Domesticity

Brew Day

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Brewing Wort

Steeping crushed grains adds character to a wort based on liquid malt extract.

It’s been a long time coming, as my advisers Mrs. Wookie and Sespi are well aware, but Sampson and I have officially embarked on our homebrewing quest. Yesterday, we gathered up the supplies we laid in about a month prior, sanitized the hell out of them, and put them to their intended use.

Unfortunately, I committed the grievous blogging sin of only managing to take one picture of the process (a crappy cell phone shot, at that). Mea culpa. You’ll just have to imagine the bubbling cauldron of awesome, the zingy hops we added to to the wort, and the bathtub full of ice we used to chill it.

Anyway, we boiled up a delicious-smelling liquid that is slowly turning into porter even as I type. The English ale yeast (or as I prefer to say, the yeasty-beasties) ought to be chowing down on the malt sugars in the wort and giving us alcohol in return for the tasty meal we have provided.

At least, that is what I hope is happening. Our proto-porter is currently sealed up in a five-gallon bucket in the guest room, and I’m told that peeking is a no-no. There’s an awful lot of waiting in this beer-making business, I’m finding. You wait while the wort boils, you wait until it’s cool enough to pitch the yeast, you wait until the fermentation process begins (that’s where we are right now, waiting for the airlock to start bubbling), you wait to bottle, and then — perhaps most agonizingly of all — you wait to drink your beautiful bottled results.

If all goes according to plan, we could be looking at Bottling Day sometime during Labor Day weekend. That would make Tasting Day right around Rosh Hashanah. Apples and honey may be traditional, but I can’t think of a better way to ring in a sweet Jewish New Year than with a cold bottle of beer Sampson and I brewed ourselves.

Meanwhile, I’m off to go stare at my sealed-up fermenter bucket and try to divine if beer magic is happening yet. C’mon, yeasty-beasties! You can do it!

Knit, Bike, Drink

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This morning I did the dishes so I would feel justified in making a pot of tea and working on this…

…until Sampson gets home, at which point I will get on this…

…and he will get on this…

…and we will take to the neighborhood streets like a couple of kids on a summer vacation adventure. The only difference is that afterwards, we grown-ups are allowed to drink this:

Sounds like a good way to spend a Tuesday to me.

My House Smells Amazing

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Sometimes, the creative urge turns to pursuits other than writing.

Honey Oat Bread

Delicious, delicious non-writing pursuits.

It had been a while since I’d baked bread, but the fancy struck me today to browse Tasty Kitchen for something new to try. I happened upon a recipe for Honey Oat Bread, submitted by one Erin (a fellow blogger, apparently). Intrigued by the promise of a no-knead bread, I did a quick pantry run-though to see if I had the necessary ingredients. I was pleased to discover that I did, by and large.

Alterations

  • I used half AP flour and half bread flour.
  • The only oats I had on hand were “quick oats,” not the “old-fashioned oats” called for in the recipe.

And the verdict is… delicious! I loved how quickly the dough came together, and the results are simple and satisfying. I can see this becoming part of my regular bread-baking rotation.

Procrastination is Motivation?

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My subconscious must be just perverse enough to make it difficult for me to blog unless by so doing, I am procrastinating on something else.

Actually, I think that’s why having a double major worked out so well for me in college. When I had a programming deadline, I could write a religion paper. With an essay due date looming, I could lose myself in endless lines of code. See? Perverse. Or contrary, at the very least.

I have no children to wrangle or job responsibilities to juggle, so this deployment has given me Time with a capital ‘T.’ It sloshes about the corners of my house, unused, in temporal eddies that could probably be used to fuel a couple of Star Trek plots. Some of my readers are no doubt gritting their teeth as they read this, thinking, “How dare she complain about having too much time on her hands! I could use an extra four hours just to keep entropy at bay.” If I could figure out a way to reallocate some of my superfluous hours to you busy folks, I’d be happy to oblige — just as long as I could reclaim them when my schedule eventually reverts to “bursting at the seams” mode.

Right now, though, with all this Time floating about, I’m having trouble generating the necessary internal pressure to sit down and write. I have ideas for SpouseBUZZ posts sitting woefully neglected and unexpanded-upon. I haven’t yet told you the story of my triumph over the recalcitrant lawnmower. ENS Wifey’s faithfully-produced MilSpouse Friday Fill-In questions have gone un-filled-in for weeks. My poor blog is parched, and I chalk it up to a lack of non-writing projects on which to procrastinate.

The solution, clearly, is to give myself some other assignments, undertakings to make typing seem a rejuvenating process and prose a refuge. To that end, I just ordered a cackle-worthy amount of yarn and made plans to embark upon my first large-ish lace project. (Hey, no one said my non-writing task had to be unpleasant — it just has to be Not Writing.) If my self-assessment is correct, knitting the way I will need to in order to finish this gift in a timely fashion (read: until cross-eyed and fumble-fingered) will make “sneaking off” to bang out a blog post seem deliciously like getting away with something.

Am I the only weirdo who procrastinates her way into productivity? I’d love to hear about any little tricks you use to fool yourself into getting things done.

To the Nth Facebook Page

Come on over and give me a 'Like,' if you so desire.

Speaking of procrastination, Facebook reigns as one of the greatest time sinks of all time, as it has since I was in college (you know, back in the days before middle schoolers and your grandmother were on it). It was only a matter of time before I joined the “Facebook Page for my Blog” party: To the Nth is now officially likable, social-networking-wise. Let me know if you have a page you’d like me to come visit!