Craft: along June - What I should have been doing when it was not hot

Dear Donk,

The weather this month has me all backward and my brain is having a really hard time reconciling what it wants to be doing with what it should be doing.

See, it was unseasonably cool the first few weeks of June, and so you'd think this would have been the perfect time for doing things like finishing long overdue sweaters and baking things like this month's Craft: along project - carrot cake cookies.

But no.

I dillied. I dallied. I spent full days fucking around in the yard (which, granted, is a great thing to do when it's not blazing hot, but still). I rode my bike around town to the library and such. I went to lunch with friends. The dog and I went to the beach.

You know - I did things that you do when it's HOT out, not when it's cool out.

What I should have been doing was finishing this sweater while I could still stand being within arm's reach of wool and baking things in my oven while I could still stand to be in my house with the oven on.

But I think this is where my Bizarro World Psyche steps in and makes my life silly.

It says stupid shit like, "Oh, it may be nice and breezy cool outside, but you want to go sit in the air conditioned library and dork out on beekeeping books."

And when you try to drag your knitting outside to work on it, you realize that you've just run out of yarn and DAMMITALLTOHELL will have to go to the Innernets to order it because SADNESS all your LYSs are out of business due to the suckass economy.

Boo.

It begins to feel like my brain has a master plan for me and, when I try to defy it, it lays the smack down on me so hard that I sit back in my chair and go, "Fine, stupid brain, I give up. Let's go sit in the air conditioning even though it's only 68 degrees. FINE."

The best part is that when it warms up again, like say TODAY, I get all revved up to bake a million things and work in the yard and ride my bike to Pilates and and and...name a hundred things that you should avoid when it's hot out...

But thankfully, I've come to terms with this backward way of my brain's, so I just let it happen. And then I sweat a lot and bake some things I've been thinking about for a long time.

The first thing being the carrot cake cookies from this month's Craft: along.



Usually I have some sort of anecdote that goes along with my crafting type projects, but this was pretty cut and dry. Follow the recipe and enjoy. I did however learn two things which I will share with you now.

1. I saved myself some aggravation and used canned cream cheese frosting and found it to be excellent and way easier to deal with than making cream cheese frosting from scratch. And for those of you who are all super excited to make your own frosting, don't be deterred, I'm known for this kind of behavior.
   
   
   
   
   
2. I learned how to use the shredder/chopper blade for my food processor which is excellent given that I intend to make pickle chips using this contraption and whoopsy had not ever used this attachment so had relegated it to the Mystery Tool pile in the back of my cabinet. Thanks to my sister, who reminded me that this thing came with a special slicing blade, I can now shred carrots in THE BLINK OF A GODDAMN EYE and, I imagine, slice cucumbers into chips with similar swiftness.
   
   
   The other thing about this attachment is the warning label. Scared the shit out of me. RAZOR SHARP! DO NOT TOUCH!
   
   
   This took 3 seconds. Wow. I'M DRUNK WITH POWER! Nope, wait, that's gin. Moving on...
   
   Unfortunately, with this new-found skill came the realization that I will need to come up with something drastic in the recipe department if I want to ever get to the bottom of our carrot stash. This recipe used only 3/4 cups (or the big 1 heaping cup I shred without measuring FUN!) of carrots which came out to about 3 good sized carrots.
   
   That only left, like 50 or so in the bag.
   
   
   Oh to be able to see to the bottom of this bag...
   
   
   

So, the other thing I've been wanting to bake for a really long time but waited until it was 80+ degrees out to start was challah. My mom's challah.

For Hanukkah, the blessed woman gave me a loaf of her homemade bread AND AND AND her recipe, all printed out nicely so it'd fit into my recipe binder.

Do you love this woman yet? I know I do.

Anyway, today the stars (and heat - yay.) finally aligned so that I had all the ingredients under one roof and the time and Brain Go-Ahead to make it.

And then I realized why my mom's challah is the best challah in all the land and also why it's that pleasing shade of yellow unduplicated in the rest of Challahdom.

Also, don't let me catch you using something other than poppy seeds on your challah. I will hit you.

And it's not what I thought.


If you'll recall, I went on a brief rant about how most challah you'll find out there is a big fat fraud because it's not yellow enough. My theory was that it didn't have enough eggs in it so someone back in the Challah Department was cheaping out when they were putting the eggs into the big corporate Kitchenaid and now we were all suffering the consequences of substandard white and bland challah.

Notice this has a nice yellow hue. Even from the outside.

No. I will not have it. I will only accept the genuine article and that is my mom's challah in all its yellow eggy glory!

It's almost like it's winking at you.

Except that the lovely desirable shade of yellow in my mom's challah comes not from eggs (even though there are plenty of eggs in there! This Kitchenaid doesn't cheap out!), but instead from turmeric.

Turmeric!

So, you know, sorry people whom I previously offended with my accusations of egg-cheapness. It's not the eggs you're missing, it's the turmeric. I still won't eat your bread and call it challah, but I'll stop calling you really mean names in public. Also, start adding turmeric dissolved in 1 cup of warm water to your challah dough as its mixing - makes all the difference.


So, now I have carrot cake cookies and proper challah and my house is its own oven, so feel free to swing by and put your cookies out to bake on my living room floor.

Excuse me while I go turn on a fan or something.

xo,
Finny