BAKING LIFE, LOST AND BASIL

Um...have I been away that long? I guess so eh? I guess I have a LOT of catching up to do. Sadly there will not be an awesome food recap because I've been missing out on morning food photos. I blame Baking Life. It is the most addictive game for bakers. It falls under the same category as Cafe World and all those other games I can't remember the title of right now on Facebook. You basically do follow a bunch of steps in order to "level up" and you can customize your avatar and such. I never really played any of those games, not even FarmVille, up until a few weeks ago when I was home one weekend and bored out of my mind. Now I'm addicted to both and I don't know what to do about it. Or rather, I go through phases where I must bake my cakes and pies and plant my wheat and strawberries and pumpkins. And then there are other days where I don't give a damn because I'm too busy finishing up the last season of Lost with Sean.

He pre-ordered season six online and it arrived a couple of weeks early from the actual release date so we spent most of the weekend catching up. There were a few "snoozy" episodes but I've been reeled back in. We have less than five episodes left--eeps!

Did I ever mention that I have a basil plant? I picked it up at Longo's one evening when Sean and I were shopping for...oh, I was looking to get some fake crab from the salad bar. About 45 minutes later and $50 down the drain, I came out of the store with a basil plant and the Angostura Bitters I had been looking around for, for just about forever. (More on that later.) My basil plant is having is ups and downs. I suppose you could say it's going through its teenage years and does not want to listen to me. Or rather, the real problem is that white flies mysteriously took over and now I'm having a heck of a time getting rid of them. I'm watering regularly but hoping that some hot blistering sun will kill them off but not kill my basil plant. Note: I'm really good with outdoor plants but indoor plants in a pot, not so much. I don't really know how to care for them. I know you're supposed to water them regularly and keep them in sunlight but in a house without air conditioning, I have no idea how the humidity affects the plant. I suppose it should be better for them but for some reason it never works.

The only thing I haven't managed to kill is a basil cutting. A basil cutting, can you believe it? I actually managed to get roots to grow from one of those basil packages you buy at the grocery store. This was bought shortly before the basil plant was purchased. I actually bought the basil plant because I was tired of buying those $2-3 packages of herbs at Longo's and/or Loblaws only to use 1/4 of the entire thing and have the rest of it go to waste (ie: the compost bin). So I stuck a couple of sturdy stems in a small mug of water and changed the water on a daily basis and ta-da, before I knew roots appeared! Check 'em out:Awesome, isn't it? I'm going to plant this stem in a pot of soil really soon. I'm really excited as this seems to be a different type of basil than the pot I purchased at Longo's.

So that's what I've been up to in a nut shell.