Bugs.

I haven't been sewing much anything lately and just wanted to make something. Without a fabric option, I thought baking might be a nice replacement. But I'm staying with my brother and his kitchen is half-packed-up, which means the mixer is sitting in a box somewhere. Yet people have been baking for far longer than electric mixers have existed, so it had to be possible.

I gathered all the ingredients to make brownies, and plunged in. I melted the butter and chocolate, and I broke 4 eggs into a bowl. At which point I realized there was no white sugar in the cabinets. So brown sugar would do -- I decided somewhere between 1/2-3/4 cup of brown sugar would be best, especially since I was using milk chocolate which was already sweeter than other chocolates. Adjusting and adapting on the fly. All was good. Everything was mixed and ready for the flour. I dropped a 1/4 cup in the bowl and then looked in the flour.

Big mistake.

There were bugs in the flour. Little crawling gray things, and god knows how many invisible bug eggs. I was really annoyed -- mostly with myself for not looking in the flour before adding it to the brownie batter. That was just dumb and totally preventable.

After dumping the batter and playing on the internet for a while to mollify my annoyed self, I walked back to the store and bought more chocolate chips. I might have also impulse purchased some salt and vinegar chips to appease myself.

Then I made brownie batter again, and of course managed to spill melted chocolate, beaten eggs, and batter in various ways. Clearly, it was not a good day for baking. But I made my brown sugar substitute (I could have acquired some white sugar at the store, but I was committed to my experiment) and I used some cake flour instead of all-purpose flour. And it turns out that while chemistry limits baking in some ways, these sorts of substitutions are just fine. The texture and taste is slightly different, but they're brownies and they taste good. And there are no bugs in them.

Meanwhile, on the sewing front, while nothing has been sewn, lots has been contemplated.

In particular, I've been looking forward to the tutorial for this block of the summer sampler series. Kate posted it this morning, and I really want to make it. I might use it for a mini-quilt for my partner in the For the Love of Solids Swap or maybe make a baby quilt of them (I've got a bunch more of those to make for the fall) or maybe something else altogether.