Flavour thoughts

Last night I made these cranberry-lime-browned butter muffins. They are good but a little sweet for a muffin - I used whey instead of milk and brown sugar instead of white sugar, b/c that was what I had on hand, and I suppose the brown sugar might be a little stronger-tasting than white. But I love, love, love the luxe caramelly qualities of browned butter against the sprightliness of lime and cranberries.

I also made apple crumble (using this topping recipe) and flavoured the apples w/ chopped sage and a tsp or so of fennel seeds and some maple syrup. (Apple + fennel comes from the Bolzano pizza at Domenica, which is scrumptious.) The fennel came through, the sage didn't - but I love the notion of apples and sage, so I'll be trying that combination again.

So, obviously more and more of my spare time and energy goes towards cooking. And plenty of my not-spare time does too - we're not even going to talk about how well I'm keeping up on my graduation paperwork. I am beginning to think about volunteering at a bakery or with a farmers' market vendor to see if I could possibly like doing this stuff professionally or semi-professionally - I have a dim and hazy daydream of doing public health work as my day job and selling preserves and baked goods at a farmers' market once a week. I need to do a lot more thinking and research before I can begin to think about whether or not this is feasible, but I am increasingly eager to explore ways to spend more time doing what I love.