our magic flute pre-party:

in a rare show of motivation and accomplishment, i am tending to our peach trees (fertilizing and spraying for peach leaf curl), planting garlic, feeding the jade plant with more soil, planting basil, refreshing the soil for the succulents, and weeding the parkway. mama bear and i used 3 year old grass seed and sprinkled it over the newly weeded and raked dirt. this was the first year that grass predominantly grew instead of weeds and i would like to encourage that.

sent this to m. she said i know her well. we both especially like the land of self-checkout lanes. 

after trying ethiopian biftu gudina, m found it at crop to cup and ordered 10 pounds so we could try it roasted at the 5 different behmor profiles. it’s amazing that i roasted all of them to full city. as expected, their roast behavior was different for each profile. duh… what’s also amazing is that i bookended my 5 roasts with a dry burn for a total of 7 roasts in 1 day!

of course, i found the following sweet maria’s roast articles after the fact:

• part 1: lengthen 1st to 2nd crack
• part 2: lengthen 1st crack
• part 3: stretch drying stage

throwing this roasting fundamentals article in here because i had a heck of a time roasting decafs.

white wheat (top) and red wheat (bottom)

the red wheat is super complex and best eaten as is. the white wheat is best for sandwiches. my starter seemed a little sluggish, so i added 3/4 tsp active dry yeast to the dough. the KA also made the crumb much more dense than hand folding and you can see some areas of concentrated/gummy dough where i didn’t distribute as well as i should have.

next: grinding glenn wheat berries in our dry vitamix pitcher.

proof that i haven’t killed our peach trees…yet:

m heard that china red had great dim sum. we ordered a bit too much for eating at the table but we certainly enjoyed it after our dim sum drought (all of our asian friends moved away) :(.

ok, not toxic, but after buying food-grade lye with a label covered in skulls and crossbones and donning 2 layers of latex gloves for safety, it amazes me that anything soaked in it can be edible. wait, not just edible. these were the best pretzels yet because of the brown color and chew the lye gave the pretzel.