Happy Valentine's Day! Molten Nutella Handpies with Bob's Red Mill

We used to decorate brown lunch bags and hang them from our desk. Write our names in felt-tipped pens. We passed around stickered love notes, miniature candy bars. We all left feeling loved in those winter school days. It made us feel good to get a card from the pretty girls, even if they were obligatory. A week later, they’d all be in the trash. A month later, my mother would buy the remaining Valentine’s Day candy in the clearance aisle and we’d have it in our baskets by Easter. Love like that was budgeted. Obligatory, too.

I was 18 when I first celebrated a Valentine’s Day. I bought him gloves at a Macy’s in downtown so his hands weren’t so cold when he held mine. He bought my dinner—a Big Mac—and I thought it was the most romantic thing in the world.  A week later, he proposed to me at a park where three rivers intersected. A month later we never talked again and I was relieved the day he told me he wanted to leave me. We were in a pizza place down the road from my dorm.  I think he’s a waiter now somewhere out West. I don’t think of him much. Not at all, actually. But for a month I was sure I’d marry him. If for no other reason than because I was bored.

I lived for years thinking love was an obligation, a chore others had to do that I was too lazy or too unwilling to do myself. I spend even more years thinking it was an all-or-nothing bargain. I spent weekends in November thinking of how to end my relationships; I spent hours in February wrapping presents instead. Love for me came in waves, crashing and then disappearing for complete lunar cycles. Love for me came in soft like crickets and then fast like an EKG. Cicadas when it was good, loud and cacophonous in the summertime, then it’d die back down into molted skins—dry, brittle, blurred shapes of what it used to hold for us.

From Indian fast food where we shared our plates to an underground lake in Cancun where we fought about sex, from a weekday we forgot to go out to a five minute phone call, I have shared Valentine’s with boys who felt obligated to care for me. I was so desperate for anything they could give. I know now that I wasn’t the heart or the hand glove. Not the paper bag or the cavities. I was desperate and lonely, but I was young, too. This year I’m spending Valentine’s Day alone for the first time in six years. I’ll wake up like it’s any other day, but take time for myself. Drink coffee, stay in bed until I have to wash my face and start my day. Eat a bowl of cereal and a couple of these hand pies. I have years of celebrating ahead of me, but it’s good to be alone this year. 

Molten Nutella Handpies

With Bob’s Red Mill’s coconut flour and a spoonful of Nutella to come spilling out of these bad boys, you can share these with that special someone or have them all for yourself. Makes 24 4-inch handpies (go crazy)

Ingredients:

• 2 cup AP flour
• 1 cup coconut flour
• ½ cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons instant espresso
• 1 ½ cup white sugar
• 8 tablespoons butter, cold
• ½ cup shortening, cold
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 8-9 tablespoon ice water
• 2 jars Nutella hazelnut spread (if you want them really molten and gooey)
• 1/3 cup of flaked sea salt (a pinch per handpie)
• 1 egg, mixed with a little water for an egg was

Directions:

1.     Sift flours, cocoa powder, espresso, and sugar into the bowl of your food processor. Pulse twice to incorporate

2.     Pulse in your fats, running motor until flour-fat mixture is the size of peas

3.     With the motor running, add vanilla and then ice water, a tablespoon at a time

4.     When dough begins to clump, turn motor off and turn onto a heavily floured work surface

5.     Knead only a couple times to form into a disc and cut dough in half. Shape both halves into discs and refrigerate for an hour

6.     While dough is resting, prep your station. You will need your Nutella, a couple spoons or a mini ice cream scoop, extra flour (this dough can handle it), your egg wash, a pastry brush, and 2 parchment-lined baking sheets

7.     Take dough out of fridge when finished resting and you can preheat oven to 350*F now (assembling the handpies can take a bit of time, if you’re doing the whole 24)

8.     Roll one disc out to be about a quarter inch thick and using either a floured 4-inch cookie cutter or even a glass and begin cutting out your rounds. One half your yield 24 rounds

9.     Evenly space your rounds onto the parchment lined baking sheets and spoon some Nutella into each one, add a pinch of salt

10. Roll out second disc of dough and repeat steps of cutting out your rounds

11. For each round out of this disc, you will be placing on top of the prepared rounds that have Nutella on them

12. Lightly dip your pastry brush into your egg wash and go around the rim of the prepared Nutella-topped round. Place second round on top. Crimp with a fork to seal. Cut a small X on each one with a paring knife to vent the handpies while baking.

13. Repeat steps 11 and 12 for remaining 23 handpies

14. Brush each with an additional little egg wash for a nice crust while baking

15. Bake at 350* for 33-36 minutes.  Enjoy immediately as the hazelnut spread oozes out like a molten chocolate cake

16. Enjoy and kiss someone cute for me!

Note: I am fortunate enough to be a Bob's Red Mill brand ambassador this year and will be partnering with them more and more throughout the year. While Bob's Red Mill supplied the ingredient, coconut flour, for this post, all opinions are my own. Check out their website for more information on all the amazing products they have to offer!

Avoiding the Red Cliche

Most things come easily to me, things you wouldn't expect from a boy with no discernible talent.  Things like baseball, calculus, forgiveness never came easy to me, but love did.  Love in the carnal sense, love in the fictional sense.  Love in the sense of letting go, love in the sense of finding yourself.  Love in the sense of that ever-present gnaw at the pit of your stomach that registers in the mind as I am responsible for someone else's happiness. Love has come easily to me since birth.  I love my mother in an almost manic sense, an almost Oedipal obsession with my desire to make her smile.  In kindergarten, I kissed a girl named Alex's hand when she reached out to grab a colored pencil, I thought I was gentlemanly and adult of me.  Years of expansive love bloomed in me as I began to daydream of boyfriends and how exotic the word fiancé sounded, with it's accented e and promise of a future with someone else.  With each boyfriend, there was a breakup, and with each breakup, there was some promise of next time, next time, next time.  I found Nolan during one of those next times.  During my return to Italy, when we were both a little bruised, both a little cut up and the vinegar kisses of a stranger felt like when soap gets in a hangnail.  But, underneath all of that, once we stripped down and opened up, there was love.

It was raw and passionate, it left me heady in the perfumed 10x8 dorm room where the heat was on and a blizzard blew through Pittsburgh one night in January.

It was lazy, falling asleep with a bucket of chicken during XLV.

It was chaotic in the sense of never having an ending, never knowing the dates of anything important, throwing shoes and his grandmother's dishes when I got too angry and forgot to say, "I'm sorry."

But I was never sorry, never sorry for loving someone so ferociously and tender.  I'd lick the wounds I had created and then blame the rust-taste in my wolf mouth on his laziness, his determination to let our love fade away.  It was raw and passionate, it was lazy and chaotic.  And somehow love became this little succulent, never needing watered, collecting dust on the windowsill, timid in its approach to life.  Our love had a geophyte approach to sustainability, fatty and tuberous, holding onto any love that existed when life got barren and dry. When it got hard to come by, when it couldn't be found in the moonlight nor with a dowsing rod, broken off from a backyard apple tree when the Santa Anas made us unbearable to one another.

Since I left for Texas, we fell in love again--hard and fast, when the bones were most brittle.  An apologetic love where conversations often ended in "How did it get like this?"  We are finding our way back to the frenzied love of when I was 19, and slowly those sour wounds heal when they're exposed to air.  I wanted to celebrate this love for Valentine's Day and forget all the other four years and the bullshit we put one another through. I wanted to celebrate this love in boxes, small tins of love that overpowered Nolan for Valentine's Day.  I wanted to remind him what home could feel like.  I wanted to remind him what love could feel like, because our house in San Diego was big by San Diego standards, and it could creak too loud when you're lonely.  I made him dinner, cakes and bread, and shipped it to him to have for Valentine's Day with a movie, so it felt like a date tonight.

I love you.

“He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.”

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Roasted Beet Pasta

Ingredients:

• 2 large-sized beets
• 3 whole eggs + 1 egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)
• 6+ cups flour

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450
2. While oven is preheating, peel beets and wrap in foil, place on baking tray.  When oven is ready, roast for 40 minutes.
3. Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes, unwrapping so steam can release
4. Cut into large chunks.
5. In a large food processor (6 cups or more), throw in beets, eggs and yolk, olive oil, and salt (and optional zest).  Puree until smooth
6. In a stand mixer, combine puree and three cups of flour using the paddle attachment.  When dough begins to form, switch to dough hook and continue to mix, adding in last three cups of flour, one at a time, until a proper dough forms
7. Remove from bowl onto a floured work surface (i prefer marble for pasta-making) and knead for 7 minutes or until is elastic
8. Keeping dough floured, cut into eighths and lay plastic wrap on sections you are not going to use.
9. Use your pasta machine's directions for thick noodles, and dry.
10. Enjoy with a vinaigrette and parmesan!

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Bacon Salt

Ingredients:

• 5-6 strips of bacon
• 1/2 cup sea salt (preferably a larger crystal)
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

1. Fry bacon on a skillet until extra-crispy
2. Put on a plate lined with paper towels and allow to cool, blotting excess grease
3. In a food processor, combine all ingredients and pulse until combined.  Do not over-pulse, as it can result in fats in bacon to liquify.
4. Enjoy over popcorn, with potatoes, or be creative!

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Handcrafted Candy Bars

There is no real recipe for a basic candy bar.  I used some of my mother's recipes, which use more specialized chocolate and techniques, but the instructions I have below can be practiced even with chocolate chips. From here, you can personalize them and make them your own, even including honeys, spices, herbs, salts, and even homemade nut butters!  But, I would start here for an intro into confectionery.

Before you begin, use a ratio of 3 oz per candy bar, so you have some room for leeway with sticking to the bowl, the mold, and your spatula.  From here, you can cut and halve, mix chocolates together and multiply easily.  I particularly like mixing white chocolate and a milkier, lighter chocolate.  When you have decided how you would like to flavor your chocolate, measure out how much you will need.  Then, take away about 30% of that amount and set aside (this will be your "seed chocolate", a step for this pseudo-tempering.  It is necessary so your chocolate doesn't turn grey when cooled).

Prepare any mold you may be using.  I always use a light olive oil cooking spray and then wipe off the excess with a paper towel.

In a microwave-safe bowl, combine your remaining chocolates and microwave on HIGH for 20 seconds.  Take out and stir.  Put back in for another 20 seconds and repeat this process until all chocolate is silky smooth and easy to stir.

Add remaining chocolate and continue to stir.  The heat from the melted chocolate should melt remaining chocolate.

Add any add-ins and pour into mold and smooth out with a rubber spatula.  Allow to cool for at least half an hour in the fridge before unmolding.  Package however you want (I went a little far with homemade packaging I designed and printed on special paper, but basic foil will do). Store in a cool place, or the fridge.

Other recipes used: For the cake (marzipan inspiration here)/  For the hot chocolate mix /  For the marshmallows / For the bread.

A Greyhound Through Hill Country

It was hard to find a comfortable position.  I'm long-limbed and can never stay still for long.  I wrapped my body around an old leather jacket and road the north-bound Greyhound bus to Dallas last week.  It gave me a reason to see Nolan, the first time in three weeks.  Three weeks that quantified into a lifetime of changing perspectives and the resultant, nagging question of why did i do this?

The bus left at seven and pulled in by midnight.  We sat in traffic for 45 minutes, and I read articles about the I Ching and cancer.  My eyes grew dryer with every mile marker and I had a pair of glasses tucked into the backseat pocket.  It was longer than I thought five hours could be, and the only way I could gauge that kind of time was San Diego to Phoenix, from San Diego to Las Vegas, from San Diego to the first gas station we stopped at the buy water and a burger on our way to El Paso for the night.  All my starting points were from that Southern California town.  And many of my ending points, too.

By the end of my time in California, I was no longer many things.  I was no longer alone, no longer exciting, no longer young and naive and studious.  No longer a law student, no longer confident, no longer the faltering idea of being someone else.  I was myself and I have sacrificed for that kind of beginning, but I had to go to Dallas and see if it was all worth it.  To look the wolf in the eyes at night and see if it howls the same as you howled inside.  When it wasn't so perfect, when it was a shaggy puddle of old love notes that got ripped to shreds in an old cardboard box.

We met at the station and a male prostitute asked where I was going.  It was pitch-dark and silent in the city, and in the distance you saw how expansive Dallas was.  We passed office buildings that still had lights on and it seemed we found ourselves in another city, another few moments of exploration.  We got a hotel for the night, a little room with a queen-sized bed and a TV that was screwed into the dresser.  The fridge motor ran louder than my breathing and my body, naturally nestled into Nolan's, fell into the rhythm of his breathing.

And for two days, I felt whole.  In a way I hadn't before.  Longer than the three-week span of living on my own.  Longer than maybe a year or two.  It was no longer a question of "How will we survive?", but a question of when will the vast gap between us close itself?  Inside you can fill barbecue joints, the Grand Canyon, and the biggest little city in the world.   There is a five year age gap and the gaps in our teeth and a gap between my thighs because I'm only eating for one.  There are memories I think I forgot and a tenderness in our words and fingertips that came out of the synapses of our mind, our fight or flight response, our relationship survivalism.

And we couldn't even kiss goodbye because we're in an unfamiliar town.  We hesitated, standing at terminal five of the Dallas greyhound, my bag on my shoulder and a headphone in one year.  I looked him in the eye and said, "I'll see you soon."

Places to visit in Dallas....Social House / Weekend Coffee / TENOVERSIX / White Elephant 

Momma

I don't think I can ever love anything the way I love my mother.  A bond that runs through my blood, a love that's almost spiritual.  I think I left for California because I was afraid of that love, of that bond between us that was broken when I came out and repaired with thread and bits of Big League Chew.  I think I'm always afraid of losing her, the way she lost hers when she was 14.  I've at least got eight years on her, at least I've got text messages and phone calls.  At least I've got her cheekbones and her temper, the way I jump to conclusions and take St. John's Wort for an acute and whispering dose of hereditary depression.  And at least I have the memories of sleeping in the middle, of baths and her drawings.  She's been sending me more and more momentos to remember her by, to keep the memory alive and tangible.

My mom's a Midwesterner through and through.  Nosey and angry, bitter and prideful.  She sends me care packages of coffee and candy, jars of jam and mustards.  Nourishing boxes, care boxes.  Curated boxes that remind me of home.  She's a gothic novel, a southern gospel of the haunting romance of love.  She's Catherine at the windowsill when she sends these boxes, boxes that scare me because I left her alone.  Alone in a house too empty and filled with silence and cats.

I called her on Mother's Day and she and my father were visiting my brother in North Carolina.  My voice cracked as I drove on the 8 West.  I sipped coffee to burn my tongue so I could distract the tears from coming.  I just missed her so much in that moment.  And when the phone call ended and I got to work, I had enough distractions to keep me busy.  It's only at night when I really miss her.  The absence is like a migraine, though, dull and constant until there's something to trigger it.  Light and sound, memories and scents.  Peaches or cucumber-melon lotion.  I avoid it all when I start to miss her.

Here's to Nancy and her hugs, her laughter and her sadness.  Here's to Nancy, and the toffees she sent me and the times I'll never get back.

Ansuz.

I was eight in Kentucky, visiting family that still lived in the double-wide trailer I was babysat at.  It was blue with a water bed, where my cousins and I would watch Twister with our aunt, Tammy.  I was at the mall and I didn't hold my mother's hand.  For two hours I was lost, wandering around and navigating the shops that lined the main concourse.  We probably circled each other's paces like satellites.  And when she saw me, she hugged me tight and promised not to let go.  

Of course, it's silly to promise things conditional on the human emotion, on circumstance and change.  I left my mother when I was seventeen and she was never able to hold my hand again.

But we place reminders on ourselves to not forget to stay connected, grounded to the bluegrass roots that shaped us in one way or another.  She used to leave me post-it notes on my dashboard to read before school and I still try to revive that tradition with an occasional text.  It goes unanswered, lost to the lull of technological synapses between our generations.  I have a reminder on my calendar for her birthday with a little heart next to the 14 and the days leading up to it are marked in my planner with "Don't forget to buy the card", "Don't forget to mail the card", "Don't forget to call her."  

They're all unnecessary insurance, anyway.  I don't plan on forgetting anytime soon.

But that's how I am with many things, with all things, in some way.  I like the insurance of planning, of making a to-do list and never marking anything off because it's all finished before I even looked to it for guidance.  That's how I am with myself, with my body.  I like to be organized, to have constant totems nearby to retrieve the inherent "me" that's sometimes fogged by the daily coil of corporate life.  I didn't want this to happen with writing, something I've always valued within myself.  I wanted to remember it as it was, and not lose it for two hours and come back scared.  I wanted my talent to shine in a way that was nurtured and remembered like when your mother remembers your favorite dish for dinner after you haven't been home for a year.  I wanted to build a relationship with my writing, and I just needed a reminder to appreciate it while it's still around.

My new tattoo is the Elder Futhrak rune Ansuz, which symbolizes the creative mind, the poetic soul, and the "god's breath".  I wanted to hold it on my forearm and invoke that metaphysical energy during my day-to-day life and remind myself of the innocence of the energy that, when reduced by half like a marsala wine, just boils down to love.

still healing.  don't you love this quilt?

PS, I updated my "Connect" page and you can find me on pinterest, instagram, and VSCOgrid. Feel free to say hi :)