Purely domestic…

Spelt bread … Ipecac … Pink Crisco … Empty toothpick containers …

Vestment patterns …

I started cleaning some cabinets, partly as a way to procrastinate, as my writing moves forward inch by inch. I figure out ONE plot point, write it up, fix all the side bits it impacted, and then … that’s it for the next few hours. So yesterday while my brain worked out the next step, I started emptying shelves in the kitchen and found a bottle of ipecac. It was hanging out with six bottles of very old nail polish, four nail buffers, and three plastic objects I didn’t recognize. Rather than try to figure out what they were I threw them out.

Ipecac! I can’t even remember buying it, though I do remember buying the green nail polish and wearing it. I also found a bottle of iodine which I saved because you can do cool science experiments with iodine if it hasn’t all gone bad. I found three different kitchen thermometers one of which I know Does Not Work. Gone, it is. Finally.

Some of this cleanup made room for a baby dutch oven that I bought because all the recipes for making bread from my fancy whole wheat flour say, set your oven to 450° and heat your dutch oven in it first. After half an hour the dutch oven itself is hot so dump the dough into this extremely hot utensil and put the cover on. So I bought the dutch oven, made a no-knead bread recipe with Spelt flour, cut it in half and made the bread.

Basically the bread was very good although not quite like regular bread. I didn’t slash the top deeply enough before it was cooked, but when I sliced the loaf in the middle I saw what a mistake this was. The steam couldn’t escape and the center of the loaf is a bit damper than the edges, which were perfect. I used the other half of the recipe for pizza dough.

While we are on the topic of special grains, Rye Chocolate Chip cookies are pretty good although the chocolate chips didn’t stick to the dough. I find that a bit odd. I have ideas about why that was, based on how the butter was mixed into the dough, and I’m sure I should test my ideas on another batch of cookies.

I think I mentioned that the Sonoran flour pancakes were tasty but needed more liquid. This is an important note for all these special flours. They are very thirsty.

Anyway, I’m off to write a story and do some cutting and sewing.