1. Set oven to 200 degrees for 10 minutes, then turn oven off.
2. Meanwhile, pour water into a large bowl. Sprinkle yeast and sugar into water and mix. Add oil, flour, and salt and mix until the dough is cohesive. It should be soft and a little sticky. (If it’s too sticky add a tablespoon or so of extra flour at a time.)
3. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead by hand with a few strokes to form a smooth, round ball.
4. Place the dough into a deep, lightly oiled bowl and cover with a damp kitchen towel (or plastic wrap). Set the bowl in the oven for 40 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.
5. Remove from oven, punch the dough down, and turn out onto a lightly floured work surface. Use a chef’s knife or dough scaper to halve, quarter, or cut dough into eighths. Form each piece into a ball and cover with a damp cloth. Let rest for 5 -30 minutes.
6. Set one dough ball aside and wrap the rest tightly in plastic wrap. Store them in the freezer.
7. Place a large cookie sheet in the oven and preheat to 450 degrees.
8. Using your hands, flatten the dough and stretch it outward with your fingertips, rotating the dough to form a circle or oblong rectangle. Use a rolling pin to further flatten it, if you like.
9. Gently transfer the dough to a pizza peel dusted with flour or cornmeal (we use a flexible cutting board — we don’t have a pizza peel) and top as desired.
10. Use a quick jerking action to transfer the pizza from the peel (or cutting board) to the hot pan in the oven. Bake for 5 to 12 minutes, depending on the size of the pizza. Serve immediately.

December 01, 2008
Ten ways I managed to ingest sugar as a child, over parental objections

1. Breakfast Cereal

When I was a girl, when we went to the supermarket my mother would come up with an arbitrary number, I think it was around five or six, and say that we could only have cereal that had a lower sugar count per serving than this number. Upon reflection, I suppose it wasn't arbitrary, because it managed to eliminate anything tasty from our breakfast options, including that fence-sitter Honey Nut Cheerios. We were left with a sad array of possibilities: plain Cheerios, plain Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, and Fiber One. This stopped me from getting the much need morning buzz and was probably the reason I turned to coffee at the tender age of fourteen. The world seems a lot bleaker at seven in the morning without sugar or caffeine, and this was the state of my life when a babysitter suggested to me, around the age of eight, that I could just dump sugar on my cereal and it would taste better. Oh, Mother, if you only knew how those babysitters corrupted us! Anyway, after that, I would spoon at least three or four tablespoons of sugar onto every bowl of cereal that I ate, and by the time my parents actually caved in and started buying decent cereal and snacks I had grown indifferent, realizing that I was master of my own destiny.

2. Cinnamon Toast

Another creative way to eat sugar. Make toast, blob some butter on it, and sprinkle liberally with sugar and cinnamon. Resent children whose mothers bought them Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.

3. Chocolate Chips

Despite being raised in the house of the child of a health food nut, I am also my father's daughter. Luckily for me and my brother, my father was unwilling to cave to many of my mother's culinary demands. It is because of him that we often had chocolate chips in the house for various baking projects. (I know that she going to jump in here and insist that she was the one who made the chocolate chip cookies, and yes, Mom, I love you for it.) We would raid the chocolate chips in handfuls on a daily basis until they were gone. This was the easiest sugar injection in our lives, and one we had to keep secret from the parents. They at least, to their credit, pretended to not notice our sticky hands and chocolatey faces as we bounced off the walls.

4. Baking Chocolate

Baking chocolate was sort of the child's equivalent of "ghost-busting," where crackheads pick up any bit of dust or gib of dirt off the ground and smoke it "just in case." As I remember it, baking chocolate was unsweetened, but still smelled enough like chocolate that I would attempt it occasionally.

5. Ovaltine

According to the family legends, Ovaltine was the one sweet food my mother was allowed as a child, because her mother had been convinced of the health benefits of all of those vitamins. As such, we were also allowed Ovaltine as children. Malted Ovaltine actually tastes healthy and is not good. Chocolate Ovaltine, though, tastes like real chocolate milk to a child who has been sugar-deprived. If you added twice as much Ovaltine as recommended, it only gets chocolatey-er.

6. Anna and Jeannette's House

Anna and Jeannette were the twins that lived up the road. They had an elderly aunt to watch them every afternoon who was notorious lax with the cupboard monitoring. Additionally, their mother apparently did not have great refusal skills, as she purchased any snack food that her five daughters may have possibly wanted (and had five daughters). When I went to Anna and Jeanette's, I could have as many fruit roll-ups as I could eat, Oreos, gummy candy, ice cream and any number of treats that would inevitably spoil my dinner.

7. Egg Nog

Another mom-allowed after-school snack born of desperation. Milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, give it a stir, some food coloring to make it seem processed and you're laughing. See previous post here.

8. Sugar Cubes

Yes, I'll admit it. I ate sugar cubes. After about three, it would set my teeth on edge and my cavities would start crying for mercy.

9. Old German Christmas Cookies

My father, ever the optimist, would often make Christmas cookies for at least a hundred people, despite the fact that we only knew thirty. This would often leave us with a store of hard, German cookies for months after Christmas. They were generally hidden behind the vinegar, because he didn't want my mother pointing out that he had made too many, just like she had told him he was going to. Luckily for him, I would raid these every so often. They were hard as rocks; you'd have to suck on them for a while before even a little bit would begin to crumble. These cookies were a great way to kill time and get a sugar fix.

10. Baking

In the end, I had to learn how to bake. God was not going to bring the cake to me, so I had to learn to make the cake. I think I started baking at around age ten or eleven, in the desperate grip of post-school sugar withdrawal. I started with the Joy of Cooking One Egg Cake which has only eight ingredients and can be made in under forty minutes. I've never looked back.

Posted by Lina at 05:35 PM | Comments (7)
File under: childhood trauma, food

November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving cheer

Tonight I ate dinner alone in my windowless room, feeling sorry for myself. This is the wost Thanksgiving, ever I thought. Then I remembered the Thanksgiving dinner that I had in a San Francisco homeless shelter and I realized that I have had significantly worse Thanksgivings than this. I'm thankful that despite everything, I still have the ability to wallow in self pity.

Posted by Lina at 09:57 PM | Comments (4)
File under: life

November 25, 2008
The family eggnog

The other night I mysteriously had a craving for the drink of my childhood. Perhaps not so mysteriously, as it's exactly the sort of thing that someone on a weight gain regime--which I clearly am--would long for. The drink is called eggnog, and consists of a glass of milk with a raw egg dumped into it, sugar, and a dash of nutmeg. My mother would put this in the blender and add a liberal dash of food coloring and then pour me a tall, lactic glass of teal or lavender eggnog.

I wrote to my mother to get confirmation of the recipe and got this in response:

"Are you accidentally writing to the wrong person?"

And then when I insisted that I remembered said eggnog very clearly, I got this:

"Maybe you're remembering your birth mother."

And finally, the concession:

"I'm willing to believe I made egg nog, though, because I felt it was my maternal duty to pump you kids full of protein and dairy, and back then raw eggs weren't regarded as a health risk. And I've always loved food coloring."

Posted by Lina at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
File under: food, my dysfunctional family

November 24, 2008
Unusual punishments

I've decided that I'm going to embark on a three part plan to myself a better person. I'm going to start going to the gym. I'm going to diet. I'm going to write regularly. I think if I decide to do all of these things at once, I might stand a sporting chance of getting some writing done. My plan will begin tomorrow, with a ridiculously expensive gym membership. I will go to the gym each night and starve myself, or I will write.

When faced with two unpleasant things--say, going to the gym or writing--it seems likely that I will choose the path of laziest resistance. I'm going to end up fatter and and flabbier, but I might just write something other then self-indulgent blog posts. Like self-indulgent novels or self-indulgent articles or self-indulgent resignation letters.

Posted by Lina at 12:13 AM | Comments (1)
File under: writing

November 22, 2008
As requested: a depressing boyfriend post

Despite requests, I have no current terrible boyfriend stories to relate. I do have one on that backburner that I've been too lazy to type up...Oh fuck it. Here goes.

My ex-bf, known to many as the Swede, and known to others as that incredibly controlling maniac with no sense of humor, was certainly a thorn in my side. I can't deny that I was a terrible girlfriend, though. I was as far from being supportive as one can possibly be, and I still cringe when I think of the blank journal that he cut and pasted, ransom note style, letters rebelliously spelling out "Fuck you, it's art." It sends a shiver down my spine.

This was the man who famously--seriously--accused me of cheating on him. With my brother.

Anyway, as you might have guessed we had an acrimonious breakup. Within a month, he started dating another Lina. (Not, luckily, The other Lina). One of our main things we liked to argue about was his propensity for facial hair, and after taking up with the new Lina, he grew a full beard. I can't help but be pleased, as I'm convinced that this, and nearly everything else he does, is somehow in reaction to me.

He's also, apparently, gotten his first tattoo. As someone years into the tattoo removal process, I generally try and dissuade those that I'm sleeping with from getting tattoos, especially when those people are tattoo-less and in their thirties. So when he recently attempted to befriend me on Facebook, after years of silence and despite the fact that I thought we were mutually not on speaking terms, I was granted the limited opportunity to see his profile pictures and his new full sleeve tattoo. Getting your first tattoo in your thirties and going for a full-sleeve? Please. He is, as they would say in Ireland, a try hard.

I've written this in the hopes of keeping Brandy happy and of keeping all previously burned bridges burnt as my ex is also in London, with his new Lina, beard, and tattoo, and I don't want there to be any concern about small talk if I do happen to run into him.

Posted by Lina at 12:03 AM | Comments (3)
File under: dating and romance

November 11, 2008
The hardships of getting what you want

Now that I have a forum for my angst, I've run out of things to say. That website is willing to pay me, wants me to write more about music and seem to be agreeable to the fact that I cannot do this unless it is in the context of my romantic dalliances. Accordingly, I've lost interest in music, love and the written word.

Posted by Lina at 10:52 PM | Comments (5)
File under: writing

November 10, 2008
me too

Patrick: like, i wish you were as cool IRL as you are on your blog

Posted by Lina at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)
File under: chatting it up

November 07, 2008
stalksies

The greatest pleasure I have in life is stalking and obsessing (mainly obsessing). This is because in real life, people are generally disappointing. In my head, or on their blog, or deep in the public archives they are fascinating. I wish I could like people up close as much as I do from afar.

Posted by Lina at 10:15 PM | Comments (3)
File under: life

November 06, 2008
In regards to the American election

It's not often that I'm proud to be an American--in fact, I've spent the last while trying neutralize my accent and hide the fact altogether, but today I really am. The cover of the London Metro says in 2 inch high letters 'The Day America Became a Little Bit Cool Again.'

To be honest, although a staunch Democrat, I sometimes shake my head at the way the party operates. It's as if they have the overwhelming desire to fail. Snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory, if you will. Take this election--we were basically guaranteed a win. So what did the Democratic party do? Have our top contenders for the job be either a black man and a woman. It was if we were destined to fail. And yet, we didn't. I love that the race didn't become about race and I love that I come from a country that still seems to have some sort of social mobility. I love that we did the right thing this time.

Posted by Lina at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)
File under: current events

Older entries...