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cottage cheese & chives bread ingredients: 0.5 cup water, 1 egg, 2 tbsp melted butter, 1.5 tsp salt, 2.5 tbsp sugar, 1 cup cottage cheese, 0.75 cup chopped chives, 3.75 cups flour, 2 tsp yeast. baked on the sweat bread setting with a medium crust (2:50). since i used less yeast, the bread didn't rise to the window (although it was still one of my taller breads). of the breads i've made, this is one of my favorites, reminds me of these chive-flavored chinese buns. the egg makes the bread soft, the cottage cheese gives it a nice salty flavor, and the chives give it a little onionish zest. tomorrow's bread agenda: i might make this bread again since i still have some cottage cheese left. my mother has requested an even hotter jalapeño bread using actually raw peppers than ones from a jar. after that i don't have any other bread recipes i want to try. i think i might make some cookies though. there's something about winter that makes me want to bake something everyday.

as of tonight, the current temperature outside is 6 degrees fahrenheit (-14 degrees celsius), with a wind chill of -12 degrees fahrenheit (-24 degrees celsius). it's warm inside the house but i'm tempted to go outside and see how cold it really is. when an tao came back from work tonight he was laughing and saying it was so cold it hurt. he said even in his hometown of hebei (north of beijing), it never got colder than -10 degrees celsius. welcome to new england winter! if you can make it here (weatherwise), you can make it anywhere! i'm glad i don't have to go outside tomorrow but i'm still tempted to walk around and see what kind of bitter winter photos i can get. if nothing else, i need to go down to the newspaper/magazine kiosk to pick up the latest issue of entertainment weekly.

today i was surprisingly productive workwise. maybe i was just trying to get everything done so i can have tomorrow off, but i still didn't manage to finish everything although i was close. as far as deadlines are concerned, i've been pretty on-schedule, which almost feels alien to me. maybe i'll finally write out an invoice tomorrow, get paid for what little coding i've done since november.

manny came over tonight (back in town after being in arizona last week) with some wings and my belated christmas present, an airzooka. i'm trying to think of creative things i can do with an air cannon besides blasting people. manny suggested shooting falling snow and seeing if i can see the vortex.