Sports and culinary advancements

I’m well into my second term of my third year now and the difference compared to the previous term is very aparent. We have less labs than we used to, which is very fortuitous, as it gives me the time necessary to apply to piles of summer research placements and invest more time into karate. It’s a huge relief after January, when after suffering through a rather nasty lung infection I had to stay home for quite a while. As soon as I got better, I started working out and attending 4 karate trainings a week, and I’m glad to say I haven’t been sick since. It’s also a great way to manage stress and the constant nagging of deadlines, and it helps me keep a good timetable.

Quite late in January I applied to a team athletics competition called the University of Glasgow Superteams, just to motivate myself to start doing some cardio. I had just about 3 weeks to prepare for the event, and after having been bedridden for quite a while - not to mention having done no PE worth mentioning in the past half year - it was really tough getting back into the habit of actually doing something. My first 2km rowing were a torture and I still find it funny how I had to rest after every 500m, gasping for precious oxygen. Now after just a month I can do the same distance in one go within 7:30, a decent time given the circumstances. When preparing for the event I visited the gym for almost two hours each day. This not only left me with less time to do other things, but also gave me a gnawing hunger. It was therefore terrifying when I found, a mere 2 weeks before the British University Championships in Karate, that I weighed 72 kg, 2kg over the limit in for my category in kumite. For perhaps the first time in my life I went on a diet, and after almost starving myself for the last two days before the weigh-ins I just about made the category. I’m never doing that again!

Now that I don’t need to watch my weight anymore, I’ve dived into my culinary projects again and this time I’ve made a breakthrough. When I started making sourdough bread at home my first attempts were truly pitiful to behold, and in many ways strongly reminded one of a generous dollop of something a cow with diarrhoea would produce. The bread I make now is almost as I’d like it to be, and I’m sure that by the time I finish fourth year I’ll be able to make wonderful loaves every time. The secret to my recent success was using whey instead of water to make dough. How would one fresh liquid whey in Glasgow, one might ask? I produced it myself. Originally, I tried to make quark from milk and was left with over a litre of whey; I remembered reading somewhere that it could be added to bread and sure enough, the Lactobacillus in my starter seemed to enjoy it immensely. The amount by which the dough leavened was almost twice what it used to be, the speed also increased and the bread was finally sour rather than with only a slight yeasty and otherwise flavourless character. The texture of the bread is great, especially now that I have a bread form. By making bread at home I have already saved more than enough money to deserve a bread form, and the bread just tastes so much better that the toast “bread” one can purchase here. However, I still sometimes find myself missing a nice hunk of Šumava.

Sporty a pokroky v kulinářství

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