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National Cinnamon Bun Day 2025
National Cinnamon Bun Day is a marvelous celebration for a π cozy autumn SaturdayΒ π. Let’s savor that cinnamon and take a bite out of this weekend, but watch out for Chekov’s Underwear…
Indulgent Things
Cinnamon rolls: proof that sweet, comforting, and indulgent things exist in the world. ~Rachel Nichols
Absolutely!Β The very heart of ππ§Έβ Cozy Season βΊοΈπ₯§π is the ability to be indulgent.
Ideally, the weather is getting cooler, so you have the option to start using the oven again to make savory meals and decadent pastries.
Sumptuous stews, roasted birds and cuts of meat, hearty vegetables all share the table with sliced breads, rolls or cornbread.
You can just feel the season, especially when the frosting starts drizzling over the cinnamon buns.
πAutumnπ is all about cuddling under the blankets, sleeping late and having some scrumptious cinnamon rolls when you finally get up and brew the coffee.
Step By Step
HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE CINNAMON ROLLS // STEP BY STEP // SOFT AND FLUFFY
If you’re a lot more intrepid and dedicated to purity than I am, here’s a video on how to make cinnamon buns from scratch.
If you’re more about the results than the journey, you can be like me and just order some.
I’m a big fan of those ones that come in a can like the crescent rolls. You just pop the sucker open, bake them and slather on the icing.
Mission Accomplished: Hot cinnamon buns, “fresh” from your oven because it’s πAutumnπ and you can use the oven again without counteracting the AC.
That is, of course, unless it’s ποΈπ₯ Indian Summer ππ₯ and we’re creeping back into the 80s.
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The only 80s I want to be creeping into is the best decade in modern history. I hope we have another Golden Age like that again soon…
Dream Academy – “Life In A Northern Town” (Official Music Video)
More Interested In Taste
I admire my fellow judge Paul Hollywood enormously, though we often argue. He believes presentation and uniformity are paramount; I’m more interested in taste. I don’t mind if one bun is smaller than the others, or if there’s a little pastry cracking, though I don’t want a soggy bottom. ~Mary Berry
What is your focus?
Are you into presentation or taste?
Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with covering both.
As far as a first draft goes, what’s your focus?
What comes out when you’re shooting from the hip?
For me, the writing comes so dialogue-heavy that you might accuse me of White Room Syndrome.
In The Sentinels, the companion anthologies of Collateral Impact stories and in Holiday Season Serial Romances, the settings are contemporary and familiar.
A bedroom is a bedroom unless I need to describe something specific about it. You know what a bedroom is and what it looks like.
You also know what a teen girl’s bedroom looks like in comparison to her parents’ bedroom.
From movies or TV or possibly from personal experience, you have an idea what a luxury highrise bedroom looks like.
If I say “breeding tanks of a Xiluryan battleship“, it’s fair to expect me to start describing things.
You’ve got no frame of reference on Xiluryan architecture or decorating principles because I just made it up.
Unless you’re psychic, you have no idea what that might look like. Even then, probably not, because I literally just made up the word “Xiluryan” without any specific imagery associated. I don’t know if they’re bug-people, reptilian, robots or what. I don’t know.
If I’m going to have Xiluryans, then I would need to start thinking about that so can you have some idea what their battleships look like and why they need breeding tanks.
At what point did Professor Tolkien decide what a hobbit looked like or where they lived? Tunnels in the hillside with big circular front doors? That was his immediate go-to?
At this point, I’ve internalized my storytelling to the point that I basically recount the movie playing in my head.
Given the familiar surroundings of my fictional environments, I can simply say it’s a bedroom or an office or a grocery store and you just get it.
James Clavell had to explain the finer points of Japanese culture, dress and architecture so you could get properly immersed in the time and place of Shogun.
George R. R. Martin has to explain the exotic locales in his world: gigantic castles, pleasure palaces, slave cities and the wilderness beyond The Wall.
Perhaps, in a future period, my assumption of obviousness will be seen as a loss to those generations.
The details I don’t include are archaeological evidence that those future people won’t have reference to.
But that’s me. I’m taste over presentation.
I’d rather tell a rich story than paint a detailed picture of where it takes place, unless those details matter.
People know what the Statue of Liberty looks like, unless they don’t.
Today, it would be because they live under a rock.
In the future, on a Mars colony? It would be like expecting a 21st Century American to have a clear idea of what the Colossus of Rhodes really looked like.
Maybe you heard of it. Maybe you know it’s supposed to be big.
If you’re a 31st Century Martian reading a blog entry for your Obscure Earth History class and it says they went up to the top of the Statue of Liberty, you can deduce it’s big enough to be climbed.
You won’t know the dimensions, the pose, the pale green patina or the date in Roman numerals etched on her tabula ansata. You, as a 31st Century Martian, would and could have no idea of any of that.
It’s an ancient thing that maybe you heard of. That’s all.
So, at the risk of doing disservice to 31st Century Martian colonists, I opt for brevity when it comes to the banal.
A bedroom is just a bedroom and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
Human nature, conflict, pathos, bathos, holiday spirit, action and feelings are my descriptors.
You don’t need to know what color shirt he’s wearing, unless you do.
You can assume he’s wearing a shirt, unless he’s in the shower.
You probably don’t even need to know if it’s a t-shirt or a button-up, unless you do.
If it’s not immediately pertinent, I’m not going to waste words describing it.
It’s totally up to you to picture him in a plaid button-up shirt and jeans or a t-shirt and sweats or a three-piece suit for all I care.
If I don’t tell you, it’s free game…
…because it doesn’t really matter, unless it does.
If I tell you he’s wearing a shiny purple banana hammock, that’s Chekov’s Underwear.
The fact that I described it indicates that it matters within the story.
It could be simply to point out what a weirdo he is.
It could be that he’s wearing it to surprise his wife.
It could be that he forgot he was wearing it after a regularly scheduled tryst, and it will be the only stitch on his body when his wife kicks him out.
I mean, where’s he supposed to put his wallet, car keys and phone if all he’s wearing is that?
Chekov’s Underwear matters. Mr. Jones at the QuickieMart, buying a pack of smokes? His attire doesn’t matter until it does, and it won’t be described until it matters.
So, with all due apologies to my hypothetical 31st Century Martians, I’m sticking with descriptive minimalism except where such things matter to the story.
Cinnamon buns need icing. Prose, not so much.
That’s all for today. See you back on Wednesday for pierogi…