Running Chick

Today, I made nisu (also known as pulla) and it didn’t suck.

I used my grandma’s recipe, which is probably older than I am (old!) but scaled it down to make two loaves instead of five.

I got to do two fun things during the course of preparation. The first was scalding milk. I’m pretty sure I’ve done this before on accident, but I never realized I was doing something other than “boiling the milk”. The second was smashing the begeezers out of cardamom seeds with a mallet. I suppose I could have used ground cardamom but NOT AUTHENTIC so I bashed those little seeds to within an inch of their life.

So, outside of making the dough, the process isn’t really too tricky, just long. You make up the dough, then let it rise until it doubles in size, then you knead it for a bit, cut it into sections for braiding (in my case, six sections), braid it up, then stick it back in the oven to rise again. Then you bake it for 30 minutes and when it’s done, brush on a syrup of coffee & sugar.  I used the oven to do the rising, first warming it up to 200, then shutting it off and popping in the dough. The first rise took around 90 minutes, the second around an hour.

Here’s the dough after it’s been braided and it’s risen for the second time.

And here’s the finished product. I somehow ended up with one giant loaf and one normal sized loaf so clearly I failed in the dividing up the dough equally section, but overall they look normal ...

… and taste gooood.

Kitties were impressed.

Happy New Year!

Hellooooholycow it’s been a long time since I’ve updated.  Jeesh, I’m a slacker. Well, let’s get on with the update to bring you up to speed.

You probably remember that I had some weird ankle issue in August that sidelined me for a month. Well, I made it through that fine, started running again and then a month later I noticed that the top of my right foot was bothering me. It started as a slight ache, then turned into a more pronounced ache, then turned into a bona fied pain. I was seriously starting to worry that I had a stress fracture, so I went to my doctor and got me some x-rays.

But they didn’t show anything (typical of stress fractures, they said), so my doctor figured it was some ligament thing and told me to limit my runs to 2-3 miles and ice before & after.  I did that for a few runs but it was clear that what I really needed to do was stop running because my foot was not feeling any better. So, I’ve been laying low since Thanksgiving day, which was my last run. In the meantime, I’ve been riding my trainer three times/week and doing weights/yoga for the rest of the week. My plan is to keep with the trainer rides for the rest of December than start running again in January. If my foot cooperates, half marathon training will also start in January.

Last month, we welcomed a new addition to the household. A kitten!

Pippen was four months and four pounds when we adopted him. Today, he’s five months and six pounds.

After having adult cats for such a long time, I was seriously doubting the sanity in adopting a rambunctious, curious little kitten. Holy cow my house is not kitten-proof.

He races around the house like mad, knocks over everything that isn’t nailed down then crashes hard.

He’s quite the handful, but he’s such a cutie that it’s hard to stay mad at him for long. Plus, he’s super snuggly so he’s extra hard to stay mad at.

Well, until next time which hopefully will be counted in days and not months.