I know. It’s a stunner. I’m a total DIY girl, but I have realized today that somethings are just not worth DIY-ing. Is that a word? (Dang you, Pinterest, for nourishing my fevered desire to do it myself.) Certainly, there are things that I don’t really want to do myself…like, folding socks, for example. I don’t mind it when they all match, but they never do. It’s disheartening. That said, I undertook 3 mini research projects with DIY potential this morning, which may or may not have been fueled by weird pregnancy cravings.
I love crispy puffed rice cereal, sourdough bread, and yogurt. Not so much together, but individually, they’re awesome. Kind of like caramel corn and broccoli with cheese sauce.
Last night, the combination of watching my hubs make popcorn in our hot air popper and realizing that the only cereal we have in the house is Cheerios (which are great, but I’m just not feeling them right now), made me wonder if said air popper had more than one application. Corn is a grain…rice is a grain…you see where I was going with this, right? It won’t work, unless you happen to have rice that still has its outer husky shell thing attached in your pantry. I do not. I found some recipes that swore that you could fry cooked sushi rice and it would be kind of like the real thing, but it ain’t worth it. I don’t fry things for a couple of reasons.
- I like my eyebrows where they are, thanks.
- My tummy doesn’t like fried or greasy things. Not even doughnuts. It’s sad, but what are you gonna do?
I have come to the sad conclusion that it ain’t worth puffing rice from scratch. Which means that a trip to the grocery store is likely in order, unless I start craving Cream of Wheat sometime soon.
My hubs brought a loaf of sourdough bread home for our little date night on Monday. I never remember how much I like sourdough bread until it’s been a year since I’ve had any. Even though I can’t puff rice, bread is totally within my realm of capability. I make it quite often. This lead me to check out exactly how to start a, well, starter. I have found about 30,000 conflicting recipes and techniques and I’ve only just begun to sift through them. I called my grandma this morning to ask her how, and completely forgot when we started chatting. It was awesome, but I remembered an hour later that I completely missed that proverbial boat and I’m going to have to call her back later. My sister did that Amish friendship bread thing for awhile when we were kids, and that used a starter, so I can probably ask her, too. The thing that I have come to realize is that a starter is like a pet. For real. You have to feed it every day, keep it in an ideal climate, and possibly talk to it to make sure it isn’t lonely. Do I really want to undertake the responsibility of caring for a colony of wild yeast bacteria? I’m still on the fence about this one. I do love kitchen science, so maybe it’ll be a go.
My last “I really want” was yogurt. Yogurt has turned out to be the only foolproof way of getting Toddler to consistently do dairy. He doesn’t believe in drinking milk unless it has been flavored by Cheerios and is drunk by the spoonful. It is a time-consuming and messy process, particularly now that he’s also into DIY. With Momma. One of the things I’ve come to discover about maintaining my blood sugar levels is that I can’t do dairy. Well, I can do cheese, butter and small (1/4 cup) amounts of carb-smart ice cream, but that’s it. I’ve switched to almond milk for the rest of my milky needs, but I can’t find almond milk yogurt anywhere. I know it exists…just not where I can get it without paying an arm, a leg, and possibly a bit of my soul into the bargain. It just isn’t worth it. And then I got an e-mail about a DIY yogurt machine on sale. (Dang you, Amazon, for nourishing my fevered desire to do it myself.) I read reviews, recipes, researched (you guessed it) yogurt starters, different ways to make it with almonds, etectera ad nauseum. I’ve gotta say…it’s tempting. Like, a lot. My kiddies go through a metric butt-ton of the stuff, so it’d by nice to be able to control what goes into it. (I have issues.) And if I could make my non-dairy non-soy (allergies…what are you gonna do?) version into the bargain, that’d be great, too. Right? I can take care of two bacteria colonies! What are a few billion more mouths to feed?
Or, perhaps, I should just buy a loaf of sourdough bread when the itch is really strong and continue to live without yogurt in my life. Need is a vacuous concept, after all.
Filed Under "Potpourri" 