I have no motive for writing today’s (this week’s) post. Nothing specific, anyway. Nothing exciting has happened with my sourdough recently. My starter is strong, and I’ve made plenty of discard recipes, but I am feeling discouraged by the almost insane amount of detail I have to consider when trying to make loaves. See exhibit a, below:

This was meant to be a blueberry lemon loaf, to which I was looking forward with great anticipation. Just planning the timing was so much work, not even getting into the work of making the loaf itself, and this is how it turned out. How can I not be discouraged? It didn’t even taste good, to top it off. It was gummy and rubbery and full of holes, and all it tasted like was sour. In an effort to not waste the time and ingredients, I cut the sincerely disappointing loaf into chunks and stuck it in my freezer, and I’m planning to make a bread pudding with it, for when I have occasion to eat bread pudding (and when I reclaim enough space in my fridge to store it). Yeah.

On to the good. Over this past weekend, I made discard crackers again (more garlic parm because those went over like gangbusters, as well as an attempt at some sweet ones- just cinnamon-sugar- they didn’t turn out great), some pretzels, bagels(made with the pretzel dough- I’ll use a bagel dough next time), and sourdough croissants. Another effort that was wasted because I didn’t get back to my chilling butter packet when I was supposed to and that steered the entire operation off course. They were heavy, dense, tough, and didn’t taste like much. You can see in the very large picture above that a ton of butter leaked out of them, and I don’t know if that was because my dough was overproofed (I don’t think that was the reason, truly) or because my butter was too cold when I started doing my folds and it didn’t get distributed evenly during the lamination. Once again, I’ll be re-purposing that bake into something else. When I figure out what that is, I’m sure I’ll write about it.

Something else to look forward to from over the weekend: the drinks. I made my first batch of probiotic rootbeer with my ginger bug, as well as a batch of pineapple tepache with the aforementioned (previous post) accidentally-fermented pineapple. And though I’m not much of a drinker anymore (I honestly wish I was, sometimes), I couldn’t help but make a batch of peach-infused bourbon for summer cocktails as well with all the peaches I still have lying around. All I have to do now is add some tea bags to steep and that baby will be ready to share with my family this weekend at our cabin in the woods — I can’t wait to share pictures from our trip next week (hopefully)!

I’m starting to feel really good about my garden, so that’s another nice thing. I do not, however, feel very good about the work it’s going to take to get what I’m growing preserved for the winter. After all, I’ve never canned a thing in my life. I have a pressure cooker, and I have a set of canning accessories, as well as books on how-to… I just have to dive in once I have things to put up. I do not have a stock pot, so that has prevented me so far from jarring up the acidic summer things like fruits and jams. I did just buy a vacuum sealer for mason jars- so there’s that. (??)

In my garden, I have a whole bed of squash and pumpkins(blowing up!), another bed with corn, peas, yellow squash, asparagus- which I put in the ground too late in the spring for it to have amounted to any harvest this year, sadly- and some carrots. My third bed houses peppers, tomatoes, radishes, and herbs (whoopsie-doodle, I let the mint go wild). Then I have containers of beans, cucumbers, melons, a pear tree, more tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and garlic, and a cute little kitchen herb garden that hangs on the railing on my back stairs. The garden is not finished, by any means. I still need to build an enclosure, and I want to plant berries lining the fence in the sunny corner.

I’ll be able to post pictures of all of this next week when I’m back from the long weekend, but I should probably sign off now otherwise I won’t be able to stop typing and then I’ll forget and this post will drag right into Tuesday (It’s currently Wednesday morning, 7/3) and then I’ll have to make a bunch of changes and this will just go on forever.

Peace and blessings,