I’ve long been jealous of the people with fancy cell phones, not because I wanted a cell phone, but because I coveted the ability to use instagram and the oh-so-exotic histogram app.

And then yesterday, all this new processing stuff appeared out of the blue in Picasa. Lookie here!

Suddenly, my existence, at least in picture form, feels more weighty. Like it has endured the ravages of time.

Or just a few extra computer finger-taps. Whatever.

(I still can’t do instagram, true, but that’s okay. I’m already having more fun than I can handle.)

In honor of my new photo shop skeelz, I present you with an adapted version of my quotidian series. Eat your heart out, baby.

Just chillin’.

This same time, years previous: bedtime ghost stories, a religious education, butterscotch pudding

In yesterday’s Kitchen Chronicles column, I mentioned corn flour and blueberry scone.

Corn flour is like cornmeal, but in flour form. I researched it to make sure.

I used both cornmeal and corn flour in these scones. I wanted lots of corn flavor with just a little corn texture. It worked.

Dried blueberries are wonderful, did you know? I never buy them and was shocked at how delicious they were. I splurge on chocolate—why not dried blueberries?

As a final touch, I added lemon zest. Because yellow lemon and blue blueberries look and taste great together.

Cornmeal Blueberry Scones
Adapted from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce and Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads (these cream scones)

3/4 cup corn flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup cake flour
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup butter
½ cup cream
1/4 cup milk
zest from 1 lemon, about 1 tablespoon
3/4 cup dried blueberries
cream and sugar, to garnish

Put the flours, sugar, salt, and baking powder in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to blend. Add the cold butter and pulse till the butter has broken down into smaller chunks but is not completely incorporated. Add the cream, milk, and lemon zest and briefly pulse.

Dump the contents of the bowl onto a work surface, add the dried blueberries, and quickly bring the dough together into one large ball with your hands—do not knead. If the dough is too sticky (mine wasn’t), add a little more flour.

Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a 6-8 inch disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

Cut each disk into eight wedges. Before baking, brush the scones with a little cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake the scones at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. The scones are very fragile when they come out of the oven, so let them set up on the tray for another 10 minutes or so before transferring to a cooling rack. Serve warm.

Yield: 16 scones

This same time, years previous: cherry pie

When I was nine, my mother gave me a diary.

It had a lock and key, and the pages were edged in “gold.”

Now the diary’s gilt edging has mostly worn off. And the lock is broken, which doesn’t really matter since the key has long since been lost. A bright pink hairband wrapped tightly around its middle is the only thing that keeps the pages from fluttering away into oblivion.

I was running out of interesting bedtime stories for the kids, so I’ve taken to reading to them from my diary instead.(Yes, it’s cheating. No, I don’t care.)

I read about a week’s worth of days each evening, maybe more. The kids get a kick out of all the things I did. For example, I:

a. made my own make-up
b. fought with my friends (all the time—I was quite the cantankerous little twit)
c. whined about the miseries of canning (still do)
d. reported on all the food I made and ate (I think there’s a theme here)

Other topics that get covered include: tin can stilts, Tom and Jerry (my children love them), my mom’s near (?) drowning and rescue, a surprise trip to the circus (though my dad spilled the beans by saying the word backwards and then I wrote it down and puzzled it out—pretty good for a pore speler sitch as me), a meteor shower, a holiday with the grandparents (the ones they never really knew), the demise (“smoshing”) of some garden-dwelling voles, Shakespearean ghost stories, etc.

I get a kick out of random lines, such as, “[My aunt] had a baby. It was born ten months young.”

This newest spin on our bedtime routine might go on for quite some time. I journaled daily for ten years, you know…

This same time, years previous: golden chicken curry, warm sourdough chocolate cakes