If April is the cruelest month, and I'm not dissenting that, then August is definitely the strangest. It starts with the peak of my birthday and beach vacations and ends with the slump that is back-to-school. Apart from that general guideline, August seems to have a strange aura about it. The weather may get increasingly oppressive, but it threatens you with the whisper that it won't last much longer.
August has always been surreal for me, particularly with the turn to adulthood. I've had my heart broken, royally bang-up broken, twice in August. Cakes I bake fail to come out of their pans, and I squash them with my toes in the garden in fits of anger. I find myself listening to Mumford and Sons' first album with a certain amount of nostalgia and wistfulness that makes me want to weep right in the middle of driving down I-83. And it's not all bad--it's the inexplicable interweave of the good with the bad. Take this August: I got a job. I went to New York and had my birthday, and Pittsburgh, and it was fantastic, and then I came back from Pittsburgh and everyone was sick, including me. Then my mother ended up with a broken toe, I ended up in the emergency room, and earlier this week, we said goodbye to this little friend, rather abruptly.
Brandy had been licking the dirt at a friend's house as we all sat at a picnic table slurping our summer sweet corn. We thought it was funny. "You sure you never put down a salt lick here?" my dad asked (and then everyone got drunk and talked about the disco age). The next thing she tried to eat was the concrete out by the pool, making us shiver as she scraped her canines against the cement. She progressed to baseboards, bricks, and various pieces of furniture, all while refusing ground beef and lunch meat. I came back from Pittsburgh and she'd begun hiding. I read somewhere that dying people will expel everything from their bodies in any way they can, and she was certainly doing that. It was time.
Millipedes notwithstanding, I'd never seen a living thing die before. I was both dreading it and-- somehow--looking forward to it for. For the first time in my life, I wasn't shrinking back from my grief. I was embracing it, accepting it as a natural and healthy part of my emotions. I let myself cry openly, without shame. I viewed my mothers' tears with something less than the terror and vulnerability I usually feel the few times I've seen her cry. So we gripped each others' shoulders and cried.
The hardest part was watching them carry our dog out of the room, wrapped in a pink swim towel. Her eyes were still open, and that jarred me. How could she not still be alive? She looked exactly the same as she had seconds before, except she wasn't squirming. She was still warm and fluffy, and I didn't want to leave her, knowing I would never see her again. Her eyes still haunt me at night, looking right at me again and again as they carry her out of the room, all light behind them extinguished. I'm still trying to cope with that.
My mother and father and I went all together to the vet's, and afterward we went out for a stiff drink at the local bar and toasted a dog who never met a squeaky ball she didn't like. I came home, took a mild sedative, and played solitaire on my phone until I fell asleep. My first thought the next morning was that I had to get up and let the dog out, and then I remembered there was no dog. I moped around for a while. It was my mother's birthday, she was working all day and evening, and I wanted there to be something nice for her when she came home. So I packed all the dog toys and food up, sniffling, and then I made chocolate brownies with peanut butter frosting.
My mother has never met a chocolate-peanut butter combination she didn't like, and I've been meaning to try out Ashley Rodriguez's brownie recipe for ages, so that was a no brainer. We're on some kind of healthy eating kick in my household, but even more than healthy eating, I believe in celebrating birthdays, and any excuse to celebrate at all, actually. When you've only got an average of eighty years to stick around, and other lovely creatures have even less, you'd better be celebrating something every damn day.
P.S. By sheer coincidence! I never read my LinkedIn updates, but something made me today. I came across this lovely short essay, and it gave me all the feels, and said everything I could not. Especially that last line.
Bittersweet Brownies with Salted Peanut Butter Frosting
Adapted just a touch from Ashley Rodriguez's Date Night In
These really are just as bang-up as they sound, with a lovely depth of flavor, and definitely more fudgey than cake-like, which is how we prefer them in our household. I subbed in turbinado sugar for white, which lent them even more depth and a nice variation in texture, although certainly feel free to use white if that's all you have.
For the brownies:
170 grams (3/4 cup) unsalted butter*, plus more if you're using it to grease the pan
90 grams (3 oz) chopped unsweetened (baking) chocolate
175 grams (3/4 cup plus two Tbsp.) turbinado or white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
40 grams (1/2 cup) unsweetened cocoa powder
70 grams (1/2 cup) all-purpose flour
For the frosting:
85 grams (6 Tbsp) salted butter, at room temperature
100 grams (3/4 cup) peanut butter, smooth or chunky
40 grams (1/3 cup) confectioner's sugar
Splash of vanilla
Brownies:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 inch square pan, lay in a piece of parchment paper that overhangs the edges, and grease that too. Bring all your ingredients to room temperature (this really does make a difference, so just do it. Go pay your bills or take a shower or something).
In a medium to large saucepan, melt the butter over medium to medium-high heat, then let the milk solids separate and bubble up. Keep a close watch: they will settle and begin to caramelize, and the butter will begin to brown. Swirl the butter to keep an eye on the color, and take it off the heat as soon as it begins to darken, about 3 to 5 minutes. Butter can go from a lovely caramel color to burned very, very fast. It should smell toasted and slightly nutty.
Pour butter into a medium bowl and add chopped chocolate. Let sit for one minute to melt, then whisk together. Whisk in the vanilla and sugar (don't worry, it seems like a lot, but it's not too much), then whisk in the eggs. Whisk in the cocoa, salt, and flour until there aren't any lumps, but don't overmix.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes (30 minutes was perfect in my oven), or until a tester comes out without brownie goop. Let cool completely (you can put them in the fridge to speed this up, if you want), then remove the brownies from the pan using the parchment paper, frost, and cut.
Frosting:
With a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip together the peanut butter, confectioner's sugar, vanilla, and butter until the mixture lightens in color and everything is incorporated. Frost the completely cooled brownies. Leftovers should be refrigerated. Birthday candle is optional.
*I only had salted butter on me, so I just used that and only added the vaguest pinch of salt.
August has always been surreal for me, particularly with the turn to adulthood. I've had my heart broken, royally bang-up broken, twice in August. Cakes I bake fail to come out of their pans, and I squash them with my toes in the garden in fits of anger. I find myself listening to Mumford and Sons' first album with a certain amount of nostalgia and wistfulness that makes me want to weep right in the middle of driving down I-83. And it's not all bad--it's the inexplicable interweave of the good with the bad. Take this August: I got a job. I went to New York and had my birthday, and Pittsburgh, and it was fantastic, and then I came back from Pittsburgh and everyone was sick, including me. Then my mother ended up with a broken toe, I ended up in the emergency room, and earlier this week, we said goodbye to this little friend, rather abruptly.
Brandy had been licking the dirt at a friend's house as we all sat at a picnic table slurping our summer sweet corn. We thought it was funny. "You sure you never put down a salt lick here?" my dad asked (and then everyone got drunk and talked about the disco age). The next thing she tried to eat was the concrete out by the pool, making us shiver as she scraped her canines against the cement. She progressed to baseboards, bricks, and various pieces of furniture, all while refusing ground beef and lunch meat. I came back from Pittsburgh and she'd begun hiding. I read somewhere that dying people will expel everything from their bodies in any way they can, and she was certainly doing that. It was time.
Millipedes notwithstanding, I'd never seen a living thing die before. I was both dreading it and-- somehow--looking forward to it for. For the first time in my life, I wasn't shrinking back from my grief. I was embracing it, accepting it as a natural and healthy part of my emotions. I let myself cry openly, without shame. I viewed my mothers' tears with something less than the terror and vulnerability I usually feel the few times I've seen her cry. So we gripped each others' shoulders and cried.
The hardest part was watching them carry our dog out of the room, wrapped in a pink swim towel. Her eyes were still open, and that jarred me. How could she not still be alive? She looked exactly the same as she had seconds before, except she wasn't squirming. She was still warm and fluffy, and I didn't want to leave her, knowing I would never see her again. Her eyes still haunt me at night, looking right at me again and again as they carry her out of the room, all light behind them extinguished. I'm still trying to cope with that.
My mother and father and I went all together to the vet's, and afterward we went out for a stiff drink at the local bar and toasted a dog who never met a squeaky ball she didn't like. I came home, took a mild sedative, and played solitaire on my phone until I fell asleep. My first thought the next morning was that I had to get up and let the dog out, and then I remembered there was no dog. I moped around for a while. It was my mother's birthday, she was working all day and evening, and I wanted there to be something nice for her when she came home. So I packed all the dog toys and food up, sniffling, and then I made chocolate brownies with peanut butter frosting.
My mother has never met a chocolate-peanut butter combination she didn't like, and I've been meaning to try out Ashley Rodriguez's brownie recipe for ages, so that was a no brainer. We're on some kind of healthy eating kick in my household, but even more than healthy eating, I believe in celebrating birthdays, and any excuse to celebrate at all, actually. When you've only got an average of eighty years to stick around, and other lovely creatures have even less, you'd better be celebrating something every damn day.
P.S. By sheer coincidence! I never read my LinkedIn updates, but something made me today. I came across this lovely short essay, and it gave me all the feels, and said everything I could not. Especially that last line.
Bittersweet Brownies with Salted Peanut Butter Frosting
Adapted just a touch from Ashley Rodriguez's Date Night In
These really are just as bang-up as they sound, with a lovely depth of flavor, and definitely more fudgey than cake-like, which is how we prefer them in our household. I subbed in turbinado sugar for white, which lent them even more depth and a nice variation in texture, although certainly feel free to use white if that's all you have.
For the brownies:
170 grams (3/4 cup) unsalted butter*, plus more if you're using it to grease the pan
90 grams (3 oz) chopped unsweetened (baking) chocolate
175 grams (3/4 cup plus two Tbsp.) turbinado or white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
40 grams (1/2 cup) unsweetened cocoa powder
70 grams (1/2 cup) all-purpose flour
For the frosting:
85 grams (6 Tbsp) salted butter, at room temperature
100 grams (3/4 cup) peanut butter, smooth or chunky
40 grams (1/3 cup) confectioner's sugar
Splash of vanilla
Brownies:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 inch square pan, lay in a piece of parchment paper that overhangs the edges, and grease that too. Bring all your ingredients to room temperature (this really does make a difference, so just do it. Go pay your bills or take a shower or something).
In a medium to large saucepan, melt the butter over medium to medium-high heat, then let the milk solids separate and bubble up. Keep a close watch: they will settle and begin to caramelize, and the butter will begin to brown. Swirl the butter to keep an eye on the color, and take it off the heat as soon as it begins to darken, about 3 to 5 minutes. Butter can go from a lovely caramel color to burned very, very fast. It should smell toasted and slightly nutty.
Pour butter into a medium bowl and add chopped chocolate. Let sit for one minute to melt, then whisk together. Whisk in the vanilla and sugar (don't worry, it seems like a lot, but it's not too much), then whisk in the eggs. Whisk in the cocoa, salt, and flour until there aren't any lumps, but don't overmix.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes (30 minutes was perfect in my oven), or until a tester comes out without brownie goop. Let cool completely (you can put them in the fridge to speed this up, if you want), then remove the brownies from the pan using the parchment paper, frost, and cut.
Frosting:
With a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip together the peanut butter, confectioner's sugar, vanilla, and butter until the mixture lightens in color and everything is incorporated. Frost the completely cooled brownies. Leftovers should be refrigerated. Birthday candle is optional.
*I only had salted butter on me, so I just used that and only added the vaguest pinch of salt.
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