All Coffee Recipes

Some cool easy coffee cake recipe images:

think of sixteen things

Image by ailatan

ONE
The only thing I cannot think of for this exercise.

TWO
The number of variants of an item I tend to select; for instance, when buying clothes and accessories I follow an urge to get two of a kind in two different colors. I derive satisfaction from balancing or completing phenomena by forming pairs—the most basic of sets or classes.

THREE
The number of children I think I want, possibly named Lily, Lucy and Lena.

FOUR
A palpably favorite digit since forever and [as I eventually discovered] my numerology number. To my symmetry-loving mind—the pinnacle of elegance.

FIVE
My age during a first-ever visit to America, when three months must have seemed like a grown-up’s decade and the memories formed would undermine some of my inner Pole.

SIX
The number of people I spoke to before talking to my first [and last] future and former boss Claudia during a courtesy interview with the ad agency DDB New York, when I was fresh out of grad school and looking for my first real job.

SEVEN
The age Polish kids are when they start first grade. Not six, seven. And we finish school and start university one year later. After that we tend to go straight for a five-year MA track, and that makes up the difference. But I went to college in the US. Colorado College and Syracuse.

EIGHT
Is also a very symmetrical number. A cube and a Möbius strip. And the perfect quantity of items to have in one’s kit. [Collapsible titanium chopsticks, minty toothpicks, moo flickr cards...]

NINE
Is a word that would make a fantastic invented brand name [were it not already a meaningful number]. It has patterns and brevity, no wishy-washy curvatures and lively angles and diagonals. It’s stuff like this I notice constantly as a professional namer.

TEN
The number of minutes by which I’m off when calculating my estimated times of departure from home. It’s as if the momentum necessary for leaving the house can be sourced and re-distributed, so that by leaving a little later you save yourself an instance of momentum-generating on another occasion. Dishwasher. Dryer. Sweep. That e-mail. Change Kanika’s water. Garbage.

ELEVEN
The age my sister Magda was during that visit in America. [See number 5.]

TWELVE
The number of years ahead of me before I turn 43, which is unimaginable to me at this time but will no doubt make plenty of sense eventually. The passage of time can be impossible to fathom, or to accept, one minute—prosaic the next.

THIRTEEN
A baker’s dozen, of interest for its wealth of cultural etymology and a satisfying read for the linguist/semiotician.

FOURTEEN
Possibly half of the number of spokes on a bicycle wheel, which comes to mind merely because I love riding a bike around Warsaw for transportation and dog purposes, and I’m anxious for warmer weather so I can get back on the saddle. Or saddles, more accurately, because there are two.

FIFTEEN
The number of items on a list I made recently of the things I have baked that I will bake again and thus can consider my own arsenal of recipes and culinary ideas. From the easiest slow-risen breadsticks and yeasted rose-petal coffee cake to certain chocolate cookies I’ve made three times just last week, it’s all there. Some kind of presentation is in order.

SIXTEEN
The number of months that have passed since I went pro on flickr, and the number of hours I spent on flickr in the average week during the first year. I love this curious community and testing site, and I’ve learned more here about noticing the form and content of photographs, synthesizing thoughts and the principles of reciprocity than I have from any other activities.

52.22 – Cliché time

Image by dichohecho

I really quite like this :s
I’ve reduced the brightness a bit but apart from that done nothing to it.
Thissss weeeeeek:
Monday was Anna’s birthday. We woke her up too late & I had to go to work at 3 so circumstances weren’t super. But I’m not going to go into it here. Anyway, I met the others after work and we went to Pizza Express to celebrate. I took exciting pictures of their flowers/tables/Christmas decorations. The decorations were nice. They had a Christmas tree with silvery things on and lots of baubles hanging from the spotlight branches.
On Tuesday I got up at 8, made Afghan cookies (a New Zealand thing, chocolate bicuits with cornfakes in) and got dressed while they were cooking. Then I dashed off to Amber’s house with a bag of walnut halves and a pot of icing sugar & cocoa, to which we added water to ice the afghans. Our family discovered Afghans when we went to New Zealand in 2003. I looked for a recipe at home and on the internet for ages before discovering it in Mum’s faithful & frequently used 70s edition of the Penguin Cookbook!
Amber & I had a nice chat & tea & coffee, and I gave her her Christmas present. We helped her brother put the annoying adverts into the free local newspapers he delivers and admired the mosaic of photos her Mum had made for the departing gap year student. Amber’s parents are house parents of a boy’s boarding house & each year one of the gap year students who helps out with games is assigned to the house as a tutor & assistant.
After that I went down to the park & ride & thence to work (12-5) which I can’t remember being particularly interesting. After that I was meant to be picking Mark up from the station as close as possible to 5. So I rushed up to the bus stop & joined the large crowd of people waiting for it. The traffic was awful so not only did we have to wait ages for a bus to arrive but when it did it could barely move. We were stuck on the roundabout in the centre of Taunton for almost 10 minutes and had to go a long back way round by the hospital to try and get past some of the Tesco/SCAT traffic.
I eventually got round to the station at about 6 & found Mark, who was remarkably un-annoyed by having to sit in the waiting room for an hour. We went home & made BLTs with cucumber instead of lettuce as we had none, with Kate as well. Mum, Dad & Anna went out for supper. Then Mark & I were meant to be meeting Amy, Meg & Caroline for a (non-alcoholic for those driving) drink or two in Taunton. But Amy texted me saying she was ill and couldn’t come. I phoned Caroline to sort out what time I’d pick her up and she said "we’re meeting in P&P, yeah?" which I assumed to mean she was going to get there herself. So I drove straight there, couldn’t see her & phoned her to see what was going on. It turned out she’d asked me so she could confirm it to Meg & text her when I got to her house. Boooo.
Then I said I’d come back & get her and Caroline said no, don’t, because she was ill anyway… I phoned Meg & told her what Caroline said and she decided not to come either. So that’s how the evening fell apart. Now I think I should’ve just gone and got Caroline anyway.
Mark & I wandered around Taunton a bit and had a drink, went to show him what Bridgwater’s like (he’s from Poole), then went home and ended up watching Amélie.
On Wednesday we got up & had a look at a road atlas, decided Glastonbury was too far away for a morning visit and went up Cothelstone hill instead. We had a nice look at the view and the funny shaped tree over near Broomfield before going down into Taunton for lunch.
Mark went home again & I started work at 3. I’d been coughing a bit earlier but while I was working I got achey all over and dizzy and hot and cold which was pretty unpleasant. And I had to rearrange all the slippers and take some downstairs, which wouldn’t've been too bad without the dizziness and aches. Meanwhile the other girl who was in for the majority of the time I was there was rearranging the sale stock. Not an easy task, but not one that required me to come up from sleepwear to serve every single customer instead of her. Grrr. I got 2 accounts though so that served her right…
I was on my own for the last hour, tidying things up as much as possible, and it was quite messy. It was still quite messy when it came to 7 o’clock and there was still a rail full of sale stuff standing there. But I had to cash up at the right time & get out to the park & ride by 7.30 to get the last bus.
I counted everything up & put it into the till and ended up with an imbalance. Which meant I had to find a supervisor to come & recount it all with me & sort it out. But all the people on womenswear had finished & gone so I was craning my head round the corner hoping that someone would come up the stairs as I couldn’t just leave the till open & all the money lying around. Luckily I did get someone after a few minutes. I turned out to have counted it all right and have too much money rather than too little!
So I finished with the horrid till, left, dashed to the bus stop & had to wait, thinking I might’ve missed it. My head was aching too by now & my throat hurt & I was feeling all stressed by the imbalance so I was far from happy. I drove home ok, had supper and crashed.
Oddly I felt better on Thursday, mainly coughy and a little hot and cold. I worked 9-2 & survived ok. I visited Lils at Boots after work & discovered that the cake lady at the farmers’ market is having a break until February :( Friday was pretty much the same but 8.20-12.20 so I had half a day left over, which I did nothing with!
Saturday morning was sleep & illness and the afternoon I spent writing Christmas cards & doing nothing. Apart from when Ashley came round to drop off her secret santa present (she couldn’t make it to the meal).
I went round to Amy’s house and we got ready and took a bus into Taunton. We were going to a kind of reunion of a group of friends, most of whom left Queen’s in year 11. Out of 9 who said they were definitely coming, 8 turned up, one of the "maybe"s was late and another turned up after supper. We had pizza and swapped cards & presents before moving on to Café Mambo and the Perkin, colliding with at least one birthday party involving people some of us knew. Amy & I shared a taxi back with one of her friends from her village (which made it much cheaper) and I slept at her house.
It was a nice evening and everyone still gets on, which is great. The "definite" who didn’t turn up was meant to be in the secret santa but we gave her present to the girl she was meant to be buying for so it worked out ok in the end, even if it wasn’t terribly personal…
I’ve spent today lying about feeling coldy and doing a bit of room tidying so that my sister can sleep in here over Christmas (we’ve got Grandma and my great aunt coming to stay). I’m not feeling hugely Christmassy, but then I have been forced to listen to the music at work for over a month now…
Ummm.
Merry Christmas!

Afternoon tea with brownie…

Image by lorises