Posts made in July, 2011

Sumerian Beer Experiment 2

Another batch of bappir, with more authentic ingredients.

In most cases, when a cuneiform text says “honey” it’s referring to date honey. So I took 16 oz of dates, pitted them, and pureed them with 16 oz of water, making a delicious and aromatic spread.…

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Messy Desk Report: July 2011

Teas have proliferated on my desk. In the back corner, I have

  • Two kinds of yerba mate
  • Good Earth
  • Lipton Vanilla Caramel Truffle
  • Dawson’s Raspberry Cream Caramel (not actually tea, mostly barley)
  • Some packets of brown sugar ginger tea mix
Other than that, I have
  • Spry xylitol Berryblast Mints
  • Entertainer’s Secret throat spray
  • Vitamin C packets
  • One disgusting Pringles pretzel stick package
And lots of junk, including five seven pens that I can see from here.

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Sumerian Beer Experiment 1

So, I’m taking another crack at brewing a Sumerian beer. And the first step, is making a Sumerian bread called bappir. Here’s the recipe:

  • 24oz organic barley flour
  • 16oz warm water
  • 8oz grape nuts cereal (flour, malted barley flour, salt, yeast)
  • 8oz honey
  • generous amount of freshly ground coriander
  • generous amount of freshly ground cardamom
  • generous amount of ceylon (true) cinnamon
Mix everything.

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Alpha and Beta readers

Recently, we had an interesting discussion at our writing group. At what point in the writing process to you turn something over to a first reader? There’s a lot of variables, but in the end the answer amounts to “it depends on the reader and the author.”…

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Micah Joel

Purveyor of things geeky