jakebe | The Home Stretch

Thanksgiving was wonderfully chill. We were hosted by a few friends we had formed a social bubble with through COVID tests and strict quarantining, and it was lovely to see them again. Months of social isolation had definitely left its mark on all of us. It was interesting to see how we stumbled into interactions through the weekend until we remembered we were all comfortable with each other. That being said, my social batteries have gone weak with disuse. It was a bit of a relief to come home and be in my own space.

I baked two things for the holiday! First, buttermilk biscuits from scratch, which weren't the greatest but certainly not bad for a first attempt. The buttermilk had been stored in the freezer at the beginning of our quarantine and I forgot to take it out until the day of, so I'm not sure if the biscuits got the full milky goodness they deserved. It was also my very first time working with a rough puff pastry. I think I might have pulsed the butter a little too finely and overworked the dough once it came out. It was surprisingly hard to roll the mix into an even thickness, and I suppose I'll just have to get better at that with practice.

I didn't have a biscuit cutter either, so I just used a paring knife to get the circles. The end result was too-small biscuits some of which didn't rise properly. They were also a little overbaked due to size. Still, they tasted good -- especially with butter and our host's sage honey. :9 I'm looking forward to trying them again, to be honest.

The second thing was a rum-raisin bread pudding, made with brioche rolls and The Kraken. :D That was also an...interesting failure. The recipe was a little vague on the bread to use (it recommended seven "slices", but detailed nothing about weight and thickness) so I think I ended up with more bread than the recipe called for. I might have soaked the bread in the rum/milk mixture a little too long as well -- and finally, maybe slightly underbaked it. The pudding collapsed, which I'm not sure is what it's supposed to do. The pudding ended up with an egg custard texture which certainly isn't my favorite, but again -- it tasted all right, with enough of a rum bite that you knew it was there.

I also made sauteed kale with ginger and garlic which turned out to be a pretty decent hit, so I'm grateful for that. There was also amazing turkey, extremely garlicky mashed potatoes, R.'s string bean salad, cornbread stuffing, creamed corn and vegetable casserole. We watched The Masked Singer with/after Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm...still not sure it's a real thing. It feels like a Key and Peele sketch or Black Mirror episode that had escaped the confines of its parent show. I have no idea how it got so big. o.o

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it's time for the Winter Holiday. This is my absolute favorite time of year, and R. and I have made a pact so that this year we'll really put effort into making the holidays a good one. That means a fair bit of work to do already, with Christmas cards and gifts needing to go out ahead of time if they're to have any chance of making it in time. I'm going to try to come at this with a bit more organization than previous years, and R. is already planning to use a label maker just so the envelopes are a lot easier to make this year. That alone should cut the writing time in half!

Beyond that, I'm just not sure what to give folks for presents. I have a fair idea of what I'm getting R. (whose birthday is this week!), but everyone else is a bit of a guess. The great thing about both of these projects (cards and presents) is that it means I'll get to spend the next few weeks thinking about all of my friends and family, and what to do to make them happy. I could/should be doing that all year, I know, but at least we get the month of December as a fool-proof excuse to do so!

I bought a game called Spiritfarer over the weekend and have fallen hopelessly in love with it. It's an Animal Crossing-type game where you're the new Guide of the Dead; your ship needs to be more or less self-sufficient to take care of the souls you're guiding, and each soul has distinct ways to be made more comfortable and happy. You take them to locations that help them process their lives while also upgrading your ship, trading with various folks on islands, and learning new skills that allow you to earn enough coin (or build enough resources) to keep your ship afloat.

There's a lovely Zen to the game that speaks to me. You're always traveling from one place to another, and along the way there's endless stuff to do to make sure the ship runs smoothly. You can farm grain, linen, and vegetables; cook meals ahead of time for the crew and discover new recipes in the process; cut the wood you've gathered to make planks for additions to the ship; loom and weave the linen for fabric; catch lightning in a bottle, bright jelly from jellyfish, and quartz from the Quartz Dragon. You can also hug the souls you've taken on board and chat them up about what's on their mind. I'm always busy in Spiritfarer, but it's ultimately in service to other people, doing the small things to make them more at ease.

The best thing about it is taking this attitude out into the world with me, where I can. The game in many ways feels like an embodiment of "doing the next right thing", and it trains you to think this way in your regular life. I don't know how "sticky" that lesson will be ultimately, but as long as it's helping me now that's all I can ask of it!