Tips, Tricks, Helpful links, and Research Things

https://standardebooks.org/

@dimiclaudeblaigan asked for a tutorial on how to begin drawing. Good news! If you can draw a funky looking stick man, you have already started!

I think that stick people are a great starting point for artists because of the things you can learn from them that will be important later on.

If you are able to draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can easily put together a stick person.

Congratulations! You have started to draw. :)

A stick person is a very minimal artistic representation of a real life person. It is simple yet recognizable, and is widely used in art, media, and signage.

But what can a stick person teach us about drawing people that look more like… well, people? Lets have a look!

A lot of internet advice says “don’t do things you don’t want to do” or “you don’t owe anyone anything.” Technically true, but real relationships are more complicated. Sometimes you’re tired but still willing, sometimes you’re excited, and sometimes you’re just… meh.

That’s why I love the Decide 10 system (from Prototype Thinking on Medium). It makes compromise clearer and more balanced. I saw this talked about on Instagram and looked it up.

Here’s how it works when it comes to activities (I used a different method for an emotional need, which I talk about in example 3).

Each person rates from 1–10 how much they want to do something.

You both reveal your numbers.

If the total is 10 or higher, you do it. If it’s lower, you renegotiate, postpone, or skip it.

Example 1: This is often used to decide whether to do a specific activity, but it can also be used to decide between two. You’re deciding between Taco Bell and Burger King for dinner.

Your partner rates Taco Bell 5, Burger King 8.

You rate Taco Bell 7, Burger King 4.

Totals:

Taco Bell = 12

Burger King = 12

Both hit the 10 threshold, so either works but you can see Burger King matters more to them than Taco Bell matters to you. So maybe a compromise is you go to Burger King that night and Taco Bell another.

Example 2: Compromise in Action

Let’s say someone rates something a 9 and you’re only a 3. The math adds up to 12, but beyond the numbers, it shows this thing is really important to them. In a close relationship, you might decide to stretch for them. Not because you owe it, but because you care. And often, they’ll stretch for you too.

The opposite can be true as well. Maybe you say something is a 1, but they rate it an 8. Seeing your low number might help them realize, “This isn’t worth draining you for. I can let it go this time.” That’s care, too.

Example 3: An Emotional Need

Today I was feeling sad. I told my friend I was a 6 on the “sad scale” and asked what her capacity was for calling. I clarified it wasn’t emergent. I was just sad.

She told me she was at about a 4 on capacity. She was tired and normally wouldn’t call tonight, but since I was at a 6, she wanted to support me. We agreed she’d call in two hours when she had privacy. She added that if I’d said it was emergent, she would have called right away, privacy or not.

That was me applying the concept in a different way. It was honesty about where we’re both at, balanced with flexibility.

The original Decide 10 article talks about adding numbers together for activities. With emotional needs, it worked a bit differently for me. My “6” was about how much support I needed, while my friend’s "4" was about her capacity to give support. Instead of adding the numbers, we compared them and found a compromise. She couldn’t call immediately, but she could call in two hours.

That’s the point of the scale. It is not rigid math, it’s a framework for honest communication.

Why this helps (especially if you have BPD):

No mind-reading. You don’t have to guess how much they care.

Saying “I’m a 3 on this” communicates low capacity without it sounding like rejection.

You can see when one person feels strongly and the other doesn’t. This makes compromise less painful.

It balances give-and-take instead of one person always “winning.”

Important to remember:

Use it for everyday decisions and non-emergency emotional check-ins. Don’t force it in crisis moments.

Numbers can change. A “2” today might be a “7” tomorrow.

The point isn’t the math. It's the honesty and balance it creates.

Color Contrast Checker

with specifically the highlights and colors being hues that compliment each other, don’t distract from the scene, and make it more interesting/visually appealing

cohesive but still contrasting

This kind of talks about color and composition

This is a bit about landscape specifically

Values & composition

Contrast in composition

Balance in colors & values

This one's more for palette building but I think it's useful and can be applied to the other ones

Cohesion within compositions/lighting

"Chromatic fringe" - I also see people using this with shading, they bring in a transition color that is a different hue than the base color or shadow, it makes it so that less vibrancy is lost and it doesn't get muddy!

This one specifically has a lot of process behind the style of painting you're looking for!

Also one of my favorite artists who makes bright and colorful art like this is Not Sorry Art on TikTok & YouTube, her website is here and it's<3 my fav. She has some videos where you can see her process

If you're wondering about Mr. Gurney's chops:

As a college student, currently really hungry with nothing to eat, I understand how hard it can be to get food. Sometimes you really just don’t have the money to eat and when you do, you waste it all on fast food instead of stocking up on cheap things because you’re so tired of Ramen Noodes and canned food you could barf. So, I’ve composed a list of recipes and resources that will fit a college kid’s budget and appetite. Don’t go hungry! <3

Ramen Noodle Recipes:

Ramen Noodle Stir Fry

Sirloin-Snap Pea Stir Fry

Chicken Noodle Soup

Chili Cheese Ramen

Egg Drop Ramen

Spinach and Ramen

Ramen Spaghetti

Ramen Alfredo

Cheesy Ramen Noodles

Mug Meals:

Cheesy Eggs Mug

Cheese and Broccoli Mug

Mac and Cheese in a Mug

Meatloaf in a Mug

Nutella Mug Cake

Cheesecake Mug

Coffee Cup Quiche

Coffee Cup Chilaquiles

Mug Egg Scramble

Microwave Recipes:

Potato Chips

Corn on the cob

Scalloped Potatoes

White Rice

Fried Rice

Baked Potato

Chicken Casserole 

Garlic Chicken

Chicken Soup Casserole

Caramelized Onion Baked Potato

Soft Chicken Tacos

Pancakes

Recipe Generators

My Fridge Food

Fire House Chef

Dinner in 15 Minutes

Advanced recipe Generator

Cuisine

Recipe Matcher

Super Cook

Recipe Puppy

Cook Thing

Recipes by Ingredient

Recipe Key

Not Beans Again

Ideas 4 Recipes

Big Oven

Other Resources

Actual College Student Cookbook

Restaurant Coupons [1] [2] [3] [4]

Great get online and go to a job board. Indeed, Linkedin whatever. Now you're gonna search for a role that's in your city, fits your qualifications, and doesn't seem like a bad time.

See that easy apply button? Don't hit it they just throw those in the trash. Now you're gonna want to go to the company's website and check their careers page.

Oh? That job doesn't exist anymore. Cool go back to the job board and find another one.

Great you found another job, you're on the company's career page and the job exists!! So you're going to need to make an account on the career page website. They're using Workday, the same site as the last job you applied for? Who cares? You need to make another account for THIS job's workday page.

Now you're going to upload your resume. That'll autopopulate about 15 boxes with everything on your resume, except formatted wrong and with tons of errors. So just go through and painstakingly check the dates on all of that and rewrite everything you already laid out in an aesthetically pleasing format on your resume.

Ok time for the cover letter, explain why this specific job and company are deeply important to you. You love their mission statement and wouldn't even laugh if their ceo was gunned down in the street. You'll really want to reiterate the things you just spent the last 20 minutes filling out on the resume section

(Remember to include language from the job description, people who work in HR are lower than dogs and they need patterns or they get confused.) Write about a page, but hey don't sound too desperate or robotic this is where they judge your character!

Maybe add your portfolio site at the end here, who knows if that helps no one has ever clicked mine haha.

Anywayyy time to hit apply! Congrats! You'll see that confirmation email come in and you should be getting the rejection letter in about 2 weeks. Unfortunately your resume didn't have the right buzzwords and the AI auto rejected you :(

Listen very closely

The above is exactly why half of my friends come to me, and cry they're suffering, and I get to bestow my job hunting knowledge on them. I love this shit, it's a game.

For credentials my fastest job hunting time has been 1 week. I searched for 1 week, got an interview, and was hired within a week. My slowest was 1 month, while out of work, while telling ALL my interviewers that I quit my work without notice (I was testing my interviewers to see how shocked they'd get when I'd tell them why, anyone who wasn't shocked I would tell them at the end that I will keep them in mind (not)). My entire average is 2-3 weeks.

Firstly, what you're gunna do is pick a job sector. You're gunna pick a few of these by the end, but for now pick one. Maybe you wanna do bookkeeping, maybe you wanna do something in doggy daycare. Maybe you're a sous chef. Idk! Figure out what abouts you want first. Do not apply to anything yet. You're gunna look at the job description, I've picked out a few for bookkeepers below.

Now what you're gunna do is you're gunna look for "buzz words", or rather words that are gunna appear commonly and indicate the tone for that job. I've highlighted some, but not all in my examples below

Just look at that snout at how similar those descriptions are!

Now that you've got your buzzwords, you're gunna slap those babies into your resume! You see, since your resume is usually read by a computer first, you're gunna trick the computer into giving it to a person. Really what the computer is scanning for is how similar your resume is to the job description. Remember your bullet points, and to keep it short, try to only have 3 to 5 bullet points per job:

- Processed over 500 invoices a day in an efficient and accurate manner

- Curated reports for management review by utilizing available data

- Monitored and recorded over 100 submissions each day increasing accuracy by 50%

These are some great, made up examples I pulled from those buzz words. You might notice I added some numbers into there. That's something you'll wanna try and note for yourself, how much of something you can do, how accurate, how much efficiency you increased, these look GREAT when your resume gets past the computer and is moved in front of a real person.

Now you have your sector-based resume with lots of buzzwords. This is great! Now for the easy part. You're gunna channel your inner "IDGAF" And you're gunna send that to every listing you like on indeed. Filter for "Apply on Indeed" and spam that shit. Sometimes you gotta answer a few extra questions, but if they give me more than 5 quick questions I trash the submission and move on.

Don't waste your time jumping through hoops, streamline it for yourself and use the same methods companies are using. Push MASSIVE amounts of average quality resumes out. The more opportunities taken = the greater the chance of success. For every opportunity taken you've now pitched a chance of success, for every resume you cannot submit because you're piddling around on their stupid website or answering 50 interview questions online, you send out a 0% chance of success.

So go, try this, and see how it works for you.

Some additional things to consider:

- Add random shit in your resume, I added my "Board Game Club" (BDSM group) into my resume for hobbies and discussed how I got my start using sparklines there

- Never underestimate the flair of a little Clipart fleur-de-lis or something on your resume. Never put colored Clipart, but a little floral or swirl design located somewhere nice makes it stand out

- if you don't have a degree that doesn't mean they won't pick you, twice now I've come to a job without a bachelors and being honest that I was only getting an associates before I think of my next steps

- Embellish, do not lie. Jargoning your job description to make it sound cool and professional is GREAT. Do not give me a resume saying you can use CNC machinery when you've only used a 3D printer. Just tell me you know how to program and manage a 3d printer and want to learn CNC machinery.

- Keep. Your. Resume. To. Two. Or. Less. Pages. You don't need EVERY job, only the relevant ones, if your interviewer asks about the gap, tell them what job you had during that time (or if you wanna lie say you were taking college courses and were on a break, you dont need a degree to say you took courses) and that you only wanted to showcase the most relevant ones

Look at the job description.

Identify what they want examples of like "ability to multitask" or "can work across teams to achieve success" or "can work on a budget".

Pick three.

Write this:

IF YOU CAN FIND THE NAME OF A HIRING PERSON: Dear [Name]

IF YOU CAN'T FIND THE NAME OF A HIRING PERSON: Fuck the usual salutation and just roll directly into "I was very excited when I saw this job application. I feel I am a great fit for this role."

Now, look at the three things you chose from their list of what they want. Write a paragraph like this.

I am an adept multitakser who routinely handles several projects/deadlines/needs (whatever). In my current position I [multitask example]. In my previous work, I [second example].

SECOND PARAGRAPH SAME AS THE FIRST DIFFERENT THING THEY WANT BUT NOT ANY WORSE:

In my current position, I work with multiple teams daily, including [name any team you have waved hello to in the hall] and through my work we have [list an accomplishment that required multiple teams].

THIRD PARAGRAPH HERE WE GO AGAIN:

Staying in budget is something I am very familiar with. When I worked on [team], my contributions [list] not only brought the project in on time but under budget by [number]. I have also brought in other projects under budget [examples].

AND NOW THE FINALE:

Thank you for your time in reviewing my cover letter and resume. I look forward to discussing my qualifications and interest in the role with you at length. I can reached at [phone number] and [email].

Sincerely,

[NAME]

And remember, any question that is looking for a negative story ("Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a co-worker") should ALWAYS be presented by you as "I do have a story for that, and I'm pleased with how I handled it." and then you focus on the all the positives in that situation. So, state what the problem was, and then how you fixed it, and then how fixing it improved your working experience. For example:

"Well, I worked with a man named Bob, and he never answered any emails he got after 3:00 PM, so if I had a question after 3, I'd start a draft email and just add to it if i had further questions. And then I'd schedule it to send at the top of his workday. He started earlier than me, and I'd usually come in to a reply from him with the answers I needed when I first sat down for the day. I actually had another co-worker who was having trouble getting Bob to answer questions, and I said, "Oh, are you sending them after 3?" and when she said yes, I shared my own process so it was easier for her to get information, too."

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Taxes

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Increase Your Income

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Retirement and How to Retire

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Credit and Credit Cards

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Investing for Beginners

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Pay off Debt

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Living Independently for the First Time

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Repairing Our Busted-Ass World

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Self-Care

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Getting a Job, Raise, or Promotion

(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)

So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented: → Three types of ceremonial jewelry → A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed → A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn

Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.

And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.

Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.

─────── ✦ ───────

🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style

Ask yourself: → Who’s in charge, and why? → Who has land? Who doesn’t? → What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?

Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.

Start there. Not at the embroidery.

─────── ✦ ───────

2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict

Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?

→ What was destroyed and mythologized? → What do the survivors still whisper about? → What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?

No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.

─────── ✦ ───────

3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists

Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about: → Death? → Love? → Time? → The natural world? → Justice?

Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.

You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.

─────── ✦ ───────

4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)

Culture shows up in: → What people apologize for → What insults cut deepest → What people are embarrassed about → What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately

For instance: → A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?” → A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.

This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.

─────── ✦ ───────

5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals

Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about: → Breakfast routines? → How people greet each other on the street? → Who cooks, and who eats first? → What’s considered “clean” or “proper”? → How is parenting handled? Divorce?

Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.

─────── ✦ ───────

6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture

A culture isn’t a monolith.

Even in deeply traditional societies, people: → Rebel → Question → Break rules → Misinterpret laws → Mock sacred things → Act hypocritically → Weaponize or resist what’s expected

Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.

─────── ✦ ───────

7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap

Worldbuilding gets boring fast when: → The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure → The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric” → Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like

You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy. → Let ugly things be beloved. → Let beautiful things be corrupt. → Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.

─────── ✦ ───────

📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy): → Culture is not food and jewelry. → Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction. → Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter. → Let your world feel lived in, not curated.

The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list. It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.

Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)

—rin t. // writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range // thewriteadviceforwriters

Sometimes the problem isn’t your plot. It’s your first 5 pages. Fix it here → 🖤 Free eBook: 5 Opening Pages Mistakes to Stop Making:

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

Learning color theory through oil painting is more difficult than learning it through gouache & watercolor, primarily because it takes way more time to find mass tone and mix everything and also it's much less obvious to easily and quickly discern if a paint pigment is highly staining or transparent.

Oil painters like to seem like they have the richest and most storied traditions in color theory to past down but also inevitably they are the most likely to retain an extremely limited chroma palette based on classical palettes for the sake of classicism and not always make that fact very apparent to a beginner aside from saying it's an "old masters palette" watercolor/gouache painters are bad at using paints that are not light-fast and clinging to them despite having better alternatives, but generally still understand chroma gamuts and pigment importance better or at least talk about them more.

When you're mixing paints, the earth colors (browns) don't need to handled and thought of as brown. Ask yourself if the brown is yellow, orange, red, or leaning towards a black (which would be treated as a violet or blue, depending on whether black is warmer or cooler).

Yes there are cool reds and warm blues

Any reference color wheel that places red on the very top hurts my feelings, stop doing this just because you learned "roygbiv". Yellow is at the top and the Indigo-Blue range is on the bottom because this also means the color with the lightest possible value is opposite the color with the darkest possible value, so you have the colors arranged with a value scale from top to bottom BUILT IN.

This makes me think makeup artists have good color theory, having to understand undertones of skin, warm v neutral v cool toned red lipstick....

Yes!!! I mean first of all, makeup artists are artists.

and they are ALSO ultimately just blending pigments to produce certain colors and effects, so yeah professionally do study the basics of color theory and then necessarily have to adapt it to their medium. And they tend to generally add like, what you talked about with recognizing cool/warm/olive/neutral undertones and such as a big consideration to their canvas.

And that IS why people will say "this is a cooler red lipstick" (although even cooler than that would be magenta or fuschia!).

I think the only thing I've noticed wrt to honestly mostly beauty influencers and not actual professional MUAs is that too many people buy an eyeshadow palette of cool tones in the palette and then put it on and complain it pulls "too warm for their cool skin." And it "isn't actually a true cool tone palette."

I just want to grab all these people by the face and say:

"Shhhhhh. Color temperature is relative. Although you have cool skin undertones, you ALSO have blood under your skin which will inherently make your base skin-canvas slightly warm no matter your foundation shade. So when you put any kind of pigment that isn't fully opaque onto your skin, the transparency WILL be warmed by your skin because you're alive and have blood still. The eyeshadow palette IS a cool palette. You're just not a vampire, which is why that cool taupe shade suddenly looks different from the mass tone in the palette."

These influencers would understand this better if they did some watercolor painting on pre-tintedpaper and then compared it to painting on pure white.

Handprint.com is hands down the most comprehensive scientific explanation of how different color wheels or palette choices work. It's big and dense and exceptionally thorough. I skim frequently and find myself always learning more. https://handprint.com/HP/WCL/water.html everything is done using watercolors as a reference point but a LOT of this translates to other mediums. For the record his CIECAM color wheel is what I consider to be the best (not 3 dimensional) color wheel for artists. Period.

He uses pigment numbers for some of the most common watercolors rather than specific paint brands or color names to place the pigments. It's also a case study in why yellow being at the top is the best because it also means you have a value scale from top to bottom (since black paints are just dark violets or blues, ultimately.)

When you look at this, you can start realizing more and more why the earth colors can be used as if they were like, straight red, or yellow, or orange. Like if you wanted to make a limited palette, you could use "burnt sienna" as your dark yellow (which will make the whole palette lean orange!) Or it could be your orange or you could use burnt sienna as your red. (Look at gamut masking links below)

Seriously it's good to try and swatch your medium (even really quickly!) Within a CIECAM Artist's color wheel. Below are two of my attempts:

From loose memory and then mapping pigments roughly.

He also discusses the difference between visual complements and mixing complements!

Anyways absolutely try to read bits and pieces. The whole site is amazing. Handprint is amazing.

Also:

https://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com and James Gurney's book: Color and Light: a guide for the realist painter. James Gurney is the dinotopia guy. That book is also amazing for painting fantasy with lots of fantastical examples. Here are two short videos on gamut mapping and gamut masking. Accompanying blog posts.

No surprises here! His book also charts pigments:

Actually these are my four favorite books hands down:

Color and Light: a Guide for the realist painter - James Gurney

Color for Painters: a guide to traditions & practice - Al Gury

The oil painters color handbook - Todd m casey

Artist's master series: Color & light - 3d total publishing. This one emphasizes digital!

The first two have been out for awhile now and you can more easily find them cheaper/used online than the latter two which are relatively newer and hefty hardbacks.

Also, from personal experience: al gury is a sweetheart angel who is a huge crazy cat man. I adore him, he's so kind and helpful. I think it's a little late to join the current session (although they did only start Jan 28, so you can always ask! Class videos are recorded), BUT he frequently offers a class on color that is fully online through PAFA continuing education, as well as other classes. I haven't taken it yet, but I HAVE taken other classes online with Al and he's really great.

Oh also online gamut masking tools:

In krita: https://docs.krita.org/en/user_manual/gamut_masks.html

https://claudiamatosa.com/resources/gamut-masking simple tool

https://mypaintingclub.com/blog/post/39-The-Gamut-Mask-Tool another tool with more complexity

A reminder that sell-buy dates or best-used-by dates are not the same as expiration dates.

The website puts a link to the USDA site which links to foodsafety dot gov who really wants you to use the app, but you can bypass it.

Also a link to the Canadian government's advisory on best-before dates.

"Smooth edges of screen fonts"

My computer was running hot before I turned everything off; the office I'm in is very warm, I could feel the heat of my CPU through the keyboard. The fans were going, not as loud as they usually get, but they were still blasting.

Y'all.

I can barely feel the warmth through the keyboard now. It's been like 2 minutes. The fan is nearly silent.

Click the Windows key and start typing "System settings", and "View Advanced system settings" will pop up. Then click "Settings" under Performance:

Then you'll see this:

TURN IT ALL OFF.

10AppsManager lets you uninstall bloatware. Winaero Tweaker lets you disable crap like Cortana/Copilot, ads, telemetry, internet search results when you search from the taskbar, and all kinds of other stuff, plus it gives you lots of other little options that are just nice to have (like, it can restore the old MS Paint program in place of Paint 3D). Both are totally free.

Oh, and check your startup programs in the Task Manager tab to make sure your computer isn't automatically starting eight million programs every time it boots. But I think people mostly know about that. (Unless this is me going "they only know one or two feldspars... and quartz of course.")

AHA WEVE FOUND IT

the making began Yesterday.

first katyas parter Was in fact able to find me a mold at good will for 2 dollars, right now it is soaking so i cannot show you a picture but trust me, it exists and it is lovely.

second thank you to everyone who sent me in their recipes for pashka. i am eternally grateful. but, i have decided that i will be combining several recipes together for a few reasons:

i know for a Fact that my great aunts version has farmers cheese and sour cream in it, not cottage cheese.

Some People in my family get pissy about eating raw eggs

i feel like this is the proper course of action for any good eastern european girl: making something so uniquely unique that it is impossible for anyone else to replicate.

this of course led to the Third step of the evening, as in yesterday evening, which was gathering the ingredients. this was much harder than i anticipated. because it took three stores.

store 1 (the fresh market) had the appropriate sour cream and golden raisins (which i have decided to use as a mix in) but only salted macadamia nuts. store 2 (safeway) had the macadamia nuts but Nothing else. store 3 (wegmans) had literally everything else i needed Including the candied fruit gummies.

i of course informed my sister of the improvements:

though, my sister was substantially less excited than i was:

i then ate half of the fruit gummies in the car back and came to the conclusion that they were Not in the original recipe because the texture was wrong.

see. no one knows what the fuck was ever in this cake. as seen above. there were definitely tiny macadamia nuts and chopped up candied Somethings (maybe maraschino cherries? and something else green??) but i did not have the time nor the desire to go to a polish deli to hunt for the mysterious candied Things.

could i have asked my great aunt what was in the recipe?

yes absolutely. she's quite alive and well. but after the infamous Walnut Cake Fiasco from christmas eve, during which i had to make walnut cake. for christmas eve. (and no you cannot have the recipe) i decided against asking.

so i decided to Fuck whatever was in the original cake and do my own thing. after copious amounts of research, i have landed on using my macadamia nuts, golden raisins, orange and lemon zest and juice, vanilla bean and vanilla extract. of which i happened to have a fuck ton of because i just made homeade vanilla extract.

and now that it is no later than 11:23pm, it is the perfect time to embark on the task of Trying Not To Fuck Up The Pashka.

in our quest i managed to forget once again that i 1. live in a college town with 7 bars and 2. its a friday night at midnight. so as we traipsed along to 7/11 we got to sing along dramatically to baby by justin bieber that was being blasted by one of the bars. we then got slushees, went to the gas station for the evaporated milk and saw three frat boys decked out in gucci loafers and vineyard vines and all three of them had their cards decline on 1. voss water 2. an ice cream sandwich and 3. a celcius.

but!

so my mold does not have drainage holes in it (as it is not the biblically correct one) this is not really a problem except for the fact that a vital step of pashka making is pressing the liquid out of it in the mold overnight in the fridge. mine turned out rather soupy and so i had the Brilliant idea to wring the liquid out blob by blob at a time through cloth napkins. which coated my whole kitchen in Cheese. and also myself. and katyas partner who stayed up with me to attempt the pashka. katya went to sleep like a loser. sometimes though, you have to coat yourself in cheese to find yourself. i do not know if i have found myself yet. will report back on that.

anyway the cheese draining method Worked and it Tastes Correct but!!! there was still more liquid that needed to come out so. i put the whole thing in a salad spinner basket in the cheese cloth in a bowl to catch the drips with a plate under it and 2 weights on a plate on top of it to press the liquid out. tomorrow morning once the liquid is drained i’ll put it in the mold.

i have no idea if this will work. but it Does taste good. so there is that. and at least my kitchen is no longer covered in cheese.

also to all of you getting pissed i was calling this cake. growing up it was quite literally called cheesecake so. hush. not everyone’s traditions are your traditions that’s what makes them traditions.

what Is tradition about this is that my great aunt would be rolling in her grave if she had a grave to roll in.

i fear i am still sticky.

also thank u everyone for figuring out the mysterious red and green cherry things. they do indeed look like the holiday fruit. if this works perhaps i will try again with the holiday fruit.

my parents do not know there is pashka.

i put some comically large strawberries on her

”alright,” my dad said, taking a bite. remember that he didn’t even know there was pashka until a few minutes ago. “how did you make the cake? because it’s really good”

and while this recipe was a pain in the ass to make, i will share it. with all of you.

HOW TO MAKE THE PASHKA

step 1. first you must be a little insane.

step 2. gather the ingredients: 2lbs farmers cheese, 1/2 cup sour cream, 1 stick soft unsalted butter, 2/3 can evaporated milk, 1 3/4 cups sugar, about half a cup finely chopped unsalted macadamia nuts, about 3/4 cup chopped golden raisins, 1 orange, 1 lemon, vanilla extract, 1 vanilla bean, cheesecloth, 6 inch vintage mold, salad spinner bowl or something else with holes in it, 5 lb weights, napkins, vodka (to drink yourself)

step 3: combine chopped macadamia nuts and chopped golden raisins into a container with lid. zest into it 1 whole lemon and 1 whole orange. add the juice of the lemon and the orange. add in a large splash of vanilla extract and a scraped vanilla bean pod. mix, cover, and put in fridge for several hours

step 4: press the farmers cheese through a fine mesh sieve with the back of a spoon into bowl. set aside.

step 5: put 2/3 cup evaporated milk into saucepan. slowly heat with 1 cup sugar. heat until it has taken on color and has thickened. stir a lot. remove from heat.

step 6: cream butter and 3/4 cup sugar with electric mixer paddle attachment. add sour cream and condensed milk. beat again.

step 7: add in the fluffed farmers cheese. switch to the beater attachment. beat at least 5 minutes

step 8: take the mixture a few scoops at a time into a cloth (not a paper towel) and wring out excess liquid over a sink. this will be messy. and sticky. wear clothes you don’t care about. now might be a good time to drink your vodka. scrape the napkin contents out into a bowl. it should still be liquidy but less wet. repeat for rest of bowl.

step 9: drain liquid out of the nut raisin citrus mixture. fold into the drained cheese

step 10: put cheesecloth into the basket of a salad spinner. make sure there is overhang over the edges. place cheese mixture into the cheese cloth. wrap excess cloth over the top of the pashka, weigh down with a plate and 5lbs of weights. place the salad spinner basket into a bowl slightly smaller than the basket so that there is room for the liquid to drain to. put in fridge for around 9 hours

step 10: remove pashka from salad spinner basket and place in your mold, place lid and weights on top of it for 1 hour

step 11: remove weights and plate. soak up any liquid that has been pressed out with paper towels. leave in mold until serving time

step 12: remove from mold, take off cheese cloth, place on plate. serve with strawberries. be very glad that you only have to make this cake once a year.

detailed method which will make

a more lasting mend.

Some libraries have free seed programs. Connect locally. Now.

If you are in the US, you have access to your state (and county) Cooperative Extension Service! This is a taxpayer funded program all across the nation. They exist to help gardeners garden better, farmers to farm better, homemakers to homemake better, 4H, and a host of other things. Quality depends on how well they are funded by the government. If yours is kind of crappy check out neighboring states with similar climates. Some still give out old, outdated info.

They have a ton of free information online and some even offer free or low cost classes. This is usually out of a land grant university in your state.

This matters b/c gardening has a HUGE local component. What works best in California is not what works best in Vermont, won't be planted at the same time, some types of plants and even down to the cultivars of the plants will do better in some situations and not in others.

For example:

planting calendar for Western North Carolina vegetables and herbs

Texas A&M page with a bunch of organic gardening resources in PDF form

Online Growing Groceries Classes 2025 with the King county (Seattle I think??) Master Gardeners - $8 per class each class is 1.5 hours long. Master Gardeners are trained volunteers who assist the Extension Service.

Midwest Blueberry Production Guide (PDF) - this is REALLY good I have it on my desk at work.

An online 4 hr beekeeping course from the Univ of Oklahoma for only $20

An online 10 hour poultry course from Penn State for only ~$50 - Penn State has a lot of really good online written resources on small time animal husbandry for free too.

UGA's National Center for Home Preservation - Did you know that the internet is full of terrifyingly unsafe food preservation info? Here's an excellent and free science-based resource for preserving your harvests on things you find on a great sale at the store.

Univ of Arizona extension event calendar of things they have going on all over the state.

Most classes used to be in person, but since the lock downs many of them are online.

If anyone needs any help with this, I'm happy to help, just let me know what state you're in and what kind of info you're looking for.