"Ashes of a secret heart"

 June feels a little bit like a defeat of a month.

 

Books, books are easier.

 

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O'Connell.  Beautiful and poignant and all sorts of other positive words.  Something super wistful about the protagonist musing about how her queer forebearers fought in no small part so she could have this prosaic average problem of having a girlfriend who is bad at being a girlfriend.

 

The Princess and the Fangirl by Ashley Poston.  Not quite as awesome as Geekerella, but another love letter to fandom.

 

Becoming Dangerous is going to require its very own post.

 

The Library Book by Susan Orlean.  I'm pretty sure that I spent at least a year listening to this book.  It was dense and informative and even occasionally really interesting.   

 

Seanan McGuire's That Ain't Witchcraft.  Antimony comes to New England and it's charming.  

 

Cooking, I kind of fell down on.  I think I made more than I wrote down but my records say I only cooked four things.  All from various Moosewood cookbooks. 
 

up-to-date oatmeal.   Steelcut oats cooked and then combined with a separately cooked date glaze.  Decent, unimpressive breakfast fare that somehow managed to dirty every pot we own.

 

(Sidenote: I'm very much hoping for an overhead pot rack at the next house.  They've got an island, which means we might be able to have one I can reach and wont' give Light or Abundance concussions.  I sometimes forget how cartoonish the height difference can look, until I see us in storefront windows.)  

 

RIcotta muffins: also fussy, also somehow simultaneously delicious and unexceptional.   You grease muffin tins, put a pat of butter in each well, heat that in the oven til  melted, divvy up some breadcrumbs into each well, then whip ricotta and eggs together.  I suspect it would have been delightful as an immediately consumed brunch thing, but languished in the fridge and got kind of weird.

 

A dish we call pasta with things.   Hominy, chickpeas, mozzerella and garlic marinated with some dried herbs, a bunch of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then tossed with pasta shells.  Sadly, peeling each individual chickpea really does make a difference when you're not cooking them.   And I kind of love it in its fairytale tale absurdity, but only if I'm in exactly the right mood.

 

Mujadara, which allowed me to learn that I have forgiven lentils and that forgiveness does not necessary convey the ability to prepare them well.  But add enough pomegranate molasses to a tire and I'd probably eat it.