1. Follow the directions from the Vegan Family Cookbook, cutting the sugar by half.
2. Preheat oven to 500, despite directions stating 425.
3. Get in the shower.
4. Realize six minutes later that you preheated the oven to 500, despite directions stating 425.
5. Jump out of shower, soapy and wet, and rush to kitchen, nearly slipping and falling in hallway.
6. Reset oven to 425.
7. Run back to shower.
8. Return to kitchen in time to remove muffins, only to find them not done.
9. Bake muffins for twice recommended time.
10. End product: photogenic but overly-chewy muffins.
11. Enjoy?

I’ll be taking a break from cooking while traveling in Europe with the fam this week. Try not to burn anything without me.

Always cook with a buddy - or seven, if your kitchen and buddies will allow it. This means for better times all around: someone to run to the store when the yeast is found dead (tragic), someone to watch TV while the dough is rising, someone to cook the spinach and make sure you don’t put too much olive oil on the rolled crust, someone to grate cheese and slice tomatoes and wave magazines frantically at the beeping smoke alarm, someone to test the center of the dough for crustiness and provide moral support when it seems to be taking three times as long to cook as it should, someone to take the pan out of the oven so you don’t burn your hand or set another pot holder on fire and then someone to tell you that it really does taste quite good and could you imagine doing all this without any of us? Impossible. You’d have been killed. And the alarm would still be going off.

If you are like me, however, post-pizza time you are stuck with a freezer full of a really tasty spinach, tomato and mushroom pie cut into awkward pieces to fit into a mustard-yellow tupperware the size of a hubcap. I guess heaven is no other people.

Ouch.

Dough: 2 tsp yeast + .25 c warm water + 1 tsp sugar, foam 10 minutes. Sift 3 c flour + 1 tsp salt + spices of choice. Combine and + 1.25 c warm water. Knead with floured hands. Let rise 60 minutes. Knead again, roll out onto floured pan.

Top: with too much olive oil + four sliced roma tomatoes + 10 ounces spinach sauteed in olive oil with 4 cloves garlic + 1 c sliced mushrooms + half package grated cheese. Cook at 450 as long as you can stand or until it burns beyond edibility.

Enjoy alone.

Last week Radaronline.com broke the story that there’d been allegations of cheating on the open-book, take-home ethics final (there must be a j-schooler interning there). The story was later picked up by the Times and now everyone’s freaking out about the immoral Columbia j-student body. The strangest aspect of this story is that no one is attempting to address the central issue: how, in fact, do you cheat on an open-book, take-home ethics final? It’s also strange that people seem to find this surprising, though perhaps this surprise is just hiding their glee at watching the privileged falter. Or something.

A current j-school student has started a blog dedicated only to this topic, which I might express surprise at just to hide my glee at watching the privileged be idiots. S/he vehemently defends Mr. Sam Freedman, the unfortunate new professor lecturer of the ethics course. “He’s the captain and we’re just sailing on his ship right? As long as we get to our final destination, who the hell cares?”
No comments. Now that’s surprising.

Some background: Trina Robbins is the self-appointed expert women cartoonist “herstorian” (and herself a rather crappy woman cartoonist) and founder of the now predominantly male-run women cartoonists organization Friends of Lulu. When I did my journalism master’s thesis on women cartoonists, TR didn’t return any of my e-mails; this was also the case for lessers in the same mold, e.g. Heidi MacDonald, who generally suck up to cartoonists, men and men cartoonists, but who seem to be threatened and/or out of their element when it comes to women infringing in their womanly territory (trad male hegemony tactics, girls: divide and conquer). I wonder how TR and HM get along.

Now: I’m not so much a fan of Aline Kominsky-Crumb either, mostly because I don’t care for her work (though she’s worlds better than TR) plus the odd impression she makes in Crumb. However, my opinion of her has increased at least 47.3% after reading this interview she gave to Daniel Robert Epstein for the Suicide Girls (big gender WTF there as well).

This snippet works on so many delightful levels. Not only does it confirm my opinion of TR, but there’s cat-fighting, misogyny, narcissistic wounds plus the goddamn Suicide Girls? Amazing.