Sometime in January of this year I lost my mind. I haven no other explanation for the fact that I took more than half of one paycheck and bought a ticket to Burning Man after barely a few days of learning it existed. I sort of skimmed over the Wikipedia entry on the event and, gripped with the reverent belief that I shall become a journalist, I jumped feet first into an event I'm discovering I am woefully unprepared for even now. Initially, my dear friend and cohort Rose was going to go on the trip with me and it would be some madcap adventure out in the desert. Well, things changed. Rose quit her internship, moved to California and is currently gearing up to spend six months in Antarctica (no, I'm not at all kidding). Rose is sort of a badass on epic Joan Jett-level proportions. All that aside, I did manage to talk two friends into coming with me so no matter what played out it wouldn't be all bad. Also, there was less of a chance of me dying in the desert alone.

Have I mentioned to you how much I loathe the desert? It's a deep-seeded hatred that stems back to just after I graduated from undergrad and left home to journey west to my first after college job. In Utah. Back then everyone pretty much thought I was crazy. If they weren't complaining about the heat then it was the Mormons, but I insisted I had never had a problem with either of those things. And thinking back on my experiences that isn't what makes me want to vomit every single time I see the craggy red landscape of the southern Utah desert pop up on some Discovery channel special or another. Part of it stems from the vast emotional desert I experienced there and part of it, well, part of it is because it just seemed to have it in for me. More than once I thought I was going to die. Now, I'm not talking about the sudden adrenaline rush you get from a so-called 'close call' that probably didn't have any real likelihood of killing you. I'm talking about the life-flashes-before-your-eyes-make-peace-with-your-Maker kind of run-ins. So, it's fair to say that the desert and I are not friends in any capacity.

That said, the fact that I am starting my journey the day after tomorrow has me more terrified than I have ever been in my life.

Granted, I have tried to make up for this fear (something which feels not unlike a small animal slowly devouring me from the inside out beginning with my stomach) by being as informed as possible. I have signed up for the Jack Rabbit Speaks which, for those of you in the know, is a newsletter sent out to all Burners past and present to help get people prepared for the adventure. I've read the website a thousand times and nearly committed the newbie survival guide to heart. I've googled past Burners and looked up their packing lists: things they brought, things they used, things they wished they had. Apparently each year hundreds of whole, unused watermelons are left behind. Because when I'm getting ready to spend a week in the desert the first thing I want to go to Kroger to get is a watermelon as big as my head...I mean...really?

But maybe I'm over-thinking things, as I am sometimes known to do. I've tried my best to step back and just let it go. I've volunteered to run the sound board for several shifts and I am bringing my digital voice recorder along with my trusty blue spiral bound notebook and various writing utensils. Maybe something interesting will come out of this yet. We'll see. At the very least you should expect a run-down when I return on Sept 9th or 10th.

Until then, later days!

French cooking still isn't my bag.

After a massive week of filming for Vampire Diaries (something which I shall likely moon over later) Dave took me to see the film Julie & Julia. Now, I had been dimly aware of the Julie/Julia Project for awhile now. I mean, when you have a book hit the best sellers list and a blog climb its way to the top of Salon (which I cannot say I have ever read, but apparently people do) it's hard to go on completely oblivious. At the time I'm sure I was hardly interested in food at all except when I was eating it; and even then there surely was a passing interest at best. So the idea of sitting down and reading about a project where someone is going to cook their way through Julia Child's cookbook seemed...well...bland.

But things change.

Now when my my thoughts seem to be utterly consumed with food when I am not worrying over one project or another in my foreseeable future the idea of a film about two women who must love food as much as I do seems appropo. That, and I simply adore Meryl Streep and Amy Adams (who doesn't?). It seemed like something I could absolutely relate to. I wasn't disappointed. When Julie threw her hands up to the sky and exclaimed to her husband, "I never seem to finish anything..." Well...let's just say it's a complaint I find coming out of my mouth more than I would like to admit.

The only negative thing had nothing really to do with the movie at all. Apparently everyone in Decatur decided they wanted to go to the Regal 24 to see Julie & Julia so the place was packed. We manged to find two seats together up front only to be joined by this old man. No problem. Plenty of people end up coming to the theatre alone, right? I've done it before more than once. I do not, however, make it a habit of taking up my seat as well as half of the seat of the person next to me (which, in this case, happened to be myself) and spend half the movie pressing down on that person's hip. At first I thought it was an accident or else he was larger so he didn't have much room so I scooted over as close as I could manage to Dave. It was distracting and uncomfortable. When I was at last driven to confrontation (something I hate) the guy ignored me. Dave said he thought he was asleep, but I am unconvinced. He didn't look asleep to me and I had heard him chuckling at several points during the movie. I was going to just suffer through, but Dave got over protective and lost it. Which, in this case, meant that he got up and started looking for another seat. Embarrassed, I decided to go out of the theatre and take a bathroom break. When I returned the old man had left and Dave had reclaimed our seats. This time I sat on the inside away from where the old man might sit if he returned. How odd.

Tastiest Snickerdoodles EVAH!

Do you ever have one of those nights were you're like "OMG IF I DO NOT HAVE SOMETHING SUGARY AND AWESOME I AM GOING TO STAB SOMEONE IN THE FACE!?" Well, I do. Frequently. And it often leads to conversations like this:

Me: I wanna milkshake.
Dave: You can't have that.
Me: I wanna cookie.
Dave: Becca-cookie?
Me: COOOOKIE. *stabbity look*
Dave: Let's get you some cookies.

And so, lacking all the crazy ingredients that many GF / CF cookbooks request I went to the internet and did a quick google search for some 'real' cookie recipes. Now, I have had a long standing love of The Joy of Cooking for a long time and they have a companion book called The Joy of Baking. As luck would have it, they also have websites! Below I've included the (altered) recipe that makes this Becca-friendly. And, hopefully, friendly to you as well.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups sorghum flour
• 1 cup white rice flour
• 1/2 cup potato starch (you may also use tapioca starch as a sub if you have that instead)
• 1 tsp xanthan gum
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 cup olive oil (or oil of choice)**
• 1 1/2 cup white grandulated sugar
• 2 eggs worth of Energy Egg Replacer
• 1 tsp Vanilla

Coating

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tsp cinnamon
  

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine your dry ingredients and go ahead and stir them until combined well. Then add all of your wet ingredients, but make sure you leave your oil until very last.

**Add oil slowly waiting to see the consistancy of the dough. You want to make sure that it isn't too dry or too wet. Trust your feelings, young padawan.

Roll into small balls and place on parchment lined baking sheet. Use a fork to make criss-cross hash marks on the top of the cookies and to squish them down gently. If they are moist enough then they will not crumble upon smushing.

Sprinkle cookies with cinnamon/sugar mixture and bake for 8 - 10 minutes. You're looking for the edges to be lightly brown but not burnt looking. If you see them sizzling in the oven, it's okay. They're supposed to do that.

Dave's seal of approval: "When you open the oven it smells like a carnival!"

In-Between Days

The relative life of leisure which I currently have been fortunate enough to enjoy has left me a lot of time for filler. Okay, so maybe that isn't the best turn of a phrase. But how else to describe all the tiny things that you normally might really love doing but get shelved for the 'shoulds' and 'musts' that build up during the coarse of a day/week/month that is otherwise loaded down with work, class, or any other number of things that comprise life as we know it.

There's my bright spot. One of them, at least.

Lacking work in the traditional sense to fill up my day I am able to pick and choose what I'd like to focus on so long as it meets the following criteria: 1. cheap, and 2. entertaining. I've found a good deal of solace in cleaning and reclaiming little areas of space which might otherwise have been left forgotten the way that old houses are when kudzu slowly devours them whole. Baking, too, has been cathartic in a similar sense. Changing something from one form to another. It's rather like alchemy. At least, I like to think so. Lately I have also found that I've been getting back in touch with my crafty side as well. Where this might have formerly meant painting or decoupage art projects worthy of any five year old, I now am turning to fiber arts. Specifically, knitting. Not that I am any good. And not that I have turned out anything more exciting than several Fish Hats. But it just makes me feel productive in a way that doing the dishes or playing the Sims just isn't able to compete with. There's something lasting about the products (barring mishaps with moths or horrifying laundry incidents).

This summer has also been one of books. Lazy day reading when I am left to my own devices is a guilty pleasure of mine. I love devouring books. Quickly pushing through the words so that I can reach the author's meaning...rereading passages in a futile attempt to commit them to memory or else simply savor the flavor that a particular turn of phrase might have. It feels terribly decadent to be able to sit down with a novel and be able to devote my full attention to it without having to think about anything else more pressing. The most recent of these indulgences is The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. While a fairly quick read, it felt dense. Heavy with thoughts and words. Not surprising, perhaps, considering it was written by a life-long Journalist and NPR Correspondent. He was funny and thoughtful. In the end the book made me want to travel more and gave me a little more insight to things that I already knew. Or thought I knew. Things like 'What does happiness mean to me?' and 'How do I get there?' Are the answers to those questions so different when you consider them in the individual sense versus giving them a hint of your nationality? Or is it possible to consider them at all without lending your cultural perspective to it? Maybe not. But it's interesting to try.