I love to cook. Love it. It’s the perfect balance between art and science, and when done properly, it can change the mood and atmosphere for those who partake. There’s something primal and organic about it…which may be why I can’t be bothered to properly measure rather than eyeball things. I’ve developed somewhat of a reputation for using 2 key ingredients: cinnamon and cayenne pepper. I feel like they’re “heart” spices; they trigger tastes that warm you to the core. Life’s too short to eat boring or bland food. You’d be hard pressed to find a creation of mine that doesn’t include at least a dash of one of them.

I don’t cook a lot (mainly because I don’t like to do it if I don’t have time to really do it well), but when I do, I seldom use recipes. More often than not, I’m making it up as I go along and then trying to remember what I’ve done at the end. It’s not a fantastic method for passing along recipes, but it works for me.

A few years ago my mom and I came across this place that sells designer chocolates. There were normal ones with cinnamon or nuts, and more creative ones with cayenne pepper or ginger. That, coupled with ogling Johnny Depp a few too many times in Chocolat (the man played a guitar playing gypsy philosopher – aka my ideal man), planted the idea for this next recipe in my head. It’s become a signature, and a fan favorite, so I thought I’d share. (It’s cocoa/powdered sugar based rather than baking chocolate based so that I’ll be able to find the ingredients anywhere in the world at any time of year, so don’t feel left out if you’re across the pond.)

COWGIRL FUDGE
1 cup cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup butter
2 tablespoons water
Cayenne pepper (to taste)

Combine powdered ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. The important thing is that you have 4 cups total powdered ingredients, so if you like Milk Chocolate add less cocoa and more sugar, and if you like Dark Chocolate add more cocoa and less sugar. I like really dark chocolate so I’ve been known to use equal parts sugar and cocoa.

Melt the butter. Fold whipping cream and melted butter into powdered ingredients. Mix until smooth. It’ll be a consistency that’s a cross between pudding and play-doh (appitizing, no?). Use water a little at a time as needed to get it to the right consistency. Sprinkle the first of the cayenne during this step so it’s mixed all the way through. Start with a little and taste as you go. You can always add more, but you can’t take it out, so be careful! The desired taste isn’t “spicy,” but enough cayenne to open your taste buds.

Once it tastes the way you want it to, spread it out and let it set. I usually use a wax paper lined tart pan or a springform pan so it’s pretty when I take it out, but if you’re planning to cut into squares or shapes, you can spread it evenly on a cookie sheet or lined cake pan. Smooth the top with a knife dipped in water so that it doesn’t stick. Place in the refrigerator to set. It’ll take at least an couple of hours, but I usually just leave it over night.

Cut and serve! Make sure to warn your friends that it’s Cowgirl Fudge so they aren’t surprised when it has a kick!

Recipe Mondays are fun…this may be the beginning of a trend.

Ok, so leave it to me to look at the bizarre element to everything, but this has been my favorite Christmas song this season. The Killers and Elton John provoking thought…about faith. Who’d have thunk it? Enjoy.

PS – If you’re still playing the game (see the game tab for details/rules), this one is a gimme.

Well your eyes just haven’t been the same, Joseph
Are you bad at dealing with the fame, Joseph?
There’s a pale moon shining above you
Do you see both sides?
Do they shove you around?

Is the touchstone forcing you to hide, Joseph?
Are the rumors eating you alive, Joseph?

When the holy night is upon you
Will you do what’s right?
The position is yours

From the temple walls to the New York night
Our decisions rest on a child
When she took her stand did she hold your hand?
Will your faith stand still or run away?

When they’ve driven you so far
That you think you’re gonna drop
Do you wish you were back there at the carpenter shop?

With the plane and the lathe
The work never drove you mad
You’re a maker, a creator
Not just somebody’s dad

From the temple walls to the New York night
Our decisions rest on a man
When I take the stand
Will he hold my hand?
Will my faith stand still or run away?

And the desert
It’s a hell of a place to find Heaven
Forty years lost in the wilderness looking for God
And you climb to the top of the mountain
Looking down on the city where you were born

On the years since you left
Gave you time to sit back and reflect

Better you than me

Well the holy night is upon you
Do you see both sides?
Do they shove you around?

Better you than me, Joseph

Well your eyes just haven’t been the same, Joseph

– “Joseph, Better You Than Me”…The Killers and Elton John, featuring Neil Tennent from the Pet Shop Boys.

How is it already Christmas Eve? I feel like it ought to still be March 2008 rather than the dawn of 2009.

It’s been particularly difficult to get into the Holiday spirit this season for a number of reasons. To begin with, we started planning Christmas emails in August so I’ve been talking about the Holidays at work for four months. We also recorded a Christmas CD through church this year, so I’ve been singing Christmas songs since early in the summer. On top of that, we moved right in the middle of December, so decorating the old place seemed pointless and decorating the new place would require a state of unpacked I have yet to reach. To sum up, I’m under-decorated for and overexposed to Christmas this year.

I guess that’s why Christmas snuck up on me this time around. I’m excited about it, and looking forward to tonight and tomorrow, but also really excited to get back to celebrating more than Jesus’ birth. I feel like we have a tendency to celebrate a Talledaga Nights’ version of Christianity this time of year. As an adult, I find the adult version of Jesus much more interesting. If people sat around on my birthday and just told the story of my birth over and over again, I might start to feel they hadn’t noticed all the cool stuff that’s happened since that day.

So…Happy Birthday, Jesus! Thanks for all you’ve done, all you’re doing and all that you’re going to do.

My challenge to you is to spend some time this holiday season reflecting on the life, rather than just the birth, of Jesus. It’s a pretty fantastic, awe-inspiring, humbling-for-the-rest-of-us existence. He’s the reason for the season, after all.

This is my favorite prophesy of the Christmas story…from Isaiah 53:2-5

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Of course, if you’re going for traditional, this one (straight out of Luke 2) works, as well.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

…so apropos for so many reasons.

To begin with, Friday night 17 friends and I attended Medieval Times for my roommate’s birthday. A good time was had by all. We had fun playing, eating with our hands, seeing Karla dubbed a Lady of the Realm, and afterwards running around and taking pictures with all the knights in their garb. Ok, so this last part was just the girls. The guys stood around looking at us like we’d lost our minds.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KARLA!

In other news, we’re moving in 4 days. I hate packing. I hate it with everything that’s in me, which is weird…because I love moving. I also enjoy most of my stuff, but having to pack it all up sends waves of guilt over my own consumerism coursing through my veins. Do I really need all these books? DVDs? shoes? Probably not. Are they all going in a box anyway? Yep.

As much as I hate it, though, a part of me loves it. Packing is an integral part of the relocation process. The very beginning of the process that leads to new cities, new friends, new adventures… Every time I load box after box with my paraphernalia, I wish that it would all fit in a hiking pack and a suitcase. I know though, that if that was the case, it’d be much more difficult to fight the temptation to pick up and move whenever the urge hits. I’m not sure urge is a strong enough word.

The last line in the movie Chocolat is “But still the clever north wind was not satisfied. It spoke to Vianne of towns yet to be visited, friends in need yet to be discovered, battles yet to be fought…” That’s more accurate, I think. Like the north wind that begins as a breeze and doesn’t let up until it’s chilled you to the bone, there’s this restlessness in me that starts with bubbles in my stomach. If left unchecked it rages through my system until my skin starts to itch and my brain gets all fuzzy.

It’s not really even a conscious thing. And it’s not that I’m not happy or content with things. Life is good. That’s an understatement really. On the whole and in the minutia, life is pretty fabulous. I just get this feeling that if life is this fantastic now, it has the potential to be even more remarkable. I’m not ready to settle for good, when great is so clearly in the works. It’s like the song (and the post title) says,”I don’t want the next best thing.”

Hopefully, this move will dial this restless boil back to a simmer for a while. I don’t want to so anticipate the great that I can’t appreciate the good. Good is nothing to sneeze at…even if it includes packing. (And a knight or two never hurt either.)

As part of the blog revamping, I’ve decided the blogs needed a cohesive theme. Since my thoughts don’t generally have a theme from moment to moment, and I refuse to be boxed in by even my own set of rules, the cohesiveness will come from the blog titles: they’ll all be song lyrics.

Music plays a huge role in my life (I spend about 10 hours a day listening to music), and my musical tastes are as random as my thought processes. In the last two days my ipod has played Ingrid Michaelson, Elton John, Iron & Wine, She & Him, John Mayer, Feist, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Coldplay, Alison Krauss, Ben Folds, Ben Harper, Goldfrapp, Dolly Parton, Death Cab, Flyleaf, Pink Martini, Muse, Rosemary Clooney, Ryan Adams, The Killers, The Blind Boys of Alabama, U2, The Wreckers, Jack’s Mannequin, Chicago, Van Morrison, Derek Webb, Charlie Peacock and various musicals…to name a few.

Can you keep up with that? I’m issuing a challenge to keep you in the game. Points will be awarded to the first person to correctly identify the provenance of each blog title. Song title is a must, but you get a bonus for correctly identifying the artist and album from my personal playlist that includes that title. Sure, you may no music, but how well do you know me?

Wondering why you want points? When you accumulate an impressive number, points may be redeemed for fabulous prizes chosen specifically for you, by me. Fun, huh?

This title is an easy one. I promise they won’t all be this straight forward or this mainstream. I also promise that they won’t be entirely random and that they will be appropriate to whatever I’m blogging about.

Let the games begin!!

The political season is finally over; the holiday season is officially in full swing. I’m another year older (and hopefully wiser).

New blog posts (and probably formats) are coming soon; I promise.

Tonight was the closing ceremonies of the 29th Olympiad. Sad. My DVR might go into withdrawal. As I sat in my parents’ living room watching the magnificent show Beijing (and for one very short act, London) put on, I was struck by a number of things.

1. Has the entire world has been in such a media bubble? I mean, there’s still a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, still unrest in the Sudan, still Russian troops in Georgia, still billions of people living life, but for the last 2 weeks, we’ve focused more on what unites us than divides us…that’s a pretty remarkable thing.

2. I don’t know how much Visa spent on those commercials with Morgan Freeman, but they were worth every penny. I rewound the TV every time I glimpsed the sepia tones.

3. Would Paris’ or Madrid’s or New York’s segment of the games been as fun and as iconic of their city as London’s small act? I have posters and/or t-shirts of all of their 2012 Olympic bids, but tonight for the first time I was glad London won those games. As old and diverse as London is, it would be easy for the city to have an identity crisis or be selective in revealing her face to the world. Instead, she showed us her diversity in the simple and yet unifyingly British act of waiting for a bus. If I was wearing a hat, I’d tip it to my friends across the pond.

4. Fame is fickle. As I looked through the crowds at the athletes, I wondered how many of them were the golden children of Athens or Sydney or Atlanta that have now been overshadowed by the Michael Phelpses and Usain Bolts of Beijing. Will Shawn Johnson’s star fade like fellow beam gold medalist Shannon Miller’s? Will Aaron Piersol pass the backstroke mantle he received from Lenny Krazelberg on to Ryan Lochte?
This year’s Olympians were incredible. Despite special equipment or suits or state of the art tracks or pools, world records fell like rain this year because athletes from all over the world came to compete. I think we forget, though, that they are equally spectacular every year…it’s not a once in 4 year thing. I’m challenged to be as loyal a fan at next year’s swimming world championships in Rome, or gymnastics world championships in London, or track and field in Berlin. I’m also challenged to hold in my heart the Jason Lezaks and Sasha Artemovs and countless other heroes who weren’t media darlings…they deserve to be celebrated even if they won’t be on a cereal box.

I haven’t blogged in a while, and rereading the shallow ridiculousness I’ve been blogging about lately, I feel I owe you all an apology. Hopefully this post makes amends.

I remember when I was younger having teachers and youth leaders warning us that even though we thought we just liked the music for the beat or melody, in reality, the lyrics were infiltrating our hearts and minds. I’m fairly certain these warnings were intended to protect us against the “evils” of Tupac and Kurt Cobain, but it had pretty much the opposite effect on me. Bound and determined to prove them wrong, or maybe just to rebel, I started listening for God in the secular.

I think the real problem may be, though, that those teachers and youth leaders were wrong; we don’t internalize lyrics. The more I’ve pondered this, the more I think it’s indicative of contemporary culture rather than our generation. It’s not just girls in clubs mindlessly singing along to Ray J’s “Sexy Can I,” it’s also more mature audiences sitting in their pews on Sunday morning singing “Be Thou My Vision” on autopilot.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Van Morrison and Bob Dylan lately. Morrison has a rendition of “Be Thou My Vision” that highlights his twangy, Irish glory. As I sat in the choir loft this Wednesday night practicing for this coming Sunday with a group of people whose faith is unquestionable, I wondered if the choir and congregation would be half as reflective as the poetic lyricist Morrison seems to be when singing the 4th verse:

“Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.”

What would it mean to our culture if we were to really contemplate and internalize that verse? The mind reels.

Maybe it’s the bohemian in me, but Morrison and Dylan are speaking to my soul as of late. Beatnik, visionary poets that they are, I can’t help but be drawn in by both the cadence and the wisdom of their lines. There’s a Dylan song that’s been stuck in my head, and more than anything ever spewed forth from the Contemporary Christian genre, I hope that these lyrics could be sung of me:

“Covenant woman got a contract with the Lord
Way up yonder, great will be her reward.
Covenant woman, shining like a morning star,
I know I can trust you to stay where you are.

And I just got to tell you
I do intend
To stay closer than any friend.
I just got to thank you
Once again
For making your prayers known
Unto heaven for me
And to you, always, so grateful
I will forever be.

I’ve been broken, shattered like an empty cup.
I’m just waiting on the Lord to rebuild and fill me up
And I know He will do it ’cause He’s faithful and He’s true,
He must have loved me so much to send me someone as fine as you.”

So…God’s speaking to me through Bob Dylan, and while it’s probably making me more secular (gasp), it’s also making me more thoughtful and reflective about my faith. I mean, how can anyone listen to Bob Dylan and Van Morrison without being thoughtful and reflective? Isn’t that the goal of the lyricist when he puts pen to sheet music? When Mary Byrne wrote “Be Thou My Vision” in the eighth century, she was pouring out her soul, not hoping to occupy 5 minutes of space in 21st century worship services. What’s going on in our souls if we’re not taking in the poetry, be it sacred or secular, of this and every generation as we sit with the notes reverberating through our vocal cords, or our bodies swaying in time, or our earbuds in our ears?

The correct answer is a well chilled Llano Estacado Blush. Yea for Texas wines! Yes, it’s a $5 bottle of wine, but if you’re drinking it while consuming macaroni and cheese, do you get to be a wine snob? The Llano Blush is a sweet and fruity and yet really crisp wine. It’s like Kool-aid for grown ups.

The Llano Blush is also a good comfort food wine. It’s not going to hold up to the really profound flavors of authentic Mexican food or rich seafood; it’s too sweet for that. If you’re looking for something to accompany pizza or fried chicken or mac and cheese or steak and potatoes or BBQ, this wine will definitely do the trick. It’s like a white zin, but more fun.

So I found a job for which I’d be perfect. Unfortunately, it only pays $350 for six months and is in San Francisco. I’m thinking, though, that it’s the kind service I could offer to multiple individuals and really build a clientele.

Read http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/672031640.html and tell me what you think. I’ll be practicing my evil laugh.