Cake and Complaints.

Hello, my bloggy world. I'm still here, doin' mah stuff. Today, I'm making Neckbone Stew (I just used some cheap beef neckbones and seared them in butter with salt & pepper, then deglazed that with onions, and added veggies & stock. It's been simmering for hours. That'll be dinner.  I am also making Grandma Georgia's Sour Cream Cake, and I thought I'd blog it, jurst becurrze.

Neckbones R good.

Grandma Georgia is my Hubby's grandma. She's a feisty 90, mostly lost in demetia--suspended sometime in the fifties some days, getting fractious and locking horns with care workers and with other other residents. She even gets into fights. LOL. She's a tiny little bundle of sticks with a fiery soul. She had a little book of recipes, very 50s recipes, full of butter and LOTS of sugar, and she let me copy some down. One of which is the eggy, sugary sour cream cake, which is delish.  So I thought I'd bake some today. Dan comes home from training in New Jersey -- Alex has turned the house into a romper room but heck. Let's bake (and bitch, 'cause I do that so well).

First we start with the recipe.

Add caption (what if I don't wanna?)

Georgia is Dan's favourite relative. She helped raise him while his mom worked, and she loves Dan like nobody else in this world. He is the only person that dedicates time for her. He makes sure she gets her hair cuts and her bags of M&Ms. He takes her to the doctor. His father rarely sees her. His other siblings, even less.

Ready... set... bake!

Ideally, you should let the butter soften to room temperature. Since I didn't,
I cubed it, and tossed it into the mixing bowl anyway (I'm such a rebel)

Georgia has been getting progressively worse, dementia-wise for a while now.  It's hard for Dan to cope with seeing someone he loves so much fading away into a stranger; somebody he never met. She doesn't recognize him very often. She thinks he's other people sometimes.

THREE cups o' sugar, it's a lot, I know.  Just slice it thin. :^D

Regardless of how hard it is, my husband is usually dealing with her all the time. But as a caregiver, it can be stressful. The worst part of it is trying to get other family members involved. It's always a struggle.

I cracked open all six eggs into a little pourey-thing. Yes, that's the techincal
term for it.  It will make adding them easier, and there's less of a chance
of getting egg shells in your cake batter.

Before you put in your eggs, cream the sugar and butter together.

What's really frustrating, is that when people can be persuaded to help with Georgia, you end up seeing shit like this all over Facebook. So ANNOYING!

SO damned irritating.  Anyhoo.... I digress.....

Mixety Mix

Start adding your eggs one at a time. Trust me, they will divide themselves
ingeniously.

One straggler to go.

Use real vanilla please. Not the fake stuff. It's just better. I've never used
this brand. Hope it's okay. Dan made cookies a couple of weeks ago and
Alex dumped the whole bottle of my good stuff in the batter.

A little bit of salt.

I had to measure out the sour cream 'cause I had a 16 oz container. 

Blending all these beautiful ingredients.

I loved Georgia the moment I met her. In a weird way, she reminded me of my mom. But the good side of mom. The spirited, opinionated, frank part of her that I like. Georgia is sassy, with a slightly softened Southern drawl. I miss the old Georgia. She doesn't even know who I am at all. I can't imagine what Dan is going through, honestly.

Oh, right, I forgot. This is my sous-chef for the day.

He likes to eat raw flour. He likes it.

Try to get it all in the bowl this time, will ya kid?
Add the baking soda in at this time too.

It's so much easier to use a sieve rather than those sifter things that kill your
hands. Just dump the flour in and then shake, shake, shake, and it's done.

Mix it in.

Line two bread-pans with parchment. I
smudged a little butter in the pan to help
the parchment stick.

It's a pretty batter. Silky looking.

Try not to pay any heed to the grime all over my oven display. I'm a crappy
housekeeper. LOL.

I never had grandparents. They were all gone by the time I was old enough to acknowledge them. So I value Georgia a great deal. And I treasure the things she's passed onto us so far; including her butter-rich recipes--even if they were copied from some book years ago.  She loved them enough to write them down in her amazing cursive, and keep them in a book. I'll honour her by keeping them in my book for Alex to have.

Where's the cake, mom? You said there'd be cake!

They took an hour and fifteen for me.
The toothpick test doesn't lie.

I hope you'll try Georgia's Sour Cream Cake too! 

It's wonderful. Nice crunchy exterior, a subtle, not-too-sweet interior. Perfect with coffee or tea. I might try this recipe with a crumble topping on it. YUM!

Caught you, punklet! He was trying to gnaw on the corner
of the nearest cake.

What's new, and 365s

Greetings my blog-readers. I am trending towards normal. The meds still make me feel nauseated, but mostly at night, so it's no big deal. I still feel tired ALL THE TIME, but with a two year old, it's not like I have a lot of choices, I simply must function.

I had a blast at the 2015 Wizard World Comic Con. I went there with another author, and shared a table, and behind the table, I felt safe. I also met my first uber-fan, and it was like a jab of energy into my soul.  Nothing inspires like unadulterated flattery. LOL.

I've been revamping the look of my books, and trying to keep myself motivated, in spite of the stress and financial issues we are dealing with. For the third time in fifteen years, my husband was laid off from his job. This time it was because of the falling gas prices; seeing as he worked for a manufacturer that services mostly oil companies, I get it, but man, it just comes as another blow to our already precipitous situation.  He has a fallback job, but it pays quite a bit less, so he's doing his best, and I have been shooting my resume around, but the jobs either pay too little to make daycare justifiable, or they just don't even respond to my submissions. I'm not on unemployment, so I don't have to take the first thing that comes along. I can't afford NOT to be picky--but I'm competing with kids that cost less and that have degrees. It's hard not to take it all personally.  I really could use some structure in my day, and it would be great to get Alex into some kind of day program so he can socialize with other kids. I don't want him to grow up being one of those weird kids LOL. I could really stand to get out of the house regularly. I'm sure it would only do good for my anxiety issues.  But it's not easy finding something that will work.  Keep your fingers crossed for me folks.

In the meantime, I'm here taking my pic-a-day photos.  Here's the last 20 days, picking up where the last post left off.

21 - Cake Tin

22 - Rust

23 - Petals

24 - Portland's Double-Decker

25 - Wristband

26 - Chickadee-dee

27 - Peek-a-boo

28 - Pomme

29 - The apple's demise

30 - A 'thquo' as Alex calls them.

31 - Toyota Texture

32 - Magnificent Steamer

33 - Teddy Train (edible passengers)

34 - Wallpaper

35 - Panes

36 - Beads

37 - Spring Sprunging

38 - Leaves of Metal

39 - Neon

40 - 42

Project 365 - the first 20 days

This year, I hope I stick with it. It's fun. As long as I remember to do them every day, I should have fun with it.  I think it's fun--but I let things get in the way of projects a lot.  Cross your fingers for consistency. So here are the first 20 project 365 photo challenge. A pic a day, random subjects.

1 of 365 - Flower, dozing. She's getting a little gray-faced.

2 of 365 - Alex, being all morning cute.

3 of 365 - A contract

4 of 365 - Bookmarks in progress.

5 of 365 - Minions

6 of 365 - Candle bird

7 of 365 - Giving Alex a project to keep him out of mine.

8 of 365 - beads

9 of 365 - A tangle on grey

10 of 365 - Bookmark

11 of 365 - X marks the spot.

12 of 365 - A wee Walnut Bed.

13 of 365 - Lace

14 of 365 - Oberon Oak

15 of 365 - Leafy texture

16 of 365 - El Gato, 3 AM.

17 of 365 - Hook

18 of 365 - My beautiful man.

19 of 365 - Simon, doing what he does best, besides being
an asshole.

20 of 365 - Latticework

So there you go so far.  I'm gearing up for comic-con, we go in Thursday for setup. I'll have pictures to post I'm sure. :)

Where have I been? Who the hell knows?

Things have been weird. I admit it. I have been dealing with an anxiety disorder, and as a self-confessed control freak, this condition has been less than pleasant to manage and cope with. I won't go on and on about the condition, I think I described it well enough in the last post. My challenge has been adjusting medications so that I can function.  I had hoped it was temporary, but alas it isn't. I know this because a small lapse in my anti-freakout meds and I start having flashes of extreme panic. It's so weird. Anyway, besides struggling with fatigue and nausea, I'm okay. I think things are slowly normalizing.  I'm now on Effexor and Buspar. My days of being medication free are over. For now. The upside is that I spend so much time being nauseous that I forget to eat, and I have lost a few pounds.

What has the Hungarican Chick been up to otherwise? Oh, this and that. I was hoping to have two books finished for Comic-Con this year, but I haven't been able to write with all this mental-health crap going on. So I will be promoing my normal stuff, and hopefully selling a few things, like bookmarks and postcards of some book covers (in addition to books and eBooks).

I've done a tiny bit of sewing, not much. Held a workshop on how to make Dormeuse caps, set up this new year's Topsails & Tea for the ORS, baked some, slept as much as I could manage, did a lot of reading, and obsessed over the G5 game 'Secret Society". It's annoyingly addictive. I find however, that the ambient music is really calming. I know.  The child is growing at an incredible rate. We had his Santa picture taken again this year.

He's grown, hasn't he? My boy. ::sniff::  I wish he'd stop growing! He's climbing everywhere and getting into everything. He displays a terrifyingly familiar sense of mischievousness and humour already. We're so screwed.  His second birthday was November 17, but we had a party on the 16th. The house was so full, I thought I was going to have a full on scream and flail attack, but I managed to bite it back and wasn't rude to anyone that I am aware of. So that's  a win. He was spoiled by his family, and then again at Christmas. The house is so full of toys right now I have no idea how to deal with it all. LOL.

Some bears and bunnies I made for a fair at Trackers Earth.
They're made from re-purposed receiving blankets. The bears,
specifically from Alex's receiving blankets.

I've also been job-hunting. Our finances are so terrible, I'm pretty sure that this is what the anxiety problems are about. But I am finding the process to be particularly stressful and painful. I am either under-qualified on paper for jobs I could do with my eyes closed, or overqualified, and all the jobs I find are underpaid. So much so, it would barely cover the $300 a week for daycare if at all.  The constant rejection is taking its toll on my ego. Someone who has such a broad skill base and great learning skills like I do should be a valuable employee, but instead I find myself competing with people with foo-foo degrees and zero experience. It's really annoying, and making me bitter. LOL.

So things have been marginally boring and uneventful on the most part. I've retrenched and been focusing on my mental balance and keeping the baby happy. Now I'm planning for the upcoming Comic Con at the end of January, and trying to prepare enough materials for it. I've done some sewing for a fair (pictured above).  I need to get back into my old habits and get back to blogging and creating. I feel kind of pent-up for not doing so lately.  So apologies to my regular readers for being super-quiet. And here is my video on how to patch/reinforce old jeans where the denim has thinned or torn.

I will work on some projects to share, probably after the 'Con. Happy New Year to all of my online friends and acquaintances. :)