Baking peasantly [Tuesday 22]

Got up right on time, and got ready quick. Wasted a lot of time zoning out and not doing anything in the morning because I thought I had too much time. Caught the later bus than usual, and suffered for it -- the trip to Sullivan which has started taking 12 to 15 minutes recently, took 25 minutes. Commute to work was a 55-minute ordeal, which was not ideal. All that staring at the windows while I stand on the train makes me conscious about untrimmed beard, at least I get to look at pretty women.

Work was great and satisfying, though most of it was meetings. The data team I'm supporting is starting a new project, and I'm the most well-placed person to assist them, so interesting things happening there. Got a solid 800 words written at work today, maybe more, but things were going so good, I forgot to keep track well. Ate an apple in the morning, which has been helping me stabilize my morning grumpies.

Went to trucks outside the backbay stop for lunch. I got the tofu rice from Chicken and Rice guys. For 6 bucks fifty, it was a healthy portion of rice and protein that more than filled me up. I got the medium sauce this time (I keep pouring down their spiciest sauce into the rice and suffering for it, I thought I'd do one better today), but still slathered my rice in it, so it was still not ideal. Had another meeting, and the department meeting, which was fortunately less tedious than what we've had recently.

Had planned to go to Brookline this evening to stay over but plans changed for everyone, so cancelled that, and came back home, an hour late because of the meeting. The trip back was frustratingly crowded, and long as a result of that. I got some time at one of the stops to write about my chocolate situation that had happened during the department meeting (read previous post). It's a loss, but something I can live with.

Back home it was so dark I didn't want to go to do groceries like I originally planned, since I had leftovers. The apartment felt too cold, I decided to fix that by baking something. I was looking up recipes for simple white bread when roommate BB suggested I make Peasant bread like he had brought up a couple of days ago. That sounded like a good idea, so I worked on that. I followed the recipe in King Arthur flour's website almost exactly, except used a lot of butter around the bread pan and then more butter on top of the bread. I scratched the top of the bread with forks too after misreading the instructions, but that didn't destroy the bread. The overall response from the house was that it's dang good, but I know it's because of the absurd amount of unasked-for butter that went into it.

Our semi-roommate I came over too, with his daily supplies, and the four of us and he watched a few episodes of The Office. Roommate PK didn't like the series at all until a couple of months ago but it has grown on him a lot. Roommate SM still doesn't like it very much, but he's started tolerating it and will watch and enjoy episodes once a while. The gang watched the series as well as Parks and Rec (which SM enjoyed a lot more than The Office, because he says the office is too mean), while I cleaned up the kitchen a bit and cooked up dinner.

I ate my bean salad (two days left-over, but still good, I'm proud of it), with the oyster mushrooms I made. I cooked the oyster mushrooms with salt in high heat on one side till they almost burned (in vegetable oil), turned them around and cooked them a bit, and added garlic, garlic powder, and butter to add flavor and more fats in the end. It tasted pretty good, and roommate PK liked it I think but then he likes anything with too much oil. I'll do it again soon and the next time I'll cut the pieces more thicker. Realized that if you're cooking things to almost a crisp on one side, it's a good idea to cut it thicker than a quarter-inch because otherwise it'll only taste like burnt soot. There was still texture to some of the pieces, and by gods it was good.

Wrote the precious piece while I was ambling about. Worked out between writing session, packed up the bread (in an existing bread plastic, genius right), cleaned up, did my evening reading (again King's On Writing, some of the paras I'm re-reading), and now all set for bed. Almost done for the day, only 20 minute earlier than planned, but every day is not going to be two projects in one night. Need to figure out what we're giving SS for her birthday, and get in touch with a couple of friends to hang out (and get invited to their parties, because I skipped the ones I was invited to for various reasons), but if I don't make any of them, I can do those tomorrow morning. Even though I wasn't as quick as I hoped (my timed actions are off recently), I'm confident I'll improve in my chore speed.