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accomplishing... something?
Apr. 6th, 2020 09:46 pmAlice and I seem to agree that she'll cook with me whenever I'm doing things in the kitchen, so I have company and an apprentice. She did a lot of baking with a friend's mom when she was in middle school, cakes and pies and other dessert delights, so she's perfectly competent around recipes. Mostly it is the ongoing food planning and management parts that are worth learning, and took me years.
Today we started the world's easiest bread - some hot water, some sugar to feed the yeast, some yeast, enough flour to make a dough, beat it hard til it is stretchy and lovely... We did most of it in the stand mixer, let it rise once while we were out, beat it again in the mixer and let it rise in pans, bake and eat all of one loaf hot with butter. That is part of the recipe, right? The bit of leftover dough went into a flour and water slurry to become a started for the next thing. Yeast seems to be in high demand. Honestly if people are baking during the apocalypse, that seems like a far better use of time and energy than panic buying toilet paper.
We also visited the V fam, talked with Cath, acquired some additional solid green fabric for continuing the criss cross quilt I started, and admired the garden. All safely separated by 6', plus or minus. There was no licking of anything. Seeing friends not through a screen was really good, and we can do more of that please.
On the way home we stopped at one of the plant nurseries, and bought two lilac bushes to go along the fence line with the screechy neighbors. I am envisioning a lilac hedge by the time the fence becomes a rotted and falling down mess. Not only did we plant the lilacs ($10 hole for a $5 plant someone once told me - we dug up a lot of back yard) we then continued to the front garden which has been ignored for at least four or five years now, and started in on it. Alice raked, I dug, and then eventually we started attempting to pull out the false bittersweet that has been running riot the last while. That is ultimately going to require utterly removing the front right bed, taking out the invaders, separating the daffodils for replanting and getting some other things in as well. There is a request for sunflowers, which we can definitely accomplish along the side of the garage. I am not really a gardening person? I don't hate it, but it does not bring me any kind of peace, it feels mostly like housekeeping but outside, and I don't even believe in housekeeping inside. And yet I know what I should be doing next. I dunno.
Today we started the world's easiest bread - some hot water, some sugar to feed the yeast, some yeast, enough flour to make a dough, beat it hard til it is stretchy and lovely... We did most of it in the stand mixer, let it rise once while we were out, beat it again in the mixer and let it rise in pans, bake and eat all of one loaf hot with butter. That is part of the recipe, right? The bit of leftover dough went into a flour and water slurry to become a started for the next thing. Yeast seems to be in high demand. Honestly if people are baking during the apocalypse, that seems like a far better use of time and energy than panic buying toilet paper.
We also visited the V fam, talked with Cath, acquired some additional solid green fabric for continuing the criss cross quilt I started, and admired the garden. All safely separated by 6', plus or minus. There was no licking of anything. Seeing friends not through a screen was really good, and we can do more of that please.
On the way home we stopped at one of the plant nurseries, and bought two lilac bushes to go along the fence line with the screechy neighbors. I am envisioning a lilac hedge by the time the fence becomes a rotted and falling down mess. Not only did we plant the lilacs ($10 hole for a $5 plant someone once told me - we dug up a lot of back yard) we then continued to the front garden which has been ignored for at least four or five years now, and started in on it. Alice raked, I dug, and then eventually we started attempting to pull out the false bittersweet that has been running riot the last while. That is ultimately going to require utterly removing the front right bed, taking out the invaders, separating the daffodils for replanting and getting some other things in as well. There is a request for sunflowers, which we can definitely accomplish along the side of the garage. I am not really a gardening person? I don't hate it, but it does not bring me any kind of peace, it feels mostly like housekeeping but outside, and I don't even believe in housekeeping inside. And yet I know what I should be doing next. I dunno.