A Happy Medium?

Recently I've been struggling with one factor of mental illness that I haven't really either encountered or considered before now.  I suppose that before now, I took the easy route regarding my mental illnesses: I blamed everything on them, I used them as a crutch, and in a way, I probably expected people to be lenient on me because of my anxiety, ADHD, OCD, etc.  Now that I'm actively trying to work on them in a way that I never have before, I'm also finding strength in myself.  I'm taking more blame, I'm taking more responsibility, and I'm taking control (or at least I'm trying to- one day at a time!).  

With this new approach that I have to my illnesses, I'm noticing things that I hadn't noticed before.  I'm noticing things that have been hidden from me to protect me.  Not huge things, but more so that my parents would delay telling me things to prevent me from being more anxious.  They'd tell me something after the fact, or closer to an event that I may be anxious about.  That makes me wonder what other things have been kept from me in order to not provoke further anxiety.  

That realization hurt my feelings.  Not in a "wah wah I'm a bratty child and deserve to know everything" way, at least I hope not.  The best way that I can describe it is that I felt dehumanized or belittled to a degree.  It felt like those close to me felt like I wasn't capable of coping with that information, or that I couldn't see the silver lining to the topics at hand.  I can't say for certain how I would have reacted to the information 3 weeks ago, but I like to think that I'd have been able to see the benefits to it.  

  

From that train of thought, I have to ask- is there a happy medium to this? I appreciate that my parents consider how certain things may affect me, absolutely.  But is there a way for those close to people with mental illness to simultaneously consider the effects of things on the person with mental illness while still giving the person a choice?  Is there a way to effectively allow the person freedom to grow and cope and learn and heal while being true to the relationship and true to the needs of both persons?

This isn't to say that all interactions should be edited for the benefit of the person struggling.  I am well aware that some things in life are hard and need to be faced with a degree of brazenness, regardless of how healthy or sick or tired or awake or short or tall or any number of reasons to avoid something.  

But somewhere, somewhere, I hope there is that happy medium.  That place where both participants in a relationship (doctor/patient, mother/daughter, brother/sister, friends, partners, etc) can have honest and mutually beneficial interactions.  Interactions where both people contribute and take from it, where both are honest and true to themselves, where each person is considerate of the other's needs.  

The only conclusion I can come to is how insanely important it is to be open with each other.  To communicate what your needs are, what your goals are, what your successes are.  If, as a person with mental illness, you choose to be open about it, maybe it's in your best interest to communicate these things in order for optimal relationships.  But that's just a guess, and I'm just one person. 

Recipe Post: Croiscones

I'm not fully set on the name, because frankly, I have no idea what to call them.  I could sing (very off-pitch, I might add) their praises for days, but the name? Not a clue.  What I can tell you is that these bad boys are delicious.  Imagine the tenderness of a scone with the buttery flakiness of a croissant.  Have I hooked you yet? Well get this: They're super easy to make, and perfect for chilly mornings.  Now, be warned that while I am a trained baker, when I'm baking at home, I cut a lot of corners.  Measurements are sometimes estimated instead of measured and techniques aren't always done perfectly.  In this treat, I did what I shall refer to as a half-assed lamination process.  Lamination is what makes croissants so flaky and beautiful. It is when you add layers of fat (shortening or butter) into dough between each fold.  It's not particularly hard, but it is time-consuming.  Here, I've adapted that process in order to have delicious pastries on the table in under an hour.  The basic dough for a scone combined with the laminating process of croissants creates a delicious hybrid perfect for Sunday morning.  

Croiscones

(scone part of recipe adapted from Tyler Florence's blueberry scones recipe)

Ingredients:

• 2 c flour, plus more for dusting
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 c cold butter, divided
• 7/8 c milk

Instructions:

1. Cut 1/4 c butter into a small dice, or shred it using the large grates of a cheese grater. 
2. In a large bowl, add the flour, baking powder, salt, and give a quick stir with a fork or whisk. 
3. Add your 1/4 c diced/shredded butter.  Cut that into the dry ingredients, until the mixture has coarse crumbs in it.  
4. Pour your milk into the bowl, and stir it into the mixture, giving it a few kneads in the bowl.
5. Dust a clean worksurface with flour, and dump your dough onto it.  Fold your dough a few times, but don't go crazy for it.  Dust the worksurface again if needed.  
6. Slice your remaining 1/4 c butter into very thin slices, as thin as you can.  
7. Pat your dough into a 6x12-ish inch rectangle, and cover half of it with about a quarter of your butter slices.  Fold the dough in half, covering the buttered half with the clean half of dough. 
8. Pat your dough down again into another 6x12 rectangle, and cover with another quarter of your butter.  
9. Repeat until no butter remains.
10. Pat dough into a 4x12 inch rectangle, and cut into four 4x3 inch rectangles.  Cut each  rectangle in half diagonally, totaling 8 triangles of dough.
11. Place your croiscones onto a parchment lined baking sheet, and bake at 400F until light gold with slightly darker edges and your kitchen smells of butter, 15-20 minutes.

Variations:

Sweet: Add 3 tbsp sugar with dry ingredients, along with spices.  I like 1/4 tsp each cloves and nutmeg, but adding 1/2 tsp cinnamon would be great too.  I haven't tested it yet, but you can be sure that my next batch will have about 1/4-1/3 c dried cranberries and a tsp of lemon zest in them.

Savory:  With the dry ingredients, add 1/2 tsp dried or 2 tsp fresh herbs, such as tarragon, rosemary, thyme, whatever your heart desires, and a good grind of fresh pepper.  Increase salt to 3/4 tsp.  When cutting the butter into the dry mixture, add 1/2 c finely grated hard cheese, such as a hard cheddar.  

So... any ideas for a better name for these? 

Introducing...

I've started (and stopped) many blogs before, from the emo 16 year old that nobody understands blogs all the way to recipe blogs.  At this point, I don't know what kind of blog this will be.  Will it be more recipes? Hilarious (not really) anecdotes on my daily embarrassments? Posts on mental health?  Those things are all possible, because they're all part of my life.  What else is part of my life? Well, allow me to share...

• I love food.  I dream about it, I daydream about it, I talk about it, I even gasp eat it.  
• I'm pretty darn clumsy, and tend to injure myself in odd ways.  Slicing my hand open on peanut brittle? Check. 
• I have anxiety.  Not run of the mill, nervous about the first day of school anxiety, but anxiety with a capital A.  It affects every day of my life in numerous ways, and will probably come up frequently here.  That leads me to my next ditty.
• I am absolutely for destigmatizing mental illness.  While it seems counter-intuitive to be in a way marking myself with mental illness by talking about it so frequently, I don't think it is.  I talk about it both because I don't believe that you should hide it, and because the more people who have mental illness admit to it openly, the more those that do suffer realize that they are not alone.  Living with any type of illness, whether it be mental or physical can be so darn isolating, and it shouldn't be.  I find empowerment in my choice to be open about these experiences.  
• On a lighter note, my favourite herb is rosemary.  I'd name a kid after it. But cilantro can stay away from me, please.  And while you're hiding the cilantro, can you also hide the dill? 
• I love cats.  Yup, I'm a cat lady.  If my boyfriend weren't so darn allergic, I'd probably have 12 of them.  Admit it, having a cat named after each month of the year would be pretty darn cool.  Yes indeed.  
• Oh, also I love puns and corny jokes.  Mostly they're met with dead stares, but I'm okay with that.  

So while this is really not a proper way to start a blog, it's how I'm going to start it anyway.  Deal with it.  Oh, and why is this called Obsession in Excess? When I love or am super interested in something, I can't play it cool.  Like at all.  I talk about whatever it is until you feel like punching me.  One might say I talk about things excessively. Thankfully that hasn't happened yet, but who knows what the future holds? What I can promise, is that anything I write about, I am  (at least in that moment) utterly obsessed with it.