Pronell

It was delicious but I'm not happy with the bottom crust yet. Gotta use some cornmeal as others do, as well as getting some poppy and sesame seeds for toppings.

A ton of the early ones are like this.

Fifteen years ago I was back with my parents in a health crisis, with both mental and physical problems. My career had collapsed and I had declared bankruptcy.

While I was living there, my mother's health failed due to COPD, and she was still addicted to cigarettes and wanting us to get them for her.

Her mental health deteriorated, and living there became hellos.

When I has first moved in, my life was in shambles and my sister was in a mental health crisis and getting a divorce.

My mom started sobbing that she had failed as a mother.

Within three years of that date she was dead because of cigarettes.

Since then I figured out my health situation (IBS and a complicating hernia) and started to sort out my mental health.

I met a woman (actually got my hernia operation at her insistence) and we own a home together. My sister sorted her shit out and rekindled her relationship with her estranged son. We have both gotten degrees. And my mom is sadly no longer here to see that we made it through.

So that was 15 years ago and I'm 51 now.

You never know what doors will open or close for you. Opportunities are not delivered evenly, and life is not fair.

But you can build a life in the moments given to you - what you do with your time, how you present yourself to the world, what you choose to learn - and this will bleed into the rest of your life.

Finally, once you have the resources, live alone or with others. Get out of that toxic situation, so that your family can be at arm's length.

Find out who you are outside of that. I think you'll learn a lot more about yourself and your parents with some distance.

Nobody expects to be toxic or mentally unstable. Maybe you'll find some sympathy for them, maybe you'll want to never return. Both are valid, and both might also leave you with regrets.

But they're your choices to make, not theirs.

And I've never regretted being there with my mother until the end, even if there were bad times during it. She wasn't always insane though, her conditions made things more difficult.

Find friends, if you haven't. Leaning on my friends helped me through that time and I am due to join them now for some online D&D.

To build on a point, failure is a necessary step to success. You will almost never succeed without failing first. Take a deep breath and start to internalize that.

You don't fail by failing. You fail by no longer trying.

People would probably accept deportations, sadly, but thought the warnings about concentration camps were overblown.

And in the Everglades, of all places. Barbaric, but also really fucking dumb.

Looks delicious! Now get some diastatic malt powder, use about a tablespoon per loaf.

I haven't made the long version of that recipe yet, actually.

I've made the classic NYT no knead bread overnight but not this one.

I actually cracked my Dutch oven on my last loaf of bread, hence pizza.

No regrets, the new Dutch oven comes tomorrow.

Amazon unfortunately, but I've read that brewer's supply stores sell it too.

Thank you! It was delicious, I recommend you try it!

To be honest the cast iron pizza is the one I started with and have been perfecting. I'll be branching out from there.

As for the mashed potatoes technique, holy cow, saved to try sometime!