Yeast is responsible for bread, wine, and beer. Do you need to know more?
Yeast is a single-cell microgranism in the fungi family. Its scientific name is Saccharomyces Cerevisiae which means “sugar-eating fungus.” It is tiny (It takes twenty billion yeast cells to weigh one gram) but very strong. Yeast serves as a leavening agent which causes the bread to rise and expand by converting the ferment-able sugars present in the dough into carbon dioxide and ethanol.
I keep snacking. All. the. time. That was probably the most consistent piece of feedback I kept getting during those early months of lock down. People that were used to the office environment were no working and sitting ten feet from their fridge. It was taking a toll on their waistline.
As a work from home, pre-COVID veteran, I had faced this battle myself and (mostly) conquered it years ago. The plan of attack is simple. Have a solid list of low effort snacks (sweet, savory, smooth, creamy) in the house and ready to go for that afternoon sugar dip.
These are my 10 favorite low effort afternoon snacks to stave off the munchies during that 3 p.m. conference call.
If you’re going to call one item in your pantry an essential ingredient than it should probably be salt. Salt is an important flavoring but also much, much more and likely used in just about every recipe you prepare.
Not only an essential cooking ingredient and taste modifier, sodium chloride is also an essential nutrient that we can’t survive without. Essential indeed!
But what is the difference between the most common types of salt: kosher, table, and sea salt? And how best are they used in the kitchen?
We recently went blueberry picking at a nearby farm. Turns out, when you are required to wear masks and can’t do any field sampling, you fill up your bucket much faster! It also happened to be really hot that week and turning on the oven at all for preserves and jam wasn’t appealing.
We ate many of them fresh but we also had fun coming up with a blueberry popsicle recipe that tasted way better and was way more healthy than the vibrant blue ice pops that typically fill our freezer.
The girls started back to school this week and Cecilia had a rough re-entry. Maybe it was a holiday hangover. Maybe it was just this lingering cold that won’t quit. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was it was immediately clear she wasn’t her normal self when she returned to the house Thursday afternoon. She was moody and mopey. That might be the new normal in a couple years but right now she’s usually pretty happy and resilient.
I immediately jumped in Dad problem solver mode. This is what I do. I have valuable life experience. I was an introverted moody kid. I can probably handle this and ice these cupcakes at the same time…I immediately hit a brick wall. This will also likely become the new normal soon. Hanging out with your Dad (especially when he has a world-famous blog) is not high on many pre-teens’s to-do list.
I realized that I’m going to have to learn that moods and feelings are not problems for me to solve. They are facts. They are, in some way, announcements. It’s an impossible task to try to stop my kids ever being moody or heartbroken or angry. What I can do is listen to them. Try to hear them. And try to understand. No more. No less. Continuing to ice cupcakes probably won’t hurt either.
This is the story of a sweatshirt. A sweatshirt that lived on the floor just inside the front door for more than two days. Another day and it was probably going to ask for the wi-fi password.
It would have been very easy for me to pick up the sweatshirt. It was actually really hard not to pick it up. It also would have been easy for me to make them do it. I can make like a prison guard if I have to but both of those options miss the point.
I want them to learn to look after themselves with some pride. Cleaning up isn’t just a task to get an allowance. It’s an illustration of who they are. The lesson from the sweatshirt that I want them to learn is how we do anything is how we do everything. Leaving it on the floor isn’t just lazy and messy—it shows that they are a mess.
One of my key parenting tenets: I’m not trying to raise successful kids. I’m trying to raise successful adults.
It’s a long term investment. Short term returns are huffing, mumbling, and occasional stomping.
