Doing our best

In these days of lock-down the days seem to run into one another. My husband was surprised this morning that it was Sunday rather than Monday. There are days when you wish you could just sleep the days away.Yesterday, I mostly slept.

Today thought I decided to be productive. I wrote to some friends.

 I made seven masks, This brings my total to about 80.

All of the hand-washing we have to do means that we are low on hand cream. I made a batch.

Due to the yeast shortage my older son and I have been experimenting with various methods of making sour dough. He has been nursing a classic sour dough. I have been doing our usual method of using bits of old bread and old dough  mixed with flour and water and letting the slurry hang out in the fridge.

As I formed today's loaf of bread, I pinched off a bit, a K'zayit, about the size of an olive to add to our bread starter in the fridge.

The movement of pinching off the bit of dough was so familiar from taking challah when I bake our challot. In ancient times people didn't reach for their little jar or packets of Red Star or Fleischman's yeast, they used a bit of old dough as the starter for the next batch. This small physical act of pinching off a bit of dough to add to my starter made me understand the mitzvah of taking a bit of dough and burning it in an entirely new (but also very ancient) way.

Our bread is doing its final rise.

When I made these meringues on Friday I added about a tablespoon of tapioca flour to the batter. I also added quite a bit of cocoa powder (probably close to 1/2 a cup). The result was not like an airy or marshmallow-like meringue, instead the result was a crispy shell and a fudgy interior. If I manage to remember what I did, I will be making this again.