Wow, I LOVED all the amazing responses to the band question. It was sheer heaven reading through them all. And the band names? We must have t-shirts. And, um, actual bands. But no! No, t-shirts are enough. Let’s make people wonder: “Oh, you haven’t seen the Burning Corsets and the Victorian Five? Do you live under a rock? Yeah, what-ev-ah…”
Just great, great answers, and I could make an argument for all of them. Which was sort of my problem with answering the question to begin with. I did a lot of “Um”-ing and “Hmm”-ing and listed Bowie and Radiohead and the Runaways and Kate Bush and then Sylvie (the interviewer) said, “You’re listing your iPod playlist.”
Yeah, I was. Narrowing down…not my strong suit. Please see previous references to 832-page book.
So, in the end, the band I picked for Gemma (with a prompt from my husband who has NO trouble nailing things down, which is why he is a very good agent) was….
DRUM ROLL
Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Goth yet a little punk. Dark. Eyelinery. Strong female singer. The darkness of “Cities in Dust” and the light playfulness of “Peek-a-Boo.” Of course, after reading all your responses, I could only nod and go, “Oh, I should have said THAT!”
Anyway, thanks for playing the game with me.
E. Lockhart and I are sitting in my living room writing. She is getting a lot done and I am…not. I must remedy that. E. ate some of the Lindt truffles we have sitting in a bowl on the table.
“You want one?” she asked.
“No,” I said, making a face.
“Wow, you have a lot of willpower,” she said.
I shook my head. “Sadly, no. That’s the SECOND bag of truffles. The first one came into the house two weeks ago. I can barely look at those without throwing up. Totally truffled out.”
But speaking of getting sick on sugar, here is my mom’s peanut-butter ball recipe, aka CHRISTMAS CRACK. Please note that I bake in the same way that I write, which is to say, feeling my way and full of guesses.
You will need:
1 box of confectioner’s sugar
1 jar of peanut butter (I like the Smuckers crunchy natural myself)
1 tsp. vanilla
2 12-ounce bags of chocolate chips (I mix milk and semi-sweet)
shortening
a little water
To make:
Dump the pb in a bowl
Sift confectioner’s sugar into it (start off with about half the box)
Add the vanilla
Mix it up and taste it. Sweet enough to bring on diabetic coma? No? Add some more sugar.
Good to go? You can stop.
You want the dough to be soft enough so that you can form balls (“Huh,huh, she said balls, huh, huh.” Sorry. Beavis & Butthead moment there.) but not so soft that it’s wet. Savvy? If it’s too dry, add a little water, and by a little, I mean add it by tablespoons. You don’t need much.
Once you’ve got your desired consistency and sweetness, melt the chocolate chips and about 1 Tbsp of the shortening together in the microwave. I start with 2 minutes and go from there. Stir. Add one minute, stir, etc. until the chocolate melts but doesn’t boil. Then you drop those pb puppies into the chocolate mixture, fish ’em out with a spoon, and put them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. if any chocolate gets on your hands it is VERY IMPORTANT that you lick it off immediately. This may happen several times, and when people who share your house come in and see you with chocolate smeared all over your mouth and smirk, you say, “What? Hey. Hey! I just saved you from a very bad situation here, mister!” Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Let the pb balls set a bit (the chocolate aspect) and then, when they are dry enough to handle, drop ’em in an airtight container and put them in either the freezer or the ‘fridge for a few hours. Then, take them out and enjoy, and by enjoy, I mean don’t even bother with a plate–just eat them right out of the container until you feel as if you might need to shave your teeth.
Happy baking.
And here is today’s random TSFT quote:
“You must build the fire,” Mother Elena says. “Burn him. Burn everything.”
OFFICIAL TSFT COUNTDOWN…Oh, bloody hell. I forgot to see what day it is. (subtracting in head) Today is the 18th…26-18=8. 8? Is that right?
8 days.