A tough move

I realize I'm being ridiculous. Logically, I know I'm being childish, but one of the lessons I've learned in the last few years that's brought me to this place is that knowledge and emotions often have nothing to do with each other. Knowing that I'm being childish isn't stopping me from feeling the way I do.

This is the first place I've ever lived where no one could get to me if I didn't want them to. It's the first place I've ever lived where I felt safe and knew that I could leave something that was hurting me on the other side of the door. It's the first place that I've really felt at home, settled and even slightly stable. It's the first place I've lived that I was able to add another person to the equation and not have it completely undo my life. It's the first place I've lived that I really enjoyed coming home to at the end of the day and didn't have to worry about what sort of disaster would take place once I got there.

Of course I realize these things can't be attributed to the space and structure, but are instead due to work I've done on myself in the last three years. I know this, but it doesn't matter. This has been my safe place; my happy place; my sanctuary from the world for the most important and best three years of my life. I became a new person in this place. And even while I know that I can't attribute the change to the space, I know that the space was integral to that change.

When I moved in, I blessed the apartment and dedicated the space to health, growth and creativity. Those things certainly happened here. Being in this space allowed me to hide, to sit and cry for hours and days, turn up my music and dance like an idiot, sit numbly contemplating every last fuck up I have made, laugh at stupid things all by myself in the middle of the night, scream and yell at thin air, sing at the top of my voice and otherwise completely fucking lose my mind in every way possible.

Which I desperately needed to do.

And it helped. Then I found Jami and she joined me here and, as indicated, it did not completely unravel my life. In fact, it in all ways made my life better. And now it's time for us to move on into a space that allows us to live more like we want to live; a space that's ours (in someone else's house).

But I'm scared. I've been good here. I've been happy here, and safe and healthy in a way that I don't think I've ever been. And there's some stupid part of me that doesn't care how much I know that this isn't about a fucking apartment and is totally afraid that leaving it is going to cause every good thing I've managed to accomplish for myself in the last three years to come completely unraveled. I feel scared and vulnerable and unsettled; for the past month, I've been having dreams that I get home from work and my mother is sitting in my new living room waiting for me. I don't need to be Freud to understand that I don't feel secure in the idea that I can properly protect myself once I leave here.

But it's too late to change my mind. More importantly, I can feel this apartment trying to spit me out. I've accomplished what I needed to here and have outgrown the space; it is time to move on whether I feel ready to or not. But this is hard. As soon as I put the first item in the first box, I won't really live here anymore. I've been putting it off all night, but now I'm going to hit POST and face my bookshelves, box in hand, and promise them better organization in the next place, just like I do every time I move.

Savory Sundays #1: Strawberry-Cinnamon Coffee Cake with Orange Zest

So, taking a cue from my wonderful girlfriend who inspires me in so many ways, I have decided that it is past time to get this mostly unused blog up and running. I have a need to write (even if I do find a million excuses every day not to sit my butt down and do it), and I also have a need to cook as this is what helps me retain what little sanity remains to me. In addition, every time I've blogged about food, I've gotten requests for recipes and even pics. So, in the fashion of Jami's Wily Wednesdays in which she posts a new art project to her blog every Wednesday, and Kyle Hepworth's Something a week, I will now institute Savory Sundays. Savory Sunday blogs will feature one new recipe either attempted or created by me and written about here where you will get a recipe to try and picture to oogle. It seems to hit three birds with one stone, so let's give it a shot.

Disclaimer: The name is actually a bit of a misnomer as our first Sunday savory is actually a Sunday sweet.

Strawberries have been abundant and inexpensive lately, so I've been buying them left and right. We can only get through them so quickly though, and one of my favorite ways to use up fruit that's slightly past it's prime is to bake it into something. Therefore, this week we have Strawberry-Cinnamon Coffee Cake with Orange Zest.

I've spent all weekend trying to think of a good recipe for my kick off, but nothing was coming to me. I think it was probably my mind trying to block me again, but after a while, I was finally able to come up with a short list of ingredients I wanted to play with. I didn't get too wild here: strawberries, cinnamon, oatmeal and orange.

I googled strawberry cake and strawberry bread, but all of the recipes I found seemed like the end product would taste like it came out of a box. We all know I'm no fan of food from boxes, so I set about making some modifications to the easiest and most basic recipe. Here is what followed:

Strawberry-Cinnamon Coffee Cake with Orange Zest

In a medium sized bowl, I combined the following:

1/2 C White whole wheat flour
1/2 C All-purpose unbleached flour
1/2 C Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Cloves
1/8 tsp Ground mace
2 tsp baking powder

I use the two flours because I prefer whole wheat flour for the fact that it is less processed and more nutritious than all-purpose flours. White whole wheat is wonderful to bake with, and has a higher rise than regular whole wheat flours, but I find that the end product can still be somewhat dense. The compromise of 50/50 seems to work better (as compared to the 1:2 general rule when using traditional whole wheat flour). In places where the end result is not expected to rise (as in the topping recipe below), I generally use the white whole wheat exclusively.

In a larger bowl, I combined:

1 Egg
1/2 C Milk
2 tsp Butter, melted
The zest of half an orange

Once the egg was evenly distributed and these ingredients were well blended, I added the flour mixture and stirred until the batter was smooth.

After pouring the batter into a 9x9 pan and making sure it was evenly distributed, I topped it with about 1 1/2 cups sliced, fresh strawberries.

In the medium bowl that had held the flour mixture, I combined:

1/2 C White whole wheat flour
1/2 C Brown sugar
1/4 C Rolled oats
1/4 C Butter, softened
1/4 C Nuts, chopped

I combined these to a crumble using my hand in the bowl and evenly distributed it over the top of the strawberries, then baked it for approximately 30 minutes.

The end result:



And this is what it looked like on the plate. The combination of the crunchy, crumbly topping, the tart and sweet strawberries, and the orange zested spice cake underneath was delicious and flavorful, combining a variety of flavors and textures in each bite.



What I would do differently next time:

Thanks to my electric oven, some of the peaks of the topping blackened. Next time, I will probably cover the pan with aluminum foil for the first half of baking to prevent this.

Also, I would probably cut as much as half of the sugar next time. This cake is delicious as is, but the worst thing in it is the full cup of sugar (between the cake and the topping) in addition to the natural sugars in the strawberries. I think next time I'll use 1/4 cup each in the cake and topping.

The vote:

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

I will definitely be making this again. One of my guinea pigs went back for more.... twice. It's a spicy, fruity, moist and soft cake with a wonderfully nutty and sweet crunchy topping that's basically impossible to refuse.