SNOW CARAMELS

i promise, cross my heart, that i'm not just saying this so that all of you will visit me in this new tundra home of mine, but -16ºf is really not that bad.

maybe it's that i've been overly prepared with my new sweater layering skills and my new favorite thing, the bomber hat.

maybe it's that i never have to walk to a subway or hail a cab.

maybe it's that it gives me a good reason to stay inside and bake all day.

snow here is a friendly snow and people accept it. they don't kvetch about it, cancel their work, and then drink all day. life carries on, people bundle up, they drive safely. i hear there are even free cross country ski rentals at a local park.

this weekend, the snow helped us make caramels! we heated up our sugars and then poured it into the deep farm snow for the fastest cooling caramels i ever did make.

i imagine you can use any caramel recipe. i used the kitchn's. cooling caramels in the snow isn't the thing to do if you want perfect, smooth, rectangular, cutely wrapped, chewy caramels. it's more the thing to do if you want to have fun in the snow but are too much of a scaredy cat for a snow ball fight and just not feeling free spirited enough to make a snow angel.

they'll probably be a little bit crackly on the outsides from being frozen in the snow, and their shapes will be awkward. but you'll have fun, i promise.

basically all you do is you cook your sugars according to the recipe, and then instead of pouring the syrup into a prepared pan, quickly (and carefully!) run outside and drizzle it in some deep and clean snow. use a spoon or spatula to collect the hardened caramels from the snow, and then rinse off excess snow in a colander. pat them to dry and enjoy! 

don't forget to brush your teeth.

-yeh!

D.I.Y. CHRISTMAS TREE FLAGS

my new york friends often ask me if i'm bored here in north dakota.

it's a valid question. i would ask the same thing if i was in their position, watching a friend move from a city with three chinatowns to a place with one token chinese restaurant. 

the answer is: we don't get bored because we make our own fun.

every grocery store has a canning section and a beer brewing section, everyone has a grandma with stacks of vintage recipes scribbled on notecards that are fun to figure out, we have the time and the wood and the burly midwestern men (read: eggboys) to build anything we want, we have the space to garden and raise animals and dig random holes just because...

and when we see something crafty and cool in a store in new york but don't buy it because we've already spent all of our money on whiskey pickles and jalapeño jam, we make it.

there is a massive d.i.y. and crafting culture here. massive. and i can see why. we have, like, no stores, except for a michael's and a target and a hobby lobby. it's a bad thing for the anthropologie obsessor in me, but it's also kind of nice because i don't feel the pressure to buy other people's things and i can let your imagination run like a wild boar and it's cheap and it's fun.

i am assimilating.

i was so inspired by the wonderful be crafty workshop this weekend in fargo that yesterday i went with eggboy to target, and bought a tree but no ornaments: just some felt, burlap, pillow stuffing, and a hot glue gun. all night long we listened to old christmas songs while we glued together our ornaments in the shape of fortune cookies, sugar beets, shamu... 

our tree is so friggen cute.

so to start off what will surely be a bunch of d.i.y. posts, here is the easiest beyond easy thing to make ever. you probably don't even need directions. but humor me.

christmas tree flags

supplies

felt

sharp scissors 

a hot glue gun*

string

*i like using a hot glue gun because it dries so quickly. also, my first attempt at this was with fabric glue and it did not stick to the felt at all. 

clues

plug in your glue gun.

fold over about two inches of felt, and cut a triangle so that when you unfold it you have a diamond shape. 

glue the edges of one side of the diamond, and then fold it over your string and press down to seal.

repeat as many times as you want.

string on your tree or anywhere else!

(if you're real fancy you can stuff the flags with pillow stuffing!)

-yeh!

THE CHOO CHOO

another quick hello from new york! i'm at the back of the b.a.m. theater right now, eating almond cake and listening to new lieder. (i think this is gonna be a good show!) 

have i mentioned how exhausting this city is?

how do eight million people do it?

how did i do it for six years?

whatever, tomorrow i am going to eat a turkey donut and then on saturday i am going to play drums and on sunday we will go back to the midwest for farmland and latkes and driving everywhere in cars.

oh! i almost forgot. these photos are from when egg and i journeyed from north dakota to chicago before we left for new york. i think i love the train (and its cute breakfasts).

-yeh! 

CAKES AND CAKES AND CAKES

{1} marzipan over a chocolate cake for farmer gene and his wife, {2} a carrot cake that looks "too normal" according to mum, {3} my response to mum's concern, {4} a cookie cake for jaclyn, {5} red velvet with cream cheese and coconut, {6} rosette practice. oy.

---

you guys. 

this whole nocturnal thing is baaaaananas. a typical day for me begins at 1 am with things like cinnamon rolls the size of my head and sixty cavity's worth of caramel rolls. by 5 am i'll typically be frosting a cake or cupcakes, and then after that i come home and wake eggboy up with shakshuka or egg tacos or some other big breakfast because it's dinner for me and a typical meal for him.

you'd think the logical next step would be for me to go to sleep while eggboy farms... but 1) i have not yet found blackout curtains that are anywhere near acceptably pretty, 2) it appears that small towns come with a bell tower that likes to play patriotic tunes every hour on the hour, and 3) i just started watching orange is the new black.  

so your girl is running on approximately negative hours of sleep and i have zits about it.

but it is so worth it!  

because i am frosting so many cakes! and it is so fun and creatively challenging! and no offense to my sister's wedding cake but with the help from the other bakers and the pressure knowing that the cakes i make are going to people who aren't in my immediate family is making me feel way more legit. (except for when i over beat the cream cheese frosting and it gets droopy, which so far has been every time.)

almost every day this week i've come home from the bakery and made more cake, mostly for friends, so the above photos are a mix of ones i've made at the bakery and ones i've made at home.

not pictured: the salty pimp inspired cupcakes that i made today that are in fact "salty princesses" because i suppose one simply does not throw around the word "pimp" in grand forks, north dakota. at least not as it pertains to desserts.

ok. it's 11 am aka way past my bedtime and i think i will go write about new music. 

-yayyyyyyy