Lackamotivation Lament

I braved Whole Paycheck tonight (and a visit to (another) Peet's for more loose tea--where I also found that I can bring back the opened can of the one I hated and they'll exchange it for me! yay Peet's!), and of course ended up buying things that were not on my list: extra butter (on sale, and it freezes, so why not); confectioner's sugar (organic & on sale, and I know I am completely out of it); a bottle of wine; a square of fig and almond pate-like stuff; lemons (because I haven't yet figured out the entire recipe for the rosemary cherry cookies and lemon might be handy, or else for the almond cookies); and some malted barley syrup. That last one is because I am vaguely thinking of trying to make some kind of malted chocolate flavored thing; I even found a cookie recipe pretty quickly when I got home.

This all started because my boss, who always has a bunch of candy in his office, had Whoppers last week and I was reminded how interesting that malted flavor is (and then I asked the google about malted milk, which was also interesting). I always liked Ovaltine, for example, and I realize now that it was the malted flavor. Plus, malted barley is part of the beer-brewing process, and the beer tastings I've been attending have helped me recognize the toasty malty flavor in a different setting. So I set myself the challenge of baking something with it; we'll see what I come up with. I do like experimenting with different sugars--honey, of course, is my favorite, but maple syrup and molasses also have made appearances.

Not that I know many people who will be interested in tasting my creations, at least not at work. There may be a few adventurous palates there, but I haven't seen much evidence of it, at least not by looking at what people eat for lunch. That may be an inaccurate barometer, of course, but when I see a lot of frozen meals, a lot of fried crap from the local lunch joints, and a lot of boring sandwiches, well, call me a food snob, but I don't think there will be much enthusiasm for cookies made with crystallized ginger and chunks of chocolate, or fresh rosemary and dried cherries, or barley malt syrup and whatever the hell else I toss in. I could be wrong, though.

Speaking of molasses, one of my favorite things is shoo-fly pie. If you haven't been in parts of the country where Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants settled, you probably have not tasted it: it's basically a molasses pie with a crumb topping. If you make it the way I like it, the bottom of the pie is gooey, and the flavor is dense and rich. Much as I love the stuff, I'm not entirely happy with the crust (which is just a basic pie crust), and I've been wondering if there's a way to improve on it. I don't want to just make a cake out of it, because part of the wonderfulness of the pie is the gooey part, and that'll just stick to whatever it's baked in if there's no bottom crust to it. That project will have to wait, however, because I don't really have any ideas about what to do with it, and I don't have any molasses, for that matter. But I'll tuck it away in the recipe-generating part of my brain and figure out something.

I have had no other motivation tonight; didn't even row (though I did lug groceries from hither to yon). I didn't have much motivation at work, either; I hacked through one of the budgets I needed to submit, but otherwise could. not. do. anything. I have piles of things to do, mind you; if I hadn't been such a slug, I might have eased my burden considerably. But it all felt like Big Projects, and all I wanted was to not be at work. I could spin a story about how starting anything means I'll forget where I am after four days off blah blah blah, but it would be all bullshit; I just didn't feel like doing the things that needed doing.

Mostly, I need a couple days off, but that's coming up, so yay. One thing that was a little strange tonight was the grocery trip, because I went to the WP near the bakery, i.e., I took the train trip I used to take to work, and it was surprisingly shudder-inducing.

Anyway, I need to go to sleep. Remind me to rant about how fucking tired I am of hearing executives and republicans demonize unions. It is getting on my last fucking goddamned nerve.