Girl Scout Cookies create a season unto themselves. A season where cookies are meagerly filled into disproportionately large boxes. A season where competitive parents overwhelm the supposed entrepreneurship of young girls selling cookies to strangers. A season of debate for the dessert consumers of America about the champion of what are at best average, processed cookies. Drahms.

With that, I present to you A Skeptic’s Crit of The Premiere Girl Scout Cookies:

The Thin Mint: A dehydrated composite of the York Peppermint Pattie and the Kit Kat. Inexplicably, the masses always elect this measly wafer as their GSCOC (Girl Scout Cookie Of Choice). I am not impressed by the weak hint of mint flavouring, the crumbly interior, and the tasteless chocolate coating.

The Samoa: Many a self-proclaimed “sophisticated GSC consumer” (please) have contributed to the dramatically overrated Thin Mint runner-up. With the promising ingredient list of chocolate, caramel, and coconut flakes, one would presume these cookies would be chewy and delicious. Except for the part where they’re not. The non-chocolate version of the superfluous crumbly wafer inside the Thin Mint wreaks havoc on the potential of yet another cookie. And then the deceitfully prominent good parts are just rolled around on top of it. Such a shame.

The Peanut Butter Thing That Doesn’t Have a Consistent Name: What is this? No really, I don’t understand. At first bite you might think you had a bite of toffee but then it’s sorely not toffee and it’s really this fake-peanut buttery mess that’s cakey and brittle at the same time in a texturally incompatible way.

The Lemonade: The exemplar, underrated star of the GSC line. This one is more interesting than the basic Shortbread/Trefoil, and far more addictive than the Lemonade’s chocolate underbellied counterpart, the Thanks-A-Lot (rusrsritenao who does this?). Barely citrus, I can ignore the flagrant lie that is the name because they’re actually kinda tasty.

But, you know. That’s me. The one who hasn’t had a single Girl Scout Cookie all year, and the one obsessed with lemon-filled doughnuts. So what do I know.

This has been a week of odd words. From conversations with family and friends, to distraction by one of my favorite online shows, to news articles and food studies readings, here are some standouts:

hirsute = hair

guano = fertilizer and no explosives

philistine = like Ricky Gervais’s eating habits

purview = scope of influence

bursar = think bolsa; financier

opprobrium = harsh criticism/disgrace

putative = accepted/apparent, like rules

(unlike purported = apparently, but falsely)

or astringent = like the face accelerant

(unlike stringent = strict)

There are books that drain me; most do.

Most books vacuum energy, intrigue, interest, joy into their greedy, papery paws.

Well. Most studying books at least.

They are culprits of instigating mostly. Words that so often have pull in lyrics and prose now glaze my eyes over. You know those brain diagrams they show for psychological studies? I envision a winding, dark, colorless image for mine.

These are they that instigate distraction and boredom and exhaustion.

I hate a book that leaves me tired. A book that begs you to put it down and drags your lids in the direction of its inky type.

Hamartia.

It’s the perfect phrase, John. Arrogant. Serious. Fragile. Insecure. Any attribute that sums up one’s tragic flaw.

Little is more tragic than a book leaving you in apathy.

But there are books that make your insides race and soar and weep and tug. That call your name when you’re not around. Not to be confused with a smoker’s addiction that won’t quit, but instead more likened to the boy who will always have your heart. The books who connect with you, understand you, converse with you. The ones you can lose yourself in. They’ll never talk down to you, they’ll slow to your pace, they’ll remind you that reading is time well spent. I often am made to forget that reading is time well spent.

ERGJEIGREOGMKEGFUJ

That was the sound of my creativity being all over the place. And evidently undocumented. I’ve just had so many ideas for different posts that I then got overwhelmed and did none of them. Which is the dumbest excuse for inaction ever. Well.

anyways.

Also, as my mom is testament, whenever I get distracted I make myself ‘productive’ in some of the most useless things. Some of which, this past week (as the stress about finalizing my videos for my summer videography job) has escalated dangerously for my actual work demands, but has proved pretty excellent as far as everything else goes. It’d be worse if I was being terribly unproductive in my procrastination, but in fact, I’d like to think I’m a littttttttle bit less irresponsible and lazy than that.

Thus, I term myself a professional procrastinator. When I've not been doing everything I’m supposed to be doing, I’ve instead been doing everything but.

1. embarking on my journey to learn perfect pitch (and browsing songs to audition to for mayhaps auditioning for a capella groups this Fall) and practicing relearning sight-reading music

which has actually been fun. Revisiting my piano music to Billy Joel’s Summer Highland Falls and Coldplay’s Clocks, I’ve been trying to not play from memory as usual. Which I’ve found is difficult, but… hey. It’s work, right?

I took the perfect pitch test at around 1am and got 8 out of 12 after briefly browsing through “The Basics of Reading Music”, and the next day decided that the lawnmowers outside hummed a resounding C. I think I’m the luckiest duck in that my ear has already put me far ahead of the curve in terms of learning this musicality stuff (clearly made up for in my lack of athletic talent….so…my abilities balance out). Clearly, I have a lot of work though to make it more than short term memory.

But the music musings didn’t stop there…

2. keyboarding and recording in garageband to my classic Mae jams and singing my covers to Crush by Jennifer Paige and Human by Darren Criss. 

And also on my trip with my dear friend French and her two other close friends to the Poconos, we tried using the Cups-style-beat with plastic cups along to a variety of other songs in 4/4. My favorite was our rendition of Kiss the Girl. Sadly I have no recording. It was pretty awesome though. They all have lovely voices. Fronch is in an a capella group at Barnard/Columbia. Cause bauss.

Andddd then I got onto a kick of hair things.

3. exploring hair colors and cuts and styles for various face shapes and skin tones.

Since of course I’m thinking about my end-of-summer-back-to-school haircut prospects. Which then qualifies ogling some gorgeous looking celebrities and hairstyles and realizing that my coarse, thick, half-asian mane will never be as wonderfully cooperative as theirs no matter how I cut it or which products I use. But I can still be like

wow Heidi you’re super gorg.

or

I see your sneaky blonde tactics tryna make yourself look like a genetic anomaly of a fairskinned, blue-eyed, brunette pixie. YOU’RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE.

or

if only I could add in sunny splashes and not look like a freak.

ughhhhGIRLCRUSH.

Yeah, I know. I’ve jumped on the train of people who think Jennifer Lawrence is perfection.

and then I took a long break to explore shampoo brands and whether using red-head shampoo would bring out my natural red highlights [update: turns out the answer to this question is 'it won’t because you have a coarse, thick, half-asian mane that cloaks all colorful brilliance, duhh’. Sigh.]

But my beauty explorations didn’t stop there.

4. venturing into the realm of makeup styles and watching videos on application and layering

Specifically Mila Kunis (more girlcrush alert). And tutorials.

imsuchagirlwowww

Because clearly all of this was important.

And since I’m actually getting to post this AFTER my videos were due, I did in fact finish them. And they are in fact passable. I’ll post links when they put them up on their websites. I’m looking forward to seeing how many views they get and have fingers crossed that the response is positive.

YAY FOR PROFESSIONAL PROCRASTINATION.

I wish I was able to retain new vocabulary better. It’s one of the things I think will be most important in my process to becoming perfectly fluent in Spanish.

But taking one step at a time, there are also concepts in English that I’m always sure a word already exists for, I just don’t know it. Or I’ve learned it once, but forget constantly at the most inopportune of moments.

(which reminds me of the Princess Bride. And how those noisy fireworks from July 4th sound like the shrieking eels.

I digress)

So, every once and a while I hope to compile some vocab lists to practice. With my own personal, potentially singly unintelligible definitions.

decorticate = like the peanut

initialism = CIA, not SCUBA

vituperate = f*$^*#&%#$^#* you

cloy = there really is such a thing as ‘too sweet’

dilettante = passionless, flighty, all sorts of awful

callipygean =I know this one, but people don’t use this often enough

obsequious/unctuous = suck-ups and slimeballs

Okay, so maybe some of these are not new. But it’s also fun to share some of my faves. I’ll throw them in every once and a while too.

If you think of time in terms of baking endeavors like I do, I was a whole year younger the last time I created something delicious with my oven.

And surprisingly, I still haven’t. Baked anything, I mean. But I haven’t put creativity on hold by any means. 

Thank you notes are a lost…art? practice? People rarely send them, and they are, in my opinion, hugely underrated.

Much like regular cards, I rarely buy stationary and never buy stationary with writing inside. The value of a card is not made up of the cost of the paper, stamp and envelope.

It’s the earnest acknowledgement that someone actually cares enough about you to do something so inane and elaborate.

It’s like a gift back. Returning the favor [of sorts] in the form of your time.

So to

it’s the least I can do.

———————————————————————–

Cups, by Anna Kendrick was first introduced to me when I watched Pitch Perfect on my laptop one night at school instead of sleeping. It’s a pretty cool audition (it’s her audition song) but maybe that’s because Anna Kendrick is just sort of a bauss and a half.

So I had to teach it to myself (since I like teaching myself songs on the piano…)

…but the biggest challenge at first seemed to be figuring out how to do the rhythm on the cup and sing simultaneously. Because I have that issue often when singing and playing piano. Where I just mess myself up and can’t seem to get notes out of either my fingers or my throat. Like musical dyslexia.

Which is (in the least obnoxious way possible) really abnormal and frustrating for me.

So I sat down and figured it out.

Aaaaand then, in usual me-fashion, I harmonized to it.

I’ll post those after this so you can listen if you want.

It’s not like a have a super-secret tactic about researching recipes. It’s just, I’ve been baking long enough to know what things need to be exact, what things can’t, what can/should be substituted, and whether or not people are lying when they say 

I have the best recipe ever!!!

Since secretly they’re ACTUALLY saying

I  think this is great when actually it's overly sweet/dry/not-actually-spicy/not-actually-delicious/etc.

A few tricks when reading recipes:

1. Just because it’s a blog/chef/author/person you like, doesn’t mean it’s going to be a delicious recipe READ REVIEWS like it’s your JOB. (If you don’t, I’ll personally fire you)
2. If it’s a blog, the blogger will likely give in-depth descriptions to why they like it. If you (like me) like chewy cookies, and the purported “Best Cookie Ever!!!!!”’s Blogger is like “I like crisp, crunchy cookies” you know it’s time to escape. Immediately.
3. Good bakers often own good cameras. Or, geez, at least a smartphone that can take a good photo. I never trust those hooligans with fuzzy/nonexistent photos posted of their recipes. Maybe I’m just a sucker for presentation. Or maybe bad bakers actually make bad photographers. Whatever.

Anyways, I’m usually a cupcake person (as my friends and family know), but yesterday after eating a bowl of cereal I decided that instead of eating that for breakfast I would’ve rather eaten a warm blueberry muffin.

Do I still have blueberries in my fridge?

Yes?

…and moments later I was at my computer doing my whole research-thanggg looking for a blueberry muffin recipe.

THANK YOU AMERICA’S TEST KITCHEN FOR LISTENING TO ALL OF MY RULES ABOUT RECIPE SELECTION AND DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMESTIBLES. You make me smile.

Except no thanks for hiding your recipes to non-subscribers.

At which point, I then paid my thanks to the interwebs, as of course some random lady mah girl Judy had already posted it up.

Except where I didn’t actually follow any of her substitutions, halved the recipe, used buttermilk powder, measured minimally when making and using the lemon-sugar topping, and baked the six muffins in flower-shaped-baking-cups for maybe 14, 14.5 minutes.

Lauds, Judy.

These are moist, very blueberry-y, and the lemon-sugar topping is a nice addition. I probably would have benefitted from baking them another minute or so, but didn’t want to overbake them. I think 15 minutes of uninterrupted oven-time, and then 5 minutes cooling time would’ve been fine.

BTDubs: If I do write recipes, I’m going to write them like I’d write really informal science labs. Deal? Deal.

Blueberry Muffins (my version of America’s Test Kitchen)

MATERIALS:

Blueberry ‘Jam’

1 cup blueberries

1&½ tsp sugar

Lemon-Sugar Topping

1/3 cup sugar

1&½ tsp. lemon zest

Muffin

2&½ cups all-purpose flour

2-½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp sea salt (Don’t be picky. Sea? DONMATTAH. Kosher is probably better than table salt, just for quantity’s sake. I just pinched and was like 'ehhhh, that’s about right’)

2 large eggs

1&1/8 cups (8 oz.) sugar (I eyeballed this. Honestly, go for 1&¼ cups. It could use the extra sweetness)

4 Tbs unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

4 Tbs vegetable oil

1&½ tsp pure vanilla extract (Pour it innnnnn)

1 cup buttermilk (Don’t be afraid to use powdered stuff. Saves my butt regularly)

1 cup fresh blueberries

Jam

1. Grate zest into the bowl you’ve already measured the sugar into. Mix berries and sugar in small saucepan over medium heat, scraping down sides so it doesn’t burn, and squishing the berries with your spatula. Cook down until it looks like this:

I’m borrowing photos today. Hopefully in the future, when I’ll be more on-my-game and not ghost-posting (posting about yesterday’s muffins? EEEEK. Pure phantom-ery) I’ll use my own photos.

Topping

1. Grate zest into the bowl you’ve already measured the sugar into.
2. Mix with spoon and set it aside.

Muffin

1. Heat oven to 405˚F.
2. Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in large bowl.  Set aside.

3. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until it looks light, like this:
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together melty butter, oil,vanilla, and buttermilk.
5. Add egg mixture and whisk well until combined.
6. Add wets into drys, mixing gently with a spatula. It’s gonna be a tad lumpy, and that’s quite alright.
7. Stir in blueberries.
8. Line a 12-muffin muffin tin with baking cups (I chose yellow flower ones. Hadn’t used them yet. They were super cute), and pour/spoon the batter into each one about 4/5 of the way up the sides (leave about 1cm of room from the top).
9. Spoon equal amounts of jam onto tops of the muffin batter cups, and swirl the jam into the muffins using a skewer or chopstick (the chopstick method was excellent. Don’t overmix! Marbelize-it!
10. Sprinkle muffins evenly the lemon-sugar mixture (you don’t have to use it all, but don’t be concerned when some of it absorbs into the batter).  
11. Bake for 15-16 minutes, or until the muffins are set, are slightly browned, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out basically clean.  Cool in pan 5 minutes before transferring to rack to finish cooling.

NOM.

Friends and strangers:

Hi.

And welcome.

I know, I’m falling victim to the endless masses of bloggers who write about things that no one else will read or care about. So the worst I could do is get your hopes up.

So let’s just say this is for me instead. …and you can browse… if you like.

A collection of my thoughts, recipes, photos, beauty tips, songs, videos, links, writing, advice, and whatever else as electronic memories from an 18-year old Jess Vander, onward.

And maybe, you might actually find some of them interesting.