Beyond decadent, and a trick of the light
I had to go downstairs for something. I passed the front office, and did a double take. There was a movie star in our office!

It wasn't, of course. In fact, it was my supervisor, who is normally an ordinarily nice-looking guy. Something about the particular blue shirt he was wearing, the way he was standing, and the illumination had conspired to transform him, for that one odd instant, into a Vision of Masculine Beauty. Very odd.

I long to make these -- recipe from
I was just really very hungry. A. would hate me. I would hate myself. But oh! they look delicious! Perhaps for the Yuletide Gift Baskets.

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
(Recipe slightly edited, but any whimsy of phrasing is courtesy Makiko Itoh, of IWJRVH.)

350g / 12 oz (about 2 cups) smooth peanut butter
1 cup of salted roasted peanuts
225g / 8oz (about 1 cup) icing sugar
50g / 1.8oz (about 1/4 cup) brown sugar, or raw sugar
500g / a bit more than a pound, of dark chocolate, minimum cacao 50%
90g / 3oz unsalted butter

Supplies needed: shallow paper cups, plastic zip bag

Chop up the peanuts with a knife or in the food processor.

Put the peanut butter, 60 grams/2 oz (two thirds) of the butter, peanuts, and both sugars in a sturdy plastic zip bag. Press the air out of the bag and close it. Knead and mix the bag until the contents are completely mixed and smooth.

Once the mixture is well-combined, press it down towards one corner. Cut off that corner with scissors, and twist the bag - now you have a sort of pastry bag.

Squeeze about a tablespoon worth of the peanut butter mixture into each paper cup, smoothing out the top of each with your finger. Each cup should be about 1/2 full. It's easier if you keep each cup in the stack of other paper cups for stability while you fill them.

Once the peanut butter mixture is all used up, make the chocolate topping. Break up the chocolate into a bowl. Melt it in the microwave at medium for about 3 minutes. Check at this point; if the chocolate is still hard, mix and nuke for about 1 minute more. Add the rest of the butter, and nuke for another 30 seconds. Mix the chocolate and butter well with a spoon until smooth.

Fill up each cup with the chocolate, smoothing out the top with your finger or a knife. Try not to lick your fingers during this whole process, unless of course you plan to eat all the cups by yourself, in which case it probably doesn't matter.

Cool in the refrigerator until the chocolate is firm, about 1 hour. Store in the refrigerator until all consumed.

Makes about 24 cups.

Note: if you would rather not put in peanuts, increase the amount of peanut butter by about 1/2 cup, and add about 1/2 teaspoon of salt. You can also use chunky style peanut butter, increasing the amount by about 1/2 cup.

G'bye, summer
Such as it was. It is most definitely autumnal out there today: chill, rainy, brown leaves scudding down the damp streets. I wore a sweater, but should've added a jacket.

Today's weight: 129.5 pounds. Rose at the usual appalling hour, and did Abs, followed by twenty minutes on the stepper.

Abs, Shock Week, tempo 313/101, no rest.

Superset:
Cable Crunch, 40lbs x15, 15
Hip Raise, b/w x15, 15

Superset:
Hanging Knee Raise, b/w x15, 15
Twisting Crunch, b/w x15, 15
Notes: two different "twisting" crunches, first stationary, legs bent and laid to side on floor, torso flat, second a sort of bicycle, reaching down to the foot with the opposite hand at each repetition.

Weighted Swiss Ball Crunch
55lb DB x10, 10, 10

I don't wanna talk about yesterday, 'cos I crashed and burned, but in the interests of Accountability, I shall. Take that! the entire Web can see you poking through the fridge, missy. Went out after work in search of insoles to revivify my flattening running shoes, and thus was late home -- and late for a meal. Trouble! Plus, I'd got an email just before I left work reminding me of a meeting I had to attend that evening. More trouble.

So I felt like I "didn't have time" to make a proper supper, though I needed one, having already missed a meal... so I nibbled. Protein shake/chocolate pudding/peanut butter/Quark goo, with Cool Whip and some low-fat chocolate ice cream. A bit more chocolate ice cream. Oo! there's some chocolate in the drawer! Two squares of Ritter Sport. Coffee. Still hungry. Some pickled beets. Still "hungry," but have definitely eaten enough.

Then off to the meeting. Where I ate part of a brownie. Then home, starving and on a sugar crash. Made myself a little whole wheat pita with Pindjur and some veggie pepperoni and some cook cheese. Then thought "a little dessert" and ate the last square of Ritter Sport. Then absently picked up the box of Kashi Crunch and ate all of it. There was only about a half cup left in the bottom of the box, but still. Idiot, me.

Am trying to do better today, though I have rehearsal tonight as well.

one, omelette with quarter-cup egg white, one whole egg, 2 tbsp Pindjur, ditto cook cheese. Two slices Ezekiel bread with sugar-free apricot spread. Green tea.

two, quarter-cup 8-grain cereal with some chopped dried apples, and a protein shake mixed with a bit of soymilk. Cup coffee.

three, cup green beans, chopped green onions, hot pepper threads, 3 oz chicken, Asian teriyaki marinade. 5 oz. sweet potato, sliced and doused with a creamy thing made of a tablespoon Quark, five-spice powder, and sugar-free vanilla syrup.

I think I will make oatcakes when I get home. I should squeeze in a workout, too. Tomorrow I leave on my little weekend journey, and I'll have to work out before that, too.

Welcome to the icebox
Chilly, today. Got the heater blazing.

Today's weight: 129 pounds, which could mean anything given that I stuffed my face with kimchi and things with soy sauce yesterday.

Eaten thus far:
one, plum. Coffee. 1/3 cup buckwheat pancake mix, 2 egg whites, splash soymilk, ditto cider vinegar; when cooked adorned with 2 tablespoons Quark ditto of Cool Whip, and, alternately, either sugar-free apricot jam or sugar-free pancake syrup. 3 ounces chicken done up in the bacon routine. (A. was watching me mix it up before we went out this morn. Splash liquid smoke. Splash Braggs. "What's that?" he said. "Fakin' Bacon," I said -- splash -- oops! slosh! -- English Toffee sugar-free syrup. "It's dessert!" he said. "It's breakfast!")

two, 1/3 cup barley flakes; 1/4 cup blueberries; scoop protein powder. Mixed together, with a bit of water so's not to be so sticky, and some cinnamon. Green tea.

three, Romaine, tomato, can of tuna. Lemon juice dressing with sumac and cumin. Hummus. Carrot sticks.

I don't need a shopping list
After work yesterday, A. picked me up, and we drove to the Sobey's mall to pick up three things: heavy-duty extra-wide foil (for wrapping the frozen cake), contact lens solution, and, from the Bulk Barn in the same mall, a cake box for the wrapped cake.

I went to the Bulk Barn and got two cake boxes (I'd brought the springform pan, and one box was a good fit -- even a little snug -- while the other was very large. I didn't know if the wrapped cake would fit into the snug box. Hence two.) and two mini-size Sidekick chocolate bars (my favourite!). One for me and one for A.

Then I went to Sobey's. It was a nuthouse in there, full of students doing the first shopping trip. There were three groups of kids earnestly debating the merits of different kinds of boxed macaroni cheese. "Should we get the cheap stuff? Or this kind with the extra cheez powder? What do you think?" I almost told them what I thought, which was "Don't waste your time here; get over to Zehrs and buy the President's White Cheddar variety if you're that concerned," but didn't.

I purchased a bunch of vegetables; some roasted red peppers that were on deep discount in the back of the store; two boxes of sugar-free Jello pudding; some cook cheese and Quark; and contact lens solution. Something missing there, isn't it? We drove off, and went to the library to drop off my overdue books, and getting back into the car, I yelped, "Foil!"

There's another grocery right near the library, so we stopped there. A. said, "Ice cream..." and I got foil, low-fat chocolate ice cream, and low-fat Cool Whip. Go me.

Then it was off home, where A. photographed the cake, and we wrapped it up nicely and boxed it, and A. took me out to dinner at the Korean-Japanese place.

Eaten yesterday, therefore:
five, hyedapbap (with a bit of rice) and a side dish of kimchi. The last bite or so of rice and fishes somehow had some unmixed-in hot sauce on top of it, which stuck to my lips and tongue and burned wildly. After that, we strolled to the coffee shop next door for dessert, for which I had a skim latte (to get rid of the burning -- milk) and a bite of A.'s chocolate mudslide mousse cake.

six (postworkout); protein shake mixed with glutamine, pudding powder and some Cool Whip, layered with a half cup of the chocolate ice cream and a sprinkle of Kashi Crunch. With one of the Lindt thin chocolate squares stuck into it.

Workout yesterday was Legs. First installment of Shock Week; tempo 313 on the first exercise of supersets and all dropsets, 101 on the second exercise of supersets. No rest, just setup time where necessary.

Superset:
One-Legged Squat off Box
WU b/w R4/L4
Work 55lb DB L10/R10 R10/L10
Front Squat
WU 20lbs x6
Work 65lbs x10, 10
Notes: I could probably afford to raise the weight at last on the front squats. I can't on the box squats -- not, at any rate, until I get a new box. I honestly thought I'd go through the milk crate this time.

Superset:
Leg Extension
WU 50lbs x6
Work 135lbs x10, 10
Genie Squat
WU b/w x6
Work 55lb DB x10, 10

Dropset Lunges, Oly bar
120lbs xR10/L10
110lbs xR10/L10
Notes: Not too bad; my knee seemed pretty stable this time.

Superset:
Lying Leg Curl
WU35lbs x6
Work 55lbs x10, 10
Pull-through
WU 20lbs x6
Work 70lbs x10, 9
Notes: Those leg curls with the toes pointed still hurt. The pull-throughs at that weight were... odd. Like I could pull more, but didn't have the leverage, rather than the strength, to do so.

Dropset Romanian Deadlifts, short Oly
109.5lbs x10
99.5lbs x10
Notes: Okay, I could do more than this. Time to stop being so chicken.

I've been reading old detective stories; I found a little stash of them I got for free out of the dregs of some garage sale, and had been meaning to get to: Nero Wolfe, a bunch of Simenons, and a C.S. Forester.

Strangely, though I went through a pretty heavy mystery-genre phase a while back, I've never read either Stout or Simenon. Probably because I wasn't inclined so much to the hard-boiled format; I preferred Sayers or Allingham, and when I couldn't get those, I remember, I was reading those cheesy medieval mysteries, or else Anne Perry's Monk books -- that kind of thing. Comforting pseudo-intelligent mysteries.

I rather liked the Nero Wolfe -- it was a big fat omnibus of five novels. I'm not so sure about Maigret. They're so detached they should have a notice on the cover: "Take with a large glass of water." Very dry.

Still avoiding that thar Mason & Dixon. I've figured out why, though; it's not the kind of book one can pick up and put down, and I haven't time at present to sit down with it and cuddle up and get in the mood. So it's not that I'm not liking it, more that it's one of those friends you need to make elaborate arrangements to see, rather than simply dropping by unannounced whenever. (Like me. So maybe people don't hate me after all -- I'm just a lot of trouble.)

And, the boring stuff
Now that I'm done my Ganache Day.

Today's weight: 129 pounds.

Meal one, 1/3 cup barley, protein shake, ground cloves, blueberries, one peach, coffee.

Meal two, 5 ounces sweet potato, can tuna, garden salsa, two teaspoons Parmesan.

Meal three, Romaine, grape tomatoes, cup of green beans, half cup chickpeas, jalapenos, three ounces chicken, capers, creamy tofu-mayo dressing.

Meal four, pumpkin ryecake, Jello pudding for the top.

Oh, and I must share my stupid moment. Remember my corn, which I discussed some moons ago? I bought corn plasters for it... was sticking them on... they seemed to relieve the pain but not much else. Well, I figured out why. I was going to throw out the plastic envelope they came in, when I noticed it seemed sort of stiff. There, inside, little black-rubber discs on another sheet of shiny paper! I'd been sticking just the adhesive thingies on my corn, without the Active Ingredient!

So I tried that. Well. The corn is giving way, distinctly. In fact, it looks almost like it might lift off like a little hat when it's ready. Yeck.

And I ran this morning, for 35 minutes, in the rain.

Cakewalk
Driving home from the picnic on Saturday, I happened to mention to A. (he came along too, and was a servant, holding gloves and mantles for the Hon. Gents.) that it was my mother's seventieth birthday this coming weekend.

"You should drive up for her birthday," he said, which struck me as a decent wheeze.

"I could," I said. "I could call my brother, and he could come too. You wouldn't come?"

"No, it's my mom's birthday too, remember, and who would look after the dog?" (His mother's birthday is the day before mine, and my parents' cat is too old and infirm to put up with a rambunctious dog.) "Plus, I could get some more work done on the bathroom." (Ah, the bathroom! Soldering and plumbing has been ongoing, and frustrating. First, the cold water pipe sprang a leak two days after A. and his friend installed it. Then, when the friend came over yesterday to try and fix the leak, the fixture broke. Yes, the expensive, Victorian-style faucet set purchased years ago (when we first knew we'd need to redo the bathroom one day) cracked irreparably, and it's much too late now to ask about warranties; they would laugh.)

I called my brother that very evening, and he thought it was a splendid idea. Then, knowing my mother, I thought it best not to spring it on her. I called her Saturday, brought her up to date on my lavatory woes, and then asked if she was doing anything special for her birthday.

"Special? No! Why would I want to do that?"

So she would not object if my brother and I showed up on the doorstep Friday night?

"What? But I was going to have a nice peaceful birthday, watch the American Open, order pizza -- now I have to clean the house, cook, make a cake --"

"No you don't. Order pizza, the house is fine, I'll bake a cake and bring it."

"What! You can't do that!"

"Course I can. I'll freeze it."

"What kind of cake?"

"I thought maybe an Opera, or a Prinzregententorte."

"That won't freeze! Anyway, you're not going to bring that all the way in the car."

"Course it'll freeze. All those fancy cakes they sell in stores, all frozen at some point. No problem. I'll pack it up frozen, it'll be fine."

"I hope it's going to be a real cake. With butter."

"I'll use my Dr. Oetker recipe. Same as yours."

"Well, it won't make as many layers as they say."

It did, though. In fact, it made nine. I called my mother again, to tell her that the cake had been successfully made and installed in the freezer to get solid, and she didn't believe me. She had to get her book, compare recipes... "I don't know how you got nine! I never get enough batter!" The recipes were identical.

Then I told her I'd decorated it with buttercream.

"What! That's not a real Prinzregententorte! It never has anything on the outside! Just the chocolate."

(I've found a multitude of recipes, just looking around, including one with apricot jam in it -- "They never have jam in them, either.") But I post a picture, herewith, from my Dr. Oetker cookbook, with buttercream decorations. Just to show that this wasn't purely my iconoclastic impulses ruining a traditional torte. Because there is only ever one right way of doing something, even something as susceptible to evolution and alteration as a cake recipe. Forsooth, even the famed Sachertorte is disputed.

Prince Regent Cake
Oetker German Home Baking, p. 25
Cake mixture
250g butter or margarine
250g sugar
1 packet Oetker Vanillin Sugar
4 eggs
a pinch of salt
200g plain flour
50g Oetker Gustin (corn starch powder)
1 level tsp. (3g) Oetker Baking Powder Backin

Butter Cream Filling:
1 packet Oetker Gala Chocolate Pudding Powder
1 level tsp. cocoa
100g sugar
5 tbsp cold milk
50g coconut butter (optional)
3/4 pt/ 425ccm milk
250g butter or margarine

Icing:
150g icing sugar
3 level tbsp cocoa
2-3 tbsp hot water
20g butter or coconut butter, melted

For the cake mixture, cream the fat and add to it the sugar, vanillin sugar, eggs and salt. Mix and sieve together the flour, Gustin and Backin and add to the creamed ingredients, a tablespoon at a time. Bake 8 separate layers out of the mixture. Spread almost 2 tbsp of mixture each time on the base of a well greased round cake tin (with removable rim and of 10? in. diameter). Take care that the mixture is not too thin near the edge as it might become brown. Bake each layer without the cake tin rim until golden. Cool each layer on a cake wire after baking.
Oven: moderately hot.
Baking time: about 8-10 minutes.
For the filling, blend the pudding powder, cocoa, and the sugar with the 5 tbsp. milk. Bring the 3/4 pt. milk to the boil, remove from heat, stir in the pudding powder mixture and bring to the boil once more, stirring all the time. If coconut butter is used, add this to the hot pudding. Set aside to cool, stirring frequently to prevent a skin forming.
Cream the fat and beat in the cold pudding gradually (take care that neither pudding nor fat are too cool or the butter cream may curdle). Spread each layer with the filling and place on top of one another to build the cake, the top layer being without filling.
For the icing, sieve the icing sugar with the cocoa and add sufficient hot water to give a good coating consistency. Add the hot fat and ice the cake.

Notes: I used 2 tablespoons vanilla sugar, since I don't have packets, but a jar of sugar and vanilla beans, and that sounded good to me. I also used arrowroot in place of the cornstarch, since I had used all my cornstarch making the pudding for the filling mere moments before. (And a good thing too. Labour Day, no place to buy cornstarch, and while you can interchange one for the other pretty freely in a cake or cookie, an arrowroot custard is quite a different -- and worse -- thing from a cornstarch one.

The instructions are, to my mind, a little sparse. I creamed the butter, added the sugar, and creamed all together for three minutes. Then the eggs, one at a time, creaming between each addition, and the flour as noted, a tablespoon at a time. There was lots of batter.

Their instructions to use 2 tablespoons of mixture at a time are cracked; I used not quite a quarter cup. Spread it out just like peanut butter right across the base of my 10" springform. Once I got the hang of it, it was easy, and after the first couple, I figured how to release them, too, so that I could flip the thing, plop it down on waxed paper on the cake rack, and the disk of cake would fall right out. What they call a "moderately hot" oven, by the way, is "340?-390?F", which of course is the standard 350?.

I didn't use the filling or frosting instructions at all; I used the custard buttercream recipe out of The Village Baker's Wife, by Gayle and Joe Ortiz. Only I added 3 tablespoons Valrhona cocoa and 4 ounces grated chocolate to the custard. For the icing, a simple chocolate ganache: 8 ounces of semi-sweet Lindt, 3/4 of a cup of heavy cream, and 2 tablespoons of corn syrup because I intended to freeze the stuff.

It went together like anything, very pretty. I sprinkled the top with gold-leaf dust, piped on my sacreligious buttercream curls, and wedged an extra-thin Lindt chocolate square into each one -- so it's quite like the picture. I hope it doesn't get squished in the wrapping! I'll buy a cake-box for it tonight.

I hope my mother likes it. Well, I hope she enjoys it. It's quite conceivable that the more things she can find wrong with it, the more she will enjoy it, in a way...

Officially canning it
No show in November. I decided Saturday.

Saying "this isn't fun any more" doesn't even begin to convey the degree of not-funness this project had achieved. There I was, putting all of my time, energy and life into something that was accomplishing very few results, feeling like a horrible, lousy failure every single morning, doing mostly everything right and getting jack-all for it -- it was an exercise in frustration and futility.

On Saturday, I went to the annual Trevelyan Memorial Picnic hosted by The Company of Cavalier Gentlemen, a seventeenth century Royalist recreation society. I was a gypsy (I absolutely must make myself a seventeenth century gown; I've been to a few of these events now, and I'm embarrassed by my anyhow conglomerations of vaguely-romantic non-period clothing). My food, of course, was much better than my clothing; I made a nice authentic seed-cake and a batch of mince-tarts -- mincemeat, that is. I used vegetarian ground round, though (mostly because the picnic is outside, and I don't like the thought of genuine meat products sitting about for any longer than necessary in the hot sun -- authentic food-poisoning is taking things a bit too far, I think).

Having made my momentous decision, I ate of the authentic food, too. And yesterday, I had a healthy breakfast, and then lived most of the rest of the day on chocolate buttercream, cake trimmings and ganache.

But that will not be the lasting pattern. I'll carry on with the workout routine, since it seems to be effective, and try to eat pretty much within decent parameters of healthy proteins and carbs, and a dash of John Berardi's Massive Eating. I'd still like to get my bodyfat down a bit more, and muscle up, but enough with this killing contest goal.

For future reference
How to Write a Best-Selling Fantasy Novel.

Because I will, one day, you know.

And this will remind me of what not to do so that I don't annoy my own self pissless.

"Note: All fantasy worlds are roughly square. i.e. the shape of the double page of a paperback."

Jeudi
Eaten yesterday:
four, 3 ounces chicken cooked up fajita-style with onion, garlic, frozen bell pepper bits and cumin, over Romaine, with some green salsa; 4 tablespoons 8-grain cereal with English Toffee sugar-free syrup and vanilla s-f pudding mix with soymilk on top (very good!). Green tea.

five, 6 ounces broccoli with garlic juice and sundried tomato sprinkles; 2 ounces soy pasta done up faux carbonara style, with some tofu cream diluted with soymilk, some nutritional yeast, parsley flakes, and a tablespoon veggie bacon bits. Also 2 teaspoons real Parmesan. Swoon. One-quarter cup pumpkin mixed with butterscotch sugar-free pudding, cinnamon, nutmeg and hot water for sweet. Green tea.

six (post-run), one cup Kashi Crunch with protein shake mixed thick with a quarter-cup of soymilk and some almond extract.

Also a small mid-afternoon cheat of a half-cup of Fibre One, an Ontario plum (A. bought a box of these, and they've been taunting me in the fridge for two days. Worth it!), and several tablespoons salsa eaten straight from the jar. Sigh, but certainly not anything to cry over.

I did an ab workout (pretty much the same as the one two days ago, but with more weight and a superset).

Superset:
Weighted Swiss ball crunch
45lb DB 3x15

Twisting Swiss ball crunch
b/w 3x12/side

Single set:
V-ups on bench
b/w x10
(I saw these in a magazine, and thought I'd try 'em. They don't seem to hit the abs at all, and my hip flexors get enough strain, thank you.)

Reverse crunches, on bench
b/w 3x10

At 8 o'clock, I went out for a nice long run (52 minutes). It was a lovely night for it -- probably one of the last few we'll get this year, judging by the rest of this so-called summer. Clear dark blue air, full of cricketsong; the gentle evening breeze carrying the smells of balsam of Peru, late flowers, cedar mulch and the occasional whiff of scorching steak; mellow temperature, neither hot nor unpleasantly cool.

I didn't see much of any human activity going out. Starting into the return half of the loop, I passed, going the other way:
4 pedestrians,
3 in-line skaters,
1 cyclist,
all of them busily yattering on their cellphones. Now, it is possible that they were sharing the beauties of the evening with unfortunate housebound friends, but somehow I doubt it.

Then, in the park, I ran past a couple holding hands. The girl? On her cellphone.

I should give up my job, and take up wandering the streets with a sign, "The End of the World is at Hand." I can hardly miss, can I? At the very least, our "civilisation" has clearly just about run its course. Ancient Rome? A model of clearheaded reasonable living by comparison.

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Stayin' alive!
Oo, yes. I've got the worst sort of earworm in my head this morning. Why is it that when this happens, it's always some stupid song that you only know about five lines to, rather than, say, a Kate Bush or Ani song you could take all the way through? The same five dreadful lines playing an endless loop through the audio.

Today's weight: 127 pounds. Temperature: 97.1?F.

Ran this morning for 27 minutes. It hurt a lot, and there were many rabbits on the rail trail.

I also noted that our twin cities appear to be trying to perform some sort of Siamese twin separation operation. Most of the main roads right round the boundary have been blocked for most of the summer due to various sorts of construction, but there was one that was open (after being closed all winter as they rebuilt the railway bridge and the section of road under it). I ran up it this morning. It's closed again, and mostly a large gravel pit -- within spitting distance of the part they rebuilt not months ago. Yeah. Someone in the City "planning" department is certainly on the job...

Food o' the day thus far:
one, 1/3 cup barley, almond extract, sugar-free apricot jam, bit of butter sprinkles; cup egg substitute with That Sauce; green tea.

two, 2 cups green beans, ounce grape tomatoes, 3 ounces chicken, teaspoon Dijon, splash balsamic vinegar, thyme, hot sauce, teaspoon Udo's.

three, Romaine, red bell pepper, more balsamic vinegar with some capers in it; pumpkin ryecake, Jello fudge pudding powder with 2 tablespoons tofu cream.

And coffee, very shortly.