Random cranky thoughts part 1

 I'm not even going to try to write a standard full post, but here are a few thoughts that are rattling through my head

I'd like to yeet all those Trump fanatic Republican Congresswomen/spokeswomen/Instagram models/groupies into the sun, especially the ones who build their whole persona or campaign on how they like to carry guns around.  Since that is unfortunately not going to happen, I want them to have a nervous breakdown as they age and are no longer useful cute little thirst traps for Republican men. 

Bonus points if they have a miserable time during perimenopause.

Negative points if they actually shoot someone during perimenopause.

It goes without saying that I want to yeet all their male counterparts of all ages into the sun or prison. 

My husband has successfully predicted a lot of what would happen well before 2020. This is based on his experiences hanging out with bikers, many of whom are right wing, as well as his general tendency to stock up on pantry staples and toilet paper.  I am never again going to get away with being a toilet paper minimalist. If he dies before I do, I am planning on selling all my stuff and moving into a condo and living a lifestyle that would make Marie Kondo and minimalist hipster dudes proud.

On a more serious note, he's been worried about the right wingers getting violent for more than a year.  At first I thought he was overreacting, but he was right.

On a less serious note, for the last six months he has been egging me on to buy sewing stuff to keep me occupied. 

How to fix Facebook in a few easy steps

Dear Facebook, 

You scour my photos and posts to try to sell me medications/treatments for conditions I have and some I don't even have, so you damned well can do something about right wingers organizing attempted coups. You might even get more clicks this way.

Love, 

Old Biddy

1. Stop letting posts from groups take over people's feeds, and stop suggesting groups for people to join. Cut the group content to 10% of the total feed and let people use the groups tab to get caught up. If someone's friends don't post much, let them get bored and head over to the groups tab of their own volition.

2. Let people further minimize or customize the amount of content from groups and or people in their feeds.

3. Go back to showing a chronological list of people's friends posts in their feeds. Or at least let people opt in to the chronological feed without having to reset it multiple times in one session. Yes, I do like to see those infrequent posts from people I'm not really close friends with.

4. Figure out a way for people/groups posting time sensitive stuff to have it stop showing up.  No, I don't give a shit about the weather report from three days ago. If FB can use AI on my pictures to try to figures out which obscure medical conditions I have, they ought to be able to not show yesterday's weather report.

Seriously, the group thing shouldn't be that hard to fix.  Most of my friends aren't constant Facebook posters and I'm a sucker for topic-related groups, so I might be an outlier, but the minute I join a group which posts a lot, the damned thing takes over my feed, until I get fed up with it and hide it from my feed or leave the group. In my case, it's just benign stuff like cats, sewing, menopause info and inappropriate jokes, but I can totally see how people become caught up in fake news and right wing groups via Facebook. Heck, one reason I got into sewing is that I joined a FB group, then another and so on.  That's fine, but I would prefer it in one place and not taking over my feed.

Mocha chocolate chip cookies

1-1/2 tablespoons instant coffee granules or instant espresso powder
1-1/2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoon hot water
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, cut in 8 pieces, at room temperature
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar 2 large eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate morsels (can use half white chocolate morsels)
1 cup nuts (optional)

Makes 36 cookies

Heat oven to 350F and line 3 cookie sheets with parchment paper or grease with butter.
Combine coffee granules, cocoa powder and 1 tbsp sugar.  Mix well and add hot water to dissolve.
Cream butter, then add sugars. Blend well, then add eggs and vanilla and beat until creamy and well blended, then add coffee/water/cocoa mixture.  Combine flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder and add to wet ingredients.  Mix until just blended and then add chocolate chips and nuts.
Drop rounded spoonfuls of dough onto cookie sheets, leaving at least 2" apart.  Bake for 15-18 minutes, until edges have set but centers are still soft.  If you are prefer a chewy cookie to a fluffy one, remove cookies after appx 10 minutes and bang pan onto counter a few times until cookies deflate, then return them to the oven to finish baking.
If any of the cookies are connected to each other, use a knife to separate them when still hot.  They will firm up a lot when they cool, so don't be afraid to remove them from the oven when they're still pretty soft.  Allow to cool on cookie sheet for 5-10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool down to room temperature.

Commentary: For those of you who bake a lot, you may recognize the base recipe for Nestle Toll House Cookies, with a bit of coffee granules, cocoa and water added.  However, I like the flavor and texture a lot better, since I've never been able to get the Nestle recipe to work right for me and tend to get fluffy or mushy cookies rather than crisp yet chewy ones like everyone else seems to make.
If you don't have expresso powder, you can use 2 tbsp coffee in place of the espresso powder and water, or you can use those disgusting Folgers granules that your parent(s) left at your house nine years ago (true story).

The recipe is adapted from one I found on the Cuisinart website. It works fine in there but is a lot easier to go old school and make it in a bowl.  Only try this if you have a full size food processor.  I have an 8 cup one and it was just a tad too small.

Nice buns..

As always, recipe first, commentary at the end...

Buttery Rolls or Buns (adapted from King Arthur Flour's website)

• 1/2 cup (120g) sourdough starter, ripe (fed) or discard
• 3 cups (361g) All-Purpose Flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 tablespoon (14g) sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 large egg
• 5 tablespoons (71g) melted butter
• 2/3 cup (152g) lukewarm water

If you don't have a sourdough starter, add an additional 1/4 cup water and flour

1. Combine all of the dough ingredients in a large bowl, and mix and knead — using your hands, a stand mixer, or a bread machine set on the dough cycle — to make a soft, smooth dough.You may need to add a bit more flour so that it's not sticky.
   
2. Place the dough in a lightly greased container in a warm spot and allow the dough to rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until it's just about doubled in bulk.
   
3. Gently deflate the dough, and transfer it to a lightly greased work surface.
   
   
4. For cinnamon rolls or other spiral dough -roll and pat the dough into a rough rectangle approximately 12" x 16". Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a small bowl. Spread melted butter onto dough and add any topping (e.g cinnamon sugar and nuts, cheese, or everything bagel seasoning, etc). Starting with a long side, roll the dough into a log.Cut the log in 1" slices, using a sharp knife, or a piece of dental floss looped between your fingers. Lightly grease two 8" or 9" round cake pans. Arrange 8 buns in each pan. If you want to do loaves, cut roll in half and put each piece in a buttered loaf pan.
   
   5. For buns, stretch dough into a symmetric cylinder.  Cut in half, then cut each section in half, then repeat process two more times so that you have 16 dough pieces.  Shape each piece into  a ball, and place in 2 greased round cake pans or use a 9" x 13" pan.
   
   6. For loaves, divide dough into 2 pieces, shape into logs and place in buttered loaf pans.  Alternately, for pull apart slices, cut dough into 16 pieces as described above, roll into logs the width of your loaf pans, and arrange in a row in 2 buttered loaf pans.
   
   7. For monkey bread, grease a bundt pan or two loaf pans.  Pull off 1" pieces of dough, roll in melted butter and then cinnamon sugar, and place into pan(s)
   
   For all variations.
   Cover the pans, and let the buns rise for 60 minutes, until they're noticeably puffy. Don't let these buns rise too long; you want them to have enough rising power left to expand nicely in the oven. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.Uncover the pans, and brush each bun with  melted butter. (you don't need to do this for the monkey bread)
   Bake for 22 to 25 minutes and 35-40 minutes for loaves or monkey bread loaves. They'll color only slightly.
   Remove the buns from the oven and cool.
   
   Commentary. You can tell if a recipe on the King Arthur Flour website is good by how many reviews it has and how many stars it has.  This one is both popular and highly ranked.   They're soft and tasty and are my go-to recipe for rolls for Thanksgiving, Easter dinner or sliders.  I've made these at least 5 times and usually do a double or triple recipe of the plain rolls and freeze most of them. To freeze, just separate a section of rolls and wrap well with plastic wrap.
   
   For more variations, check out the comments on the King Arthur Flour website.
   
   
   

Snarky Fangirling Lia Ices

I was listening to my usual Amazon Prime music station in lab the other day and a song that I'd never heard before came on.  I played it several times in a row and liked it even more each time.
The singer, Lia Ices, is a singer songwriter.  To me, her voice sounds like a young Sinead O'Connor sang a Cocteau Twins song, but there are also similarities to Kate Bush, Tori Amos, and Florence and the Machine. 
After listening to a bunch or her songs, I looked her up. Dear readers, if she didn't sounds like an angel I would be seriously snarky because she seriously does not fit my image of someone who sounds like Sinead O'Connor meets Cocteau Twins. I don't hate people because they're beautiful but I could almost come close here because her life is so over that top that I'd like to trade places with her for a few days.  She's got that tall pretty bohemian look and is married to a heir to the Mariani dried fruit empire who owns an organic vineyard in Northern California.  There were multiple articles about her in Vogue, including her snark-worthywedding, her makeup routine, etc etc.  She's been recording music since 2008, but since I'm an out of touch old biddy who doesn't read Vogue I was totally clueless. 
Here's the song that got me hooked despite being a cranky old biddy who'd be shocked that her favorite new artist is a rich girl Vogue Instagrammer type. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfrwEyyRsIY

the magic of perimenopause, part 2/n

And, just like that, my ovaries turned back on and my internal furnace shifted back to normal levels. All of a sudden I have a normal heat tolerance again.  Probably not coincidentally, I am finally able to sleep deeply and not wake up from being too warm.
I am celebrating this momentous occasion by drinking a lot of caffeine and attempting to catch up on a year's worth of sleep.  However, I am hedging my bets by not putting the flannel sheets or comforter back on the bed just yet.

FU - media, part 1/n

Bringing back the short format without links since I have a lot to say and a short attention span...
Can we please stop throwing our female presidential candidates under the bus?  Please just focus on articles on the latest Trump fuckups and let the voters decide who they want in the Democratic primary.  It's really obvious now that there are multiple female and minority candidates for president. Hollee fuck this is getting annoying.  Do the math.  Raising 3% less money than Joe Biden in three months is not a sign that doom is imminent, nor is one generic tweet that says essentially the same thing as all the other candidates regarding Trump's attack on Iran. The media glorifies all the white guys, ignores the qualified male minority candidates and giddily throws the female candidates under the bus one at a time to maximize their views. 
On a related note, can we please stop acting like Pete Buttiegieg is a super genius because he went to Harvard and got a Rhodes Scholarship without also mentioning that Cory Booker did pretty much the same, albeit he went to Stanford.  Likewise, Julian Castro also went to Stanford.  The only reason I know these things because I'm also an alum from the same era. Sheesh.