wherein Liz bakes brownies, again

A week and a half ago, I mentioned that if a brownie recipe says to use an 8 x 8 pan, baking them in a 9 x 13 pan is a bad idea.

Yesterday, I took my second box of that particular mix and tried baking it in an 8 x 7 glass dish. The time given on the box for an 8 x 8 glass pan was 45-50 minutes, and I duly baked the brownies for about 50 minutes. In a vague attempt to compensate for the slightly reduced pan size, I set the oven at a slightly higher temperature than the requested 325 F -- I started at 350 F, then turned down to about 335-340 F. Judging by the results, I should either have baked the brownies another five minutes or left the oven at 350 F the whole time, since they came out slightly squishier in the center than is strictly desirable. But they are much more properly brownie-like than the ones I made in the 9 x 13 pan, so hey, I'll take it.

Mmm, brownies... :-)

[Fic] "The Company of Trees" -- Guardians of the Galaxy/Star Trek: AOS

Summary: This was Gamora's universe, but she acted more out of place and isolated than Gaila. She held herself clenched tight like she was in enemy hands and opening would be to invite poison into her veins. Fortunately Gaila had years of practice forming out-nets and in-nets with aliens. (1,600 words)

Note: This ficlet was written on 3/5/15 for samparker, in response to the Three Sentence Ficathon prompt: Guardians Of The Galaxy/Star Trek AOS, Gamora/Gaila, tenderness. It is a sequel to both Rattle the Cage (wherein Natasha Romanova discovers Gaila imprisoned in a HYDRA lab) and Following the Girl (wherein the Enterprise's cross-universe rescue attempt mixes oddly with the Guardians' attempt to retrieve the Tesseract). There may be one or two more ficlets in this sequence.

[ETA: The slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]

( The Company of Trees )

That was one of the more frustrating things I've ever written! Not because the characters or scenario were particularly difficult in any objective sense. The words just did not want to come.

I think I may have had a mild blue funk over the past week or two, actually. I have been doing the obsessive reading and sleep-schedule-what-sleep-schedule things, which are fairly reliable symptoms of a depressive episode, and a funk would explain my sudden creativity lapse. I just haven't felt particularly gray, or at least not as compared to how I've been feeling normally over the past few months. Mneh.

Anyway, I got enough sleep last night and I seem to be somewhat more together today, so hopefully if I can get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight and tomorrow that will give me the boost I need to finish hauling myself back up to somewhat more stable mental ground. *crosses fingers*

Oh. Right. And I should remember to eat regular meals. That helps too. *wanders off in search of extremely belated dinner*