Wait, what Year is It?

 There's no reason to fear, the new year is here! I have been listening to more spiritually peaceful, meditation-style music lately. Mostly instrumental, like acoustic guitar or pan flute. Stuff you might hear in a massage studio to help you feel relaxed. And it IS relaxing, and good to work or do chores, or read to.

I might return later and put in some links from YouTube, because I use that often, but I also just instruct Echo (Alexa) to play something in that genre ("Echo, play chakra meditation" or "play calming instrumental music.").

It is officially winter here, as in, it now actually *feels* like winter. It was unusually warm (ish) for the longest time, and now it is appropriately frigid for the region. There was one recent snowstorm that melted within a week, but the ice blocks from the frozen kiddie pool are still ice blocks outside. 

Because of the weather, I have started getting into my "I think I feel like baking" and "Stew sounds good" mode, so I made different veggie stews and types of muffins over the past week. I am at the point in my cooking experience that I still like to check out recipes, but I don't *have* to, because I have the basic ingredients in my head and the approximate measurements for things the same way. It feels good to just "know" how much to use and what goes well with what.

I made different variations of blueberry-matcha muffins, which both turned out nicely. Then I had an interesting conversation with an AI model about clouds, and I asked it for a muffin recipe inspired by that. It gave me a great suggestion that I have seen on cooking shows before but forgot about, where you infuse milk with earl gray tea as one of the ingredients in lemon flavor batter. I haven't done it yet, but I will! It also had a lavender and lemon idea that sounded familiar, but that I've never tried before.

It's almost Steven's birthday and I'm going to make a lasagna I saw on America's Test Kitchen (and already made once and it is really good). That's when I definitely need a recipe, when I specifically want to make something that someone else created. I could wing it, but the flavors were perfect, so I want to do it right.

I have to go get some work done, I just wanted to create a post so I don't fall too far behind. I'll try to return to this with the lasagna recipe if possible, and some links for super calming, chill music I like. Peace and Love to All.