now it really is spring

[kareina]

Our snow is pretty much gone. Just a few little lingering thin layers of ice here and there where there had been snow dunes or piles where we had shovelled snow. Each morning this week, as I hop onto my trike to pedal to the Archives for another day sitting alone in the library sorting through piles of papers so that I can enter into the database what we have before putting them into boxes on the shelf, I have been looking at the piles of leaves that had collected last autumn against the rocks at the entrance to our walkway, and wishing I were working from home, so that I could rake them up during a lunch break. However, most of the week, by the time I got home from the afternoon half time job, doing analyses in the lab at the uni, I was really to tired to even think about it.

In fact, on Wednesday evening I was so tired that I got home just after 18:00, did my yoga straight away, and was in bed by 19:30 and slept for nine hours (5 to 7 is more normal for me). This meant that I had enough energy, and enough time, before work to try making some yeast-based naan, after years of making it with baking powder. I shared photos of it to my new Instagram account*, which cross-posts to FB, where one of my friends asked for the recipe, so I typed up what I did.

Naan filled with nettle-almond butter

* put half a cup of white wheat flour in a bowl and stir in a spoonful of dried yeast plus just enough water to make a very thick liquid.
* go do yoga whilst they get acquainted.
* add several large spoon fulls of Turkish yoghurt plus enough more flour to make a soft dough
* pre-heat the oven on the setting for grilling only from the top, on its warmest setting, and set a cast iron griddle on the stove on medium heat
* make nettle-almond butter:
* melt a good size chunk of butter (I used a covered bowl in the microwave
* lightly grind a generous large spoonful of dried nettles plus a little bit of home-grown and dried basil in a mortar and pestle
* mix the butter and green powder together with a little garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper and some fresh chives.
* add several small scoops of almond meal till it looks right.
* if you have time let it rise a bit longer (I skipped this step, because I didn't get up *that* early
* divide into balls of dough about 1/4 cup each in size (mine was enough to make nine of them)
* roll out each ball of dough into an oblong about 2 to 4 mm thick
* spread a small spoonful of the nettle-almond butter (see above comment for details) on half the oblong, and fold the other half over and press edges to shut
* roll out and fill several at a time, to give the dough a little chance to rest before cooking, but not more than you have room for on the counter
* brush the top of one of them, and place it, butter side down, on the griddle to cook the first side.
* as soon as it starts to brown transfer it to a cookie sheet, cooked side down and butter the next and put it on the griddle.
* after about half of them have cooked on one side, brush their uncooked sides with melted butter and set their pan into the oven, not too far from the hot top-heated thingie and keep making the rest, putting them onto a new pan
* rescue the ones from the oven when they start to brown a little, move them to a cooling rack brush them again with butter, and resume cooking the first side of the last of the batch
* butter the tops of the second batch and pop them into the oven
* clean up the mess while they cook, but remember to get them out and butter them again before they cook too much.




Note that this was my first attempt at making Naan with yeast. Normally I just do it with baking powder, having learned that from a newspaper article back in the 1980's.


When I got home from the lab that evening I had some energy left (nine hours of sleep when you are accustomed to 5 to 7 will have that effect), so I did a bit of that raking I had been wanting to do. Whilst in the yard I noticed that the first of the nettles are starting to grow (good thing, I am running low on dried nettles), and that the poor strawberry patch has become quite completely infested with grass.

Therefore, this evening I took the time to dig out the strawberry patch, extracting large blocks of dirt/grass/berry plants and setting them aside. Tomorrow I will go through the squares and attempt to extract the berry plants from the grass, and re-plant them in the patch. Hopefully they will survive the process (they survived being transplanted from the field to this location the summer after we bought the house, so I suspect that they will be fine.

I must admit, when I read post from my friends who are in serious quarantine because they don't dare get sick, or because they live in countries with much stronger restrictions than Sweden has, I feel vaguely guilty that I am still going to work and occasionally get to see people. Plus I am benefiting from the quarantine conditions elsewhere, as I get to join in zoom meetings, and make progress on sewing projects and mending. So while things are hard on so many other people, my life is still pretty darn good. I mean yah, it would be even nicer if we could go to events, and there was someone to cuddle with, but given the global situation, I have it good.

Comments

[hrj]

There's a whole "survivor guilt" thing going on with those of us who either are not badly impacted by the quarantines or who actually enjoy some of the changes (like working from home). I think the best we can do is to acknowledge our guilt/privilege to others in a similar situation so as not to burden those who are truly suffering under the quarantine with our feelings.