What is a commonplace book? For me, this is a space where I post interesting links, reflections on what I’m reading, and the newest recipes I’ve been trying out — a collection of miscellaneous micro-posts.
What I’m fixing:
- St Michael’s Bannock, late and weird, but good. We’ve celebrated Michaelmas with the same family for the last three years, but this year it had to be a week late. I scrounged together a couple of recipes, one which sounded more authentic, and one which was more doable on a single grocery store hunt, and the results were pretty good. We ended up with this:
Almost Certainly Inauthentic St. Michael’s Bannock
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 c all purpose flour flour
- 1/4 c old fashioned oats
- 1/2 c rye flour
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 Tbsp butter
- 1 scant c cream + 1 Tbsp plain white vinegar (to make buttermilk substitute)
- handful of raisins — I used a mix.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine dry ingredients. Cut in cold butter as you would biscuits – with a pastry knife, two forks, or your fingers. Add buttermilk mixture. Mix until mostly combined. On a floured surface, knead the dough until smooth, then pat into an 8 inch round loaf, and bake on a greased cookie sheet for 40 minutes.
- You can put french fries in the bottom of your frittata and it’s pretty good. This has been a third trimester PSA.
- You can put olive tapenade on frozen cheese pizza and it’s also pretty good. This has been a third trimester PSA.
- Things are rapidly degenerating here on the culinary front, obviously.
What I’m reading:
- Baby’s cells can manipulate mom’s body for decades. Even with the potentially creepy sibling ramifications at the bottom of this piece, I just find the idea so comforting: that however briefly you get to know your child earthside, she stays a part of you. That even when your child is totally exasperating you and you feel such distance, you still carry evidence of him in your body. It’s beautiful, and worth remembering this month, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.
- Vindication! Study says parents aren’t to blame for picky eaters.
- The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, which was given to us as a gift from Scout’s godparents last fall, and which we started to read aloud to each other, but then I got pregnant and sleepy (story of my life). Now I’m listening to it on Audible, and while there isn’t a lot that is revolutionary for me, Inklings nerd that I am, the passages on Oxford are dreamy and it’s nice to use my brain, at least moderately, in this sleepy chapter of life when I’m often reaching for the remote or just going straight to bed.
Leave in the Leaf 