Whenever my brain needed a break from studying, the kitchen was in full swing. Pancakes, sourdough pizza wheels, and syrup for drinks were made while avoiding exam prep. I’ll show you all that while talking about good sources for ingredients and ranting about supermarket organic.

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Below are some image impressions from the video. If you are visually impaired or prefer reading to watching, feel free to refer to the subtitles of the video. For easier reading, I have pasted these below in both English and German. I try to share as much of the story in words in addition to images.

Procrastination is a form of productivity, in my book. Wanting to escape a literary analysis and exam prep, I got a lot done.

Pancakes, syrup, bread. The kitchen was in full swing whenever my brain needed a break from studying.

I’d been too stressed to make dinner plans. My brain was fried.

When someone posted about making pancakes, I wanted pancakes. Simple, right?

But my previous pancake attempt had been a mess. Literally and metaphorically.

Plus, we don’t use yeast or baking powder.

But there are recipes for pancakes without the modern industrial additions.

So, I decided to get over myself and try again.

I followed the recipe carefully to make the batter. I didn’t want to make another mess.

To my surprise, it came together nicely.

This was supposed to be dinner, so I chose to make savory pancakes.

I debated long if I should add any sugar. The recipe called for a lot. I halved the sugar in the end.

Without yeast, this should be a taste thing, so we’ll test it out.

Our stove is broken, so I have to take turns on what gets heat. I have to send it in for repairs.

I have to dig out the non-induction cookplate from the back of a nook you’ll get to see later.

This is already our fourth cooktop. They all die after a few months and have to be returned.

I guess they are not meant to be used. That seems to be a common issue we face in this household. We use our things.

The obsession with touch functionality is worth an entire rant of its own.

I miss buttons. Real, touch-me-feel-me buttons. Can we get those back, please?

But we were talking about pancakes, weren’t we?

I burnt the first pancake a bit but not too bad–and it only broke into two pieces.

I added more from our final bottle of sunflower seed oil. We are removing the highly-processed oils from our home.

The batter looked really smooth. I was so happy with it. I know it looks like there are lumps but only on the bowl.

The big lesson I learned about pancakes:

Patience. Patience makes pancakes.

I’ve made pancakes a few more times since. I’ve lost my fear of them. And they are getting better, too.

If you don’t mess with the batter until the bottom half is cooked, the mess is minimal–and the pancake stays whole.

I get now why people love pancakes so much. They are very versatile. In this case, beef and mushrooms.

I also highly recommend bell peppers, corn, and beans. Or, you can go breakfast-style and add something sweet.

I also added some sour cream on top. I can’t tell you how much the store-bought ingredients bother me.

I miss the farm shop.

Hopefully, we will only live here for a few months. This was a rushed move. We would not have chosen this place.

But now we don’t need to rush finding a place that fits better. We have time.

What we don’t have is sources for good ingredients.

I’d need to drive an hour to get good food–to where we lived before.

“Good morning!”

We’ve figured out a routine to get meat when I check on the garden and pick up my prescription.

“Pepper, come on.”

But there were a few weeks when grocery-store organic was the best we could do.

We didn’t have a good source of produce, dairy, and eggs either.

For a few weeks, we tried buying organic at the store and lowering our standards but it just doesn’t work.

I like making things from scratch, knowing where the ingredients come from.

Leaving aside the environmental and ethical issues with industrial dairy, meat, and eggs–

and believe me, that’s tough to do–it all tasted so much worse.

I maintain a sourdough to bake all our baked goods instead of using yeast.

Well, industrial yeast, that is. Of course, there are wild yeasts in the sourdough starter.

One by one, processed ingredients vanish from our pantry.

As one thing becomes routine, I add another.

We used to drink a lot of soda. Now, I make flavored syrups instead. This time, I was very low on mint.

And what I had was getting devoured by aphids. Lemon-honey syrup, it was.

Cooking from scratch gets you in touch with all steps of what makes food food.

I grew that mint. I know the fields that fed the bees for this honey.

Eating local honey that hasn’t been processed to death means eating local pollen all year.

My lemon tree is still only a handful of leaves tall, so it will be a while before we meet our demand for lemons.

We will probably never not buy at least some of our lemon juice. And that’s okay.

Not everything is possible to do yourself. Not everything makes sense. But where I can, it’s highly satisfying.

Okay, that’s in there. We’ve got three pots waiting and we’ve got

the bread rising so hopefully

everything that I needed to do is done now and all I need

to do is wait. Because I only

put in a little bit of mint, it’s probably not going to

develop a lot of flavor. I much

prefer these flavored, but I don’t have a

garden here and there’s just nothing I can

throw in as a bit of flavoring, I’ve got it in lemons, so

we’re just going to live with

lemon syrup, that’s fine. And once we’ve

got a herb garden again, there’s going to be

lavender and mint and all that again, just

like we did last year. We’re out of syrup

with flavor now, so excited this. We’re drinking water for

the next few months and I’m not

that good at drinking plain water.

Making things from scratch also makes you more comfortable with experimentation.

I wanted something I could freeze to thaw and finish up when I need a quick meal.

So, I decided to turn yesterday’s pasta sauce and a bread dough into pizza wheels.

I had never done that before. I didn’t have a recipe. I just followed my gut–and knew my dough.

From making pizzas, I knew how wet it could get before tearing, for example.

I am still always surprised when things work out. Maybe, at some point, I’ll just trust myself?

If I wanted to freeze these, I’d freeze them unfinished, them bake them again to finish them up.

Bottling the syrup brought a little detour.

While filling the bottles, I realized where my lids were. There was some real-life-tetris in my future.

There is a nook in our hall filled with things we can’t use here.

At the very back are my canning jars and the lids I’m looking for. No garden means no canning, right?

The lids I needed were in the second-to-last box.

But before long, the lids were on and the canner running.

So long, and thanks for being here.