Yesterday I made a necklace I don’t particularly like (using some purple line agate I got for a different project but didn’t use) and today I made some awesome honey whole wheat bread (and arugula pesto for tomorrow’s dinner, but I don’t think an ordinary dinner thing I make all the time really counts as “making something”).

I used this bread recipe with the changes suggested by several people, like so:

• 1 1/8 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup bread flour
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon yeast

Throw everything in a bread machine set on wheat/light/1 pound. I noticed that the dough was super sticky at first, so I added quite a bit more flour (both kinds) and that worked. Our bread machine is old and weird, so when the bake cycle started, I punched down the dough and then put it in a loaf pan and baked it (in the oven, not the bread machine) at 350 for 30 minutes. Next time, I’ll just do everything by hand because holy crap it’s not that hard to knead some dough. Anyway, the bread is really, really good — not too dense and very doughy, just the way I like it. The bread we’ve been buying since going non-GMO (Rudi’s) is good, but this is better and it’s not that much work.

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If you’re in Denver, do you know about the Chipotle Cultivate Festival going on at City Park on Saturday? I don’t even eat at Chipotle, but I think this is just about the coolest thing, ever. There’s stuff for kids to do (plant seeds, eat vegetables, make t-shirts), lots of good beer, and best of all we can see Tennis and Okkervil River (I’m a dirty dirty hipster and love Okkervil River). And it’s all free.

As the parent of a little kid, one of my favorite things to do is attend outdoor festival-type things where you can drink good beer, listen to music, and maybe get some food. I suspect Denver might be the best place in the world for this stuff. We’ve recently enjoyed Tour De Fat and Oktoberfest (although, being vegetarians, we don’t eat at Oktoberfest and while we’re at it the beer isn’t my favorite, but the accordion music more than makes up for it).

The big idea I’ve been talking about for years involves something kind of like City Park Jazz but on a much smaller scale and with DJs, probably at City Park because I’m biased and it’s close to us. It would be super awesome to go see, say, Mark Farina (if we want to be really ambitious) or just good, local DJs, at the park on a Sunday afternoon with your kid. Hey Denver, how do we make that happen?