Myth

by Natasha Tretheway

I was asleep while you were dying.
It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow
I make between my slumber and my waking,

the Erebus I keep you in, still trying
not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow,
but in dreams you live. So I try taking

you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
Again and again, this constant forsaking.

Again and again, this constant forsaking:
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
You back into morning, sleep-heavy, turning.

But in dreams you live. So I try taking,
not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow.
The Erebus I keep you in–still, trying–

I make between my slumber and my waking.
It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow.
I was asleep while you were dying.

This is almost identical to the autumn peach pancakes I made last week—except for the pumpkin, of course. Derrick says these are his favorite of the pancakes I’ve made so far.

Pumpkin Pancakes

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 cup Smart Balance milk
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Smart Balance Butter, melted, plus more for serving
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ can pumpkin (Libby’s 100% Pure Pumpkin)

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk and vanilla. Preheat a nonstick griddle over medium heat.

Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry. Switch to spoon. Stir in the melted butter. The batter should be thick and smooth. Stir in pumpkin.

Spoon the batter onto the griddle 1/4 cup at a time. Cook the pancakes until set and thoroughly bubbly, about 3 minutes. Flip them with a spatula and cook until golden brown, about 2 minutes more. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

I’ve been making pancakes every other weekend, and I think they’re worth the time and effort of making them from scratch compared to using a mix. The taste difference is huge. This recipe has become my baseline for almost all of the fruity pancakes I’ve been experimenting with.

I created this recipe this morning, and it had nice flavors. I had a few left over, so we’ll see how well they reheat for breakfast tomorrow.

Autumn Peach Pancakes

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 cup Smart Balance milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Smart Balance Butter, melted, plus more for serving
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup frozen peaches, thawed.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk and vanilla. Preheat a nonstick griddle over medium heat.

Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry. Stir in the melted butter. The batter should be thick and smooth. Fold in the peaches.

Spoon the batter onto the griddle 1/4 cup at a time. Cook the pancakes until set and thoroughly bubbly, about 3 minutes. Flip them with a spatula and cook until golden brown, about 2 minutes more. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

This would probably taste even better with real chocolate pieces blended in. But we didn’t have real chocolate, so this is what we came up with.

Strawberry Chocolate Smoothie

3 ice cubes
1 cup whole frozen strawberries
1 cup milk
Generous squirt of chocolate syrup
Smaller squirt of chocolate syrup.

Put top four ingredients in blender, and blend. Pour into giant coffee mugs with either Santa Claus or Black Cat on the outside. Squirt a little extra chocolate syrup on top. Enjoy!

Makes 2 servings.

This will be a short entry, as I have a migraine and need to get my head/shaky hands taken care of before I can grade (hopefully soon!) But I wanted to type this up while my tuna melt eating experience was fresh.

I don’t particularly like tuna. I can’t really pinpoint my canned tuna eating experiences. I’ve wanted to like it for a long time, but it never seems to work out. Last year, a “tuna helper” fettuccini alfredo mix was so fishy and funky that it made me sick. But I had a coupon for a can of the Starkist Autentico series, and I decided that I would eat tuna this week. I picked out the “Chunk Light Tuna in Oil and Vegetables”, thinking it seemed pretty safe and neutral, then Emily posted this entry over at The Sexy Divorcee Cooks For One. It was magically perfect timing! I followed Emily’s cooking instructions exactly, so I won’t copy those again here.

Though it says the tuna can has three servings, I felt like I needed to use half the can to cover the sandwich. Because the tuna was already oily and vegetabley, I didn’t feel like I needed to add much mayo (Smart Balance) and mustard (Dijon). I went pretty light on both, actually. The mixture didn’t become overly white with mayonnaise overload (like my first salmon salad I made on Monday) and stayed pretty pink. I used Smart Balance butter to coat the pan. I used sharp cheddar cheese on honey wheat bread. It took about 20 minutes to make.

I thought that the tuna melt would be….well, meltier, but the cheese seems to lock everything together so the sandwich doesn’t explode while eating it. I kept a fork on hand to scoop up two bites which squirted out the side. The tuna flavor was much more mild than any of the other times I’ve tried eating it. I don’t know if this is because of the bread, cheese, vegetables or something about the Autentico sub-brand compared to regular StarKist I’ve tried.

This seems like a pretty cost-efficient meal, especially with the built in vegetables. Since I saved the other half in the fridge, I’ll get a second tuna melt out of it to eat for lunch tomorrow or Friday!

I eliminated beef from my diet about two years ago, as an easy diet modification to eliminate a possible contributor to my cholesterol levels and weight gain. I switched to turkey or sausage for these kinds of recipes which normally rely on beef. In the past two years, I also began to increase my fish consumption, which I’d never eaten in college or Flagstaff (where there just wasn’t any fish around except for at Red Lobster).

A couple weeks ago, I made some chicken fingers just because we happened to have some in the freezer. It’s an old favorite recipe for the “Ultimate Chicken Fingers”, which uses a batter of Bisquik and Parmasan to add flavor to the chicken. This used to be a staple in our cooking. But once the chicken fingers made their way onto my plate, I just couldn’t stomach it, and I realized that I don’t even like chicken anymore. Chicken has gradually made its way out of my diet over the last few years, and I hadn’t even noticed.

So I got to thinking, what meat am I really eating? I don’t eat beef. I don’t eat chicken. We’ve only bought ground turkey once in the past month for a spaghetti meat sauce, but I ate many of my spaghetti bowls without the meat sauce, simply with butter and parmesan. I enjoy pork, bratwursts and ribs, but I haven’t opted for these meals as regularly now as I used to either. My taste buds and stomach have changed. What does this leave me with? Fish and veggies.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have finished watching Season Three. At this point I’m over 90 episodes in. That’s at least 67 hours (not including when they have special hour and a half long episodes). I could spend three straight days of no sleep or breaks and only watching Melrose—For some reason, maybe a pacing problem, it seems like it would take a lot longer than that.

I’m now so far into the show that my sense of timelines and plotlines are becoming blurred. I’m sitting here thinking, “was that Season Two? Or Three?” In part due to the blurriness and in part due to the precedent of avoiding plot spoilers that I set in previous entries, I hope to keep my comments general instead of specific. Though Season Three began with a very Billy/Allison-based cliffhanger, I was very disappointed in the direction that they took this season. Their breakup seems contrived and forced. When I complained to Derrick about it, he said, “It’s like they’re jumping the shark by NOT getting them married already.” I completely agree. I feel strung along by this obviously meant to be romance. I used to root for Billy and Allison. Now I just want them to get it over with. Get together, get married and get off the show.

Season One was saved when Heather Locklear joined the show, so I’m the first to admit that Melrose needs to be spiced up every now and then. I was seriously disappointed that they chose to bring in Brooke, played by Kristin Davis (who many of you now know from Sex in the City), to be the “new Amanda”. When she showed up, I seriously had to take a two week hiatus from watching. I couldn’t stomach how they let a brand new, completely random character, screw up the dynamic. I know that good fiction brings us trouble, but I want to like my bad guys, not hate them. She is spoiled, selfish, and manipulative.

You loyal readers (and Melrose fans) know that Dr. Mancini is always my favorite. This season, we got to watch him fall in love with the most appropriate of women, and even though this romance didn’t turn out the way that I hoped, it was nice to see him go from evil to good to evil again.

Season Three brings addiction, blackmail, Vegas, cults, framing, business (someone we know and love buys Shooters!), baby-stealing, failed romances, attempted murders, and lots of sex. And it ended with the biggest cliffhanger yet. I’m dying to see what happens (hint, AT LEAST one major character is going to be killed off), but I knew I needed to write this up before finding out who bites the dust.

This started out as a smoothie, but it tastes much more like a slushy and has a chunkier consistency. I am calling it autumn slushy, because it is a beautiful deep red color.

Autumn Slushy

3 ice cubes
1 cup apple juice
1 cup no-sugar berry blend (strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry)
1 spoonful honey

Put ingredients in blender, and blend. Enjoy! (But not too quickly, or you might brain freeze).

Makes 2 servings.

I feel horrible and broken about this today, while I’m simultaneously grateful that none of my students were in this car.

From the GCSU student newspaper, The Colonnade:

Four students involved in car accident, two fatalities

Four students were involved in an automobile accident on North Columbia Street in the early morning hours of Sept. 22, according to the Milledgeville Police Department. Two freshmen, Johnny Harof and Alex Delor, were killed.

Freshman Christian Smith was driving a 2004 Mini Cooper on North Columbia Street at the intersection of the railroad tracks near the Goodie Gallery, according to Milledgeville Chief of Police Woodrow Blue.

Smith and Tyler Zecker, who was sitting in the passenger seat, sustained injuries and were taken to Oconee Regional Medical Center and later transported to the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, explained Blue.

“At this time we know they were heading south on North Columbia Street. When the driver crossed over the railroad tracks, he lost control of the vehicle, it went airborne, flipped over a couple of times and ended up striking a tree,” Blue said.

The first responders were on the scene at 12:58 a.m., Blue said.

According to John Gonzalez at the Baldwin County Coroner’s Office, Harof and Delor were pronounced dead at 1:45 a.m. The cause of death was blunt head trauma.

“I hate it,” said Gonzales. “It’s real sad to see young kids. They need to slow down.”

Interim President Stas Preczewski issued a statement to the student body and college community. In the statement he offered “most heart-felt condolences to the family members, friends and associates of our deceased students.” He also said that counselors would be available to “assist any university person or group who wishes assistance.”

SGA President Evan Karanovich expressed the need for unity in this time of tragedy.

“The untimely deaths of Alex and Johnny, our friends and classmates, are difficult,” Karanovich said. “By coming together as family, we can comfort and restore through these difficult times. These two students began their college careers here just a short time ago, but they made a mark as soon as they became part of our George College family.”

“The accident is still under investigation. It will be a couple of days until we complete it,” Blue said.

It is normal for instances of fatality to be under investigation for a period of time, according to Blue.

All four students went to Collins Hill High School in Lawrenceville, Ga. Their families have been notified.

The police report and comments from first responders who were at the scene are still pending.

By Aubrie Sofala and Bobbi Otis

This week we made our first batch of muesli…well, almost muesli. After seeing this video over at Summer Tomato, Derrick and I were both excited about muesli as an alternative to cereal or granola for breakfast.

Unfortunately, since we live in Milledgeville, we were unable to find a 5 grain cereal as recommended in the video. We knew that rolled oats would work, but we wanted the benefits of multiple grains. We found this Kashi 7 Grain Puffs cereal, which tastes like a healthier Rice Krispies. The con of the Puffs would be that we do not have the option of eating this food cold or hot, as with traditional muesli.

We are on our third day of muesli-eatin’. I have had bowls with both almond milk and Smart Balance Milk. The almond milk brings a sweeter flavor to the cereal and complements the nuts.

Almost Muesli

Kashi 7 Whole Grain Puffs
Cashew Halves and Pieces
Almonds (Low Sodium)
Peanuts (Unsalted, Dry Roasted)
Sunflower Kernels
Golden Raisins
Dried Cherries

Mix ingredients together in a big bowl. You’ll know when you’ve got the proportions right. Puffs should be the most used ingredient, and the dried fruit should be the least used. Store in a container to preserve freshness.