Dream Sequences, Part I

Time's a ticking. I've nothing of particular note to say, but I do want to document a few dreams before they slip away entirely from my memory. I like these kinds of dreams, the ones that feel like they were put there by a drunken haze that gave intense satisfaction at the time, dreams that waver around in the realm of reality with a few familiar faces that really ground the realness, but enough strangers and strangeness that you can discount the depth. I like these types of dreams, but I also dislike how they waste away over time, and soon become lost from any sense of recognition unless written down. In fact, thge first dream I'd like to mention is almost completely gone, and I no longer have much to say about it, beyond a snapshot of one scene from its pages. 

Living in our neighborhood is a dude called Mark. He's a drug dealer, alcoholic and addict that likes to walk up and down the neighborhood with his shirt off, but he's usually friendly enough. People know who he is, and he's occasionally hired by residents for services like snow-shoveling and painting. Anyways, Mark was a predominant character in my dream, and he played the role of some sort of pimp, that was desperately in love with one of the girls in our gaggle of four, which contained a woman, her daughter, another younger man (who I think was her lover), and me. I can't remember any of their faces, much less their names. Anyways, I say Mark was a "pimp," but I certainly don't remember anything about prostitution, so he was a "pimp" simply in the sense that we belonged to him, for some reason or other, and we feared him. He was our boss, but he was so much more than that in the dream (I just can't remember what). 

In fact, we were all so terrified of angering him that we rarely challenged him. However, when his amorous attentions turned more aggressively onto this woman (he had to know where she was at all times and who she was with), fueled by his suspicions that the man in this "work group" was actually her lover, it became necessary for her to escape, and imperative that we helped. She and her daughter needed to get away from Mark, and the rest of us would stay behind to ensure her safety, or so we, the characters in this dream, thought. While on a "hotel job" (we had been hired to do some construction work in a grand hotel, that had a lobby that looked like the ground floor of some expensive bank in NYC), we fled. Without telling Mark, we escaped to the top floor of the hotel, which was a huge empty apartment with pale wooden floors and lots of windows and light, and white walls and low ceilings and white doors. In a rush and trying to figure out how exactly to help this woman and her daughter disappear unbeknownst to Mark, all four of us huddled in one of the tiny rooms in the back, combing through our minds for ideas. We ran out of time very quickly, I'll say. 

Mark, ever on point, comes yelling through the front door of the apartment, looking for this woman, raising a racket in his Baltimorean accent, "Where is she? Where is the bitch?" he yells (odd thing to call someone you love). The four of us are still in the tiny backroom, and I have to think fast (somehow, I'm the one orchestrating all this madness and this group). I quickly shut the door, and shove the woman and daughter into the closet, motioning for them to be silent. I then turn to the man, and begin pulling my clothes apart, indicating he should do the same, all the while kicking the door in a steady beat and shouting out,  "Unh! Unh! Unh!" Because in a moment of panic, wondering desperately how to divert Mark's attention away from our absence and then convince him that nothing is really going on, I've settled on "if he thinks we're having sex, then he'll think nothing else is up."  Oh, how clever am I....

By this point, my compadre has caught on and also begins tearing his clothes off and making noises as well (we sound like we're having really bad sex). Mark reaches the back of the apartment, slams his hands on the door, effectively knocking it open. I immediately cry out and pretend to hold my clothes together, all the while trying to keep Mark's attention on me (I don't want him walking deeper into the room and seeing the people hiding in the closet). The man and I crowd forth towards the doorway, apologizing profusely, subtly pushing Mark of the room. He asks what we've been up to, where "insert her name here" is, how can we have ditched work to have sex (who wouldn't?). We respond with "we don't knows, we're sorries, we were just too damn hornies" and things along those lines. All the while, my dream mind is praying that Mark doesn't notice that there's no scent of sex in the air, hoping that he doesn't check our genitals and realize that nothing really was even going on (because in my dream, I'd let my pimp Mark do that??).  Priorities, right? 

Anyways, I don't remember exactly how things ended (I might have woken up at that point), but I don't think Mark found the woman. I remember him slamming his palm into a wall and shouting, "Goddamnit!" which seems like a pretty good indicator that my "sex plan" worked. Sigh. 

Here's a delicious sweet scone, with a lovely maple flavor that pairs well with even the tartest of strawberries. I'm not analyzing the dream, no time for that no no. After all, that'd defeat the point of the lovely haze. The second dream will be detailed in the next post, along with the recipe for a savory scone...for consistencies sake, you know. 

Maple Strawberry Scones
makes 6 large or 8 medium-small scones

2 C all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

0.2 oz. buttermilk powder*

1/4 C unsalted cold (frozen) butter, grated

1 large egg

1 1/4 C frozen strawberries (roughly chopped) +1 TB flour

1/4 C whole milk

1/4 C maple syrup

salt and caster sugar

*Note: instead of buttermilk powder and 1/4 milk, you can substitute 1/4 C buttermilk. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix together the flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and buttermilk powder. Pull the butter from the freezer and using a cheese grater (large holes), grate the butter into flakes. Add these cold butter flakes into the flour and stir with a wooden spoon until the dry mixture looks like coarse meal. Do not over-mix. In fact, as is the case with scones, you really want to keep things cold and not overwork the butter into the flour (or else you'll lose the flakiness and your scones might be tough).

Toss your frozen strawberries in the TB of flour (this is to prevent the strawberries from bleeding red all over the biscuit, as well as to absorb any excess moisture when baking). Add the frozen strawberries to the dry mixture and toss until strawberries are evenly spread out in the dry mixture.

Now add the wet ingredients (the egg, maple syrup, and whole milk) to the dry mixture, mixing by spatula until the dough almost comes together. Do not over-mix.  Then turn it out onto a cutting board and fold a couple of times with a pastry scraper until any of the remaining dry flour gets hydrated. It should look like sticky, wet and thick batter. Smooth it all out into a rectangular shape, until 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. Then cut the batter into scone shapes (right triangles) and transfer to a non-stick pan.

Sprinkle with caster sugar and a bit of salt. Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 to 30 minutes (more time if larger, less time if smaller), or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Serve.