Checking in and making stuff

So it’s been a while 😅…

My last post was a super short note on doing less. That note came from a place of still somewhat feeling like I was overextending myself despite moving back home and being extremely unemployed. The question really is what’s been keeping me so busy? Truth be told, a lot of it has been stuff I do want to do. It being summer has meant a lot of my friends who are in school either here on in the U.S. were around and available, so we spent a lot of time going out, hanging out and generally touching grass in each other’s company, so that I can’t complain about too much.

I’ve already had some new experiences in that time, which I’ve come to realize are new to me because I didn’t spend my earlier adult years in Jamaica. Going to a river with friends, outdoor movie nights, a solo beach trip. I also turned 26 recently. If you ask my sisters, that means I’m not long for this world. Hell, I’m practically withering. To celebrate, I had dinner with some friends and also spent time at Hope Gardens with my mom’s side of the family.

Being back home has come with its ups and downs. Life is definitely slower than it was in New York, which I appreciate. I also appreciate that I came back in the thick of mango season. I’ve enjoyed many a mango and even made my own mango jam! I’ll put up the recipe somewhere else on the blog (eventually).

I also attempted to make a sourdough starting using the wild yeast found on mango skin (there’s yeast on everything if you just don’t wash it 🤪) following this recipe. But seriously, yeast is everywhere, and harvesting yeast from fruits or other natural sources is an ancient technique used in everything from bread-making to brewing alcohol. Typical sourdough starter recipes rely on the fact that yeast is just kinda floating through the air and with enough time and feeding, they’ll be in large enough numbers to sustain a sourdough starter and be able viable to use to leaven bread. All I really did was inoculate my starter with some extra wild yeast from mango skins. Now all of that is moot because it got a bit too active, so I stuck in the fridge in hopes to slow it down a bit. Unfortunately that was a bit too successful and ended up just killing my starter lmao. Which makes sense if you think about it. According to my brilliant microbiologist friend, commercial yeasts are typically hardier which is why you can leave a bread dough leavened with active dry yeast in the fridge to proof without much issue. Unfortunately, like myself, the yeast on mango skins is not built to handle the just-above-freezing temperatures in my fridge and promptly ceased to exist leaving me with a dead sludge of flour and dead microbes. I’ll try this again when I can pay more consistent attention to it and don’t mind it growing at the rate it was initially.

Over the past couple weeks, I have slowed down a good deal. I’ve been making time to draw also to embroider! The cocoon in that patch is specifically based on the cocoon of the Jamaican Swallowtail butterfly, specifically the specimen in this issue of a defunct local natural history publication.