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My iris beds are beginning to pop. I have so many purple irises of the old variety, found along ditches and abandoned home sites. I also have quite a few of the white ones, which are my least favorite, but they were here at the house when we bought it and I have split them many times over the years.

Irises are my favorite flower, and they were loved by my youngest son as well. April is a bittersweet month for me, as they begin to bloom I’m equally torn between joy and grief. The specialty irises I planted ...

For all of you fans of the Divine Miss M, she now has her own Pinterest board. Anything she poses for will be added there. I was a bit surprised when she made the request, and you know what she told me? “I’m famous! I can have a cult following and people all over the world will love me!”

Hmmm… I am but her obedient slave.

The more I work with Spelt, the more I see why it has such a following. While Einkorn is my favorite for taste, Spelt is sooo much easier to work with. Yesterday I ...

Look who crawled downstairs? I think Miss Myrtle smelled cheese. I don’t know how, the aroma of freshly shaved garlic surely overwhelmed it, combined with the rosemary!

The potato pizza was a bit of a hassle to make. I soaked the potatoes (Yukon Gold’s) in salt water for a couple of hours, then drained, pressed, and squeezed the water out of them, before lightly coating them in olive oil and tossing with pepper, freshly grated parmesan and garlic, and some rosemary out of our garden.

The 65% hydration sourdough crust performed beautifully again, despite the amount of heavy ...

What a gorgeous day it’s going to be as well! I will be spending it with my mom, and we will be eating…

PIZZA!

Yesterday’s 65% hydration pizza dough was such a success that my mom and I decided to repeat it again today to make sure it wasn’t a fluke! LOL

The lesser hydration amount made for a dough that was very easy to handle, and it had nice puffy and airy edges with a perfectly thin crust under the toppings.

Oh but let me tell you about the toppings! I use marinated artichoke hearts, sliced ...

I don’t think it’s any secret that I love pizza. And I confess I’ve been really drooling over a dedicated pizza oven. I’ve had my eye on the Ooni Koda for a while. But at $500, I probably won’t ever buy it. A girl can dream!

I had planned to spend this year playing with pie recipes, but with Jim working out of state, that seemed like a recipe for obesity. I’ve decided to focus on pizza and pasta instead. What? How is that any better you ask?

I can control my gluttony better ...

She appears to have gone missing. I guess I better ask Siri cat to hunt for her. Cat’s track down mice and bring them to you right?

I had plans to get more of the weed whacking done yesterday, but the morning was drizzly and cold, with a bitter wind. It was all I could do to talk myself into a walk after lunch, but I’m so glad I did as while I started out with my winter coat and gloves on, I was able to remove them halfway through my six mile walk.

The clouds blew off ...

Sometimes I feel like… well I’m not sure what to call it. It often seems like the silliest things bring me the most joy. This morning, I made a wee bit of pasta… just one egg pasta. I had no idea what I wanted to make with it, just that the thought of pasta for dinner sounded wonderful.

While walking with friends the other day, salad was mentioned. I’ve pretty much stopped buying lettuce at the store because it seems like there is always a recall on it, but I couldn’t get the thought of a yummy ...

I love to cook fortunately, so that’s usually not an issue for me, but there are days when I simply don’t feel like it. yesterday was one of them. I swept and mopped the downstairs, and then started on our taxes. For lunch, I just popped half of the shrimp quesadilla that’d I’d cooked the day before into the Breville (have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE my Breville convection oven?) and enjoyed it thoroughly.

I could eat these every day, but I’d be so freaking fat. I did use whole wheat herbed tortillas ...

Lately I can’t get enough of this bread. It’s sourdough with rye and spelt and full of flaked grains and seeds.

I mill my own grains, but I also flake them using my FlicFloc. It’s a bit tedious as it’s a hand crank model, but the flavor difference is oh so worth it!

My mix varies all the time. This particular batch began with emmer wheat berries, rye berries, white wheat berries, amaranth, tri-color quinoa, teff and barley, which I added to a jar and tossed in a bit of water. I use about a tablespoon ...

I’m pretty tickled with my row clearing progress, but a bit dismayed to discover tons of elderberry seedlings sprouted in the rows. I rue the day I ever planted elderberry bushes, I had no idea they were so invasive!

I went ahead and cut and removed all of the wires between the posts as well. They’re impossible to see without anything on them and Cosmo ran into them while we were out working and hurt himself.

My mom came over and helped a bit as well. She loves yardwork (I detest it) but I have to be careful ...

My perspective is likely skewed as baking bread is probably my favorite thing to do in life, as I find it immensely soothing to sink my hands in the dough, heartwarming as it bakes and fills the house with the most wonderful aroma, and gratifying when I sink my teeth into it.

Which brings me back to my point, sourdough maintenance. I know that most people consider it too much work to maintain a starter, and dislike feeding and discarding.

I don’t “feed and discard”. I keep anywhere between 10 and 25 grams of sourdough culture in my fridge ...

It’s supposed to rain all day, and most days for the next week, so I’m squeezing in a walk where I can. I took a look at the radar this morning and figured I could get an hour’s walk, which is about four miles, in before it hit.

It still isn’t raining so I probably could have headed to the lake for a much more enjoyable walk, instead of traipsing back and forth on the road in front of our house, which gets quite tedious as there is only a little over a quarter mile stretch ...

I finished the appliqué on my little wallhanging, trimmed the appliqué border down and added one more. The dark on the outside is leftover binding that I will use on it when I get it quilted.

I’m pretty tickled with this as it began with me just needing to sew for a little bit the other morning, and use up some scraps. I also used two fat quarter colors (each bordered took two each) that I never thought I’d use, so I’m happy about that too!

I had some binding leftover from my lone star quilt I ...

I discovered that 65lb weight card stock isn’t heavy enough for a greeting card, and all I had on hand, so my little card making experiment is on hold for now. I did however, try the scoring tool on the Cricut maker to crease the fold in my too thin card stock, and it’s amazing! […]

The post The Valentine’s Project appeared first on Tinksquared.

This is going to be a long post. I may never stop typing. That’s how much I love good sourdough bread and how much I love making bread in general. I’ll try to keep it organized but . . well, you know how I am! Sourdough by Foodbod: Sunday evening, Vince had already gone to...

The post Sourdough appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.