It Takes Skill

carrot ginger cupcakes with apricot cream cheese frosting
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

I have somehow achieved a perfect duet of feet: I have terrible, giant, itchy and possibly infected bug bites on my left foot and a nice big clump of poison ivy between the second and third toes of my right foot. What the hell are the odds? Most people would have settled for one or the other, but not me, no, driven by that relentless quest for perfection which has so characterized my life thus far, I have achieved two of the itchiest plagues known to humankind simultaneously. Thank you. It was difficult but I managed it.

The thing about itching, besides the undeniable yet so frustrating fact that if you scratch it gets worse not better (and I scratch; I always scratch; I have always scratched and I will always scratch, world without end) is that it takes up a corner of your mind. Yesterday I was busy as hell running errands around town - I believe I drove up and down Haywood Road at least six times - and while I was thinking efficiently about all the things I had done and was doing and would do, part of my brain was saying, over and over, my feet itch. Itch! My feet! They itch! It gets annoying, rather in the same way a small urinary tract infection will make you oh so annoyingly aware of the fact that you do possess a urinary tract, a thing you ordinarily are completely unaware of the 90% of the time you are not actively peeing.

In other news, I spent yesterday afternoon making these cupcakes and also a couple of sandwiches of magnificence - not one, not two, but three kinds of meat - for several of the men in my life. These cupcakes were fucking ambrosial, y'all, as in, they might be the best things ever and I don't even like cupcakes all that much ordinarily. Not only that, my house smelled amazing and still smells amazing, so I recommend them heartily. This is the recipe I used with these changes: I added fresh grated ginger to the grated carrots - like a scant handful or so; I used half light brown sugar and half white sugar and I tossed in a pinch of nutmeg, a teaspoon or so of vanilla and some lemon juice. Oh and I didn't add the nuts. I don't, for the most part, like nuts in baked goods; they're always kind of an unpleasant surprise. I didn't use his icing either - for the frosting I just mixed a block of cream cheese with 3/4 cup of powdered sugar and about 2 or 3 tablespoons of apricot preserves and a little lemon juice. Enjoy - and you will. You're welcome.