observations

Did You Know That Flour Is Raw?

I recently found out I’m allergic to yeast, both brewer’s yeast and baker’s yeast. Not gluten, not wheat, which is great, but pretty much everything made of wheat is likely to have yeast in it. That means lots of careful label reading. Did you know saltine crackers and numerous “flat” breads have yeast in them? Why? They’re flat. Yeast fluffs up baked goods. There doesn’t seem to be a need to add yeast to these…

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Mask Culture

We are now over 6 months, 204,000 deaths, and 7.06 million cases into the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Those are sobering statistics for a sobering worldwide event. While this 6 months has felt like about 10 years in terms of the stress we have been under, it’s a relatively short amount of time to create some major habit shifts. It can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a new habit,…

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Pandemic Woes: I Miss the Library

This pandemic is a drag. When we first went into lock-down in March, which meant closing the museum I run, figuring out how to work from home, getting used to Zoom meetings, and dealing with shortages at grocery stores, there was such a flurry of new activity that it was difficult to reflect on all that was happening. In addition, we had to get used to masks and social distancing, including avoiding stores and other…

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