I’m at my aunt and uncle’s place on Bowen Island for a week, taking care of these bad babies.

They have all this food growing in their yard (that is, my aunt and uncle do). I’ve just been wandering around all day stuffing my face. The best are the plums, but even the lettuce tastes ridiculously good. I so hear you, flopsy bunnies. I so hear you.

These weren’t grown here, but apparently they’re some kind of weird, prickly cucumber.

Oh man. My sister made the best pie ever created by the smooth and practiced hands of man or woman. I ate about two thirds of it, all in one day. I wish my sister was a souless kitchen drudge who lived in my closet, and baked me things constantly. Like in the Dark Crystal, that machine that sucks out the life from the darling innocent puppet people, leaving them haggard willing slaves. I want that to happen to my sister.

I also had a store-bought cornish pastie, just to roll onward with the pastry theme of my life, but it tasted like dust by comparison.

I bought champagne grapes, on a whim. Best idea ever.
Dessert and breakfast.

The view outside my window last night was so thrilling, I kept having to stop my work in order to gape at it.

Crackly summer storm turned the sky increasingly impossible shades of orange.

I bought a selection of tasty things, for my last, desperate week of lettering and formatting Beast. Also eggs. Eggs are the best thinking food.

Jewelled grape bread. Which made me want to examine my hoards of shiny things.

A lot of these are random bits of glittering plastic I’ve picked up off the street. People are so careless with their shinies, these days.

My attempt to make something elaborately and ceremoniously tasty with things I had on hand ended with yogurt and honey and chopped pistachios. I’m in the middle of a yogurt fixation. But really, what I want to do more than anything is get chauffered to some distant and magical pasty shop, like maybe this one, in North Vancouver, so I can buy some expensive tiny pastry succubus that will bankrupt me entirely, and yet wrap me all up in its sweet-scented buttery thrall.

A mysterious person of ill repute left a lizard on the edge of my easel.

It is unreasonably hot, today. It feels like I’m living inside my dog’s steamy dog mouth. It’s grinding to a halt all my plans for getting work done, and more importantly, my plans for guiltily shirking work in order to go in search of tasty things to eat, and tasty books to read, along with.

So Heinz baked beans are perfectly fine, and there’s nothing wrong with them, and I eat them all the time. But I when I buy something for myself, be it food, or clothing, or sundry item, I want to imagine that somebody out there put a particular hands-on attention into designing and making it. And maybe even they liked doing it, because that is their favourite thing in life, crafting whatever that object is. This is a crazy fixation of mine, and it means that I sometimes spend a really, seriously stupid amount of money on things. But I’m so into it, see? The crafting of stuff.

And wouldn’t it be nice, if there was somebody who was really, really dedicated to making the perfect baked beans? And wouldn’t you want to be friends with that person, or at least know where to find that product? They might make unusual flavours. Maple syrup and cranberry, for instance. Molasses and sausage? Yes. Spicy curry. It would be the best thing ever.

I’ve eaten a muffin from Our Town Cafe almost every day since I’ve moved here. Really, they have the best muffins ever, wodgy and substantial. But for weeks and weeks, while sampling every kind they carried, I avoided their selection of vegan, and can you even believe it, no-sugar muffins. I’ve had the odd good vegan muffin in my day, usually thoroughly de-veganed with an unreasonable quantity of butter, but no sugar? Do they come with hair shirts and rods of flagellation?

Of course, one day they were almost sold out of muffins, and I was forced to try one, and hot damn, they were fantastic. If I don’t have one every morning for breakfast, now, then I’m a petulant wreck. Go figure.

My Scary Deadline foods of choice, at present, are meringues and strawberries. Though really they are just a stand-in for rice pudding, which nobody carries in the summer, but I’ve been yearning for it, and making Brandon walk with me to the grocery store every evening to check if any has been made.

Yesterday Claire and Brandon and I hit up ABC books on Broadway. I bought a nice chewy fantasy novel as deadline comfort reading. It had an odd fuzzy sticker on the inside front, which endeared me to it further.

And as the jewel in the crown of the day, I had a look at the sale at my favourite store, and they had just brought out from their back rooms the shirt I’d been fixated on all last year (and had thought was long sold out), now much reduced in price. Long-scattered stars aligned, and a bolt of light fell from the heavens, and I was proven the true and rightful King of England. Best shirt ever. Plus they gave me another chocolate bar.

Yoshi Kondo shirt.

I had some extra money from doing commissions, so I bought this at Lark. They even gave me a chocolate bar.

My life is perfect, and I will die happy.

Except that now I have to go work.

Things from Ganache. Fluffy little rum vanilla cakes of some sort, and sponge toffee. Whenever I go downtown, it becomes a quest for tasty things.

This toast knows what it’s all about.

They had these giant glass shinies at the dollar store. I needed one for my hoard. The waffle was damn tasty, too. It had little bits of crystalized sugar in it, so they paired oddly well.

And when I got back from Saturna, David had painted this garbage can and left it on my desk. I’m preparing my response, now.

Treasure.

Plump breads.

Tuna casserole, and hard little lozenges of corn bread.

Dog of the sea.

Tea snacks.