Month: March 2026
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Ruokakerma | Cooking Cream
Ruokakerma is the workhorse cream of the Finnish kitchen — a starch-stabilized cooking cream (10–22% fat) that won’t curdle no matter how long you simmer it. Thinner than heavy cream, trickier than half-and-half, it sits in a gap American dairy doesn’t bother to fill. Here’s what it actually is, what it’s made of, and why…
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Six on Saturday | 28th March 2026
Week four, and the rain did its work. Rhubarb shoots, an overgrown yew getting identified, snowdrops under the plum trees, and a birthday party revelation about raw rhubarb.
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Notes to My Past Self | 25th March 2026
My mother made sandwiches with the cheerful logic of someone who saw no reason why ingredients in the same refrigerator shouldn’t share the same bread. Ham, cheese, butter, jam — all of it, together. I spent decades thinking she was doing it wrong. Turns out the sandwich wasn’t wrong. The cafeteria was just too small.
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Six on Saturday | 21st March 2026
This week we’re going indoors. One pothos cutting from 2010 became a dynasty spanning every room in the house. There’s also a revenge Brugmansia, a succulent that taught my son that broken doesn’t mean dead, a Christmas cactus I snapped in half, and two freshly planted beds of broad beans.
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Six on Saturday | 14th March 2026
The first seeds went into the ground this week — 274 grams of homegrown peas, pressed into the soil by hand. The comeback year is officially underway. Also: survivor thymes, immortal bergenias, a zombie apple tree, and two beds of defrosted freezer archaeology serving as a wildlife buffet.
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The Stealth Bread Project: Case Files 1.8 & 1.9
In which the jar of shame gets a redemption arc, the Nutella Protocol is deployed, and we learn that some grains need backup.
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Six on Saturday | 7th March 2026
I took a year off from the garden. Not on purpose — 2025 was just that kind of year. But it’s early March, the snow is pulling back, and I went outside with a cold and a pair of boots to see what survived. Turns out the garden carried on without me, slightly offended.
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The Stealth Bread Project: Case Files 1.6 & 1.7
In which I finally fix the one obvious thing, then prove the method works with a second grain. Husband selects stealth bread voluntarily. Unprompted