Dusty Knuckles

I’ve been baking bread for the first time lately (what on earth happened to bread prices). I finally accepted that my brown thumb for plants also extends to yeast, evidently, so I’ve blooming had enough. No. I’ve had enough of blooming. Got British for a second there.

Instant yeast feels like cheating, but it balances out because whatever the opposite of beginner’s luck is, I have it with bread. I don’t know if I overwork the dough or if I live at God’s least favorite altitude, but every dough I make tends to bake into a tough, scraggly mess that could hardly look worse if I’d tried.

Things have been a little better lately, though. I made dinner rolls for the first time, and though they had that same sort of scraggly crust issue I have in most of my bread baking currently, they also had that definitive buttery taste and semi-fluffy texture (still working on density, as I’m very good at baking dying stars). Those gave me some hope. I may not blooming need it – damn it. I may not need blooming to bake bread, but something tells me I’m to be cursed with thick innards in all my loaves until I bite the bullet and figure out how to stop killing active yeast before it makes my food yummy.

Slow cookers are also an insane home-cooking advantage that I’d been sleeping on for years. Let it be known: throw chicken and stock and seasonings in a slow cooker all day, and you’ll have pulled chicken as a go-to for days. It’s incredibly cheap cost-wise and time-wise. Very helpful now that I’ve started taking my editing more seriously, applying to more jobs, and generally trying to be more active as a writer and creative. I added tomato to mine with cumin, oregano, chili powder, paprika, and garlic, and I’ve been dining on the finest pulled chicken sandwiches, tacos, and quesadillas for the last couple of days. Samey, but so cheap, which just makes it taste better.

I guess this is the cooking episode of my author blog. Thanks for sticking it out this long if you’re still here. Bonus praise: rice cookers rule and I have similar praise for them as I do for slow cookers. Just get one if you can afford it – I managed to snag mine for $15 at a Goodwill.