A basic cucumber salad with some onion, tomato and vinegar dressing is always great.

This is my go-to summer salad! Chunks of tomato and cucumber with thin-sliced shallot or red onion, salt and let sit for ~20 minutes to release some liquid, drain and add chopped avocado and your favorite canned bean (I like cannellini), dress with black pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Awesome! Let me know how it goes!

I’m OP’s wife, he told me someone asked for the dough recipe and it’s just easier if I type it all out rather than dictate it all for him to type up.

Based off the date of this post, this would have been the final iteration of my sourdough pizza dough. If you don’t have a sourdough starter, I will also provide the regular yeast version.

Sourdough Pizza Dough

Yields 3 ~230 gram balls of dough, which I find is a great size for our pizza oven. Start at least the day prior to pizza making.

Ingredients:

• 90 grams active sourdough starter at 100% hydration

• 400 grams bread flour

• 200 grams water

• 9 grams salt

• 8 grams honey

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a mixing bowl until uniform, don’t bother kneading too much at this step.

2. Cover and let sit for about 1 hour. This is called an “autolyse”, which during which the flour hydrates and gluten begins developing. Some would probably disagree with me and say an autolyse is only water and flour. Regardless, it makes for less hand kneading, which I think is great.

3. Dump onto a non-floured (or lightly floured) surface and knead until smooth. The previous step should make it so that this only takes a few kneading motions. It’s a fairly low hydration dough, so it shouldn’t be too sticky.

4. Put dough back into a lightly oiled bowl (or the same bowl, now lightly oiled), cover, and let rise until puffy, not necessarily doubled in size (but it’s fine if it gets that big). For my starter, in the summer, this is usually about 3 hours.

5. Divide dough into three balls (should be 230-235 grams each), shape each into a ball, then rub each one with oil and place into separate lidded containers. I like to reuse this style of takeout container for this purpose, but use what you have.

6. Stash the dough balls in the fridge overnight or up to three days (this is the longest I’ve stored them, you could probably go even longer). Take out of the fridge about an hour prior to shaping to come up to room temp.

Non-Sourdough pizza dough

Yields 3 ~230 gram balls of dough, which I find is a great size for our pizza oven. Best started the day before, but could also be made day of pizza making.

Ingredients:

• 445 grams bread flour

• 245 grams water

• 9 grams salt

• 8 grams honey

• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a mixing bowl until uniform, don’t bother kneading too much at this step. Try not to dump the yeast and salt into the same area of the bowl when adding all the ingredients.

2. Cover and let sit for about 1 hour.

3. Dump onto a non-floured (or lightly floured) surface and knead until smooth. The previous step should make it so that this only takes a few kneading motions. It’s a fairly low hydration dough, so it shouldn’t be too sticky.

4. Put dough back into a lightly oiled bowl (or the same bowl, now lightly oiled), cover, and let rise until puffy, not necessarily doubled in size (but it’s fine if it gets that big), about 1-2 hours depending on ambient temperature.

5. Divide dough into three balls (should be 230-235 grams each), shape each into a ball, then rub each one with oil and place into separate lidded containers. I like to reuse this style of takeout container for this purpose, but use what you have.

6. Stash the dough balls in the fridge overnight. You could probably also keep them in the fridge for up to a few days, but I’ve only done overnight with this version of the dough.

Bread nerd things, i.e. baker’s percentages: Both recipes are about 55% hydration, with 20% starter (technically 87 grams would be 20%, but round numbers) and 2% salt. Honey is also about 2%, the 8 grams was from a triple batch that I added 24 grams honey to, and scaled back down.

When I was a kid my dad would make ant baits out of boric acid and honey, keeping them out of reach of the dog and being very clear with my brother and I that this was poison. I did the same in an apartment a few years ago to take care of an ant problem, and it worked great. About 2 parts honey to 1 part boric acid powder, I think?

I think the bechamel recipe we use is Samin’s!

You know how when you’re on a voice/video call and the audio keeps bouncing between two people and gets all feedback-y and screechy?

That, but with LLMs.

What my husband and I call “Try Hard Lasagna”: we make a double batch of Marcella Hazan’s bolognese sauce (non-NYT link), fresh egg pasta, and bechamel. Then those all get layered with mozzarella and parmigianino cheeses into the best lasagna I’ve ever had.

I actually need to do this soon, because I promised a pregnant friend that I’d make her some in disposable loaf pans for easy post-partum meals.

Then I regret to inform you that Sabine has some not so great views on trans issues

My usual go-to for productivity is lyric-less “ambient” post-rock: Explosions in the Sky, God is an Astronaut, the Album Leaf, etc. I’m also usually happy when Spotify starts mixing in some Sigur Ros/Jonsi, because even if there are lyrics I can’t understand them (either because I can’t speak Icelandic or because Jonsi is just making “non-linguistic vocalisations” that just sound nice alongside the instrumentals). This is for when I’m at work doing detail-oriented things or writing. Lyrics or podcasts are too distracting because I focus on the words.