a plummy day.

i wrote the below, in italics, back in september. and delayed uploading the photos and then forever passed. lets try to get better about that...

i was once asked what i do to relax / de-stress. you know, after a long week at work, or if something less-than-happy happened in my personal life, or whatever. and i had to think for a minute or two, but it eventually came to me: spending time in my kitchen. which is probably one of the reasons that i sacrificed location for an amazing kitchen with my current apartment. what does this mean, exactly? it means i like to spend time in my kitchen, chopping, cleaning, preparing foods. it relaxes me and gives me the opportunity to structure and organize things, which is nice for someone slightly obsessive-compulsive like me.

today i had a lovely day like that. i peeled and chopped up all the carrots i got in my farmshare this week. i shucked, de-cobbed, and made soup out of the corn on the cob from my farmshare this week (and i roasted some to go with some avocado as a soup garnish. yum). i peeled and cut up potatoes and onions for roasting. i cut up a watermelon into chunks for this week. i roasted and peeled some beets for this week. i washed and cut up and made into a cake some lovely plums i got at a farmers market on friday.

it. was. lovely. and exactly what i want in a weekend.

so about that plum cake. my good friend kaitlin, who i went to high school with, posted a picture of a gigantic tub of plums on twitter, way back when. and they sounded delicious. so when i found them at the farmers market not a week later, i had to buy a little container. but what was i to do with them? especially since i had never consumed ones that looked like them before! make a cake! thats what!



i went with a recipe from food52. a friend of mine turned me on to the site quite some time ago, but i have to admit i don't use their recipes that often. i love the fact that they are well-illustrated, and tested to be sure that they work well (at least the contest winners!) but i find that my cooking style isnt neccessarily the same and so i dont try all of the recipes on there.



this plum cake recipe, however, looked great, and so i of course had to try it, since i had the plums. i liked the way that the plums were layered into the cake too. it was quite delicious. but of course i don't ever have a reason to make dessert, because who is going to help me eat it! one of the difficulties of my single life -- no one to help eat leftovers! i once made apple crisp for a party thinking it would be all gone and of course people barely ate half of it! i cant eat that much leftover!! and then when AJ&UB came for dinner in december, AJ brought a small cheesecake, but then left half of it for me! how am i supposed to get through it! so coming back to the plum cake. i ended up bringing it to dinner with bryan and emily, and left a bunch with them, which is how i solved the plum cake issue!