I have seen beauty in so many forms, tasted the skies of potential for my spirit through observing a sunrise, known the power of all that is by taking in an artist in the height of their creativity.  We each of our own perception of beauty, and yet we know it when we see it.

Ugly Cakes are not beautiful.

I dicovered Ugly Cakes as an accident, as many of the best culinary and emotional connections are discovered.  I was supposed to have a date with pinwheel roll-up pumpkin bread or some such thing, but my stores were low and I worked with what I had.

We all work with what we had.

When I looked down at the mess that had come from my discovery, I was deeply saddened.  These Ugly Cakes are what I have to eat for dessert?  These are, well, ugly!  What a waste, I heard myself say, of a decent can of pumpkin.

And then I bit into them.  I did not taste the hallelujah of the heavens, I did not melt into a heap of orgiastic goo.  But I had found something that has become a sweet breakfast favorite for me, the type of comfort breakfast or treat that fills my heart with a sort of wisdom of the tongue.  This is not perfect, but neither am I.  This is not what it might have been, but it is the perfect what I needed it to be.

Here, then, is a recipe for Ugly Cakes, with notes below on how I don’t quite follow the recipe.  If you do not have all the ingredients, do as I did, and improvise.  Work with what you have.  Pray.  And maybe you will find a new family enjoyment item that is perfect for what it needed to be.

Ingredient list:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 can solid pack pumpkin
• 1 egg yolk

Dig around your kitchen and find measuring cups and two bowls.  I think that regular cooking folk might call them medium bowls, but they need to be able to fit all the above goo in them.  But not yet.  Right now, just find the bowls, and a big wood spoon while you are at it.  Oh yeah, and those measuring cups.

My measuring cups look like little stacking dolls from Russia, and always make me think of Sydney where I bought them on King Street.  I ponder the people I cherish who are far away, and rip the little women in half.  I use the 1 cup measuring bottom half of her decapitated corpse and pull out the flour.  Why all-purpose flour, I wonder.  Wouldn’t most-purpose flour work?  How many of us are really all-purpose.  Is this flour really all-purpose.  Ponder for a moment on the nature of purpose while measuring all three cups into one of those bowls.

Futz around in the cabinets looking for pumpkin pie spice.  If you have some, go you.  I don’t.  I never do.  Instead I looked at the list and went, ah, things that taste like pumpkin and ginger and cinnamon.  With that in mind I pulled out ground nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves and vaguely made a total of 2 tablespoons of spices wind up in the flour.  I added a dash of vanilla because my mother had sent it to me, and that was as reasonable or a reason as any to add something to my life.  Sometimes stuff just ends up on our laps, or in our bowls, and we make it work.

In the other bowl, the bigger of the two if there are two, put in the stick of softened butter.  In my case, I only had 2/3 of a stick of butter, so I poured in a bit of extra virgin olive oil to make up the difference.  I also forgot to soften it in advance, so I stuck it in the microwave for a moment and hoped for the best.  Add the 2 cups of sugar to the “butter” that you have, and blend.  This mostly means sitting on the couch watching an episode of Firefly, squishing the butter around until the salt and butter have mooshed their way into each other’s hearts.

Crack the egg over the sink (not over at the couch where you were watching firefly) and add the yolk to the bowl now next to the sink.  Make sure not to tip bowl into sink of dirty dishes.  Open up the can of pie material, contemplate the genius of the mass-produced can for world market sales, and add all the orange-goo that so reminds me of my birthday.  Contemplate the nature of birthdays while mooshing the goo all together

Sit back down at the couch with both bowls.  Add some of the flour mix to the bowl of egg/butter/sugar/pumpkin.  Blend.  Once blended, do it again.  Like life, if we try to take it all on at once we can get overwhelmed and get flour all over our livingroom.

Once it is all mixed together, stare at the goo.  I felt compelled to add a dash more flour, and blend more.

Stick it in the fridge, convinced this stuff is just not quite right.  Finish the episode of Firefly (aprox. 30 minutes, more is okay if you want to watch another episode or if your neighbor stops over to introduce himself and offers you a glass of sangria, talking about his ex-husband and how he is surprised how long construction is taking on the pool.)

Pre-heat oven to 350 F.  Dig under your range for a non-stick cookie sheet.  Pull Ugly Cake Goo out of fridge.  Find that tablespoon earlier used for measuring.  Use it to dig out a heaping spoonful, okay, more like a giant glop.  Place giant glop on cookie sheet and squih down.  Glop should be approxametly 1/2″ high, and 3″ across in any given direction.  Put 4-8 of these on the desired sheet, however many you want to make.  The batter keeps for a week or so.

Note your imperfections.

Once the oven is heated, put in Ugly Glops.  Set a timer for 15 minutes.  Try to clean up this mess in your kitchen.

When the timer goes off, open up fridge.  Take a toothpick and stick it in a cake, or guess.  If it comes out sticky/runny, let it go for a few more minutes.  Mine take about 16-18 minutes, depending on the magic of how hungry I am (hungrier, takes longer it seems).  This is the nature of desire.

Let cool, or, bite right in and have your tongue hate you afterwards for the blister.

Stick extra goo in tuperware container, seal, burp the lid, put in fridge.  Make hungry cakes whenever makes you happy for the next week or so.

Serve warm, or not.  Enjoy as you see fit. Much like life itself.

One of my comfort foods is what I have deemed Comfort Garlic Toast.  I have made variatons of it since I was a child.  Powdered garlic, shredded cheddar and cheap bread were all it took for my mother to make me smile on a day someone had been mean to me or when I’d not aced a test.  But I’ve grown up and the idea of a pool of cheddar grease leaves me wanting.  This is my version of this treat and sometimes side dish to italian, french, or american cuisine… with a bit of grown up and a lot of childhood memory.

Ingredients needed for this recipe:

- 3/4 stick of butter (or an equivalant of margerine for my femme allies on a diet)

-5 cloves of garlic

-Italian spice blend (there are tons of great options out there)

-A few slices of wheat bread (or some other healthy-ish bread… the more texture the better in my opinion)

-12 minutes (20 for me, see below)

-Shredded Asiago Cheese (I get mine at Fresh&Easy in a round tub and keep in my fridge to use as a condiment; Parmesean, Romano, or other hard cheeses will also work, and for the flavor adventurous, you can use a blue crumble cheese or feta but use less garlic in my opinion).

-Cutting board

-Paring knife (this all black one was a recent gift from my mother as part of my housewarming package)

-A happy thought somewhere in your heart

Pour yourself something to drink that makes you smile.  I chose to make mint drinking chocolate using nonfat milk, and my lips, tongue and belly was delighted.

Remove butter from the fridge, and cut it into cubes, tossing it into a microwavable coffee mug.  Mine matched the one I was drinking choclate from, another thing to make me smile Brek it up with a butter knife a bit, venting agression stored in your muscles, then set it in the microwave.  Hit the “Express” button twice, totalling 1 minute on 80% or so.  Check consistency.  Can you push the butter around without it being runny?  Perfect.  If your microwave runs hot, then do 30 seconds, check, etc.

Once the butter is pliable, grab the garlic and do not despair on how to peel it.  Schuck off the obvious dead stuff that you see in the top right of this image- the part where the tendrils and roots ran into the ground.  This was once a flowering plant, and you are eating its bulb. By consuming bulbs we are absorbing the potential to be flowering beings ourselves, harnessing our ability to grow by spreading roots between our friends and loved ones, and reading towards the skies to show our potential.  We become grounded in the bulb inside us, and for this we celebrate.  So pull off the tendril sction with your thumb, having the individual cloves fall away- or cheat!  Take the paring knife and just cut it off!  That will remove the hard section from the bottom part of each clove, and take some of the skin away with it.  Instead of fiddling with each piece, you can expose their naked pearls in one speed-strip.

Look at how cute they are as bottomless.  Bottomless and ready to be consumed, or bottomless potential… either way.  Both are very sexy.

Now pick up a clove, and either slide the tip of the paring knifein the space between the dead skin and the pearly white beneath- or if you are rocking long nails, that is even better.  Slide in slowly, then twist- the skin pops away… about half the time.  To gaurantee it, use a meat tenderizer to help separate the skin, but if you are lazy, just try again on the other side.

You now have naked pearls of garlic, and your kitchen is smelling of your endeavors.  Remember the last time you had a good date at an italian restraunt.  Remember the taste of marinara or alfredo sauce.  Remeber the love that goes into hand-pressing olive oil, and the love you are pouring into your own creation.  Now to mince! Start by lining up each clove one after another and slice them thin.  Do all of them.  By turning it into a repetitive motion you save time and are more likely to create something consistent.

Look down and *look*.  Snowflakes each.  You can stop here if you like huge chunks of garlic, but most folks prefer smaller pieces.  ow we go from slicing to mincing.  Put all of the sliced garlic in a pile and begin doing downward pressure strokes with the whole knife at one time.  One hand is on the handle, and the thumb and index finger on your other hand are holding the tip.  Lift together, push down together.  Note the line created.  Repeat.  Over and over and over again.  Every 10-20 strokes, wipe off the blade, pile it all back up, rotate the cutting board one quarter, and do it again.  Keep repeating until you are happy or have totally tranced out and snap back when the song on the iPod changes.

Add minced garlic to the coffee cup of butter.  Mix with the butter knife.  Knock over your beverage.  (Optional).  Curse yourself loudly at having forgotten it was there and reach for kitchen towels to start mopping thedrinking choclate off of your foot, the floor, the counter, the cutting board.  Throw it all in the sink and be annoyed for a moment until you realize it is an opportunity for self-compassion.  Shit happens.  Dishes are washable, kitchen towels cleanable, and there are worse things for your floor to smell like.  Fess up to yourself that you were daydreaming about the guy you played with last night who was really hot who you’d had a minor crush on for years.  Shake head in amusement and move on.

Add two large pinches of shredded cheese to the mix.  Blend.  Close tub quickly for fear of dumping it over too.  Open up mixed italian seasoning, turn it over the coffee cup, and pat it 6 or 7 times like it was being lightly spanked.  Blend.  If it doesn’t look like enough of either, add more to your taste, but this is usually about right.  Set seasoning down to put lid on it an note that the top looks like a flower, a reoccuring universal theme from this toast lesson, and meditate on it.

Blend one last time and the start buttering toast with the mixture you have created.  Not too much, but enough to cover the whole piece of whole wheat.  Note the connection between whole piece and whole wheat, and reflect on how whole you are being in your life.

Turn on your oven to Broil (and Broil on the other dial- make sure it says so on both lest your stove get confused and look at you funny).  Set the buttered bread on the rack not on the very top rack slot possible but one down from there.  Push the rack in and laugh about the word “Rack”.  Close door to oven 75% but not all the way.   Wait 2 minutes and peek because you’re nosy.  Shake head at dishes and decide to do them a bit later.  Come back a minute or so later.  Remove when it looks perfet to you.

Put on a plate.  Serve.  Love yourself.  Sit down and enjoy.  Put the leftovers in a tupperwre and store in the fridge for easy comfort a few days from now.  Feel free to double the batch or triple it for speed comfort for the coming weeks

If you are not craving garlic, consider replacing the garlic with 1/3 of a tart apple (Granny Smith works well) or pear, the cheese with shredded coconut, and the italian seasonings with cinnamon-sugar.  Its a really great dessert for folks on a budget.

Enjoy the Alchemy.  May the Philosopher Stone of your life unfold before you, and may you enjoy the journey, and the matching flaatware, along the way!

Thus I believe in the art of edible alchemy. We have the power to transform base ingredients to a higher purpose, and in my recipes I prefer to thus share more than the ingredients that went in. This first recipe in the Edible Alchemy series thus came to me when given an opportunity to sustain the lives, friendships and joys of friends and more of mine in Maine.

Needed for this recipe:

• 30 minutes (or an hour if you will be reading a book or simultaneously dealing with email while doing the initial food prep)

• 3 people whose hearts and lives you want to feed (hopefully including yourself)
• 6 asparagus stalks (7 if one of them reminds you of an ex-boyfriend that you once had back in London… long, hard, straight…)
• 3 slices of smoked bacon (best if obtained from a corner shop where people know your name, and if not possible, drooled over for a few days so that the potency of your desire for more tasty bacon is boiling in your blood)
• 6 eggs from happy chickens
• One tomato
• A handful of cilantro
• Bag of mixed spring greens
• Sourdough bread leftover from last night’s feasting
• Parmesean cheese
• 3 splashes of milk
• Olive oil
• Applewood smoked sea salt
• Cracked black pepper
• 2 cloves fresh garlic
• One nonstick saucepan
• One nonstick frying pan with lid
• One mixing bowl
• One garlic press
• One slotted wood spoon
• One whisk
• One flipper/turner
• a heap of love and sense of humor

Wander into the kitchen while your friends who have been hosting you for the week are upstairs packing their bag for the conference you are all heading towards. It is best if you packed your bags the night before so that after breakfast you can do the dishes and they can continue their panic with full bellies and full hearts. Once in the kitchen get yourself a beverage of your choice (I recommend Moroccan mint tea) and take a deep breath. Absorb one last day in their space and say a prayer under your breath for coming back to Maine and visiting them again. Obviously, if you are not in Maine, insert a location that gives you pleasure… especially if it is your own home- for our own homes should give us pleasure.

Clear off the food prep space and set dirty dishes in the sink to do later. Or do them now, but if so, adjust cooking time above. Run your fingers over the wood cutting board and thank the tree that gave its life as you set out your ingredients and begin your work.

Cut the bacon into small chunks. Bite-size or smaller. This is an art, not a science. As it sticks to your fingers laugh under your breath at the voices upstairs asking where the books that need to be taken were stored. Peel the garlic and set them aside.

Heat up the saucepan with some drizzled olive oil in it to some middle temperate and be amazed at how nifty their flat topped stove is. Press the garlic into the heated oil and mix it around with the wood spoon, being delighted as the garlic hits your nose and the folks upstairs proclaim “yum” within seconds of oil and garlic sensually embracing each other in the pan. Toss in the bacon once the garlic is tan like the girl you had that secret crush on back in Austin. Enjoy the crackle of their threesome, stirring regularly.

While the bacon crisps, start cutting up the asparagus into chunks that make you happy. Be amused about the one that looks like your ex boyfriend. Cut it up anyway. Toss it in with the bacon/olive oil/garlic to create an orgy for the senses.

Put a lid on it, adding a splash of water as you do so to help steam the asparagus while it fries. Keep the eyes on the back of your head on it to make sure nothing sticks or burns to the saucepan… you will have to use that spoon and mix it up from time to time.

Slice up the tomato. Rinse and mince up the handful of cilantro. Slice the 3 pieces of bread from the sourdough round and set these all aside. Check on the orgy.

In the mixing bowl, crack two eggs and add a splash of milk. Make cute patterns in the milk if it makes you happy.

The add some flavored salt. I prefer the Applewood Smoked Salt, but any flavorful smoky salt will work. Brands I enjoy include Artisan Salt Company in Washington and Auntie Arwen’s in Connecticut.

Whisk with abandon. Take the orgy off of heat and let it lay in its own afterglow.

Heat up the frying pan to medium heat. Pour in the egg mixture so that it is even across the base. Let it bubble a bit. Put some water in the edge of the lid (not much at all) then pour it slowly down the side of the pan and quickly put the lid on top. This steams the eggs.

Once the eggs look firm, Take the slotted wood spoon (to drain off the oil) and take about a third of the asparagus bacon mix to put on the left side (right side if a lefty) of the omelet. Add a few pinches of cilantro. Add some slices of tomato. Add some Parmesan cheese. Take a picture (optional).

Grab the flipper and slowly slip it under one side, make an offering to the universe to have this go well, and fold the omelet. I tend to break one out of five or so… so have the broken one be yours when you sit down to eat. Its just as tasty.

Lay out your plates, put on a handful of salad on each, and slide the first omelet onto the first plate. Accidentally drop the bag of salad as you try to put it back in the fridge and have the dogs descent upon it all. This is of course when one of your hosts will come in and let out a howling laughter at it all. Curse it all and ask him to grab a broom. While you repeat the omelet making steps above (minus dropping the salad as that is all done)- bowl, whisk, pour, steam, layer, fold, plate- let him know that its his job to make coffee if the house wants it as he has the coffee magic. Put laughter in kitchen on repeat.

Plate the 2^nd and 3^rd omelets. While the 3^rd one is steaming, throw the bread in the toaster. Set the flavored salt and the pepper on the table and do other table prep. Tell everyone that food is served in 1 minute. Correct yourself and say 2 minutes.

Tell them out loud how much they mean to you. Smile and consume each others joy between bites of asparagus bacon omelet. Leave with a full belly and a full heart.