stunt_muppet

I'm mostly over the cold by now, but I still have a ton of residual goop and up until a few days ago had to sleep on the couch because I'd cough myself awake lying down. Beats being actually sick but it's still very annoying!

I have been meaning to get lavender! I don't have any at the moment, but my friend was kind enough to make me lavender-infused sugar. Also, among my fancy gin collection is a set of lavender-infused gin from a distillery/lavender farm about an hour from my house. I suspect neither of these will have the medicinal properties of the lavender plant itself but they do smell very nice.

And I'll have to try the gin in black tea idea, especially with the lavender gin! I've been meaning to find more warm drinks to make as the weather gets colder. As much as I like hot toddies it'd be nice to have more options.

Thank you for the book recommendations! I'm especially intrigued by the idea of the vegan poundcake recipe that actually tastes good, haha. I've had more vegan baked goods over the past few months since some of my coworkers are vegan and bring in cookies or brownies, and I've been pleasantly surprised by most of them! They tend to have a texture a bit like carrot cake or cornbread, but I like both of those things, so it works out.

I'd love to try the Israeli cookbook too! One of the things I tried making on my new recipe adventures was falafel. Unfortunately I kind of leaped into it without realizing I didn't have the equipment to deep-fry anything, so I ended up using my Dutch over as a deep fryer and having to clean carbonized oil off of it for days. Plus, no oil thermometer, which means the oil got too hot and the bigger falafel balls didn't cook all the way through, and because the oil probably burned I couldn't save it for another time and I ended up having to take it to the county recycling to throw it out instead. It tasted okay but if I make it again I'm definitely just making little pancake-shaped falafels in an inch of oil instead of trying to impromptu deep-fry.