Day #29: More than a day of rest

I slept today until after 9:30 a.m.! I can’t believe my animals let me.

After making coffee and doing the dishes, I had a spurt of energy. I made lentil mushroom and jasmine rice soup (with homemade stock), and prepared dough for sourdough sandwich bread, which will go into the oven tomorrow.

This is a new recipe that I’m trying, and it’s not looking hopeful. It calls for mixing flour, salt, water, and the sourdough starter together, and letting it sit overnight. Then tomorrow there is supposed to be one round of kneading, rising in the pan, and baking. I don’t see how there is enough activity to make the thing rise. Perhaps my starter itself isn’t active enough. But I guess I’ll see. Photo tomorrow.

I also baked the flatbread I bought yesterday after adding a little more cheese to fill in light areas. It was well worth the $2.99 I paid for it, quite tasty, and it made three servings. I’d consider that a win.

I noticed this wildflower growing up in a gap between cement blocks in the backyard. It’s called a moth mullein, because the stamen of the flower resembles moth antennae.

It’s an invasive herb (of course it is … it seems every beautiful wildflower is deemed invasive) and — this is super interesting — parts of the flower have been used for hundreds of years as a natural cockroach repellant, according to the PictureThis app. I’ll have to do more research on the how-to if I ever have that problem!

Here’s a poem mentioning the mullein, also from the app.

After all this, the dogs and I crashed. We’ve been laying around quietly watching YouTube. (If you’re planning on seeing the movie “Oppenheimer,” this documentary is an excellent warm-up. It’s less than 30 minutes long.) I knew who Julius Robert Oppenheimer was, but had no idea of his personal history.

It feels really good to have this post done before 9 or 10 at night (I’m finishing up writing at 5:15). I’m going to read now, and get to bed early. While the above “done” doesn’t seem like a lot, it’s more than I typically do on a Saturday, which is my day of rest … and by rest I mean laying around and intentionally doing nothing I’d call productive.

Two more days in this challenge!