13%

Iron 3mg17%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

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from http://easyveganrecipes.info/strawberry-spinach-salad/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=strawberry-spinach-salad from http://easyveganbreakfasts.blogspot.com/2020/05/strawberry-spinach-salad.html

[easyveganbreakfasts]

Strawberry Spinach Salad

This strawberry spinach salad is full of flavor and super easy to make! Refreshing and delicious, with a burst of sweetness. Serve it as a show-stealing side dish or make a meal of it by adding some protein!

I have a weird thing about salads: I generally don’t like sweet things in them. I’m a savory salad kind of girl.

I find most people go nuts over restaurant salads with stuff like cranberries, apples, fruity dressings…that kind of thing. And those salads are so not for me! Give me a good old Caesar salad any day.

But, there is one exception. A big old spinach salad with fresh berries is so my jam. Especially during the spring and summer months. It’s so good!

I’ve been served a bunch of versions of this salad over the years at restaurants and peoples’ houses. So I started making my own version, and it evolved and evolved until it ended up as this delicious salad I’m sharing with you today, complete with my vegan version of my mom’s poppy seed dressing recipe.

Strawberry Spinach Salad Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need:

How to Make Strawberry Spinach Salad

Make your dressing first. You can find the complete recipe for the poppy seed dressing here. It’s super easy!

Prefer to save time and use a store-bought dressing? I get it! You can look for a bottled poppy seed dressing, or try a balsamic or berry vinaigrette. Any of them would be delicious with this salad.

Before assembling the salad you’ll want to clean and hull your berries, chop your pecans, and dice the avocado.

Place everything into a big salad bowl, with the spinach on the bottom, everything else on top. Give everything a good toss. Drizzle the salad with poppy seed dressing and toss again. That’s it!

Variations

I often switch up the ingredients in this salad depending on what kind of mood I’m in or what I’ve got on hand. Here are a few versions to try:

Add more fruit. In addition to strawberries, I love adding some blueberries, orange slices, or mango chunks. You can even totally switch out the strawberries with one of these varieties of fruit if you like.

Switch up the greens. Spring mix or arugula work great as alternative to the spinach.

Switch up the nuts. Walnuts and slivered almonds are delicious in this salad.

Add your favorite vegan cheese. Try some store-bought or homemade vegan feta or fresh mozzarella.

Spinach Strawberry Salad Tips & FAQ

This salad is best served right away. If it sits too long the avocado will brown! If you want to do some prep work in advance, chop the nuts, clean and hull the berries, and store everything in separate containers. Dice the avocado right before serving, then add everything to a bowl and toss.

Use fresh ingredients, and sweet strawberries! How can you tell if your strawberries are sweet? Look for plump, bright red berries with lots of sweet fragrance.

Is this salad gluten-free? It is!

Serving ideas! I often make this salad for company and serve it before dinner. Want to make a meal of the salad? Add some protein and bread. Try this lemon & herb baked tofu and this vegan cornbread.

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Strawberry Spinach Salad

This strawberry spinach salad is full of flavor and super easy to make! Refreshing and delicious, with a burst of sweetness. Serve it as a show-stealing side dish or make a meal of it by adding some protein!

Prep Time 10 minutes

Total Time 10 minutes

Servings 4

Calories 380 kcal

Author Alissa Saenz

Ingredients

8 ounces fresh spinach

16 ounces fresh strawberries, hulled, cleaned, and halved

1/2 cup pecans, roughly chopped

1 avocado, diced

1/2 cup poppy seed dressing (or as needed)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

Place the spinach into a large salad bowl, then place the strawberries, pecans and avocado on top.

Drizzle the salad with dressing and toss to distribute the ingredients.

Sprinkle the salad with salt and pepper to taste.

Divide onto plates and serve.

Recipe Notes

Serves 4 as a side dish.

Nutrition Facts

Strawberry Spinach Salad

Amount Per Serving

Calories 380 Calories from Fat 300

% Daily Value*

Fat 33.3g51%

Saturated Fat 4.4g22%

Sodium 119mg5%

Potassium 866mg25%

Carbohydrates 27.6g9%

Fiber 8.6g34%

Sugar 14.7g16%

Protein 5.4g11%

Calcium 125mg13%

Iron 3mg17%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

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