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(Sorry about the poor-quality picture - unless it's really sunny outside, there's virtually no light in my house, except my bedroom.)
I'm not sure where this recipe came from - my Mom's friend Bernadette, maybe. Mom's been making it for a quarter of a century.
You need:
Ingredients (topping):
~ 1 cup all-purpose flour (UK users, use plain. Also, a US cup is a little bigger than an English one - about 2/3 of a standard British mug.)
~ 1 cup sugar (I'm an unrefined person, but white works fine, although it's not quite as sweet.)
~ 1 tsp baking powder
~ 1/2 tsp salt
~ 4 tbsp butter
~ 2 eggs
Ingredients (filling):
~ 2 large Bramley apples. (We use Bramleys. Proper French people use dessert apples, since they don't really have sour apples over there. You can use dessert apples, or actually any apples, but use a little less sugar if you're not using cooking apples.)
~ 3/4 cup sugar
~ 2 tbsp flour
~ 1/2 tsp cinnamon
~ 1/4 tsp salt
~ 1 tsp vanilla
~ 1/4 cup water
Equipment:
~ 1 chopping board
~ 1 peeler
~ 2 large bowls
~ 1 small bowl
~ 1 electric mixer OR 1 french whisk and 1 wooden spoon
~ 1 sieve
~ 1 spatula
~ 1 cobbler dish. You can use anything made of ceramic or pyrex - lasagne dishes work well - but it should be about 2 inches deep. You can use deeper if you need, but you have to double the cooking time.
Method:
1 ) Fill your first large bowl with water, and add a couple pinches of salt. (This will pull out any bugs in your apples, and keep them from going too brown.)
2 ) Peel and chop apples into slices. (Thin slices or chunky slices - it's nice either way.) Put the apple slices in the bowl of water.
3 ) Mix all filling ingredients (except apples) in small bowl.
4 ) Add sliced apples and mix around until all slices are coated with filling.
5 ) Beat egg in other large bowl. Add all the other topping ingredients, sifting flour as you add it.
6 ) Lightly grease your cobbler dish. Doesn't need to be as heavy as you'd do for a cake, since you're not expecting it to come out of there in one piece. You can get away with not greasing it if you have a dishwasher.
7 ) Pour apples and filling into cobbler dish. Dot topping around on the top, using the spatula. Don't worry too much if it doesn't cover perfectly.
8 ) Bake at #6-7 for 35-40 minutes.
Makes one large cobbler, which is good eaten hot or cold (although I like it hot), with cream or ice cream or just on its own.
Yes, I'm still alive, but spending a lot of time trying to catch up on the sleep I missed last week.
Money is extremely tight - worryingly tight - and that always makes me want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. I do have to go see the bank manager sometime this week, though, and make an appointment with my financial consultant to figure out how to pay off the overdraft. Because at the rate they're taking it from me, even if I put all my wages into the account and spend nothing on anything other than basic groceries - which is what I've been doing for the last month - the reserve fees are so punitive that the debt still gets larger. They're actually taking more from me in overdraft fines than I'm earning at work, the scoundrels. So I need to find out if I can get a short-term loan where fixed interest rates are calculated into the monthly payment, or a (horrified gasp) credit card, or what. Jaz will know, I just have to stop being an ostrich and go see her.
(Ja, I know ostriches don't really bury their heads in the sand...it's just one of those images that's hard to break.)
Of course I'm having panicky nightmares of having to declare bankruptcy, and having the bank steal my car and clothes and shoes. You hear stories about people who borrow fifty quid from a moneylender and end up £15,000 in debt even though they didn't borrow any more money, because the print on your contract that you need an electron microscope to read said that you're willing to pay 4000% interest. Compounded weekly. And if you don't, we'll repossess your babies and sell them to Madonna, and break your kneecaps so we can collect on the insurance.
Um, did I mention in the last couple of months that I've been overreacting? To everything? I think it must be hormones, or lack of sleep, or something. Every minor mishap feels like a crisis. (Actual crises I deal with just fine, but that's just how I roll. I usually work better under pressure. Except for the times that I retreat and ignore the world.)
Curt went to Jersey a couple days ago. And there were promptly six murders on the island. An island with basically zero violent crime. I swear, that guy has the worst timing in the world. It doesn't appear to be anything to do with him, but somehow he always manages to be around when things go to hell. So of course when he gets back, I imagine I'll demand a visit and frantically examine him for bullet holes - even though the news reports say that all the victims were Polish, and I don't think anyone could mistake a tall skinny black guy with a very proper British accent for a Pole from Jersey.
I have to sign up for college this week, if I can get the money. I don't even know that I want to go this year. Right now I'm so tired I don't want to do anything. But if I don't, then I'm not moving forward with life, and life isn't going to get better unless I have more money, and that means work, and THAT means education. I'm totally unemployable right now. Your self-esteem has to take a bit of a hit when you're so unwanted in the workplace that you can't even get a job in Wilkinson or McDonalds.
I know. I've tried.
Plus, there's Kurisu-San. I miss him. Like, a LOT. If he doesn't sign up for school then I don't know that I'll have the heart to continue - oh, I'll probably do it, I'll just feel weird - but if I don't sign up, then I definitely won't get to see him. So I suppose I have to take my chance. He still isn't answering texts from me, and with any other man that would be a warning to stay away, but this one is different; he thinks differently to other people I know - and I think that if I can talk to him in person, things will be okay.
I know some of you will feel duty-bound to give me your opinions on this, but all I can say is: you don't know him.
Of course, he may tell me to leave him alone. I'd be surprised if he did, but he might. Even that would be better, though. I don't like silence, I like to know what's going on. If I've caused offense, I like to know why, so I can either try to make amends, or at least consider changing my behavior in the future. And if I just knew that he was OK, then I could get rid of this sick feeling of dread that I sometimes get when I think of him.
And the only things I can imagine are that either I've offended him, or there's something wrong with him that makes him feel like he can't talk to me. Logically, there must be something wrong, yeah? For a guy to be happy and open and friendly with you at night, and cheerfully planning to come and see you in the morning, and then totally block you from his life in the afternoon - something must have happened. I just need to find out what. And I imagine I WILL ferret it out sooner or later; I'm not a person who can let things like that lie.
But Lord, I miss him. It seems so strange, to miss a person so much when you haven't actually seen them in a year or more. I don't remember going this long without talking to him, though. Oh, there probably was a period this long, but I don't remember it. I think it's only been about four months, but it seems like forever. I think maybe that's one reason I've been so crabby over the last few months. Every time something goes wrong, whether it's a major crisis or just a stupid little thing, I think, I wish I could talk to K. K always makes me feel better. And when I have nightmares about him, which I often do - ones where he's really sad - I think, I wish I could talk to K. K always says that I make him feel better.
I have friends and family, of course, and Curt, and I even talked to my ex the other day - but one person is no substitute for another.
Well, this note has certainly taken a depressing turn.
Hopefully autumn will come soon. That, or some nice hot August days. Either way I hope we'll get some dry weather. I always feel like shit when it's damp outside.
I was having such an awful time today, what with insomnia last night - I haven't slept in thirty-six hours now - and pain that I couldn't shake off, I gave up on the idea of salad for lunch, and had waffles with ice cream, banana and cinnamon sugar.
I know you're jealous. It's OK, you can admit it. 'Cause I have the recipe here. It's actually fairly healthy - more so if you use low-fat ice cream or frozen yoghurt, and make your own waffles - and so easy even Wayne Rooney couldn't fuck it up.
Ingredients - for the waffle batter:
~ 125g butter or vegetable spread
~ 150g sugar (I use unrefined for just about everything, but any kind of sugar except powdered should be OK, depending on your tastes)
~ 250g plain flour
~ 1 cup (250ml) milk
~ 3 large eggs
~ 1tsp baking powder
~ OPTIONAL: 1tsp vanilla extract
~ OPTIONAL: juice from one lemon
NOTE: Please bear in mind this recipe is to serve 6. That's 6 fairly large eaters. You can freeze the extra batter for up to two months though, which is what I usually do, or refrigerate it for two days. It's easier than trying to scale down, unless math is your thing.
Ingredients - for the fixin's:
~ Vanilla ice cream
~ 1 banana per person
~ Ground cinnamon
~ A sprinkling of brown sugar (just a teeny bit - or leave it out if you want)
Alternatively you can swap the cinnamon and sugar for maple syrup, or chocolate sauce. I'll give you a recipe for chocolate sauce at a later date, I don't like the ones that come out of tubes.
Equipment:
~ 1 set of scales
~ 1 mixing bowl
~ 1 sieve
~ 1 cup (that's an American cup - about 2/3 of an average British mug)
~ 1 teaspoon
~ 1 waffle iron
~ 1 balloon whisk
~ 1 ice cream scoop
~ 1 serving bowl
~ 1 spoon to eat with
Method:
1 ) Measure out dry ingredients and chuck together in mixing bowl, sifting flour as you go.
2 ) Add wet ingredients.
3 ) Whisk together until you have a runny batter.
4 ) Lightly grease your waffle iron (or don't, if it's non-grease) and heat up.
5 ) Gently spoon batter into iron. Don't overfill, it rises a bit, although not a huge lot.
6 ) Cook until golden. Or a bit more brown if you prefer.
7 ) Place waffles on the bottom of serving bowl. Top with ice-cream, banana and cinnamon sugar.
If you don't have a waffle iron, or don't like to cook, you can use pre-made waffles from the supermarket - just make sure to get the sweet or plain ones instead of the salted ones. If this is the way you're playing it, you get to skip steps 1-6, lucky you.
See - idiot-proof, and it's really good!
...How long will it take before it hits ya
And you begin to understand
The dirty underhanded kind of plan
To place pandemonium upon the land
Face to face with the faces of death
On a daily basis
To the point we embrace this
Demonic debauchery
Negatively affecting the psyche
That's why we like to see
Some type of monster, chasin'
Erasin' people from the face of the earth like Jason
When that was just a movie really illustratin'
The illy type of shit that they really got waitin'
And I can't be condoning 'em
Sick minds perpetuating pandemonium
~ The Pharcyde
I am completely torn in half right now. Torn between anger and sadness. Between understanding and condemnation. So angry at both sides, for completely different reasons. (Thanks, Kidfos, for putting that so simply and clearly before, in a way that I was unable to.)
In this, as in so many other things, I straddle the line.
I haven't been back to London, but I understand things are a little better. Not good, but better. I don't know if this is just the eye of the storm, so to speak, or if the rioters have burned themselves out. Or perhaps it's just that the city's basically on lockdown now, and the police now have permission to use water cannons and plastic bullets.
A YouGov survey today said that nearly a third of people surveyed were in favor of using live ammo on the rioters. Evidently totally missing the point - or not caring - that use of unnecessarily strong force by the police was what sparked this crisis in the beginning.
These are our children. And they're in pain. Yes, they're dangerous. Yes, they need to be stopped. Yes, they need to be brought before a judge and held responsible for their crimes, and find a way to pay their debt and help rebuild the city. They do not deserve to be killed because of a feverish madness that has infected them briefly. And it is a form of temporary insanity, or they would do this all the time. Perhaps it takes someone who straddles the line to see that.
I'm supposed to be at work. I hate that I'm not. If I were a bank cashier or a shop assistant or a veterinarian, I'd be perfectly justified in staying home. But I'm not. I'm a youth worker, and a crisis support worker. Dealing with situations like this is my job, although we've never had anything on this scale. Public transport isn't reliable enough to get me in every day, even if I could afford the train tickets, but if I had someone in London to stay with...but then there's Mom. Perhaps that's the biggest area in which I'm torn in two. Wanting to go out and do my job, do what I know is right - but morally bound to stay home and protect the family and castle.
Times like this are when I most resent having people who depend on me. For so many years my job has been to look after my mother. And I love my mother, of course I do. I love her more than anything - evidently more than my kids at work, which is why I'm here instead of there. Yet I am past the stage in my life where I'm content to protect the home front, and it chafes on me that I am unable to go out and perhaps help a dozen people, because of that one who requires me above all others.
Stay home and ignore my job, and the kids who rely on me. Or go to London, do my job, and leave my mother unprotected. Nothing major has happened here - we had a gang of kids outside the front yesterday evening, talking loudly about wanting to loot, but after awhile they just went home - but you can never be sure. If they're kicking off in Gloucester, for pete's sake, then there's no reason they won't here. It's not so much the idea of leaving the home undefended, though, it's more the risk to me that going into London would cause. My heart and soul find this risk low and perfectly acceptable - I am not a coward, not someone who runs from danger. My mother does not find any kind of risk acceptable when it comes to me, no matter how long the odds of being hurt. And because of that, because of that refusal to loosen the bonds, my brain constantly bombards me with the same question - If you put yourself in danger and something happens to you, how will Mom survive?
This is not a question that most children have to deal with. Usually the people you have to protect are your kids, not your parents. But since I started walking and talking my main focus in life has been to make sure that mother is okay. And that means *I* have to stay okay.
I wonder how many parents feel this way. How many feel the burden of love that precludes putting themselves in any danger, not because they're scared of dying, but because doing so feels like abandoning their families. How many men want to join the military and fight for their country but feel unable to leave a clinging wife and children, amid unspoken accusations of desertion. How many people want to do the right thing, even when that involves some physical risk, but the guilt keeps them at home. Obviously not everyone feels that crushing burden, or nobody would ever leave home at all.
I have always known that love can smother as easily as warm, but at times like this that knowledge is amplified.
So I sit here, watching other people doing my job for me, and feeling totally useless and unnecessary.
...unhappy with the riches 'cause you're piss-poor morally. ~ T. I.
Romance novels. Pokemon. Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. The smell of freesias. Hiragana. Kurisu-San.
Focus, Sati. Focus and breathe.
I do not do well with fire and explosions. I have far too many memories where burned-out cars and buses and homes - and eyes - feature highly. I remember the Brixton riots of 1995, and I believe I remember the Brixton and Broadwater Farm riots of 1985, although I was still toddling around in diapers at the time. Loud noises and smouldering cars have the ability to send me into a post-traumatic state. So no, to answer your texts and messages, I am not okay. I am at home in Alby now, where it's safe and mostly peaceful, but I am not okay. I am, however, safe, which is more than I can say for Curt and his sisters, or my ex boyfriend Siji, or several dozen of my friends.
I can feel it out there, all that anger and fear and hate, and I can barely breathe for it.
I am full of rage. Full of sadness, and full of rage. And that is precisely why I can't judge the people I'm angry at too harshly - because I know where they come from. I know what it's like to scream and scream and know that nobody hears you. I too have felt that free-floating anger, that ire without a focus, that lividity that bubbles through my veins and obstructs my vision so that I cannot see where to aim it. I see so many people causing others pain, and I want to hurt them back. I want to grab all the looters and smash their heads in. I want to do the same to Cameron and Clegg and all the politicians who live in luxury while their people struggle to feed themselves. I'd gladly smash in Dumbya's face, too, for starting a war that led to a global recession. And all the faces of the fundies-who-call-themselves-Muslims who attacked on 9/11, and precipitated the war. And all the people who taught them that hurting people is ok - their teachers, their leaders...and the westerners who bombed their people way back when, to make them want to take their vengeance on America.
In fact, bring me everyone who thinks that hurting people is okay, and I'll have to restrain myself from ripping their fucking heads off.
Oh, I'm sorry - irony, you say?
This is the problem with cause-and-effect, of course. You can never trace a thing back far enough.
Rebel without a cause. Rebels with plenty of cause and without a focus. They come to mean much the same, in the end.
I see so many people wanting to judge. To place blame. I see very few willing to accept it. They did this. Nothing to do with me. It's the fault of all those pampered kids who sponge off the government. I have a job, I don't sponge or steal. It's the fault of the government for not providing enough help for the poor communities. Not my fault - I didn't vote for Cameron or Clegg, I didn't vote at all. The blame goes to the parents who raised their kids with the same lack of values that they were raised with, to the poor role models portrayed in the media, to the ministers who cut funding to schools, to everyone else. I didn't do this, THEY did this. We all have such set ideas of who to point the finger at.
We all did this. We, as a society, have a lot to answer for.
What do people need? They need food and water and shelter, obviously. And they need love and affection, and they need to be heard, and they need to feel like they have choices. Lack of choices are what cause depression. Eating disorders. Suicide. That frantic need to take control of your life, at any cost.
I do wonder how many of the fingers that are pointing are attached to people who have spent significant amounts of time in Tottenham or Brixton or Peckham. Choice - or more accurately, the feeling of having choice - is rare and valuable there. Whether the kids who are raised in those areas ACTUALLY have choices available to them or not is almost irrelevant - they FEEL like they don't. Oh, there are always success stories, about kids who were smart and motivated and found a way out of the ghetto that didn't involve a life of crime, and those stories are wonderful. But the flip side of them is that people who weren't raised in that kind of poverty think that those cases are the norm, that everyone should be able to make a success of themselves if they just tried a little harder. We forget that behaviour is learned. Nobody - or few people - are born bad. People are not born miserable. We get that way because of how we are raised, and then we raise our kids the same, unless we're lucky enough to have an external influence that teaches us another way to live. You cannot break a cycle from inside without help.
I am not justifying. There are no justifications for what we've seen over the last three days. But there are reasons. There are always reasons. We, as a community, as a country, need to be able to look back and try to find out the why's and how's of this situation. And the why is not simply that a bunch of bad kids spontaneously decided to take what they wanted and harm people for fun. Happy people do not harm others.
I'm so mad at the rioters for shooting themselves in the feet. Again. And yet, I understand. I understand a mentality that says, even if unconsciously, maybe if I shoot myself in the foot then someone will notice and give me the treatment I need for this gangrenous arm.
I don't have the answers. Not any of them. I don't know if we can trace anything back to an original cause or if the pain that our children feel goes back right to the beginning of time. I don't know how to fix a society that's broken. But I know a place we can start. So I'd like you all to do a favour for me, if you can. Tonight when you go to bed, and you get to feeling righteous about the way you've conducted yourself this week, give yourselves a pat on the back for being a good person. Congratulate yourself for resisting temptation. You could have chosen to be part of the violence, could have chosen to sacrifice others to take what you want, and you didn't. That's significant. That's wonderful. And then, after you've congratulated yourselves for making the right choice - think for just a minute or two about how lucky you are to realise, to have the knowledge, that that choice is yours to make. And be thankful.
A first post should always be a happy post, I think. Start as you mean to go on. Things are not happy now, but they were, and will be again, so I shall give you this post from a month ago.
My name is Sati, and I love people. That is what I do. It is my job, my passion, my compulsion, my need.
There's a London based rapper and singer, who's been around for a few years but really rose to prominence this year. His name's Example, and he's more than a little bit fabulous. I intend to write more about him in a post soon, but for now, it's not actually him that I'm concerned with, but one of his songs.
Kickstarts. Like when your bike stalls out, and you have to get it going again. At least that's what my biking friends tell me - although what do I know, I've only ever ridden pillion.
He's doing mostly dance music right now, so it's repetitive. One verse, repeated. One hook, repeated. That's OK. It works.
You should probably YouTube the video, if you're interested. You don't have to or anything, it just might explain this post a little better if you had the images to go along with it.
You want me to come over, I got an excuse
Might be holding your hand, but I'm holding it loose
Go to talk, then we choke, it's like our neck's in a noose
Avoid the obvious, we should be facing the truth
Start to think it could be fizzling out
Kinda shocked because I never really had any doubts
Look into your eyes, imagine life without you
And the love kickstarts again.
And that's me and Light of My Life, right there. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is, as yet, unclear - and really, it's moot. It's us. It is what it is.
Ten years. Half of our teens and half of our twenties. Many partners for both of us. A handful of whom I've loved, and been in love with - really, truly. A couple times when we tried to make it as a couple, only to be tossed aside by fate and chance. Countless times that I've fallen in and out of love with him, and then back in again. One episode of cheating when we were just getting together, one rape, one miscarriage, one year of amnesia, one bad marriage.
And always, just when - like now - I think we're fizzling out, I look at him and my engine catches, and my heart remembers who it beats for again.
I do have more to say, but...but.
