Hazelnut tea.

Inspired by an OB/lil exchange a couple pubski's back, went ahead and made my first challah from scratch. Used craisins instead of raisins for shits and giggles. As you can see, it came out way better than expected.

In a swelling of pride, I sent out the pic to the fam. I was reminded the family historian on my dad's side is flying in from Israel, checks time, today. I was hired baking the challah for Shabbat dinner. Cooking from scratch was easily one of the more rewarding tasks I've done in a while. Honoring the time it takes to allow each step to run its course brought about more respect for an art of creation. Typing this out, I'm inclined to think this is what brought me back to Twain's Two Ways of Seeing a River. My only other memories of kneading dough or panicking flour into doughy hands were in some Hebrew school where the rest of the steps were done for us. As I grew older, the few other exercises in baking the braids progressively indoctrinated peers into previously hidden steps. Building from up from sugars and yeast had been new this time around. Brought about more caution as beginnings gave way to middles where I could finally see what affected the dough's consistency, and acknowledge its role leading into braiding. Let me tell you now, 6-braid is the easiest braid I've ever seen. Take the last rope, pass it over 2, under the middle, and over the last two. Repeat. Hours spent among dough doubling, braided dough forming, baking and cooling allowed for meditative time kneading, separating and braiding to settle in - which was more than I had expected. Of all things, it wasn't the thoughtful type either: skin soaking, hands weaving in through their own ceramic bowl realm was all. And it was nice.

Making a run for a proper whisk and brush for the eggs/egg-whites. Naturally, I know what I want to improve on come Friday. On the side of working further into my own family history, while I haven't done much digging since the username change. To make up for it, I have gone ahead and bought a 32GB SD card to make sure my phone doesn't run out of memory for this interview. I'm expecting to get a lot outta this one seeing as my fathers side of the family is the one I have the most trouble connecting the dots with.

On some writing notes, I don't do it. I really damn want to. Posting Oils was a thrill seeing the feedback here. I've been looking for a reason to revisit My Kingdom, enticed by adding fresher perspective of where I am now in life in an addition. More thoughts on this idea jumbling in my head without coherency so I'll leave it at that.

Mini-Major front: Minor road blocks in the scheduling for next semester to be fixed tomorrow. Looking forward to some (subjectively) common-sense-icle classes like Mechanical Physics and Discrete Maths. :)