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Initial Reflection on Dietary Needs

First Published: 8 January 2025

Draft 2: 8 January 2025

As I’ve mentioned in a fair number of musings, I want to be better at fueling my body. That means that I’m going to aim for a few goals:

both lets me get some estimates and gives me the actual links to the book where the USDA lays out their explicit recommendations. Unfortunately, those PDFs do not give citations, but I will trust that the data are at least generally good. With that in mind, the goals I should be hitting:

Ok, so that’s interesting and good enough. It’s always nice to confirm that there’s a large range of completely acceptable values for every macronutrient. The micros I will assume I can hit if I get a diverse diet in, at least for now. Now comes the much harder part: generating an actual diet.

I think that having the list of colors is a thing I need to do when plotting literally any meal, and especially while shopping. I think that it’s also probably best to have as much of what I’m cooking as things that I can generally do in batches that requires minimal in person effort. The absolute ideal, is of course, something like the classic crock pot meal, which is a turn on whenever and come back to whenever, with no real time considerations other than a floor.

I know myself well enough to know that I do, legitimately, enjoy cooking when I can, and that I hate following recipes. Those two conditions make a lot of meal planning hard, as does my tendency to forget things when they’re out of sight and to fall into chaos at the slightest provocation. However!

Hope is not lost. I do know myself well enough to know that when I have a list, even if it’s vague, I can often follow along with them, especially when I have a reason to do so.4

I think that this may be more than a single blog post is able to have, but I will definetly try to start making vague measurements in my recipes, so that I can both recreate them and see what the health information in them is. Additionally, that can let me start experimenting with different changes to each recipe. For instance, yesterday I baked a loaf of sandwich bread where I substituted yogurt for milk and added some almond flour.

Draft 1: 8 January 2025

As I’ve mentioned a fair amount in the recent musings, I want to be better about feeding myself. There are any number of reasons for this, but if I’m being honest, it’s mostly due to the loss of my mother.5 With that in mind, there are some general guidelines that I’m going to try to keep in mind going forward.6

Alrighty, that’s a pretty doable set of items. With that in mind, let’s start being explicit with some numbers9. Thankfully, Uncle Sam has us covered with that. These days, I do unfortunately think that I am Inactive to Low Active based on their terms, though that is something I’d like to change:10

I’m realizing that I’m losing the thread, so let’s restart.

  1. though, I could easily believe that my brain is in the top 2 to 3 percent of calorie usage, in which case would need to be higher.↩

  2. all in mg/kg, all RDA↩

  3. more solid↩

  4. like, for instance, this whole blog post and my general desire to eat better↩

  5. as so much of what I do is these days↩

  6. will be looking things up really quickly to make sure that I don’t miss anything super important.↩

  7. Yes, I’m well aware that the average American gets far more than enough protein in their diet, but I’m not average↩

  8. says that trans fats are banned, interestingly. Looking at the abstract of this meta analysis, seems like that’s not necessarily true.↩

  9. for the macros, in particular↩

  10. N.B. I am rounding everything, because I don’t like unnecessary precision, and don’t really believe that my body is a bomb calorimeter (unfortunately).↩

  11. which I kind of am↩

  12. which, wildly enough, is on the low end. The USDA recommends 10-25 percent from protein↩

  13. USDA wants 20 to 35 percent↩

Planning 2025

First Published:

Draft Two: 7 January 2025

N.B. In the interest of having single day drafts, this is the first draft up until reflection of July 2023.

I generally title posts like this a reflection, for a few reasons. Mostly, I want to use it as a way of seeing what goals I’ve had, kept, lost, and picked up. However, this musing is meant to serve a different role.

Up to this point, I’ve mostly been treating what’s changed in my life as though it’s no more a change than any other sudden shift, like studying abroad or graduating. I don’t know if even now I’ve come to terms with all of the ways that my life is forever fundamentally altered for having lost my mother. Goals that relied, in any way, shape, or form, on her direct motivation1 need new reasons. So, even as I look back at my past to see what my goals once were, my focus today is almost entirely on the future. I am willing to discard any goal I once had that no longer serves me.2

Time to go through every reflection I’ve had.3

Back in January of 2019, I had the goal of writing a sonnet every day. I do think that forcing myself to do something creative, in both senses of the word, and analog before bed time is ultimately good for me. Much as I think this, however, I don’t love sonnet form. I’m tempted to try common verse, because I do really enjoy alternating tetrameter and triameter. However, unlike a sonnet, common verse does not have a set number of stanzas or lines. Worth considering, at least.

Three years later4, I wanted to blog daily5. I was working through the Bible in a Year that year, and had the goal of keeping up on it. I also wanted to work on working out and writing music.

Apparently that February was the only February I reflected on. Interesting that I lose focus in the springtime. More or less, the same as January, though with working on my book6 added in.

March has also only been reflected on once, and I misdid the naming of the url. As before, with practicing guitar added in.

In April, I wanted to finish a draft of a paper I needed to write.

June7 brought the idea of listing the exciting things that had happened to me in the past month. That’s probably something that’s worth bringing back? It also added the goals of accordion practice and writing short stories.

In July I wanted to be able to run a little over five miles continuously, stretch, work on an exam, and revise my book.8

Poems, journaling,9 and curricular development were my August goals of note.

September had me hoping to work on my 24 for 24 list.10

I wanted to do NaNoWriMo and fill out 24 for 24 in October.

NOTE: At this point in the musing, I realized that I’ve been looking at the goals moving forward, so generally transpose all the goals forward one time unit.

I had the insane goal in November or December of that year of writing another 50K word book.

On the start of 2023, I wanted to add daily rosaries to my list, along with working through the Catechism in a Year.

February brought no new goals.

In May of that year, I split my goals into professional, personal, and growth. In general, they were single things that I needed to accomplish, and I should not forget the value of static goals. I also wanted to get back into bagpiping, which is also a thing I miss. Wildly, I hadn’t written any public outreach talks at that point. I know that it’s something I really started in graduate school, but it’s so weird to me that I only really started to do it about 20 months ago.

June had me counting my monthly words, and split goals into finite11 and growth. I wanted to get up at 6am daily, get ahead on my book, and write letters to friends. I also wanted to invite friends over to my home, because I was happy with its state.12

That same month, I also reflected on the reflections themselves. In that post, I introduced my concept of actually tracking my goals.13

In July, I wanted to be able to have friends over, which necessitated a clean home. That’s really it for changes.

August brought the goal of finishing a talk and nothing else.

September had me reflecting forwards14 on what excited me about the coming month, which seems like a good goal. I also started work on my album, which I have yet to finish.

In October I gave small snippets of explanation for why each goal was set.15

November had me commenting that the month had passed me by for reasons I should have remembered. I don’t know if I recall them right now. It’s distinctly possible that October of 2023 was when I found out about my mother’s illness. I was apparently doing well enough at prayer then that I wanted to do better than a rushed rosary.

At the dawn of last year, I kept up my tradition of five things that I was excited for in the coming year. Let’s see how I did:

I may as well also list five good things that happened to me last year that I did not list:

I did also want to swim a mile, learn a polka, read through all my books. I did none of those, though I was generally ok at finishing the rest of my goals.

Nothing really new in July, though that came with my acknowledgment that I more or less had given up on blogging.

At the end of last year, I made a list of more or less every goal I had at the time. I then spent some time sorting them into different categories, like finite and infinite, goals for the near and far future, etc.

So, what have I learned from going through all my reflections?

In general, I always want to blog more, stretch more, and exercise more. Most of the time I want to pray more. I have also gone through different phases for how I reflect.

Going forwards, I think that I would like to continue monthly reflections, and I would like to do a few forward looking and backwards looking experiences. Looking through the goals from my last reflection, there are some changes and some similarities from there. So, what does this mean for me?

In 2025, I am excited to:

Goals for this year20:

Looking more short term, what are my goals for the rest of the month?

That’s a fair number of goals. How can we make this a daily and weekly check?

Daily:

Weekly:

Ok, that doesn’t actually seem so bad. Saturdays seem like they’ll start to be filled with activities which lead me to growth, which is always really nice. In general I do tend to find that I spend too much time wasting away on Saturdays, since I tend not to have anything in particular scheduled to do.

Draft One: 6 January 2025

I generally title posts like this a reflection, for a few reasons. Mostly, I want to use it as a way of seeing what goals I’ve had, kept, lost, and picked up. However, this musing is meant to serve a different role.

Up to this point, I’ve mostly been treating what’s changed in my life as though it’s no more a change than any other sudden shift, like studying abroad or graduating. I don’t know if even now I’ve come to terms with all of the ways that my life is forever fundamentally altered for having lost my mother. Goals that relied, in any way, shape, or form, on her direct motivation24 need new reasons. So, even as I look back at my past to see what my goals once were, my focus today is almost entirely on the future. I am willing to discard any goal I once had that no longer serves me.25

Time to go through every reflection I’ve had.26

Back in January of 2019, I had the goal of writing a sonnet every day. I do think that forcing myself to do something creative, in both senses of the word, and analog before bed time is ultimately good for me. Much as I think this, however, I don’t love sonnet form. I’m tempted to try common verse, because I do really enjoy alternating tetrameter and triameter. However, unlike a sonnet, common verse does not have a set number of stanzas or lines. Worth considering, at least.

Three years later27, I wanted to blog daily28. I was working through the Bible in a Year that year, and had the goal of keeping up on it. I also wanted to work on working out and writing music.

Apparently that February was the only February I reflected on. Interesting that I lose focus in the springtime. More or less, the same as January, though with working on my book29 added in.

March has also only been reflected on once, and I misdid the naming of the url. As before, with practicing guitar added in.

In April, I wanted to finish a draft of a paper I needed to write.

June30 brought the idea of listing the exciting things that had happened to me in the past month. That’s probably something that’s worth bringing back? It also added the goals of accordion practice and writing short stories.

In July I wanted to be able to run a little over five miles continuously, stretch, work on an exam, and revise my book.31

Poems, journaling,32 and curricular development were my August goals of note.

September had me hoping to work on my 24 for 24 list.33

I wanted to do NaNoWriMo and fill out 24 for 24 in October.

NOTE: At this point in the musing, I realized that I’ve been looking at the goals moving forward, so generally transpose all the goals forward one time unit.

I had the insane goal in November or December of that year of writing another 50K word book.

On the start of 2023, I wanted to add daily rosaries to my list, along with working through the Catechism in a Year.

February brought no new goals.

In May of that year, I split my goals into professional, personal, and growth. In general, they were single things that I needed to accomplish, and I should not forget the value of static goals. I also wanted to get back into bagpiping, which is also a thing I miss. Wildly, I hadn’t written any public outreach talks at that point. I know that it’s something I really started in graduate school, but it’s so weird to me that I only really started to do it about 20 months ago.

June had me counting my monthly words, and split goals into finite34 and growth. I wanted to get up at 6am daily, get ahead on my book, and write letters to friends. I also wanted to invite friends over to my home, because I was happy with its state.35

That same month, I also reflected on the reflections themselves. In that post, I introduced my concept of actually tracking my goals.36

In July, I wanted to be able to have friends over, which necessitated a clean home. That’s really it for changes.

August brought the goal of finishing a talk and nothing else.

  1. or even indirect↩

  2. this is an aspirational statement, not necessarily indicative of any real fact.↩

  3. at least those which I was smart enough to title “reflection-”↩

  4. and horrifyingly, almost three years ago↩

  5. which was true in the prior reflection, and is likely going to be true in every future one, so I’m just going to stop mentioning it↩

  6. now my web serial↩

  7. nope I did not miss a month, no clue what you’re talking about↩

  8. assume that goals are generally transferred between each month unless otherwise noted↩

  9. ah, right, the spell checker I use doesn’t like journal to be a gerund↩

  10. Which, realistically, is probably a good thing for me to bring back this year↩

  11. static from above↩

  12. what a wild concept, honestly↩

  13. For those reading, yes, it took me more than five years from starting a blog to realize that I could (and realistically, should) track the goals I have↩

  14. projecting??↩

  15. Ok so that’s something that’s been extant before, but↩

  16. initially: Finish my album. Realizing that I’ve been nominally working on this for 18 months really just goes to show me how much I need to finish it.↩

  17. initially: Restart my web serial and find a way to make it a healthy and growth-inspiring habit, but I realize that it was a goal, not an experience↩

  18. or so I hear that’s what the wedding is↩

  19. meager just feels like such a British word that I cannot help but spell it meagre↩

  20. taken liberally from my 2024B reflection↩

  21. I don’t really know how to describe it, maybe ensemble?↩

  22. why non-musical? see the other musical goals and also below.↩

  23. I know that I’m starting very late, but there’s every chance that I’ve done novel things since my last birthday that I have noted somewhere. If not, well, that might be a sign that this summer will have to be filled with growth.↩

  24. or even indirect↩

  25. this is an aspirational statement, not necessarily indicative of any real fact.↩

  26. at least those which I was smart enough to title “reflection-”↩

  27. and horrifyingly, almost three years ago↩

  28. which was true in the prior reflection, and is likely going to be true in every future one, so I’m just going to stop mentioning it↩

  29. now my web serial↩

  30. nope I did not miss a month, no clue what you’re talking about↩

  31. assume that goals are generally transferred between each month unless otherwise noted↩

  32. ah, right, the spell checker I use doesn’t like journal to be a gerund↩

  33. Which, realistically, is probably a good thing for me to bring back this year↩

  34. static from above↩

  35. what a wild concept, honestly↩

  36. For those reading, yes, it took me more than five years from starting a blog to realize that I could (and realistically, should) track the goals I have↩

Christmas 2024

First Published: 2025 January 6

Draft 1: 6 January 2025

I started to write this musing on Christmas morning. It was a Christmas unlike I’ve ever had before, though for almost no positive reasons. I woke up alone in my empty home, with neither tree nor any decorations.

Last Christmas1 I mused about the different Christmas traditions my family had.2 This Christmas, we abandoned most of the traditions, for a few different reasons.

We kept the pajama exchange, though it felt far less homey, given that I had to walk a few blocks in them in order to sit with my father and brothers. We kept the photo with Santa and the family selfie, though I no longer had to angle the camera far down. We kept the generally low energy vibes, though with a flavor of sorrow rather than joy underpinning it.

Having spent a year without the traditions, my family and I all agree that we do, in fact, like all the traditions we have and want to bring them back next year. Of course, there will be a gigantic hole in the midst of that3 celebration, but that is something that we’re going to have to work around. I don’t know what metaphor will end up being the most true here, whether the hole will grow smaller in time, be covered over by new threads of life experiences, or simply avoided, as a scar in the ground. Regardless, I am grateful for the past year, the coming year, and whatever time I have left on this world.

Draft 0: 25 December 2024

As much as I’m glad that last year’s musing about Christmas contained our traditions, because I have already forgotten them, reading them was very difficult. So much has changed from last year, and some of it was even my fault. We are not at home

  1. I gave you my heart (song reference)↩

  2. has? It’s hard to use tenses when discussing anything with my family any longer↩

  3. and every↩

Reflections on Today’s Gospel

First Published: 2024 December 15

Draft 1

It may have taken 6 years, but I’m finally reflecting on the same Sunday Gospel more than once. While reading today, the two things that most struck me were the fact that the first paragraph of the gospel was almost entirely secular advice, and the second half was almost entirely spiritual. I know that the distinction is not necessarily true, but an atheist should take no issue with anything in the first paragraph.

My other major takeaway was the wheat and the chaff. Since fire was used in reference both to baptism and the burning of the chaff, I read it as saying that we are the wheat whose chaff is being burned off. Chaff, as we all know, is not something independent of wheat. It is the outer covering, which we remove because we don’t want it. Likewise, the sin in us is the chaff that we need to not just separate from, but burn away entirely through the healing power of Christ.

I’m really fatigued today, so that’s all I have, other than a quick look to see what has changed in the past six years.

Ooh! I focused on the fact that it was Advent, and mentioned that we should focus more on the joy aspect of the faith. That’s still true, but it’s interesting how my takeaways have changed through the years.

Goals:

  1. Ave Maria and Salve Regina↩

Learning to Draw

First Published: 2024 December 14

Draft Two

Visual art and music have always felt completely separate to me, in a way that I don’t really think is true of most people. Given the fact that both are what people will point to as “the arts”, or “fine arts”, there’s at least some level of correlation. I can understand part of it. After all, both are endeavors which fundamentally require conveying something within ourselves to the world outside, in a way that isn’t as true for other activities. Both are seen as fundamental to humanity.

As I think about why I consider the two forms so different, I think that the artifacts of practice are incredibly important. When practicing music, there is no direct evidence once you have finished. The notes fade, sound waves dampened by everything around you. When finishing a practice of visual media, by contrast, the page is full of every mistake you’ve made.

The fear at the idea seeing my own mistakes, and the pain of actually witnessing the work I was proud of a day ago has certainly been a discouragement from my continuing the practice. I also don’t know that I’ve ever really figured out a good way to practice the skill. With writing, for instance, I know that everything I write will, on some level, improve all of my writing. I also have relatively clear demarcations for what practice will most impact what part of my craft.1 The same is true of music.

In drawing, by contrast,2 I know that line and shape and form are important, but I still don’t see how studying one thing inherently leads to improved ability to draw something else. On the same thread, I also do not have anything that has ever been a huge motivation as a relatively large project. Even to this day, a motivation for at least some of my music practice is upcoming public performances, which weigh heavily on me. I write as a part of my job. Drawing is not something I’ve done.

And yet, this musing is not about my historical struggles with drawing, it’s about my current goals to learn how to draw. I’ve been working on the skill since about the day that my mother died. I think that it was the next day that I got a sketchbook and started to draw. Primarily I’ve been focusing on figure drawing.

I don’t really know why that is. Certainly I like figures in art, and at least some of the art that I want to create has the human body as a part of it, but I think that a larger reason might just be that the media about learning to draw I’ve consumed lately has been focused on people’s own goals to learn to draw form.

As I continue to draw the human form, though, I am more and more finding the ways that small gestures really do mean the difference between something completely discordant and something pleasant to look at. Simply thickening a line where there is shadow in a reference image adds a surprising amount of depth to the drawing. All this to say, I feel like I’m making progress, even though I don’t really want to go back and see if it’s true. I’m hoping to dedicate some time as I continue to move forward in my life to actively studying how to do it better.

Draft One

Interestingly, it seems that I’ve only ever mused about drawing a single time, almost three years ago now.3 As my goals right now hopefully indicate, I’ve decided that right now I want to learn to draw. I don’t think that this is a new goal, but it’s never been something that I have put for a sustained effort on.

I’m really not sure why I never really learned how to draw. For reference, when I say draw here, I’m using it in the sense of still life or figure, or generally of something vaguely resembling realism. I’ve done plenty of nonrepresentative art4, and I have run up against the borders of insanity more than a few times constructing a knot. Despite this, I still don’t really think that I can draw a guitar, even though there is one sitting in front of me at this exact moment and I can perfectly picture one in my mind.

When reading about learning to draw, a lot of the stories end up similar to those that I see in music spaces from those who enter later in life. Someone, either an authority figure or the general air of authority, convinced people that they were not musical at some fundamental level. Probably because I am a relatively competent musician5, I do not think that was ever the case for me. I also do not lack inspiration for things I would draw. My mind is filled with countless fantastical images that I wish I could convey to the world.

Especially since I have spent the past six6 or so years working on my penmanship, it seems more than a little strange that I haven’t really spent a lot of time with drawing. Of course, paging through my old notebooks does show a good number of pages with different amounts of pedagogically sound drawing practice. Unlike the music that runs through the books, however, there is no through line.

Goals:

  1. at least in theory. Whether or not those are borne out by reality is another matter entirely↩

  2. i keep wanting to just say art, which I know is wrong, and also I’m only really interested in pencil or pen drawing or digital drawing, so might as well just use that↩

  3. I hate that 2022 is three years ago in just a few short weeks↩

  4. representative was the word I was looking for↩

  5. it’s wild what things I do and don’t feel comfortable claiming. I have never felt good about saying that I’m good at music, except when interfacing with someone who I think is wrong about their opinion↩

  6. Oh gosh this blog is old↩

Brain Training

First Published: 2024 December 13

Draft 2

Because I am actively trying to return my library books right now1, I’ve started to actually try to read them. A past version of me was incredibly optimistic, and thought that I would be able to read through tomes upon tomes of information about historical science and synthesiz it into my public facing talks. Of course, life happened, and I did not end up doing so.2 In attempting to read some books which are little more than collections of essays, I have come to realize that I’ve somewhat lost the ability to read essays, especially social science essays. Thinking about my brain as a muscle may have problems from a psychological standpoint3, but it’s been something useful for me in the past. Just like how swimming is harder after taking a break, so too is it harder not just to think, but to think in any particular thought pattern after taking an extended break from it. I recently noticed where my mental strength had waned on Sunday as I tried to write a hymn harmonization. For whatever reasons, I most often find myself writing polyphonic music, or at least homorhythmic music.45 Hymns, by contrast, are almost always homophonic.

That is, there is one single line that can be clearly pointed to as the melody, and the rest act to support it. At a more fundamental level, though, I do not work in the realm of tonal harmony that often.6 Sure, many of the folk songs that I write take the standard I IV V approach, but the music I listen to, cover, and especially write for choirs do not rely on that very limited harmony. Hymns, as a genre, however, operate completely within that sphere. Because I have minimal interest in writing tonal homophony, I was very comfortable with the fact that I have lost those skills.7 By contrast, I’ve realized that I cannot read essays, especially in the way that I used to, and that is something which concerns me, at least a little. I don’t know where the mental fortitude to slog through dense words that are written from an expert in a field to another expert in the same field has gone, but I do know at least a few reasons why I’ve lost it. First, scientific papers are rarely written as essay. These days, most of the time the abstract and conclusion are all that need to be read. If attempting to copy an experiment, than a brief skim of the experimental section is usually sufficient. I am also rarely attempting to do pure literature reviews, where I synthesize a number of papers into a single document without adding new information of my own.8 Now I guess I have to ask myself whether that’s a skill I want back, and if so, how much effort I’m willing to put into it.

Goals:

Draft One

I found myself struggling to think of a topic for today’s musing.9 Potentially relatedly, I’ve been trying to get through the long list of library books that I checked out from the library at my school. Among them are books that have come recommended to me and a number of books I’ve found by simply wandering the stacks. I often forget that History of Science is its own field, and that tends to be to my own detriment. Because of the fact that it is History of, the field’s output more closely resembles that of history than that of science. That does make sense, given that it is tools and techniques from history which enable the research. However, it does mean that I’m being confronted with a fact that I haven’t had reason to realize: I’ve lost my ability to read essays. Hmmm, this is a little too off the topic.

  1. there are a variety of reasons for this, but most of them boil down to me realizing that I’ll never finish if I don’t start and my research being a lot of start a test, wait for hours, check results↩

  2. Ok so to be fair, I don’t know if I can really entirely blame life, especially given what will follow↩

  3. that is a statement that is just obviously true, but↩

  4. I know that there’s a term for music that shares rhythm but is multiple melodies↩

  5. Oh cool the term was homorhythmic↩

  6. I use the definition of tonal meaning something approximating “a single diatonic scale at a time, usually through the entire piece, with emphasis on the I chord, the IV chord acting as sub dominant, V as dominant, and resolutions at I. Usually this means that the seventh resolves to the first and the fourth resolves to the third.”↩

  7. For those then asking why I’m practicing it now, the answer boils down to the fact that the conductor I’m hoping to write music for generally likes homophony and relatively tonal music↩

  8. that feels like it might have come off somewhat aggressively towards the social sciences. That wasn’t the goal, and I absolutely think that synthesis is value, even if it is not explicitly novel in the same way as measuring something for the first time.↩

  9. No, I don’t have any good answer for how I pick between calling it a musing and a blog↩

Donut Recipe

First Published: 2024 December 12

Draft One

Wildly enough, I don’t think that I’ve ever written a blog post with the word “recipe” in the url. I’m almost positive that I’ve given at least a few recipes, so that might be a bit of an issue. However, that is not the purpose of today’s musing. As the title1 probably indicated, I’m going to talk about my donut recipe.

As with most of the things that I cook these days, there was minimal measuring involved. In general, this tends to work out, because I generally work with continuous ingredients.2 That is, if the dough is ever so slightly too dry, I can add functionally any amount of water to the dough to hydrate it slightly more. In the specific case of the donut3 dough, though, I do somewhat regret not measuring anything, because I used one of the only discrete ingredients in the average baker’s toolkit4: the egg.5

As a result, rather than simply describing a texture, I feel somewhat as though I need to at least approximate the recipe I used. My best guess is as follows:

  1. Pour flour, sugar, liqueur, salt, vanilla, and first tablespoon of yeast into a large bowl.

  2. Crack in two large eggs

  3. Pour the milk on top and stir with a wooden spoon10. Texture should be about the same as slime, or slightly thicker. That is, it should be very sticky, but when you stir, you should easily watch it pull away from the edges of the bowl.

  4. Cover and let sit for two hours.11

  5. After two hours, remember that for some reason you can never get yeast to rise when poured directly in milk, so add final tsp of yeast into water in a small container. Wait until frothy and stir into the dough.

  6. Cover and wait 68 hours.12

  7. Dough should be approximately doubled in volume. Punch it down by using spoon to lever the dough off the rim of the bowl.13 Because it is a very wet dough, might take some effort to deflate.

  8. Cover again and wait until clearly risen once again

Now, I am always a fan of doing things a little extra. The previous time I made an iteration of this recipe14, I think that I wrapped the dough around oreos. This time, at request of the people I am feeding them to, I had three fillings: oreo, biscoff, and whole strawberries. With this in mind, recipe will continue:

  1. If filling donut with a solid, take enough dough15 to cover the object and wrap it. Because we used high protein flour, you can stretch the dough a fair amount. Don’t16 worry about that, the donuts will puff in the oven. The older cookbook I found recommends rolling to 3/8 inch thick and cutting from there, so if afraid, use that as a baseline

  2. As each donut is made, place it on a greased sheet pan17. It is ideal to wait at least five minutes after forming the donuts before frying them, though if you wait to heat your oil until you’ve finished shaping the donuts, you’ll likely be fine

  3. When filling, dough, or shaper is exhausted, heat a pot full of a good frying oil to 35018 Follow normal frying safety when frying.

  4. When oil reaches 350F19, add as many donuts as you see fit. I found that in my wok, 1214 was about as many as I could reasonably fit, though I did manage 20 at once.

  5. Using a wooden spoon20, gently stir the donuts as they fry, flipping them if one side appears to be blonder than the other.

  6. Pull from oil when golden brown21, drain, and let cool on paper towels.22

  7. When cool enough to handle23, dip in icing of choice.

  8. Allow to cool fully! This is an important one, because the inside will likely retain heat better than the outside.24

By mentioning the icing, some might wonder about the recipe. The oreo donuts were topped with vanilla icing, and the strawberry were topped with a lemon icing.

I think that about sums it up!

Goals:

  1. and likely URL↩

  2. can you tell that I’ve been thinking a lot about quantum chemistry lately?↩

  3. my spellchecker and the cookbook I used last night insist it’s doughnut. Hmm wonder what gardner says. Tragic, he’s on team dough because of ingredient. However, given that it’s a 15  to one ratio, I think that I’m going to feel justified with moving the lexicon forward↩

  4. I did absolutely sit and think for a long little bit about what ingredients might be in a baker’s kit that are functionally discrete. Chocolate chips are, but almost never will they be treated as such, since they normally are done by volume. (I also roped a friend into this) An entire whole spice, such as cinnamon bark or a vanilla bean, is similar. Fruits and vegetables maybe, especially if used whole (I never know what to do with onion)↩

  5. more accurately, two eggs, but↩

  6. because it’s what I had. Given the way I use it, probably not a bad idea to use bread flour or other high protein↩

  7. I think↩

  8. I feel a familial obligation to use Gran Marnier, but A: the grocery store did not have it, and B: the store brand was much cheaper↩

  9. entirely because I buy yeast by the pound, and I hate to measure↩

  10. you probably don’t have to use wood, but it’s what I did↩

  11. since everything I used came from the fridge, I put in a slightly warmed oven↩

  12. could probably wait less time, but like bed, you know?↩

  13. I generally assume you use a bowl that will be completely filled and doming when the dough finishes rising↩

  14. 24 May 2022↩

  15. I usually need to sprinkle a little bit of flour on the dough constantly, don’t be afraid of that fact↩

  16. a pun you can’t make with the “approved” spelling↩

  17. or something else↩

  18. There are so many schools of thought to this. If you have money to spare, I have heard great things about avocado oil. If you have slightly less, peanut oil is often recommended. I personally “splurge” (in the grad student sense) by buying canola oil rather than vegetable oil, because I like at least nominally knowing where the hydrocarbons are from. In general, high smoke point, minimal flavor is the goal↩

  19. I really hope no one reading this (lol) assumed 350 C and didn’t keep reading ahead. Oh well, not changing it↩

  20. again, probably optional, though I like to think that the wood is less likely to damage the donuts↩

  21. if in doubt, another 30 seconds probably won’t hurt↩

  22. J. Kenji Lopez Alt did find that they work better than cookie trays for draining oil↩

  23. so for me: immediately to 30 seconds later. To a saner person, a few minutes later↩

  24. why yes, I did have a mouthful of hot strawberry this morning, why do you ask↩

Goal Updates and Scheduling

First Published: 2024 December 10

Draft One:

I know that I literally made the goals less than a week ago, but I have already forgotten them. With that in mind, I think that it might be good to start going through the goals I’ve accomplished, and organizing the ones I have left so I have a reminder.

Having forgotten about most of these, stretching is really the only one I’ve been particularly good about doing. I did write a hymn harmonization on Sunday, though, which I suppose is a good thing! I think that now is a great time to begin putting explicit time markers on my life. I know that my schedule will change when I begin to teach again next semester, but the first of those is at 11 AM, so in theory I can schedule anything I like before then. It might be worth considering locales as well.

For those events which happen multiple times a week, that means setting aside multiple blocks of time. For writing the song, I think that one time on Sunday makes sense, since I’ll already be doing music, and the other maybe on Wednesday. Great, they’re in at 8AM those two days, and I’ll for now plan on doing them at home.

For pop science, I think that Friday mornings could be a good day, and it would be nice to do them in a coffee shop. That means I need to pick one out on Thursday and print it out, since I’d like to avoid having to use my computer.1 I’ve booked it an hour a week, starting at 8am this Friday.

When do I want to work on drawing? Realistically, whenever. I know that I want to do it at home, though, if only because it’s embarrassing to have others see my work. MTWR makes sense to me? I get a long weekend off of it, which would be cool. In at 7 50 am so that on Wednesdays it will not conflict with music time.

I have scheduled 3 to 5 pm on Sundays for reflecting on the Gospel and writing the hymn harmonization, and 4PM Saturday for prereading it.

That takes care of all the weekly events, so now it’s time to start scheduling the daily events! I recently got an app that asks me about my day at start and end, and I’m going to treat that as good enough for now. 715 to 725 will daily be guitar time. I haven’t quite figured out where musing is going to fit into my schedule, but I think that it might help to figure out what my days actually contain on a weekly basis first.

725 to 740 is booked each day for the first stretch, and the second will happen before bed. I don’t think that I want to do daily affirmations, and I’ll plan to walk to the pool daily at 1050 am, except for Wednesdays, when I’ll move it to 10 AM.2

Wow, it feels kind of nice to have the whole day scheduled out like that. I know that tomorrow we will not be able to follow the schedule exactly, because it takes me more than 20 minutes to get ready and to work, and I have to be at work at 850. Guess everything gets shifted back 15 minutes! I hope that I’ll find a way to make this routine both helpful to me and also maintainable.

  1. though I suppose the ipad might also be a good choice.↩

  2. and other days maybe, whenever I have an 11am meeting↩

A Few Happy Memories

First Published: 2024 December 9

Draft One:

As I mentioned in my last musing, I’ve run into the issue of trying to do highly emotionally charged musings at times and places where that is not necessarily conducive to finishing them. With that in mind, and keeping in mind the two desires that these musings result from: wanting to feel close to my mother still and wanting to muse more often, I thought that it might be good to just go through a few quick and happy memories I have of my mother while they’re as fresh as they’ll ever be again.

There is a slight issue in doing this, though, because so much of my relationship with her was about the constancy, so the many conversations we have blur into one cohesive sense of warmth. One memory that comes to mind right now, though, is from Hanukkah one of the years that I was in high school.

It was during one of the phases that either I or my father1 were in the space of connecting to our Jewish heritage, and so we were lighting the candles. On Wednesday, though, we2 had Religious Education, and for some reason my father was not available to watch the candles burn. So, she had me take the menorah to the church basement, and I lit them before class. It was shocking to me how many Catholics, especially confirmed ones, were so unaware of the Jewish roots of our faith.

I think that it ended up derailing the planned class discussion, because rather than talking about whatever the planned lesson was, we talked about Hanukkah and the Church’s relationship to Jewry.

The other memory coming to me right now is when she said something which more and more I’ve come to realize is both absolutely fundamental to my own faith and also not incredibly common: all theology needs to be rooted entirely in love. That is, when speaking against something, love has to be central to the entire argument. Rather than using fear of damnation and hellfire, using the knowledge that the Lord is Love and that love is our highest calling is not just the key to good apologetics.

Honestly, the more I think about those words, the more that I find them benefiting my life. The more I can act and speak from a place of love, and the more that I try to ascribe good intentions to others, the better the world seems and the better my relationships become.

I also remember the first time that I crocheted a basic hat for my mother. She was bemoaning losing hair from her cancer treatments, and asked me to make her a hat. It took me a few hours of half attention, but I saw her wearing it so much afterwards. I know that it’s so trite to talk about how the smallest things we do can have the largest impacts, but I do truly find that to be the case.

In short, I miss you mom, but I wouldn’t trade my memories for anything.

  1. or quite possibly both of us↩

  2. I and my mother↩

Reflection

First Published: 2024 December 9

Draft One Written 7 December 2024

It’s been more than a day since my last post, which is not exactly what my goal was. Alas, the world is what it is, and I became far too optimistic about how much mental and emotional energy I had and would need to write the posts that I had been planning.1 Still, I do know myself well enough to know that daily musing does, in fact, make me feel generally better about life, and since I want to get back to writing my web serial2, this feels like the good and gently way to slowly edge back into it. With that in mind, I think that I’m going to treat this like I treat the beginning of most periods of my life, and go for some goal creation. Unlike most of my reflection posts, however, I’m not going to be looking back at old goals.3

Also unlike most of my reflections, I don’t think that I’m going to focus on deliverables as much.4 I know that there’s a lot of research talking about how goals are best when they’re actionable and etc., but the most important of the things that I want to accomplish in the next few months aren’t really the sort of thing that one can break down piece by piece. Anyways, with that disclaimer out of the way, time to stream of consciousness some goals, which I’ll then organize into time frames, etc.

Ok well that feels like a good enough list, if one that’s probably both too vague and too specific at the same time. I know that setting really optimistic goals for myself rarely works out, so I’m going to try to avoid that if at all possible. With this in mind, what’s a good way to break up the goals? There’s something to be said for timelines, there’s also something to be said for actionable versus overarching goals. Maybe I’ll just go through them all and think about how I can work on them before the year ends? That seems reasonable enough. Other than that, I’ll compile the list so that I have starting material for the future. So, without commentary, my goals for the foreseeable future right now are:12

So, since working on all these things at once would be, frankly, insane, let’s set come up with at least one way that I could work on each of them as a goal before the New Year, and then compile a list of what I’ll actually do.

Huh wow, that was far easier than I expected.

Given how many of these seem to be schedule based, scheduling my life is clearly a must. Since none of these are things that absolutely have to be done before the end of the year, I think that it might be best to focus on the bigger picture ones, like compiling lists. With that in mind, my goals for year end are:

Well, that’s honestly not the worst list I’ve ever made. I do love how many of them are list based, if I’m being totally honest. For now, however, I’m going to step away, if only because I don’t want to burn out too early.

  1. Thinking I had far more and it would take far less, respectively↩

  2. I’m terrified to see what comments have been left while I’ve been away↩

  3. for the triad of reasons: I don’t want to, I’m worried about what I’ll find, I don’t know how applicable they are to my day to day these days↩

  4. or, at least, I don’t intend to.↩

  5. I always hate ending sentences with an abbreviation that uses a period↩

  6. which, by words, I have done↩

  7. maybe one for the parish (pastorate?) day, or else one for the Church’s patron? Will consider, and probably ask my fellow choristers↩

  8. I know that that is a relatively sad goal, but it is what it is↩

  9. not that I do not still have any number of motivators, just that they aren’t the primary motivator↩

  10. if only nominally↩

  11. that is to say, find a way to make it so I can make food that nourishes my body, doesn’t leave me craving, and is doable with the life I live↩

  12. feels so weird to say that, as though there’s nothing else that I’m hoping to strive for, but it is kind of true↩

  13. I think that I forgot to give this its own bullet point↩

  14. this one is new as I compiled the list, but I really hate the way that my life is a mess (physically speaking, if not metaphorically).↩

  15. I think that I forgot to give this its own bullet point↩

  16. that is, figure out what occasion I could write a song for that would actually get performed↩

  17. in general, I do want to get better at composition and music, and I think that writing the song was my way of saying that↩

  18. i hate that I’m not allowed to end a sentence with abbreviated I have↩

  19. lol↩

  20. That didn’t work super well last time, but maybe this time↩

  21. as two footnotes above↩

  22. I’m not putting any further details here, because I um don’t want to incriminate myself further/make it something problematic (not that I have any ill intentions, just writing something semi publicly makes anything seem more nefarious↩

  23. I know this one is new even here, but it is something I’ve always wanted to be able to do, and it’s something that I can absolutely do systematically↩

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