March results

[preserved_by_bronzing]

I came in to this community at the end of the month (and had a very busy work and home life last week), but still plowed through a closet that we'd been wanting to get to for some time. Like years. My wife was off work last week recuperating from a (successful!) surgery, so I attacked this closet, which is in her home office.

I have no idea how many items I removed, but definitely hundreds. I had switched careers and finished a grad school program during the pandemic, and finally last week felt ready to let go of all the stuff from my previous career and from school. It was really cathartic. I still had (for you IT people out there) SQL Server 2008 manuals. Why! They've left the building now.

This closet will now be storing crafting supplies. I have a bookbinding hobby (mostly old, out-of-copyright and/or print classics and old theological treatises), and my wife wants to get more serious about her quilting and crochet hobbies. Now we have space to store those things.

There is another closet in this room that we will need to tackle next. It's mostly computer supplies and old video game systems, so I'm curious how that will go for me.

Here's the new crafting supply closet! May it remain not-cluttered.



I'm grateful for the March Madness notion. It gave me an excuse and motivation to just do this now.

Pantry Uncluttering Continued

[the_broken_tower]

... Finally back at the baking to clear out the pantry's generous flour shelf.

I decided to prep dry ingredients for later tonight. The recipes I'm using mix all their dry ingredients first, so everything could go into one bowl.

The whole wheat made it easy for me. I unrolled the top and bugs came out. The bag went into the trash.

Instead I used the last of the Rye to double a recipe for Chinese Almond Cookies. There will be a lot of them, so hopefully they'll be edible.

Next up for the running are spelt and bread flour.

At this point, the surplus flour has been reduced by 50%. Most of what's left are specific-use items (like glutinous rice flour for mochi, and okonomiyaki mix) and local mixed flours. The two remaining big items are masa flours.

- Cobalt Amber (he/him)

Update with recipes and cookie tax

Everything has been made! There are two new packaged, labeled hunks of dough in the freezer. Tasting portions of each batch were baked per how this goes.



The recipes are Chinese Almond Cookies, with sunflower oil and rye flour subbed out for the regular, and Lavender Lemon Shortbread with different spices (ground rose petals, rose water, cardamom, grains of paradise, and hibiscus powder).

I cheated a bit with the shortbreads - I was not going to roll and cut them. That is a whole mess. Instead, I laid a sheet of parchment paper over a plastic cutting board, rolled tiny balls of dough, placed them, and then smooshed them with a measuring cup and a strip of wax paper acting as a non-stick intermediary between them. Works so much better than dealing with sticky dough on wide surfaces. The entire sheet went into the freezer, and then slipped off onto a baking tray with the parchment paper.

If you're like Cobalt and don't read the directions about using cold butter... Literally do not worry about it. I used the room temp stuff he set out, ended up with a very paste-like dough, and the cookies did not die. Just freeze it first.

The only thing left (apart from a remaining mixing bowl to wash) is to put the bread flour into the newly-vacated AP flour container.

- MK (he/him)