Musings from a young Hollywood professional

williammillersyndrome:

ask me outrageous things!

Going off and applying for a ton of menial summer jobs. Cause, you know, I’m partially through my masters program, have my bachelor’s degree, and I need money for the summer.  So I’m applying for jobs at the mall. 

Dream life for the win.  

This makes about 12 or so full sized muffins.  If you’re using mini mufiins, about 25-26.

(modified from: http://www.ourfamilyeats.com/2010/09/pizza-bites.html)

3/4 cup white flour.

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup milk.

1 egg

1 teaspoon basil (I used fresh)

1 teaspoon oregano (I also used fresh)

1/4 teaspoon salt

pinch cayanne 

3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup pepperoni, sliced (or get the precut mini pepperonis.)

1 cup marinara sauce, plus 1 tablespoon.

1. So, dump all the ingredients (except the cup of marinara sauce) into a bowl and mix until combined.  Let sit for 15 minutes. 
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 
3. spray Pam onto a muffin tin, fill tins 3/4 of the way full, and bake for 25-30 mins, checking regularly.

They’re amazing!

Got challenged by a friend, who said that not very many people know the interesting things about me. 

1. I am a second degree black belt in TaeKwonDo.  No, I will not beat you up.  I stopped attending 5 years ago, so I frankly suck at it now.  I mean, my instincts are still there, but no form or anything. 
2. I collect and burn candles all the freaking time.  Whenever I’m at home, BAM, burning a candle.  
3. I was raised incredibly conservative southern baptist.  While I no longer consider myself southern baptist (but instead miscellaneous liberal non-denominational spiritual christian), occasionally I find that the thinking of my background sneaks in.  I always get horribly depressed when it does, cause I really don’t want it to.  It sometimes just happens.
4. On the note of religion, I am now a religious nerd.  ALL religions interest me, and I spend a lot of time studying them. So I know a weird amount about islam, atheism, catholicism, wicca, early pagan religions, hinduism, buddhism, ect.  Enough that when I talk about it, people sometime mistake me for being part of that religion.  And then when I say I’m Christian, I get a lot of awkward looks and silence.  
5. Every single guy I’ve dated has been a gamer.  One was a competitive professional gamer.  I will never date a professional gamer again.  It was a disaster.
6. On that note, I play WoW.  My main is an Undead Mage. 
7. When I get stressed, I bake bread.  This is a new development of this last year.  No one has complained. 
8. I know how to shoot guns proficiently.  Well, I’m not proficient in hand guns.  Give me a long range rifle and I’ll know what to do.  
9. I also collect pocket knives.  None of those swiss army knives, but good strong knives.  My first was a damascus steel kershaw scallion.  I also have a Paul Prankster, a smith and wesson, and a tiny tiny spyderco.  If you ever run into me, ask to see which knife I’m carrying.  I will gladly show you. 
10. I am a nerd.  Simple nerd things will make me very very happy.  I post a lot of Memes.  I like lolcats.  I play video games.  I love scifi.  I love TV.

wolfyn:

howtrueisthat:

LOL the last one

Looool.

Especially the first one!  That looks awesome!

OH MY GAHHH

Copy and paste your bolded books read, italicized books not completed, and then sum up with a head count, so to speak. What does the list say about your reading habits? The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 
6. The Bible 
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare 
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk 
18. Catcher In the Rye - JD Salinger 
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot 
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens 
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 
34. Emma - Jane Austen 
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen 
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe 
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell 
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving 
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding 
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan 
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel 
52. Dune - Frank Herbert 
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth. 
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon 
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt 
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac 
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding 
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie 
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville 
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker’s 
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 
75. Ulysses - James Joyce 
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 
78. Germinal - Emile Zola 
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 
80. Possession - AS Byatt 
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker 
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry 
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White 
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton 
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams 
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare 
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

its a friends 21st birthday right now, and we took him to a bar and he’s playing foosball with a hot midget. I can’t make this up. not at all.

So, this is my current favorite dough recipe.  I can use it for my flatbread snacks, or for my pizzas, or for my dipping bread.  

FLATBREAD/PIZZA DOUGH

makes 2 pizzas/flatbreads

1 1/4 cup water

3/4 tablespoon yeast

3/4 tablespoon salt

1/2 tablespoon sugar

1/4 cup olive oil 

3 1/4 cups flour (I use all purpose unbleached, but it doesn’t matter too much)

1.  Mix the salt, sugar, olive oil, yeast, and water together.
2. Mix in the flour.
3. Let rise for 2-3 hours (no punching down necessary.)
4. Store in fridge until used.  To bake, take a cookie sheet and drizzle olive oil on it, then take half the doug and spread it out until it’s between 1/2 and 1 inch thick.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, and probably won’t be. 
5. Depending on toppings, bake at 450 (or 500 for pizzas) for 15-20 minutes, checking for browning around the edges. 

****

To make seasoned flatbread, just drizzle olive oil over the dough and shake on the herbs.  I use za’atar seasoning a lot, or freshly minced garlic for a sublime garlic bread. Dip in tomato sauce or olive oil and vinegar. 

****

For pizza, spread chopped tomatoes or tomato sauce evenly but not thickly over the dough.  You should be able to see some of the dough.  Use cheese sparingly, and check oven often for over browning of the cheese.  

So I’m gonna garden, do photo manipulation, and then make pizza from scratch.  Including the pizza dough.

Fresh food ftw!

So, as people know, I make a shit tonne of bread. And I talk about it quite a lot. 

So here’s my basic herb bread recipe.  You can, of course, leave out the herbs, but they’re rather tasty.

makes 2 loafs.

FRENCH HERB BREAD

1. Add the Yeast and Salt to the water: preferably in a resealable, lidded (not airtight) plastic food container.  Don’t worry about dissolving everything. 
2. Mix in the flour: just make sure it’s all mixed in, do not knead 
3. Cover and let rise for 2 hours:  Cover with a non-airtight lid.  Rising should be at room temperature.  It can rise for up to 5 hours without it being a problem. 
4. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours.  While you can just use the bread after it rises, it’s a bitch to work with, and chilling it just works better. 
5. Shape the loaf:  Cut off half the dough with a serrated knife.  Add just enough flour so it doesn’t stick to your hands.  Quickly shape it into a ball or blob format, do not kneed it.  LIGHTLY coat the ball with flour.
6. Let the dough “rest” for 40 minutes.  
7. twenty minutes in, put the bread/pizza baking stone in the oven and start preheating to 450.  ALSO, in a place that won’t obstruct the baking dish, put a shallow broiler pan or cake pan in the oven, empty.  
8. After starting the preheating process, dust some more flour on the top of the loaf and slash the top of it, so it looks all artsy and such.  
9. After the 40 minutes of resting are up (20 minutes into the preheat) slide the loaf onto the baking stone.  Quickly pour 1 cup of water into the broiler pan, and quickly close the door.  It will hiss and sputter and steam.  That is good, cause it makes the crust all tasty.  
10. Bake for 30-35 minutes.  Make sure the crust is brown.
11. Take out of oven, and let rest for AT LEAST 20 minutes before slicing, or else the bread will get too dry inside too fast.  
12. Enjoy!

• if you do not have a baking stone, use a cookie sheet.  The crust won’t be as tasty, but it’ll bake.
• The bread, once baked, doesn’t keep for very long.  Then again, it doesn’t last very long cause people eat it. However, if you seal it up in a bag, it’ll last for about 3-5 days.
• It’s really good with butter, bruchetta, olive oil and vinager, and honey. 

Fair Warning: someone told me this blog might be a trigger for some.  You have been warned.

So, on a different social medium, someone commented on my picture saying it was “thinspo” and asked me if I was “pro-ana”.  Me, being a not quite hip graduate student, had to look this up.  Google directed me to a few tumblr tags, and…

What. The. Fuck. 

Among countless pictures of bone thin models and celebrities, which I expected and are kinda normal, there were blogs about techniques on how to maintain eating disorders, food blogs complaining about how they ate 700 calories in a day instead of 600,

There will be several parts to this blog. I will address the health issues, the self esteem issues, and then my reaction to being called thing

1.  Health issues.  It goes without saying that anorexia is not healthy.  I’m gonna go out on a limb and recognize that people probably know this.  However, the human body does need a certain amount of calories to live, and that cannot be ignored.  Without enough food, people can face bone density problems, muscle reduction, and fatigue.  The healthiest way to lose weight has long ago been established to slowly and steadily lose pounds, while substituting healthy activities for the unhealthy one.  A healthy weight lose is generally considered to be between one and two pounds per week.  The best way I have come across, honestly, is something like weight watchers.  Most other weight loss diets usually involve some sort of purging or dehydration. Make healthy substitutions to what you eat.  Drink a lot of soda?  Brew your own iced green tea.  Snack at work or school?  substitute 1/4 cup mixed nuts.  Eat chips a lot?  Substitute a handful of triskets.  Love sweets and desserts?  Get a few strawberries and sprinkle a bit of brown sugar over them. 

2.  Self esteem issues.  I get that.  I really really get that.  Using pictures of thin people for inspiration to get healthy is fine.  However, if you are healthy, within the healthy BMI category, embrace your body.  Instead of the super thin bony models, look at people like Christina Hendrix.  Cause damn, she is sexy.  And she has curves.  If you’re aiming to be sexy, think about tone more than thin-ness.  Exercise, lift weights, and do sit ups (or the roman chair, if a gym is available to you.)  Feeling stronger is an amazing way to boost your self esteem.  Remember that beauty is not numbers, not measurements. One of the most beautiful people I know in real life wears a size 22.  And damn, she carries it well.

3.  My reaction to being called Thinspo and pro-ana.  I don’t have any problem being inspiration to get healthy.  I think getting healthy is great.  If you’re aiming just for the thin-ness, I’d say you might need to refocus that, but whatever.  However, pro-ana?  Hell no.  For one thing, I do not strive to have the body I do.  I have an illness, an honest to god blood sugar disorder that makes it so my body cannot process foods in the same manner as everyone else.  And this SUCKS.  I have to be careful what I eat, eat in small small quantities (which makes going out for food problematic), and constantly worry if my blood sugar levels are going to take a dive and I’ll pass out during something important.  Like class, or driving.  It’s given me heart problems before.  And yes, it makes it so I don’t gain weight easily.  This is not something to be envied, at all.  I’d much rather be 30 pounds heavier and not have to worry about this illness at all.  And I truly mean that.  And almost every time I mention that to people, they generally say something along the lines of “oh, you’re lucky” or “oh, I wish I had that.”  No, you don’t.  Don’t be jealous of another person’s body, you don’t know how or why they’re built like that.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is to be happy with your body, work on being healthy rather than thin.  Cause being healthy is so much more important than fitting into the size 3 jeans.

GPOY

I spent the day at the Ren faire.  Total Awesomesauce, by the way.  Didn’t have any giant confrontations, didn’t spend too much money, and got to talk to some awesome people.  I even got to dance. 

HOWEVER: I was in that bodice from 10:15 am until midnight.  Now, usually when you wear a bodice, you wear it for around 8 hours.  Not 14.  So I have epic bodice burn all down my rib cage. 

And there is your gratuitous bit of tmi for the day.