A hiatus, a flop, and a winner

What a bad blogger I am! A week goes by and I've got nothing for you. Not even a photo. In my defense, a few things have contributed to my empty-handedness. One, our oven died. For those of you who live in hot places, an oven crapping out in the summer would be no big deal. Here, where it's coldest in July (I just walked the dog wearing my wool beanie), I use the oven a ton in the summer. Turns out it will take 2-3 weeks to get fixed. I guess this is what it takes for me to quit eating so much cake.

We also spent part of the week at my mom's house while she is on vacation. Where she lives is warm and flat and there are no stairs to carry the dog up and down. It's an exceedingly nice place to visit, although living in suburbia is not for me.

Although I did some cooking while we were there, I neglected to document any of it. The one thing I did make that I hoped to blog about, some little berry shortcakes for the 4th of July, didn't turn out well, and the photo was a joke (I'm nothing without my EGO light). The biscuits were flat and dry, and that was all there was to the recipe. Mixing berries with a few tablespoons of sugar does not really add up to baking. I enjoyed the whipped vanilla cream though.

I do have a winner to announce from last week's contest. I loved all of your comments, as always, and would have liked to send each of you that gift certificate. But ultimately, I chose the response that my mind kept returning to. DS wrote:

"As in the example of Midnight’s Children, this may not count as a food-related book, but I always think of the decadent and nostalgic description of coffee in George Orwell’s 1984. I love coffee. And if I found myself in an apocalyptic age, I might also consider risking my life for real coffee, bread and sugar. When I’m brewing a cup, I often think of Orwell’s coffee description and how grateful I am that while we may not have a single-payer universal health care plan, our government has yet to impose “Victory Coffee” and saccharine on the masses. For Orwell, coffee is so good that in his imagined autocratic state, it was considered contraband."

Full disclosure, DS is a friend of mine in real life. But that's not why I chose her response. I just found it to be very thoughtful and intelligent (like DS herself) and it did make me want to reread 1984. Not a food book, but still. I almost didn't choose DS because it seems like you're not supposed to pick your friend as the winner. But, doesn't that seem discriminatory in its own way? And hell, it's my blog. So congratulations, Deborah, the gift certificate is yours.

And happy weekend to you all!