From sea to secondhand sea.

I'm waiting for it to finish baking as I type.

This go, modifications were a big improvement. 3/4 c. butter 2/3 - 3/4 c. sugar 2 eggs 3 tbs. honey 1/2 c. milk Cream these ingredients together, one at a time. 1 tbs. cinnamon 1 tsp. cloves 1/2 tsp. nutmeg 1 1/2 tsp. cardmom 1 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1 1/3 c. flour Mix dry ingredients in a bowl separately. Then add to the wet ingredients and beat on medium/low. Pop into the oven for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees. * The flavor was great, sugar was about right, crumb was light but quite buttery. I might take down the butter to 2/3 c. next time, and a little less flower to accommodate.

Yields four fairly large crepes. 1 large egg 3/4 cup milk 1/2 cup flour 1 tbs melted butter 1 tbs sugar 1/2 tbs vanilla (optional: 1/2 tbs chives or other herbs) Mix all ingredients well. It should have the consistency of heavy cream. Heat a nonstick over medium. Pour 1/2 cup of batter, swirling to thin out. When the top looks dry, flip until both sides have browned slightly. Repeat.

I think all the energy I used to sublimate into baking found an outlet in grad school, but that's over now. These days I have weekly dinner+dessert nights with a friend and host the occasional brunch, and slowly I've found myself wanting to bake again. Mjuk pepparkaka is Swedish spice cake. Swedes embrace cardamom (and in the summer, saffron) in their baking, and the flavors take me back. My aunts used to make spice cake for me from a box, but it was great. They had four go-to mixes: this, a lemon cake, a sugar cake, and Tosca cake, which that last one I am definitely trying in the future. I've tried making Swedish spice cake three times now, and each time it's a little wrong. The first had the perfect balance of spices but was way too buttery. I should have known, with a description that translated to "juicy cake" and a ludicrous amount of butter. I think the recipe was this one, but to my deep regret, I just can't tell. :[ The second was off on the spices (too dark = too much ground cloves, I think, and after spending an hour cutting open cardamom pods and grinding the seeds, I accidentally tossed a tsp of it over the mixing bowl and onto the floor), and still too juicy for me. This third one I just baked tonight is a weird texture. The thing's falling apart, seems unevenly baked even though my knife came out clean, and is kind of flavorless. It turns to an unpleasant mush in my mouth. I should have been suspicious when the recipe instructed me to blend softened butter directly into all the dry ingredients and boasted a mere 1/2 cup of sugar. Anyway, here it is for the record, with a couple of notes on what I'm trying next time. Adapted from: This (mainly) and this (spice balance + 1 extra tsp of cardamom) 1 3⁄4 cups flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 1⁄2 cup sugar 2 teaspoons ground cardamom 1 tbs cinnamon 1 tsp cloves 1 tsp ginger 1⁄2 cup softened butter 1 egg 3 tbs honey 3⁄4 cup milk Set the oven to 350 deg. Butter a pan. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Then add all the wet ingredients and blend on low to medium speed, then by hand to complete integrate. "Pour" (it was thick as hell) into the pan and smooth the top. Bake for about 30 minutes. Next time, less flour, more sugar, less milk?, one more egg. Mixing butter with sugar first, then adding the egg and milk, then adding a blend of dry ingredients. The cake looks paler than I expect, but to be frank, it's almost impossible to tell if the proportion of spices tastes right because it's got so little sugar to carry it. And maybe it was ambitious to put 2 tsps of cardamom, and I should stick to one? Until next time.

I've made pancakes four out of the past five weekends, and these were my favorite.

Snowpiercer. Mike and I tried to watch it at the Music Box, and it was sold out. Twice. So we settled in for VOD. I really loved this movie. Love is kind of a weird word to use for something that is so gutwrenching, but it was also so gripping, so breathtaking, and such a fantastic story I can't recommend it enough.

Fresh eggs from a handful of free range, organically fed chickens on the two-person farm of the son of a coworker I can't really stand. But she gave me these beautiful eggs with the richest yellow yolks I've ever seen. The picture doesn't do them justice.

Waxahatchee: I didn't like her album half as much as I do now that I've seen her live. Dum Dum Girls: Mike got the tickets for me for Christmas, so I'd been looking forward to them for a long time. I wasn't disappointed. Not depicted: Angel Olsen at Lincoln Hall. I can't even. It's a miracle I'm not just a puddle of goop, I love her. Noah: There were some storybook shots (figures in black silhouette against the sky) that I really appreciated, and I loved the rock angels. James and I made the same aesthetic connection to Ray Harryhausen (e.g., Jason and the Argonauts [1963]). The film was an entertaining hodge podge of styles--is it a drama? Is it a fantasy action film? Is it a play? Is it an elementary school religion class special? Not depicted: Godzilla. Meh. Not depicted: Captain America: Winter Soldier. Better than the first, still with a hearty dose of shrug.

And bloopity bloop, things I saw that I loved, things I ate that I loved. Mike and I just made it to Lilli Carré's exhibition at the MCA, which is still so much about what comics do, she is just amazing. Sushi at the new place where Wasabi used to be, for Dan's birthday on April 26. Brunch at the Winchester (their identity was done by Sonnenzimmer), and Mike reiterated that he is done with the clean lines, light wood, inoffensive color blocks, and everything-just-so-even-the-disorder of hip interior design. Brunch was okay. My little potatoes quiche made me nostalgic. The lemon (?) sauce was great. The smoked trout was smoked trout. My main complaint is that the portions were... stingy. Even the glasses were tiny!

Another cake, this one from probably a couple of weeks ago, I think I baked it during a Blackhawks/whoever they played first in the playoffs, I don't even remember. Just Smitten Kitchen's go-to chocolate cake. (See what I mean about powdered sugar?)

On the first day of the design class I took at Spudnik a couple of months ago, a classmate brought in orange olive oil cake. I managed to forget until the very last day of class to ask her for the recipe. And then I got the recipe and promptly made it.

and am now unbelievably sad.