YJL

This morning after making a coffee and nuts cake, I went on to graft for second round. Yesterdays graft did fail, both basil and tomato wilted lifelessly. I chose the rootstocks and started with mint onto basil, which took me forever to graft. They were so tiny if using cleft graft, 2mm at most, the stock just could hold the scion tight while I was wrapping the plastic. When its basil onto mint, I decided to do wipe-tongue graft, although I kind of did it wrong by not cutting a slope.

As for that cake, which turned out more like brownie and slightly oily to handle, but it tasted good, I could smell nuts. While making the cake, I accidentally burned my finger by grasping onto a hot butter knife, which was drying while oven preheating up. The cake contains coffee, which I quit drinking last year, guess I found a loophole, I just hope it wont keep me awake.

I finally made the bird feeder and house, the feeder is made of small plastic bottle with peanut, cashew, almond, Brazils nut, and a few others; the house is made of jug of laundry wash liquid. Everything is in place, just need inhabitants and patrons.

What else:

• The carrot top has one ~2cm root, finally.
• While I was paying NHI, I forgot my phone number, I knew the digits, just couldnt figure out the order of them. I had to check my Google account to find out my own number.
• I also resowing seeds, but I wasnt resowing what were sowed, I decided to replace most with others, sugar snow pea, squash, pumpkin, aubergine, cantaloupe, small bell pepper, and luffa.
• While checking the seeds in handmade seed envelopes, I realized that I could reverse the envelop and even cross the written text. One envelop can be used for four times at least.
• That purple dick seed pod is funny, I put a few last seed pods in an envelope to dry, and they pop now and then, making quite loud pop noise, too bad they were not popcorn.

This afternoon I decided to make sponge cake for the first time, actually I did a similar one once, just not with egg. The recipe I found calls for equal parts of butter, sugar, and flour. 125g of each with 2 medium eggs. Not enough butter, just about 30g, thats with half of an egg. I didnt want to bother the rest of egg, so I experimented with extra virgin olive oil.

They turned out nice, tasted slightly like egg waffle, especially the thin crust. The olive oil one seemed softer and it looked with green hue, since I didnt actually measure anything, it might not actually softer, I just eyeballing by volume, even the recipe is by weight. Fortunately, the result was delicious, which is dangerous, because each cake was only just about palm sized, fat and sugar, need not to say more.

Next week, I will try to cut down the sugar and use or mix with other oil, one doesnt have strong flavor as olive oil. It didnt taste bad, just olive oil flavor is a bit of weird.

On to other things today, the fly trap kind of worked, I saw a few flies in it, but not many. However, there were hardly any flies around the indoor plants and compost.

I also lightly pruned that purple dick plant, three actually, which have overgrown and look very disorderly. My plan is not pruning, but allowing its seed to dry, so I pulled any branches or stems didnt have seed pods. These three will be pulled off once I get the seeds, although not sure I want to collect those seeds. There is a small seedling self seeded, of course that would be the one to continue.

Everything that took off from these plants was broken down and layered on the soil, like mulch, not sure how long until they completely break down. I will plant other seedlings in the same container, maybe peach or grape if I do get the seedlings grown.

Last week, I started to grow bean sprout and celery microgreen (not sure why only bean uses the sprout). Soy and azuki, but the soy bean was never sprouting, like forever, which I have noticed when I tried to plant it. Anyway, after nine days, the azuki sprout is ready to eat. Normally it should take about three days, but I kept it in a place not very warm around 18 degree.

The sprout tasted great, it kind of has crunchy texture and sprout didnt taste bitter. I could just nibble it as snacks, but I added it to a vegetable soup for a different texture.