To start on a happy note, I finally made those much-vaunted saffron cookies with pine nuts. I used Vosges Sugar Cookie mix (procured from Central Market), added a teaspoon of saffron to the egg in the dough, then just before baking, studded the tops of the cookies with pine nuts. To be fair, it was an experiment. I wasn't sure whether the saffron or the pine nuts would overwhelm.
As it turns out, they could have done with some overwhelming. Next time I'm not going to buy the inevitably over-priced saffron that one finds at specialty food stores. My recommendation is to hunt down your nearest Spanish, Persian, or, best of all, Indian, grocery store and buy saffron there. It will actually taste like saffron and not just crumbly red threads. As for the pine nuts, I would recommend folding them into the actual dough itself to add texture. Simply sprinkling untoasted nuts on top did not add much by way of flavor.
In any event, these cookies are being consumed at an alarming rate (despite the equally alarming amount of butter in them... I am clearly a butter magnet when it comes to recipes). Perfectly chewy and redolent of just-barely-cooked-enough cookie dough, they make the inner child quite, quite happy.
Now, onto darker things.
Self-betrayal.
Much MUCH easier than you would think. The mind has an excellent capacity for self-delusion and rationalization. One MUST be open to self-examination, ruthless self-examination in fact. Especially when it comes to love.
Love is a very tricky thing. In a way, nearly all of us are socialized to want that "one great love of our lives" (and various degrees and permutations thereof). We have to remember, however, that this wish, in fact, limits love. Love is something you bear for a person, whose very existence in this often-bleak world makes it a little brighter. It is selfless. If you love for love's sake alone, you will find that it frees you from its consequences.
At least, in theory.
Falling in love with a person makes it very easy to find compatibility where there is none. It is the most fecund breeding ground for wishful thinking that I have ever seen and I should know, I have definitely been guilty of this. That wishful thinking leaves one open to a great deal of self-betrayal. To distill my advice into one sentence, if you find yourself telling a friend or an acquaintance about a romantic situation and you find yourself having to justify what is quickly becoming an awkwardly indefensible "relationship", END IT. Your inner goddess will thank you. She should not be forced to serve. She is not a water-bearer or squire. She is a shieldsister, a battlemaiden, a phalanx-mate, the one whose shield stands between you and everything that would seek to destroy you. She chooses mates who are worthy of defending her and being defended by her.
That being said, once you do end it, I do not advocate ending it with hatred. It is easy to work ourselves into paroxysms of rage at the other person for not acknowledging our feelings or behaving in a completely assbackwards way. Of course they do. People do that. Even intelligent people get remarkably stupid when it comes to situations like this. Just remember that they are still perfectly reasonable people. Perhaps they will even make some other individual (personally, I like to think some other utterly hapless, unsuspecting individual) happy one day, the way you want them to make you happy. There is no point in wasting time bemoaning your fate. Just remember, at the end of the day, they were not worthy of being defended and most definitely not worthy of defending you.
As it turns out, they could have done with some overwhelming. Next time I'm not going to buy the inevitably over-priced saffron that one finds at specialty food stores. My recommendation is to hunt down your nearest Spanish, Persian, or, best of all, Indian, grocery store and buy saffron there. It will actually taste like saffron and not just crumbly red threads. As for the pine nuts, I would recommend folding them into the actual dough itself to add texture. Simply sprinkling untoasted nuts on top did not add much by way of flavor.
In any event, these cookies are being consumed at an alarming rate (despite the equally alarming amount of butter in them... I am clearly a butter magnet when it comes to recipes). Perfectly chewy and redolent of just-barely-cooked-enough cookie dough, they make the inner child quite, quite happy.
Now, onto darker things.
Self-betrayal.
Much MUCH easier than you would think. The mind has an excellent capacity for self-delusion and rationalization. One MUST be open to self-examination, ruthless self-examination in fact. Especially when it comes to love.
Love is a very tricky thing. In a way, nearly all of us are socialized to want that "one great love of our lives" (and various degrees and permutations thereof). We have to remember, however, that this wish, in fact, limits love. Love is something you bear for a person, whose very existence in this often-bleak world makes it a little brighter. It is selfless. If you love for love's sake alone, you will find that it frees you from its consequences.
At least, in theory.
Falling in love with a person makes it very easy to find compatibility where there is none. It is the most fecund breeding ground for wishful thinking that I have ever seen and I should know, I have definitely been guilty of this. That wishful thinking leaves one open to a great deal of self-betrayal. To distill my advice into one sentence, if you find yourself telling a friend or an acquaintance about a romantic situation and you find yourself having to justify what is quickly becoming an awkwardly indefensible "relationship", END IT. Your inner goddess will thank you. She should not be forced to serve. She is not a water-bearer or squire. She is a shieldsister, a battlemaiden, a phalanx-mate, the one whose shield stands between you and everything that would seek to destroy you. She chooses mates who are worthy of defending her and being defended by her.
That being said, once you do end it, I do not advocate ending it with hatred. It is easy to work ourselves into paroxysms of rage at the other person for not acknowledging our feelings or behaving in a completely assbackwards way. Of course they do. People do that. Even intelligent people get remarkably stupid when it comes to situations like this. Just remember that they are still perfectly reasonable people. Perhaps they will even make some other individual (personally, I like to think some other utterly hapless, unsuspecting individual) happy one day, the way you want them to make you happy. There is no point in wasting time bemoaning your fate. Just remember, at the end of the day, they were not worthy of being defended and most definitely not worthy of defending you.
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