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My sister is going to have her first baby in June.
We just found out it's going to be a boy.
After seeing this picture, and after hearing that it's a boy, somehow this became a lot more real to me. I even choked up a little bit.
At first I was like, what am I getting so emotional for? Then I realized: it's because this is the first time our mom's genes will be carried forward into the next generation.
My mom died of cancer at 44. There was so much that she didn't get to do. She was taken too soon.
This baby carries her genes, her cells. A piece of who she was.
And this baby will outlive me and my siblings.
A part of my mom will be alive after I'm gone.
That means so, so much to me.
I know the baby is not born yet, and I do not want to place any expectations or burdens of existence. When they join us in this world, they'll of course be their own person. But I also look forward to looking into his eyes, and seeing a little glimmer from my mother's soul.
I hope that's not too weird.
Just wanted to share.
In less emotional and more materialistic news, the arrival of unexpected birthday-and-other presents continued throughout the week. My goodness! I've done nothing to deserve any of it.
My brother Jonah sent a big bag of Japanese candy and snacks, we're having a lot of fun experiencing those already! It's amazing how many unexpected textures exist in Japanese snack food. I love eating new things :)
He also sent some very fancy whisky barrel-aged shoyu (soy sauce) that looks like it belongs on the top shelf of a CEO's liquor cabinet.
We'll use it for sushi and stuff, but I definitely want to have it as a marinade for a beautiful piece of meat at some point.
Kayle sent me a big bag of matcha (amazing since I love matcha but will rarely treat myself to it) and a matcha tea preparation set!
And also this big circus compendium. As soon as I posted the picture circus people started commenting to say they'd read it and sharing how much they enjoyed the book. I'm excited to dive in, but it's going to have to wait until I get caught up in steno!
My parents sent a Burpee gift card, and I'm hoping to use it to get some Burpee planter soil! It's supposed to be really good, more lightweight and aerated, so I'm hoping it'll help the carrots to grow properly. It's a really thoughtful gift as gardening season starts pretty much now. They also sent a murder mystery puzzle! I've never heard of such a thing and Jameson and I are really intrigued by it. More updates on that later.
My leather jacket showed up again, and damn, I think it looks pretty good!
I do not like posting pics of myself, my body is not good and I've got terrible fashion sense.
But come on, it's my first leather jacket! Had to share.
Finally, the long-awaited butter paddles showed up! They're just as beautiful in person...larger than I'd realized, but I like the weight of them, it might make pressing the butter easier. I'm amazed by my friend Matt's talent, and that he has his own woodworking shop now. It's just, it's really impressive! Hopefully I can put these to the test this week, maybe make some butter to go along with my homemade bread.
So overall I've been very much spoiled this week. It was like a second Christmas! And now I have sooooo many projects to work on: learning to use a coffee siphon, learning to use a donabe smoker, learning to use butter paddles. Learning to make bread, from the beginning. Restarting my garden. Brewing matcha tea.
All of these are overwhelming all at once. But if I tackle them one by one, I think I will enjoy each new experience more.
Experimentation started first thing on Wednesday morning with the coffee siphon.
This is a pretty involved process, one of those "ritual" things that isn't meant to be done slapdash before rushing out the door to work. Plus I wouldn't dare handle an open flame half asleep at 5am anyway! This will be a weekend pleasure for sure.
First step was to measure the water. The bottom "flask" has ml markings, making this part super easy. I chose 400 ml as that's like 1.5 American cups. Then I used my huge fancy-ass kitchen scale to weigh out 22 grams of coffee. This is Barney's coffee which is locally made in Florida, it comes pre-ground in a huge variety of flavors. I had gotten myself the chocolate flavor for Christmas and this is the end of that bag. So it's not high-end snootery coffee, but whatever.
While the water was heating in the kettle, I filled the burner halfway with denatured alcohol. When the water started bubbling, I poured it into the bottom flask and lit the burner.
Technically you could have the little burner heat the water, but that would take forever so most people opt to heat the water on the stove. This is one of the reasons I've been kind of rolling my eyes at this contraption. It seems like a lot of steps for some hipster-looking, overpriced, overcomplicated brewing method. Boy was I wrong.
As the water heated in the flask, it was drawn up through the upper container's glass tube. Science!
(Use the arrow on the right of this post to navigate to the 5th spot, which is a video)
When most of the water was in the top (there will always be a little left behind in the bottom) I gently stirred in the coffee and let it bloom for a minute or two. Then I removed the heat source which caused the coffee to sink back down through the filter and into the bottom flask again. Kinda like a fancy coffee toilet.
(Use the arrow on the right of this post to navigate to the 6th spot, which is a video)
The rounded lump of grounds in the upper chamber shows that the coffee emptied evenly and correctly. Cool!
The coffee was extremely hot so I let it cool a bit, then gave it a taste.
Holy crap...there actually is a big difference when you brew coffee this way! I'm a French press person, I like the rich flavors and oils that the French press preserves in the coffee, but the press does let a lot of sediment through. There was sediment in this too, but...it was so SMOOTH. I'm not sure if maybe the oils were distributed more evenly throughout the coffee? It's actually kind of hard to describe what it was like. It was...lighter somehow. Like each sip was a mouthful of coffee-flavored air instead of liquid. It was very, very good.
This is not a cheap device so I'm not going to tell people to run out and get it. But if you get a chance to sample some siphon-brewed coffee, definitely taste it and see what you think! I did not expect this to be more than a fun, expensive gimmick. But it actually is a very good way to brew smooth, delicious coffee. I'm excited to make coffee this way on the weekends from now on...what an indulgence!
After that excitement I was all hyped for my day. I went to Target for some mineral oil for the butter paddles (I should have some on hand for the cast iron anyway) and some other random necessities, and when I got home I started weeding. Argh, so many weeds. It never ends in Florida. While I worked I talked on the phone with Sarah, my friend who recently lost her husband to cancer. She's in a very tough financial situation, and will be moving to New Hampshire where she has friends who will let her stay with them for cheap. I'm happy for her that she'll be able to get a fresh start. We made plans to have one last meal together, and I also hope to help her with the moving process and/or disposing of some belongings for her.
When the front of the house was done I had a look at the pollinator garden. It looks pretty ratty, but I can see that a lot of things survived the winter. All of the bulbine look good, and the pentas seem ok too. The milkweed has buds on it already! And aphids :P I plan to add a few more things, but for the most part the milkweed is what attracted everyone last year so as long as that's good, I won't make many changes.
Next week I will do the actual planting, but today it was good to just clear out the weeds and such. It's supposed to rain this week, so I'll probably spread some fertilizer to prep the soil.
After that I was all sweaty and dirty so took a shower and relaxed a bit while Jameson practiced and did a workout. He's got some shows coming up (wow!) and we're both really excited for him to be performing again. I just hope covid doesn't ruin it.
For dinner we had beef stroganoff over egg noodles with blanched asparagus on the side.
It's a pretty basic recipe that anyone can make, but I appreciated the instructions to hard-sear the meat so it wouldn't get overcooked in the sauce and would remain tender. It was very good.
After dinner I had a video chat with my family. Both my sisters are pregnant, my stepsister Kayle is about ready to pop, but they both look really happy and their husbands too. I'm excited for both of them! My parents seem to be doing all right as well. We talked for about two hours, there was a lot to catch up on. I sipped a cucumber mint + gin + lime cocktail while we talked, and later realized that might be a tease for the pregnant people. Oops.
After that I made some late night granola. I wanted to make it now because on Thursday I want to make bread, and if the oven is my proofing drawer I don't want it hot from making granola. When it was done I left it in the oven to dry overnight.
At 10pm Jameson suddenly had the urge to try the candied jalapenos, and it's been two weeks after all, so we cracked a jar open.
DANG they are good! Hot and sweet and sticky. I'm gonna put them on my breakfast eggs, maybe make some biscuits and have them on that with butter or cream cheese. They'd be amazing on a burger. Jameson wants to put them in his PB&J sandwiches. I mean...that's probably actually a good idea!
On Thursday I was wide awake at 8am for some reason, as someone who only gets 5 hours of sleep during the week I would have liked to have slept longer. I made myself another fancy siphon coffee, this time with the cloth filter. I actually prefer the metal filter, it lets more oils through I think. The granola did come out more crunchy, although it still didn't clump as much as I want. One of these days I'll get the formula right.
After breakfast I got to work on meal prep while Jameson did his grading, then I buckled down and launched into Bread Baking for Beginners. The first recipe in the book is for a no-knead four-ingredient Dutch oven bread. Flour, yeast, water, salt. And time. I did everything exactly as instructed, although I did use about half white wheat flour since I've read it can be used in place of AP flour if needed. I also added a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten just in case.
I would have liked to take pictures of the process, but this is still very new to me and takes all of my concentration (plus my hands are a mess for most of the process). To sum it up, I combined all of the ingredients and the bread had two proofs--one in a mixing bowl and the other in a banneton covered with a linen cloth--before going into a large preheated Dutch oven. The results:
I think it turned out really well. No-knead bread is supposed to be more dense than artisan bread, no big air holes or anything, and it's often described as "gummy". So imo this is a success.
While the bread was proofing for the second time, I decided why not make some homemade butter to go with it!
I churned some cream, and in just minutes I had butter. I poured off the buttermilk and put it in the freezer to hopefully use for pancakes or biscuits or whatever. Then I dropped the butter into ice water and squeezed it and rinsed it several times to get the buttermilk out.
I used the butter paddles, but having never used these before it was awkward and I'm not sure I did a good job. I did see more buttermilk running down the grooves in the paddles, which is what's supposed to happen, but butter kept getting in there and clogging the grooves. I'll have to do some research to see how I'm supposed to be doing this!
In the end I had a nice little 4oz blob of butter. I worked in some salt, then used a fork to stir in some honey.
I scooped it into the butter bell my sister got me for Christmas. Jameson and I tried it on the bread, and it was so dang good!
I'm really pleased to have made these things myself today!
I will keep an eye on the butter to see how long it lasts (supposedly a month, but here in humid Florida probably less than that.
By the time I was done with all of these projects, it was pretty much time to prep for dinner. Time flies on weekends.
I made al pastor-style enchiladas, which we enjoyed while watching some documentary or other. Then Jameson taught his class while I went to my steno class.
This weekend was just go go go, so much to do. Next weekend I've got three days off, but I'll still have steno classes on two of those days. I want to do my spring planting in the planter and in the yard, which means gathering the soil and plants and seeds and fertilizer. I'm helping Sarah move and possibly taking her out for lunch/brunch. I still need to learn to use the donabe smoker, and I'll still be cooking dinner, and possibly making the next loaf of bread in my book. I still have cleaning to do.
A lot of these things are fun, but one of these days I really would like a day of just watching a movie, sitting still.
Is that still a thing?
We just found out it's going to be a boy.
After seeing this picture, and after hearing that it's a boy, somehow this became a lot more real to me. I even choked up a little bit.
At first I was like, what am I getting so emotional for? Then I realized: it's because this is the first time our mom's genes will be carried forward into the next generation.
My mom died of cancer at 44. There was so much that she didn't get to do. She was taken too soon.
This baby carries her genes, her cells. A piece of who she was.
And this baby will outlive me and my siblings.
A part of my mom will be alive after I'm gone.
That means so, so much to me.
I know the baby is not born yet, and I do not want to place any expectations or burdens of existence. When they join us in this world, they'll of course be their own person. But I also look forward to looking into his eyes, and seeing a little glimmer from my mother's soul.
I hope that's not too weird.
Just wanted to share.
In less emotional and more materialistic news, the arrival of unexpected birthday-and-other presents continued throughout the week. My goodness! I've done nothing to deserve any of it.
My brother Jonah sent a big bag of Japanese candy and snacks, we're having a lot of fun experiencing those already! It's amazing how many unexpected textures exist in Japanese snack food. I love eating new things :)
He also sent some very fancy whisky barrel-aged shoyu (soy sauce) that looks like it belongs on the top shelf of a CEO's liquor cabinet.
We'll use it for sushi and stuff, but I definitely want to have it as a marinade for a beautiful piece of meat at some point.
Kayle sent me a big bag of matcha (amazing since I love matcha but will rarely treat myself to it) and a matcha tea preparation set!
And also this big circus compendium. As soon as I posted the picture circus people started commenting to say they'd read it and sharing how much they enjoyed the book. I'm excited to dive in, but it's going to have to wait until I get caught up in steno!
My parents sent a Burpee gift card, and I'm hoping to use it to get some Burpee planter soil! It's supposed to be really good, more lightweight and aerated, so I'm hoping it'll help the carrots to grow properly. It's a really thoughtful gift as gardening season starts pretty much now. They also sent a murder mystery puzzle! I've never heard of such a thing and Jameson and I are really intrigued by it. More updates on that later.
My leather jacket showed up again, and damn, I think it looks pretty good!
I do not like posting pics of myself, my body is not good and I've got terrible fashion sense.
But come on, it's my first leather jacket! Had to share.
Finally, the long-awaited butter paddles showed up! They're just as beautiful in person...larger than I'd realized, but I like the weight of them, it might make pressing the butter easier. I'm amazed by my friend Matt's talent, and that he has his own woodworking shop now. It's just, it's really impressive! Hopefully I can put these to the test this week, maybe make some butter to go along with my homemade bread.
So overall I've been very much spoiled this week. It was like a second Christmas! And now I have sooooo many projects to work on: learning to use a coffee siphon, learning to use a donabe smoker, learning to use butter paddles. Learning to make bread, from the beginning. Restarting my garden. Brewing matcha tea.
All of these are overwhelming all at once. But if I tackle them one by one, I think I will enjoy each new experience more.
Experimentation started first thing on Wednesday morning with the coffee siphon.
This is a pretty involved process, one of those "ritual" things that isn't meant to be done slapdash before rushing out the door to work. Plus I wouldn't dare handle an open flame half asleep at 5am anyway! This will be a weekend pleasure for sure.
First step was to measure the water. The bottom "flask" has ml markings, making this part super easy. I chose 400 ml as that's like 1.5 American cups. Then I used my huge fancy-ass kitchen scale to weigh out 22 grams of coffee. This is Barney's coffee which is locally made in Florida, it comes pre-ground in a huge variety of flavors. I had gotten myself the chocolate flavor for Christmas and this is the end of that bag. So it's not high-end snootery coffee, but whatever.
While the water was heating in the kettle, I filled the burner halfway with denatured alcohol. When the water started bubbling, I poured it into the bottom flask and lit the burner.
Technically you could have the little burner heat the water, but that would take forever so most people opt to heat the water on the stove. This is one of the reasons I've been kind of rolling my eyes at this contraption. It seems like a lot of steps for some hipster-looking, overpriced, overcomplicated brewing method. Boy was I wrong.
As the water heated in the flask, it was drawn up through the upper container's glass tube. Science!
(Use the arrow on the right of this post to navigate to the 5th spot, which is a video)
https://instagram.com/p/CLHdFsWgwSN
When most of the water was in the top (there will always be a little left behind in the bottom) I gently stirred in the coffee and let it bloom for a minute or two. Then I removed the heat source which caused the coffee to sink back down through the filter and into the bottom flask again. Kinda like a fancy coffee toilet.
(Use the arrow on the right of this post to navigate to the 6th spot, which is a video)
https://instagram.com/p/CLHdFsWgwSN
The rounded lump of grounds in the upper chamber shows that the coffee emptied evenly and correctly. Cool!
The coffee was extremely hot so I let it cool a bit, then gave it a taste.
Holy crap...there actually is a big difference when you brew coffee this way! I'm a French press person, I like the rich flavors and oils that the French press preserves in the coffee, but the press does let a lot of sediment through. There was sediment in this too, but...it was so SMOOTH. I'm not sure if maybe the oils were distributed more evenly throughout the coffee? It's actually kind of hard to describe what it was like. It was...lighter somehow. Like each sip was a mouthful of coffee-flavored air instead of liquid. It was very, very good.
This is not a cheap device so I'm not going to tell people to run out and get it. But if you get a chance to sample some siphon-brewed coffee, definitely taste it and see what you think! I did not expect this to be more than a fun, expensive gimmick. But it actually is a very good way to brew smooth, delicious coffee. I'm excited to make coffee this way on the weekends from now on...what an indulgence!
After that excitement I was all hyped for my day. I went to Target for some mineral oil for the butter paddles (I should have some on hand for the cast iron anyway) and some other random necessities, and when I got home I started weeding. Argh, so many weeds. It never ends in Florida. While I worked I talked on the phone with Sarah, my friend who recently lost her husband to cancer. She's in a very tough financial situation, and will be moving to New Hampshire where she has friends who will let her stay with them for cheap. I'm happy for her that she'll be able to get a fresh start. We made plans to have one last meal together, and I also hope to help her with the moving process and/or disposing of some belongings for her.
When the front of the house was done I had a look at the pollinator garden. It looks pretty ratty, but I can see that a lot of things survived the winter. All of the bulbine look good, and the pentas seem ok too. The milkweed has buds on it already! And aphids :P I plan to add a few more things, but for the most part the milkweed is what attracted everyone last year so as long as that's good, I won't make many changes.
Next week I will do the actual planting, but today it was good to just clear out the weeds and such. It's supposed to rain this week, so I'll probably spread some fertilizer to prep the soil.
After that I was all sweaty and dirty so took a shower and relaxed a bit while Jameson practiced and did a workout. He's got some shows coming up (wow!) and we're both really excited for him to be performing again. I just hope covid doesn't ruin it.
For dinner we had beef stroganoff over egg noodles with blanched asparagus on the side.
It's a pretty basic recipe that anyone can make, but I appreciated the instructions to hard-sear the meat so it wouldn't get overcooked in the sauce and would remain tender. It was very good.
After dinner I had a video chat with my family. Both my sisters are pregnant, my stepsister Kayle is about ready to pop, but they both look really happy and their husbands too. I'm excited for both of them! My parents seem to be doing all right as well. We talked for about two hours, there was a lot to catch up on. I sipped a cucumber mint + gin + lime cocktail while we talked, and later realized that might be a tease for the pregnant people. Oops.
After that I made some late night granola. I wanted to make it now because on Thursday I want to make bread, and if the oven is my proofing drawer I don't want it hot from making granola. When it was done I left it in the oven to dry overnight.
At 10pm Jameson suddenly had the urge to try the candied jalapenos, and it's been two weeks after all, so we cracked a jar open.
DANG they are good! Hot and sweet and sticky. I'm gonna put them on my breakfast eggs, maybe make some biscuits and have them on that with butter or cream cheese. They'd be amazing on a burger. Jameson wants to put them in his PB&J sandwiches. I mean...that's probably actually a good idea!
On Thursday I was wide awake at 8am for some reason, as someone who only gets 5 hours of sleep during the week I would have liked to have slept longer. I made myself another fancy siphon coffee, this time with the cloth filter. I actually prefer the metal filter, it lets more oils through I think. The granola did come out more crunchy, although it still didn't clump as much as I want. One of these days I'll get the formula right.
After breakfast I got to work on meal prep while Jameson did his grading, then I buckled down and launched into Bread Baking for Beginners. The first recipe in the book is for a no-knead four-ingredient Dutch oven bread. Flour, yeast, water, salt. And time. I did everything exactly as instructed, although I did use about half white wheat flour since I've read it can be used in place of AP flour if needed. I also added a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten just in case.
I would have liked to take pictures of the process, but this is still very new to me and takes all of my concentration (plus my hands are a mess for most of the process). To sum it up, I combined all of the ingredients and the bread had two proofs--one in a mixing bowl and the other in a banneton covered with a linen cloth--before going into a large preheated Dutch oven. The results:
I think it turned out really well. No-knead bread is supposed to be more dense than artisan bread, no big air holes or anything, and it's often described as "gummy". So imo this is a success.
While the bread was proofing for the second time, I decided why not make some homemade butter to go with it!
I churned some cream, and in just minutes I had butter. I poured off the buttermilk and put it in the freezer to hopefully use for pancakes or biscuits or whatever. Then I dropped the butter into ice water and squeezed it and rinsed it several times to get the buttermilk out.
I used the butter paddles, but having never used these before it was awkward and I'm not sure I did a good job. I did see more buttermilk running down the grooves in the paddles, which is what's supposed to happen, but butter kept getting in there and clogging the grooves. I'll have to do some research to see how I'm supposed to be doing this!
In the end I had a nice little 4oz blob of butter. I worked in some salt, then used a fork to stir in some honey.
I scooped it into the butter bell my sister got me for Christmas. Jameson and I tried it on the bread, and it was so dang good!
I'm really pleased to have made these things myself today!
I will keep an eye on the butter to see how long it lasts (supposedly a month, but here in humid Florida probably less than that.
By the time I was done with all of these projects, it was pretty much time to prep for dinner. Time flies on weekends.
I made al pastor-style enchiladas, which we enjoyed while watching some documentary or other. Then Jameson taught his class while I went to my steno class.
This weekend was just go go go, so much to do. Next weekend I've got three days off, but I'll still have steno classes on two of those days. I want to do my spring planting in the planter and in the yard, which means gathering the soil and plants and seeds and fertilizer. I'm helping Sarah move and possibly taking her out for lunch/brunch. I still need to learn to use the donabe smoker, and I'll still be cooking dinner, and possibly making the next loaf of bread in my book. I still have cleaning to do.
A lot of these things are fun, but one of these days I really would like a day of just watching a movie, sitting still.
Is that still a thing?