cooking – dangermouse.net

Busy Baking Bits

I made sourdough bread today, and I made pizza for dinner. Tonight we had mushroom pizza, which is a topping we don’t have too often.

Again, it was a pretty standard day. I had a bunch of classes to teach. And in between I worked on next week’s new topic, which is Time Passing. I’ll be asking the kids questions about what things change over time, how fast, why, and what’s good and bad about how things change. We’ll also look at aspects of nostalgia, and looking forward to the future.

The reason I did it today instead of waiting until Tuesday like I normally do is that tomorrow I’m planning to go out in the morning and spend the time doing some stuff I wouldn’t normally get to do. This is because my wife is going to take Scully to work, so I won’t have to look after her at all, and I can go places that I wouldn’t be able to take a dog. I’m thinking I might do the Bondi to Coogee walk.

New content today:

Pancakes for dinner

I’ve been trying to feed my sourdough starter a bit more frequently to get it in a healthier condition, so I’ve been generating some starter discard. And so I’ve been looking for ways to use it. Tonight my wife went to a painting class, so I made diner for myself, and decided to use the discard as the basis of a pancake batter. I just added an egg, a splash of milk, and some baking powder, and it came to the right consistency. I had the pancakes with ricotta, fresh strawberries, and maple syrup.

They turned out really nice! It’s a little strange having a sweet dinner, but it can be fun every now and then.

Today was the fourth lecture of the image processing course, with the professor back after I filled i for last week’s lecture. he reminded me that it wasn’t actually my first official coursework lecture – I did lecture 4 (today’s topic) last year when he was away! I wrote about it back then. He read my blog and pointed out how I was now Wrong On The Internet, so I feel duty bound to correct it. 😀

I decided after the lecture to head home on the normal train rather than the new Metro, since the best walking route home fro the Metro stop is still messed up by work on the pedestrian crossing lights, necessitating a significant detour. I think the old train is quicker overall at the moment.

I also went ot the post office this morning to mail some more Magic cards to a buyer. And while there I hopped over to Moon Phase (the croissant place) and tried one of the char siu buns. I’ve wanted one for a while, but they’ve been sold out the last couple of times. But today I got one. And wow, it’s amazing. It’s a next level steamed pork bun (char siu bao). Instead of the steamed doughy bun, it’s light flaky croissant pastry with a super crispy top. It was so good.

New content today:

Sourdough pizza experiment

Monday is always very busy with online classes. It’s the last day of the “Sayings” topic, which has been a bit different and interesting, but I think I’ll be happy to move on. It took a bit of extra encouragement to get some of the kids talking about possible meanings of some more obscure sayings.

For dinner I experimented and used some sourdough starter discard in my pizza dough. I measured out about 120 grams of discard and adjusted the amounts of water and flour to compensate. The dough was a bit crumbly at first but after kneading it turned out fairly normal. It baked well and tasted pretty good, so that’s good!

Weather continues to be warm and spring-like. We have 28°C and 29°C days to look forward to later in the week, and it’s still winter! I wonder if this forebodes a hot summer.

New content today:

My first second university coursework lecture!

Today I gave my ~~first~~ second lecture of regular coursework for a university course, as I’ve mentioned preparing for over the last few days. The professor had an important meeting and asked me to give the lecture for him. I’ve done “guest lectures” before for this image processing course, during the project work period, on topics that weren’t strictly covered by the course, but this is the ~~first~~ second lecture I’ve done that was actual course material. (Edited after the professor reminded me I in fact did one last year!)

In the morning I did a couple of critical thinking classes. Then I had to get ready for the trip to the university. I would normally leave at 12:30 and walk Scully down to my wife’s work to drop off there and then catch a train in. But I ran out of some ingredients for my usual home lunch fixings (falafels and tortilla wraps), so I decided to walk up to the shops and get some sushi. I didn’t really have time to walk back home again so we went straight from there to my wife’s work and arrived a little early.

After dropping Scully off, I rode on the new Metro train from there in to the university. This train line only opened on Monday, and it’s a significant change from the style of train lines Sydney has always had. Our old train network is heavily interlinked, with many lines diverging and converging, so the train traffic has to be carefully regulated to avoid collisions between trains on different lines merging into one. The Metro is designed on the principle of a single line with no branches or merges, so the trains can run more frequently and faster while still being safe. From my place to Central Station (the closest station to the university) takes 16 minutes on the old line, but only 12 on the new Metro line.

Being a brand new rail line, the stations are gorgeous and clean, with impressive architecture. Here are some photos: Victoria Cross Station.

I arrived in good time for my lecture. It was about image processing operations like binary morphology, cross-correlation, segmentation, and so on. It’s material I know pretty well and the lecture went smoothly. I made sure to try and give context and motivation for every algorithm that I covered, and explain it in simple terms. Afterwards, a couple of students came up and told me they enjoyed the lecture and thought I explained things well. So that was good!

And another Metro photo: Central Station, on the way back home:

Tonight for dinner I made lemon pasta with broccolini, garlic, black pepper, and Parmigiano Reggiano. I used a fresh lemon that I picked up for free from a crate of lemons out the front of someone’s place. Presumably they have a lemon tree out the back and had ridiculous numbers of lemons so wanted to give them away. It was super juicy and the pasta turned out delicious.

I’d use fresh lemons more, but I always feel like paying $1 or whatever for a lemon from a supermarket is bad. It just fells like lemons are a thing that should be free.

New content today:

We have cookies!

In between the last classes of the Fishing topic today, i had to run up to the post office to get a packing box, and then pack the five Dungeons & Dragons adventure books that I eBayed on Saturday. Then it was back up to the post office to mail the package.

I also made a sourdough loaf. And pizza for dinner. And tonight I’ve just pulled a batch of choc-chip cookies out of the oven. The oven’s been going all evening! And I’ve used about a kilogram of flour just today!

Not much else to ay about today, except that it was again very cold and a bit windy, but not as bad as the weekend. Central New South Wales is expected to get record low temperatures overnight and tomorrow, down as low as -7°C in places! Thankfully that doesn’t extend to the coast. But this week looks like continuing the cold spell.

New content today:

Spring already?

Today I did some comics stuff, and worked on my lesson plan for the new week of ethics classes, on the topic of Fishing.

For lunch I took Scully on a big walk to get her some exercise. She didn’t get much yesterday and was a bit restless and cheeky, so today I really wanted to tire her out. We stopped at St Thomas Rest Park where Scully could run around a bit off her lead. I practised some recalls with her, getting her to sit and stay while I walked away, and then calling her to come to me. We also said hello to some other dogs (and their owners).

Then we went to Maggio’s Italian Bakery for lunch. I got a pizza slice and a sour cherry danish, and grabbed a couple of Napoli biscuits for snacks tonight.

Near the bakery is a cafe called The Laneway Cafe. They serve a coffee brand called The Cat’s Pyjamas, and have signs for it on the barriers around their tables. Seen here with Scully:

Now… I’m disturbed by the fact that the cats on the sign are wearing clothes that are not pyjamas.

Yesterday I assembled the Lego Dungeons & Dragons tower with the tavern and the other castle-like bit, and this afternoon I took photos of the whole lot so far.

So this is all stages 1-24 put together. It’s huge! I managed to put it into my display cabinet, where it just fit, thanks to me having moved the shelf a while back specifically to accommodate it. Hopefully it’ll still fit when the dragon is constructed and added.

And finally, I’ve stared noticing signs of spring flowers and foliage already. There are several magnolia trees starting to flower, and even a few azaleas, and I’ve seen new green shoots on some plants too. I’m a bit surprised, as the weather is still really cold. Although we are forecast to get up to a pleasant 23°C on Thursday. So maybe that really is the first sign of spring…

New content today:

Satay pizza for dinner

Monday morning was busy with ethics classes. I had three new students across a couple of classes today. It takes up a couple of minutes doing an introduction to the class for new students, but I’ve done this so many times now that I can pretty much recite it without thinking.

At lunchtime I took Scully to the post office to mail off some more Magic cards. The weather wasn’t too cold and it looks like warming up to 20-21°C later in the week, which is much more bearable than temperatures in the teens.

This afternoon I photographed the second half of that batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips that I started last week. That gives me a total of six weeks of new strips, although the first week has already been published last week.

For dinner tonight I made pizza. We had some leftover fried puffy tofu from a str fry on Saturday, so i wanted to use that, and we had broccoli. So rather than make the pizza with tomato sauce, I made a spicy satay sauce with peanut butter and chilli and some other ingredients. It goes really well with broccoli and tofu, but I wasn’t entirely convinced about tofu on a pizza. But it turned out pretty good and was delicious.

New content today:

Fajitas Tuesday

Today I worked on my lesson plan for this week’s new ethics topic: Noise. With questions like:

What should you do if neighbours are being noisy when you need to study or sleep?
Is it okay to have an occasional loud party, as long as you don’t do it too often?
Can even soft sounds be annoying sometimes?
How important do you think it is to get away from noise and have some peace and quiet?
Should there be more quiet places in busy areas?
Should concerts be softer to protect people’s hearing?
Should electric cars make sound so people can hear them coming? Or is it better that we use the new technology to reduce traffic noise?

That done, I took Scully yup to the shops and got some sushi rolls for lunch. It had rained—again—overnight, but was clearing up as we went out and the sun came out in the afternoon. I noticed a lot of the footpaths are green with moss again, like they were a year ago when we were having ridiculous amounts of rain. There are also an awful lot of mushrooms sprouting from the bases of trees and garden mulch areas around the street trees.

This afternoon I spent some time sorting through Magic: the Gathering cards, trying to collect loose cards and the remains of decks into piles of specific sets so that I can offer them for sale on eBay as coherent lots. I discovered a couple of preconstructed Commander 2013 decks, which I barely ever played with. My friends and I preferred booster drafts and didn’t really get into playing Commander. So I confirmed that these decks still had all of the cards present and stuck them on eBay (Power Hungry deck, Eternal Bargain deck). These items join three lots of old sealed booster packs that I listed yesterday (Throne of Eldraine, Core Set 2020, and 6 mixed boosters going back to Ravnica block). In the next week I’ll start listing lots of loose cards from specific expansion sets, starting with the more modern ones.

In other gaming news, I got an email saying that backer surveys are ready for Goodman Games’s Original Adventures Reincarnated #8: Grimtooth’s Old School Traps. When I backed this, I chose the D&D 5E version of the book, but I’ve since re-evaluated and would prefer the Dungeon Crawl Classics version now. So I sent Goodman an email and asked if my pledge could be changed. Hopefully I’ll hear back in the positive.

For dinner tonight I made vegetable fajitas. Fried up some onions, garlic, julienned carrots, sliced broccolini, cauliflower, and mushroom, seasoned with paprika, oregano, cumin, cloves, cinnamon, chilli, salt, and lemon juice. Served with warm tortillas.

New content today:

Calzone Monday

Not much to say today – it was a busy day with 6 online classes. In between I went to the post office twice, to get some packaging, and then send it off, another Magic card sale. I also sorted out a whole bunch of cards that I still had partly assembled into decks, putting them into piles based on expansion set, so that I can reintegrate them into my collection before preparing to sell them off.

For dinner I made calzones, stuffed with pumpkin and ricotta, with a tomato sauce to spoon over the top. It’s a nice variation to make with pizza dough.

New content today:

Special calzones with caramelised fennel

Today was cold. I took Scully for a morning walk and it was pretty chilly.

This morning I sold some more old Magic cards online. I had to make a couple of packages and take them to the post office after lunch. I spent some time working on Darths & Droids comics, scripts and producing the actual strips.

And I started cooing early for a special dinner. I chopped up a whole fennel bulb and fried it up to caramelise it and make it soft, adding a bit of balsamic vinegar to deglaze the saucepan and add flavour. I let that sit for the afternoon. Then this evening I made pizza dough, chopped up some spinach leaves and blanched them quickly. I assembled them into calzones, with ricotta cheese, and baked them in the oven. I’d also made a tomato sauce with chopped onions, garlic, basil, and oregano, to spoon over the top of the baked calzones.

I’ve made calzones before, with either just spinach and ricotta, or mushrooms inside. This was the first time I tried fennel and it was delicious, adding another dimension to the flavours.

I’m also starting to organise our next Dungeons & Dragons session, which is planned for 28 June. I thought we could use another payer, and remembered an old friend who I haven’t seen for a while. She used to play with me and one of the other current players in different games many years ago. If you read Irregular Webcomic!, you’ll know her as the player of Alvissa the elf in the Fantasy theme and Paris in the Space theme. So I sent her an email to invite her to join our current game.

New content today: