Happy Halloween everyone! I dressed up as Rosie the Riveter this year - it was a fun and easy costume to do. Today's post is mostly about how I'm gradually getting into a rhythm (of randomness). I set three simple rules for myself:

1. Get up every morning and do something useful - no lounging in pajamas.
2. No sitting in front of the TV and bumming out.
3. Spend some quality time by myself in quiet contemplation.

The first day of my early mid-life crisis was yesterday. I kept it simple. I wrote out the projects I wanted to do and planned my India trip. The weather was gorgeous so I headed out on a long walk after lunch. It was amazing being surrounded by beautiful fall colors while listening to old Hindi songs. I also caught up on some reading that had taken a back seat for a while. Today was far more interesting. I did a smattering of different things. I finished Day 23 of 30 days of yoga (thanks Rowena for telling me about it) and continued learning Spanish from Duolingo. Today's post is a kitchen special - Injera and Project #2 (from my long, long list of projects to experiment with - the kitchen projects seemed easier to get a head start on before I travel). INJERA Harneet mentioned that he was going to cook Ethiopian food two days ago. Whenever we've done this in the past, we just pick up injera from Seattle. I ❤️ injera and the sour, fermented taste of it. This time, I decided that it would be fun to try making injera from scratch instead. I tried instant injera a few days ago (takes just an hour or so to make). While good, it wasn't as sour as I had eaten in my favorite Ethiopian restaurant (Altaye Ethiopian Restaurant). So on Sunday night I put the batter into my Instant Pot to ferment and it was the right amount of smelly and fluffy this morning (by right amount of smelly, I mean it stank pretty bad and I had to boil some cinnamon and spices to get rid of the smell 😉). Was the smell worth it? I think so! The injera turned out great. Here are a few pictures of the process and the end result. [gallery ids="139,143,141,140,142" type="columns"]And here is our dinner - Doro Wat (Ethiopian chicken and egg dish prepared by Harneet) with the Injera. TAKE AND BAKE DOGGIE COOKIE DOUGH I also started experimenting with Project #2 (if you are wondering about Project #1, I'll get into that some other day). I call Project #2 "Take and bake doggie cookie dough".  Basically, its cookie dough for dogs that can be baked fresh at any time (think Nestle tollhouse break and bake cookie dough). Hypothesis: people with pets love to spoil them and the process of baking fresh cookies for their puppies without all the hard work is an attractive option. The first recipe I experimented with was a pumpkin peanut butter cookie dough, and of course, my favorite puppy Phoenix was happy to oblige as a test subject (he risked a timeout and managed to get some cookie dough off the counter too). I baked two of them today before popping the rest in the freezer and happy Phoenix made sure they vanished in seconds. [gallery ids="189,190,191,192,208" type="rectangular"]As a first phase, I'm going to start distributing these out to a few friends with dogs to see what they think. If it goes well, I can move on to the next step of figuring out market, regulations, packaging and distribution. If not, Phoenix scores some yummy homemade cookies anyway. It's a win-win situation. Of course, Harneet has been tasked with continuing to bake the frozen cut-out cookie dough with the same willing test subject while I am away - longitudinal studies are important 😂. Until next time, thanks for stopping by.