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Nattering Social Justice Cook: DIY Cooking Kits

Shared food can be a social experience that creates friendships.
Shared food can be a social experience that creates friendships.

Within the last few years, an industry has sprung up aimed at people who don’t know how to cook but yearn to do so. The basic model of such companies is that they deliver kits for making a homemade meal: the ingredients, with any pre-work like peeling or trimming already done, and a set of instructions that includes step by step photographs pretty enough to be in a food magazine.

I tried one of these services a year or two ago, lured by a good coupon deal, and did get some value out of it, but cancelled the subscription before they could start hitting me with the non-coupon costs. For someone utterly foreign to the idea of cooking, these might be useful to show how easy it is to create a tasty meal, or for someone scared of failure, they might build confidence. But the amount of wasteful packaging was striking, and that seems a bad thing to me. I don’t like creating garbage, because among other things, it means I must expend effort taking it out, but also because it’s bad for the planet.

The average American generates 4.3 pounds of garbage per day. That’s over a pound and a half over what the figure was in 1960. So we’ve gotten, overall, less efficient rather than more, while at the same time depending on resources that are diminishing.

Every one of the kits came in cardboard packaging around a styrofoam box with two large ice packs. I stuck a few of those ice packs away for re-use but there are only so many ice packs any household can use and they’re not recyclable because they’re filled with some sort of chemical solution. Every ingredient was packaged separately, down to tiny plastic bottles holding approximately a teaspoon of soy sauce. If I had weighed the garbage against the end result, I would have found the garbage far in excess of the end result.

I think people should know how to cook, because it’s a skill that helps them make their life better in a number of ways. I freely acknowledge that people with few resources will have a harder time cooking, yet be in a position where the practice would benefit them tremendously. Some low-cost appliances can be of much use here, like a rice cooker, hot plate, or toaster oven, but using those efficiently takes skill and knowledge. These kits aren’t going to teach people some important basics, such as how to shop economically/efficiently, how to store ingredients, or how to prepare food.

My grade school taught home economics in 6th grade, in a time benighted enough that girls weren’t allowed to take shop class, because that teacher claimed he was too worried about long hair getting caught in machinery. It was useful stuff: how to plan and cook a meal and how to sew things, mainly. We did have a few boys in there, mainly ones who were there for eating part of cooking practice.

Most of what I learned about the kitchen, though, I learned at home, from my mother, who was and continues to be a skilled and adventurous cook, my maternal grandmother, who provided farmhand meals for decades and was a master cake decorator, and my paternal grandmother, who had only a few dishes down, but made them well.

It wasn’t until graduate school, though, that I realized that I really loved to cook and was pretty good at it, particularly after two years of catering to a household that included two vegetarians, a lactose-intolerant, someone testing for food allergies, and a follower of the Pritikin no-fat whatsoever diet. I hosted dinners and potlucks, fed a houseful of boarders, and created a backyard garden that supplied fresh ingredients. I learned to love tiny ethnic grocery stores as well as how to make some of my own staples, began to bake bread on a regular basis, and began to accumulate what’s currently two shelves of cookbooks (and books about cooking), despite frequent culling.

picture of two shelves of cookbooks
Some of these books have survived several decades of purges and moves.

Why do I think the skill is so important? Here’s what it has brought to my life over the years.

  • Economic advantages: I can live significantly more cheaply than someone who eats out or buys pre-prepared food. I could feed my household for significantly less than I would otherwise if I’m willing to put a little time into planning my meal schedule and shopping. Among the things I can and often do make at home that are cheaper: yogurt, bread, pasta, salsa, mayonnaise, hummus, cookies, soup stock, kombucha, burritos, ricotta cheese, cold-brewed coffee, instant oatmeal, flavored butter, ice cream — and that’s just the foodstuffs. I can stretch meals – buy something that serves for multiple meals, like a pork shoulder that goes into pulled pork, stir-fry, and then soup. Learning how to cook well can be the single biggest budget-changer skill a person learns.
  • Nutritional advantages: I know what’s going into my food and can accommodate my partner’s sensitivity to corn, for one. Looking at the list of ingredients of something like Hamburger Helper, I see a bewildering array of chemicals. Some are everyday things dressed up in scientific names, but a lot are chemicals designed to keep the food lasting longer on a store shelf or to make it pretty. I can incorporate foods that I know are good for us or cut down on things like sugar, sodium, and fat.
  • Educational advantages: Learning how to cook means learning how to plan and prepare. When I give a dinner party, I’ve got a schedule laid out ahead of time: this dish goes into the oven at time x, then I prep onions for the next dish while the water’s boiling for yet another. It means a bit of math if you want to play around with servings and substitutions. It can mean even more education: learning the cuisine of a particularly country often involves learning something about its history and culture. You also learn how a small addition can have a major impact, how to taste as you go, and other useful stratagems.
  • Social advantages: In grad school I hosted countless potlucks, which were a cheap way for impoverished grad students to come together for a meal, as well as various cook-offs, including a chili competition that featured, if I’m remembering correctly, eight different kinds. Yesterday I hosted my D&D group, feeding them an epic lunch of Mongolian hotpot before we started gaming. I can also throw a party much more cheaply than the cost of hiring someone to cater it. Moreover, through judicious application of delicious food and drink, I can delight my friends and enjoy their company and conversation for a period of time. When I was dating, I showed off my cooking skills more than once in order to woo someone. There’s something about having someone prepare food to you that is deeply romantic. Not to mention the seductive shazam of an intimate meal shared in the right setting. Even now, I can demonstrate affection for my spouse by fixing him breakfast in bed or his favorite snack when he’s feeling beleaguered by the world.
  • Aesthetic advantages: Food is one of life’s great pleasures. Celebrating its flavors and complexities is an aesthetic pursuit, and learning to appreciate new foods is an opening up to new things that helps make life more enjoyable. If you understand food and some of its complexities, you can appreciate that elaborate dessert or delicately flavored cheese even better. And a writer can rarely go wrong by exploring the sensory, in my opinion.
  • picture of chicken feet

  • Ecological advantages: Learn how to cook and you eliminate a lot of waste. Plus you learn how to use up some of what would be otherwise thrown away. Vegetable and meat trimmings can be saved to make awesome soup stock; those excess bananas so quickly turning brown can become an ice cream substitute. I made soup stock from chicken feet yesterday; the result was a healthy broth for my sick spouse that cheered him up, but also reminded me that living creatures went into our meal. Eating meatless (which has its economic pluses as well) is much easier if you know how to cook things like lentils, beans, and grains. Learning how to ferment foods has made me more aware of how much we depend on the microbial world in cooking.

How does one acquire the skill? DIY kitchen kits are not the way to go. Pick a simple dish: scrambled eggs, a grilled cheese sandwich, a basic soup. Start smaller if you’re totally new and learn how to hard-boil an egg. That’s a useful skill, because not only have you learned how to make pre-packaged protein-rich snacks that you can take with you to work, but you’ve learned a basic ingredient for recipes ranging from egg salad to eggs Vindaloo.

Or pick a basic appliance and start experimenting. A rice cooker is one of the most versatile things you can own; throw a handful of lentils and some spices in with your rice and you’ve got a cheap, one-pot meal, for example. A toaster oven performs a multitude of tasks, and a slow cooker has many of the uses a rice cooker does.

One of the great things about the Internet is that it throws up so much of this stuff online. When I started making my own tamales, I went to Youtube to watch techniques and learned by seeing the demonstration in a way I would have never absorbed from a textual recipe. It was a bit of a challenge, which learning new things should be (IMO) in order for them to really sink in. Opening a package and putting preassembled bits together doesn’t give you the knowledge you need in order to assemble those things on your own.

Like so many things in life. Right now we’re at a time when plenty of people are ready to provide you with pre-assembled mindsets, lists of talking points, ingredients measured and tailored so they can be assembled only into a single recipe. Question your mental ingredients, know where they come from, and taste as you go.

And remember the universe loves you (along with everybody else).

Peace, out.
#sfwapro

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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

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2018 in Retrospect Plus Here Comes 2019: Ever Onward, Ever Hopeful, Ever Joyful

There’s only one day left of this year in which to reflect upon it, and one thing I’ve been urging students to do is sit down and reckon up some of their accomplishments as well as planning out next year’s goals. So here I am, practicing what I preach.

Fiction-wise, the biggest thing published was my fantasy novel, Hearts of Tabat, in May. (If you’re one of the folks who enjoyed it, please think about putting up a review on Amazon, GoodReads, or wherever.) While it’s book two of the Tabat Quartet, it functions as an introduction to the series as well as the first book, Beasts of Tabat, does, and maybe they actually read better in that order, I dunno.

Other publications included stories for my Patreon campaign, this dour little piece of flash in Daily Science Fiction, and stories in anthologies, including “My Name is Scrooge” in The War on Christmas.

I finished up writing two novels, one of which (You Sexy Thing, a space military fantasy) is off with my agent, another (The Five of Us, a MG far future space story) of which I’m currently editing, and got halfway through two others: Exiles of Tabat (the sequel to Hearts of Tabat) and Devil’s Gun (sequel to YST).

The anthology I edited, If This Goes On from Parvus Press, will come out in spring of 2019, and is chockfull of good stuff. So will the little collection that’s intended as a reward for Kickstarter backers, Rambo on Rambo. Thank you to Parvus as well as my rocking team of slush readers, who heroically tackled (literally) hundreds of stories.

The Patreon effort continued to grow, and I hope in 2019 to get it to the point where I can start my own monthly magazine. One helpful thing I started doing was using the software Airtable, which came recommended by Pablo Defendi, and treating the effort as though it were itself that magazine, with weekly features like Tasty Thursdays, in which I provide and talk about a recipe, and Friday Questions, a mini Ask-Me-Anything where conversations can range all over the place. I also hooked in my Discord server for $5 and up patrons and coaching clients and also recruited some other writers and Rambo Academy faculty in order to create a community where people could encourage and motivate each other as well as trade story and novel critiques,

Nonfiction-wise, I finished up the book for Moving from Idea to Finished Draft. I wrote a couple of Clarkesworld essays, “The Future, Ordinary” and “Saving throw vs. Boredom: How RPGs Taught Me Storytelling“. I also published a new class, Hex-Engines and Spell-Slingers: Writing Steampunk and Weird Western. I did a number of reviews for Green Man Review, and have several more in the pipeline – just need to get back into the groove of doing those. I wrote the usual round of blog posts, including favorites On Writing: Advice for Attending a Writing Workshop, Chekhov’s Gun Store, and When and Why to Hire an Editor, And What They Should (and Shouldn’t) Do

The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers overall gained a few more teachers, and continues to grow, which is frickin’ awesome, and lets me sit in on classes by the likes of Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire and Rachel Swirsky, along with a host of other great folks. We had our first gamewriting-related class, High-Speed Worldbuilding for Fiction and Games with James L. Sutter. Check out the latest version of the faculty list. Speaking of teaching, over a thousand students have come through the Rambo Academy now, which is awesome, and I added several new live classes to the roster. I expanded the number of free slots in each class from one to three.

I went to the usual round of conventions, including International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, Norwescon, Emerald City Comic Con, GenCon, WorldCon, DragonCon, GirlGeekCon, Surrey International Writers Conference, and Pacific Northwest Writers Association. I got to both tell Peter S. Beagle he was the new SFWA Grand Master and then give him the award — and I get to do the same with another personal hero this coming May. I was a mystery muse for Clarion West this summer and some of the students from there took me up on my offer of a coaching call (If you’re one of them reading this and sad you didn’t, the offer is still open.)

I made my Twitch TV debut as part of the crew playing Esper Genesis. My name is in the rulebook as a playtester, which makes me proud and happy. One ball I’ve dropped is getting SFWA set up with a Twitch effort, but that requires figuring out what form that might manifest in as well as assembling the right volunteer team to care for it.

SFWA continued and continues to make strides forward into the 21st century, despite various small contretemps along the way, and I expect it to break the 2,000 member mark in 2019. Things that got implemented or that kept surging along in 2018, in no particular order:

  • I’ve been working on prodding the SFWA Youtube channel into existence since I was Vice President, and this year it really started to find its feet under the adept leadership of Diane Morrison. Some highlights include. Please check it out and subscribe – lots of good stuff is in the pipeline including gamechats with Jason Stevan Hill and James L. Sutter.
  • The mentorship program was launched. That’s been a long and painful struggle because we wanted to make sure we got it right, but the first wave of mentors and mentees got matched and the results (and numbers) are terrific. I’m mentoring someone myself — if you’re interested in participating in one or the other (or both) sides of that the next time they open up to matches, keep an eye on the website. You do not need to be a member to serve as mentor or mentee.
  • The Givers Fund created by outgoing SFWA CFO Bud Sparhawk continues to roll along disbursing money to efforts promoting fantasy and science fiction. Much of the money raised for this comes from our partnerships with HumbleBundle and Storybundle, which we have worked with in the last 2 years to create Nebula-themed offerings as well as efforts throughout the year, including two SFWA-author Storybundles.
  • The first Nebula Awards weekend I ever went to was a hotel banquet plus a handful of desultory panels. Nowadays it’s a bajillion times busier, bigger, and full of requested features. At some point it deserves a blog post all its own, detailing all the cool little features it’s acquired, like the Alternate Universe Acceptance Speeches. In 2019 (and 2020), it’s in Woodland Hills, California.
  • The Partners and Spouses party at the Nebulas was another thing I’ve pushed for, an event honoring the folks who often make it possible for writers to write, hosted by the inimitable (and SFWA Ombudsman) Gay Haldeman. In 2018 there was even programming aimed at those folks, assisted by Michelle Appel.
  • Indie members have been one of my foci all along and I continue to see them shaping the organization with their enthusiastic, energetic, and above all market-savvy input. We continue to be the only org of this kind letting people qualify with crowd-funded projects. Efforts associated with them include the NetGalley program and the New Release Newsletter.
  • Finally that frickin’ Game Nebula plus revised membership requirements for game writers are in place. Check out the SFWA Recommended Reading list to see some of the games SFWA members are playing and recommending.
  • The continued growth of the SFWA volunteer program under Derek Kunsken’s adept hand continues to please, and the volunteer breakfast that we implemented three years has (I hope) become a mainstay, along with the cool thank you certificates handed out there.
  • Kate Baker helped organize Six Sigma training for the Board at the Nebulas this year and the extra day of that was so well worth it that we’ll be doing it again in 2019.
  • SFWA Ed is rocking along under Jonathan Brazee’s able hand, they’ve got several claases up already, and I’m working on a mini-project for them right now.
  • Publications are getting sorted out. The Bulletin continues to lurch towards a more regular production schedule and has some things it previously lacked, like submission guidelines. The Singularity, originally intended to solve the problem of people getting a piece of mail from SFWA, going “I don’t want this,” and unsubscribing not realizing that meant no more e-mails from SFWA at all, including stuff about the Nebulas and the SFWA elections, has a regular schedule and is always full of great stuff, with people using it, which is a nice sign. Moving the Forum (and once and for all ending the confusion between its name and the electronic discussion forums) to electronic form only and re-shaping it into the Binary, a twice-yearly members-only formal writer-up of votes, committee and board member reports, and budget numbers, has been another effort that has been successful and helped turn something a little retro looking into an entity for this century.
  • Social media has gotten more of a focus in the past few years, and I see the SFWA Twitter account currently bubbling up all sorts of good content from past years on the SFWA blog, including a number of my own pieces.
  • Another of my visions, the SFWA First Chapters project, designed to help with the perennial question, how do I sift through the kerjillion novels that come out in a single year, is off and running!
  • Undoubtedly I have forgotten a kerjillion things that I will remember right after posting this; I will edit them in as they occur to me.

Some SFWA moments, like writing up a requested statement on what a SFWA President does for the Elections committee, are a little bittersweet because it’s the last year of my Presidency. While I am REALLY looking forward to putting more time and mental bandwidth into writing, I know I will miss a great many of the interactions. I will continue to work with the org as a volunteer — that sorta goes without saying, I think, but I’m still figuring out what I want to do. I got to make my final round of picks for the next SFWA Grandmaster, the recipients of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, and the Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service Awards, and they’ve all been Board-approved and notified, and I am super happy with the chance to acknowledge them all. This will be my last Nebulas as SFWA President, the closest I’ve gotten to playing prom queen in this life, and so I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to out-do last year’s banquet dress.

A nice highlight, coming in late fall, was that I got a helper! The daughter of a friend, Molly Louise, has been working hard at putting together a more regular social media presence, doing some writing for the blog like To France and Beyond and What Happened to Sabrina?, helping put together the newsletter, and creating some fun graphics. It’s been a big help and I look forward to working with her in the New Year.

Sadder notes of 2018 included losses like Ursula K. LeGuin, Mary Rosenblum, and my friend K.C. Ball. I was touched that Orycon asked to reprint my tribute to her in its program.

I had bought a lot of 4 horses for the sake of the Stardust Unicorn in it, and decided to modify one of the excess ones.This is still in progress.
The pictures illustrating this write-up show a new obsession: Breyer horses. Throw in the availability of used toys and memorabilia on eBay and you have a recipe that sates my inner 12-year-old. Here’s the one I’ve been working on customizing. It’s a fun rabbit-hole, and my BFF and I are planning a trip to Breyerfest in the middle of the year.

I’m looking forward to that as well as to a lot of projects in 2019. A lot of last year’s productivity was spurred by finding a new writing process last September, one which is painful yet productive, and which involves getting up at 5:30, hitting the gym, and then denying myself Internet until I’ve hit my wordcount mark. It’s based on Chris Fox’s 5,000 Words an Hour.

What I am looking forward to in 2019:

  • Turn in Exiles of Tabat, the MG novel, and the next few books in the space series, which is planned on as a somewhat insane ten book story arc.
  • On-demand versions of the flash fiction class, the all the -punks class, and the Stories that Change the World class.
  • Finally get the third edition of Creating an Online Presence done.
  • Frequent visitors will have noticed more guest blog posts on here. I’m hoping that eventually I can grow it into a monthly magazine of sorts since the Patreon continues to gain traction. If you’ve got something you’re promoting that you want to guest blog about or are interested in talking about some sort of semi-regular column, please drop me a line. By the end of 2019, I hope to have made significant progress towards that goal.
  • Moving the Chez Rambo household to a new place – we’re looking for new digs, probably still here in West Seattle, and I know that’s going to be a major effort.
  • Upcoming/planned appearances include Confusion in January, Norwescon, the Nebulas, GenCon, WorldCon (Dublin!), Cascade Writers, PNWA and Surrey International Writers Conference. I’ve also booked a treat for myself in the form of a trip to Breyerfest with my best friend in July, which should be a hoot and a half. Neither of us have ever been and I’m working on booking us an Airbnb that will let us interact with live horses too. If you have suggestions of things we should see while in the Lexington area, let me know!

Resolutions aren’t usually something I formally do, but I am going to try to be better about keeping up with my journal/notebook this year, because I find recording things like word counts for writing sprints or tallying gym visits makes me more mindful of and better about doing them. I like to jot down “10 Things About Today” in my daybook on a regular basis because I like looking back at those small details and remembering incidents, like seeing two little girls in purple ballerina skirts purposefully making their way up a hill yesterday or talking to a woman in the gym about the book she’s reading. I’d like to pick up the habit of meditation, because my mind is a monkey-mind, constantly distracted, worrying, and busy puzzling things out and composing pretty phrases in my head.

I hope to be better about both maintaining existing ties as well as establishing new ones, much of that in the form of letting my amazing friends and family know how much I appreciate them. To be a little more tidy in my daily existence for the sake of my own sanity, since an orderly environment is so much nicer than living on the edge of creeping chaos. And finally, to make more art for the sake of making art, like my notebook doodles or the masks I make every once in a while or my little Breyer customization project.

To continue to work on thinking before speaking, to encouraging other voices to talk — and listening to them, and to be mindful of the impact of my words. To continue to work at being able to go to bed knowing I’ve made an effort to make good things happen in the world, that I’ve cultivated love rather than spread hate, and that, above all, that I’ve been true to myself.

Here’s to a shiny 2019 for us all.

Peace out,
Cat

#sfwapro

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Nattering Social Justice Cook: Prepare to Ride, My People

photo of someone saying yeahTo those who have said “wait and see” about the results of the election, I have seen enough events and phenomena to feel that I am sufficiently prepared to venture an opinion on the results of the election. Here are some, listed in random order:

I need to stop because the more I look, the more the hits keep on coming. What a bizarre time to live in.

So. For those of you who either didn’t vote for Trump or did and now are all “I’ve made a huge mistake“, aka the sane and/or informed ones, yeah, buckle up because it’s going to be a rocky ride. At best, a lot of wealthy people are going to skim money from our government while changing laws so they can exploit us even more while at the same time, hatred and intolerance are normalized and neo-Nazis are allowed to try to silence dissent. At worst our rights are stripped away and things go up in flames.

There were election shenanigans, to a point where people should be at a minimum auditing the results. There was documented Russian interference and more than that, there was the result of sedulous gerrymandering on the part of the Republicans for the past decade along with their removal of the Voting Rights Act.

In my opinion. You may disagree, and that’s fine. This is what I think and what’s driving my actions over the next four years. I am going to speak up and object and point things out. I am going to support institutions that help the groups like the homeless, LGBT youth, and others whose voting rights have been stolen and whose already too-scant and under threat resources are being methodically stripped away.

I am going to continue to insist that honesty, tolerance, and a responsibility for one’s own words are part of our proud American heritage, the thing that has often led us along the path where, although there have been plenty of mistakes, there have been actions that advanced the human race, that battled the forces of ignorance and intolerance, and that served as a model for the world. That “liberty and justice for all” are not hollow words, but a lamp lifted to inspire us and light our way in that direction.

I will continue to love in the face of hate, to do what Jesus meant when he said hate the sin while loving the sinner. I will continue to teach, formally and by setting an example of what a leader, a woman, a good human being should do, acknowledging my own imperfections so I can address them and keep growing and getting better at this human existence thing. If I see a fellow being in need, I will act, even if it means moving outside my usual paths.

I will not despair or give way to apathy. And as part of that, I will celebrate the good, point out the wonderful, witness the absurd, the amazing, and even the wryly amusing. I will let my sense of humor buoy me, and I will continue to consider the alt-pantless, sorry, alt-right, petty, pathetic, and laughable. They know that they are. Writing in 1944 about anti-semitism in his essay Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate, Sartre stated things with a prescience that makes his words apply to their theater of outraged outrageousness, in which they prance around with the self-importance of bright preteens who have just discovered death metal and nihilism.

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely aware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

I will not be intimidated or disconcerted. Feel free to laugh at my naiveté, my over-earnestness, and idealism. I’m going to dance right past you, m-fers, and you will never know what hit you.

Language matters. Truth matters. Even in the face of this sort of thing:

The world is broken. Love isn’t enough to fix it. It will take time and effort and blood and sweat and tears. It will stretch some of us almost to the breaking point and others past it. We must help each other in the struggle, must be patient and kind, and above all hopeful. We must speak out even when we are frightened or sad or weary to the bone.

The millennials, may the universe bless them, are inheriting a shitty world. Those of us from older generations must teach and support and help where we can, realizing that what we do now affects the rest of their lives. We cannot let things slide into any of the nightmarish worlds we see depicted in so much science fiction, but if we do not act, they will. I will not sugarcoat things; it may be too late. But living as though it is not is the only way we’re going to survive.

Act now. Even if it’s just saying hello or smiling at someone that you wouldn’t normally. Start putting some good energy out in the universe to counteract the fog of hate. You’ll be surprised by how much better it makes you feel. Don’t pay attention to the trolls; they’re trying to keep you busy so you won’t act, to discourage you into slumping back onto the couch before you can even take a step out the door.

And here’s a recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies I know. In case you need a little chocolate in your life. We’ve gone through several batches of them in the past week here at Chez Rambo.

Bright blessings on you all,
Cat

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