Bear Essentials: Mitten Noms - Michigan Classics(+ Black Forest Fudge)

Michigan has 3126 miles of shoreline, and about twice that many fudge shops.  Which is lucky, because when I'm baking on the sun-soaked beach, what I crave most is a trip to a steaming candy kitchen and a brick of chocolate the size of a smallish possum. 

12 Days of Cookies: Day the Fourth( Double Chocolate-Double Peanut Butter Cookies)

Do you ever look at a picture of food you've just taken and think "Ooooooh, sexy!"?  No?  Just me?  Okay then.

I Apologize for Your Lack of Ice Cream (+ Cherry Stracciatella Ice Cream)

They say that animals can tell when a really hard winter is coming.  Squirrels hoard acorns.  Chipmunks gather seeds.  Beavers store away…you know, whatever it is that beavers eat. 

We must have one doozy of a winter coming, because I’ve been stockpiling ice cream.

This week, while searching for a particularly elusive package of bacon, I discovered that my two freezers, combined, contain 6 pints of superpremium ice cream, four half-gallons of mediumpremium ice cream, about a quart’s worth of various homemade ice cream concoctions, and one sad quart of rainbow sherbet, about which Mr. Bear has been heard to say “All the flavors are good, but I like green the best.”  The fact that my husband thinks “green” is a flavor is so upsetting that we’re just going to move on until I can figure out how to discuss it calmly.

For those of you who are mathematically challenged (and don’t think that I didn’t have to resort to Google Measurements for this myself), that’s 26 pints of ice cream.

That’s approximately 26 POUNDS of ice cream.

That’s three babies worth of ice cream.

In the time it took you to read this, I probably ate your baby and those of both your neighbors.  Assuming they’re roughly newborn and made of ice cream, of course.  Don’t take it personally.  You just happen to make delicious offspring.  Really, you should be proud of yourself.  You could go into business.

I Blame the Ghosts (+ Tuscaloosa Tollhouse Pie)

Today I’m having chocolate-chip pie for lunch.  I’d like to act like this is some kind of aberration – that usually I eat leafy greens and quinoa and lean grilled chicken breasts, but we all know that’s not true.  Pie for lunch is not that unusual around here, but today’s example is even more grievous than usual – it’s not even a fruit pie, for god’s sake.  AND there’s an ice cream chaser.  Oh, and it’s Haagen-Dazs.  None of that “country churned, half the fat” nonsense here.

For this reason, I’m feeling a little guilty.  So if my ninth-grade nutrition teacher happens to come a-callin’, here’s what we’re going to tell her:

It’s the ghosts’ fault.

You see, I find myself in need of some comfort lately: I haven’t been sleeping at all well.  Finally released from the stress of classes and the sleep-destroying properties of a thesis, I immediately picked up Chris Bojahlian’s recent novel  The Night Strangers and found a whole new reason to up my morning caffeine dosage.  The book is about an airline pilot who survived a crash that killed most of his passengers and crew.  Suffering from PTSD and struggling with crippling guilt, he moves his family to a Victorian fixer-upper in rural New Hampshire for a fresh start – only to have his psychological haunting become very literal.   I bought the book because I admire the author, because I finally have time to read again, and because we’re thinking about moving to New Hampshire.  But mostly, I bought it because I’m a sucker for a ghost story.

If you pressed me, I couldn’t even tell you what I think about ghosts.  On an average day, my belief sits at about a 50 on a 100-point scale.  And yet I’m completely fascinated.  I devour novels about hauntings.  And as long as that book is sitting open in front of me, my belief rests firmly at 157.  Every page is punctuated with a glance over my shoulder.  Every strange household noise is immediately cataloged and evaluated.  And then I find myself lying awake at 3:00 AM, wondering if there’s always been a shadow in the northwest corner of the bedroom. 

Some people live for this kind of manufactured terror; I hate it.  I get no enjoyment from fear.  Yet none of my reactions to these books stop me from seeking them out.  Why?  Who knows.  I assume it’s probably some sort of complex that science hasn’t discovered yet.  Maybe they’ll name it after me.