baking blunders

I don't know why I think that baking will be a stress reducing activity.

It's been a weird day. I started off the morning in Chicago, and with mocha in hand I drove back down to central Illinois, feeling relatively good about life and dare I say, optimistic even.  When I got back down here, it's not even like something bad or discouraging happened, suddenly I just slid back down into the muck.

I was at my sister-in-law's bridal store, Adore, this afternoon, working on making some little goodie bags to hand out to her neighboring businesses. (She is opening officially on Thursday - so exciting!) As I sat there, cutting ribbon, I was very much reminded of practically every other job I've ever had in my life. (Okay, sidebar, I really enjoy helping out at the store. It's is really awesome and such a cool thing that Janice is doing. So please don't get the wrong impression. I am very grateful to Janice for letting me help out for awhile). With every knot I tired around the bag of Hershey kisses, the more discouraged I seemed to get. I am not convinced my life is very going to change from doing random jobs that no one would ever need a writing degree- let alone even a college diploma for.

It's also been a weird day too in the sense that I've felt physically strange all day long, I am not sure if it's because I am super dehydrated, or having some type of issue with vitamin deficiencies or what, but I feel it in my limbs, especially my feet, and physically I just feel exhausted, weak, and maybe just generally defeated. What does that mean? I've slowly been switching to a vegetarian diet and am finding that is something I think I want to continue but am very unsure about how to do that properly if this is how I am going to feel most of the time. That is frustrating to me. For social justice reasons, I really believe in cutting down our meat in-take and/or switching to only locally, grass fed meat. But that isn't an option right now. Tomorrow I will be cooking with red meat that probably lead an unhappy life in Colorado all because I really need the iron. This is the same type of frustration I feel when I am at a farmer's market - (ironically since I love farmer's markets) Currently, they remind me of how much of all this is a privileged, and one that I currently cannot really afford to participate in financially, but also now physically too. That doesn't seem fair.

All this to say, is that I really wanted to do something this evening to take my mind off, well everything. So I decided to bake whoopie pies. I even ran (literally) to the grocery store just so I could buy some Crisco, (which felt weird - running back with a can of lard in my hand. It felt very ironic).

And they didn't turn out at all.

UGH!

The cake part was too much like a cookie - so it was crunch, crusty, and hard. yuck.

I get really angry when I bake and it doesn't turn out. All that work and all that clean up for nothing. It makes me want to punch a wall.

I think I should've just studying math tonight. The results would've been about the same...