Cake and Coffee

 I decided to start a blog in 2020 to complement my shift away from an analog social life. I'm 34, which means I digitally came of age during the Heyday of Weblogs. I haven't managed to commit to Twitter or Instagram with the same passionate regard. Perhaps they're both too...bite sized? Too public? 

The trick of this year has been staying present and tuned into a world that is hurtling towards new unspeakable disasters every day while somehow never tapping into the energetic hum of humanity that comes from, like, being around other people. The margin between my inner life, or private life, has further widened from the collective world experience. But we're all still here, I hope, screaming into a social media void, reading the news, masking up, rising up, hoping that the digital revolution that fucked us in 2016 can swing away from the selfish and evil administration comprised of blood-sucking money vampires, rapists, Klan members, Earth pillagers, and towards a path of healing, where children aren't ripped away from their families at the border of this god forsaken place, abortions are safe, accessible, and legal, and perhaps we start atoning for the birth of our nation through social justice and long overdue reparations. 

So here we are. Welcome to my weblog, christened in 2020, about 12 years after blogs were relevant. I read that these Gen Z kids are buyng Motorola Razrs again, so I'm feeling confident in my vintage selection of Internet real estate. 

Last night I made "healthy" pumpkin bread. Breads are so fun to bake: they generally use one mixing bowl and whatever ingredients I have on hand, and I can finish one off in about a week or so before it gets stale (unlike, say, a layer cake or 48 chocolate chip cookies. BTW, I live alone). My favorite bread is Half Baked Harvest's Chocolate Chunk Coconut Banana Bread (yes! This *whole paragraph* is my quick bread musings!), which similarly uses maple syrup or honey as the sweetener and coconut oil as the fat. I used coconut oil for my pumpkin bread, but its not quite as complementary to the pumpkin flavor as it is with bananas, so next time I might use rapeseed oil or something like that instead. I added Enjoy Life chocolate chips so that it feels very dessert-y, though I ate it for breakfast. Once I made a lemon loaf - I won't link to the recipe because it was horrible - and learned the important lesson that a quick breads are too dense and moist to lend themselves to subtle or light flavors. If I were you, I would stick to the pumpkin or banana community. A chocolate + cinnamon situation would be good too. Or throw some zucchini in there with some blueberries or something. Idk, I'm not a recipe developer, just trust me and don't ever make a lemon loaf.