see punk run

A gorgeous book with beautiful photographs of the finished baked goods, process photos for some of the tricky bits, and friendly illustrations that demonstrate the science behind the recipes. Because it explains WHY you're doing things this way, it's got an America's Test Kitchen vibe, only Cermelj herself is gluten free and has a degree in chemistry, so it feels more personal than ATK's GF cookbooks.

Be aware, though, that this is a book for people who have no other dietary restrictions. Cermelj makes no attempt to accommodate those with other major food allergies/sensitivities and most recipes include milk, butter, and eggs, and the only substitutions offered are for recipes with a supplemental amount of almond flour. The few recipes that do happen to be dairy free or egg free aren't even noted in the index.

Most recipes use a gluten-free flour blend. These recipes have all been tested with five commercial blends: Doves Farm Freee plain GF flour, and store-brand GF flour blends from Aldi, Lidi, Asda, and Sainsbury's. Why, yes, this book is British.

There are also two blends you can whip up yourself:

1. 50% white rice flour, 30% potato starch, 20% maize flour

2. 40% tapioca starch, 30% buckwheat flour, 30% millet flour

Some recipes then call for additional flours like brown rice, sorghum, millet, and oat, and starches like corn and tapioca. Xanthan gum is used in most recipes, and the breads call for both xanthan gum and whole psyllium husk.

And some specialized ingredients:

• caster sugar
• double cream
• dutch processed cocoa powder
• vanilla bean paste

The recipes give measurements in grams (even the liquids) and temperatures in °C, and each one has a beautiful full-page photo, headnotes describing the finished product, and storage advice.

The extensive introduction covers the ingredients and tools used in the book, and most chapters include their own specialized details about the science behind particular items, like pie crusts, breads, and muffins vs cupcakes. The recipes range from basic (chocolate chip cookie, hamburger bun) to super fancy (eclair! millefeuille!!) and are broken up into: Cakes; Cupcakes & Muffins; Brownies; Cookies & Bars (+ 1 savory cracker); Pies, Tarts & Pastries; Bread; Breakfast & Teatime Treats; and Around the World, with most of the fussiest stuff being in this last, involving lamination and pastry creme and whatnot.

The breads mostly do not use custom blends and instead call for the exact amount of each of the flours used. I made the focaccia bread which was simple and tasty though I probably overcooked it, and the rice-free (!!) sandwich bread which had a lot, a lot, of steps, but was soft and chewy and delicious even though I probably underproofed it because it never rose into a proper loaf shape. I don't know what it is about Cermelj's recipes, but I've yet to nail any of them on the first try. You live, you learn. I'll try again.

This book is a tremendous resource, and after having it checked out of the library off and on for several years (NOT because I was using it, but in case I MIGHT use it), this time when I returned it, I bought my own copy.

You can also find Katarina Cermelj at her blog The Loopy Whisk where recipes are categorized by diet (nut-free, dairy-free, egg-free, vegan, paleo, etc) and by dish (mostly breads, breakfast foods, and desserts). I've made her gluten free white bread from the blog, and it was also good, even though, again, mine did not come out like the pictures. I'm blaming....England.

Contains: casual use of ableist terms (stupid, crazy); one of the handwriting fonts used for the diagrams is small and its ambiguous letters can be difficult to read; everything is in metric but there are conversion tables in the back.

This review was crossposted to Gluten-Free Eats.

Today's Agenda:

• Decisions made since the last public board meeting
• Diversity update
• 2024 Board roadmap
• Any other business (Questions & Answers)

Decisions taken since last meeting:

• Approved new chairs for Webs, Communications
• Approved Board Confidentiality Policy
• Approved Board Break Policy
• Granted new threshold for Finance's expense approval

This meeting ran as smoothly as the last, again due to the fact that the only people allowed to post to the meeting room are Board members and there's no way to ask questions about the business at hand. The first roll call showed 99 guests. The second had 75, and the last 67. So around 100 people were there at one point or another, maintaining the trend of increased attendence since End OTW Racism began encouraging fans to show up for the meetings.

The diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) update, was, in its entirety:

We're pleased to announce that our contracted organizational culture firm finished conducting interviews in December, and will be sharing their final report with the Board very soon.

To that, Anh Pham responded: We don't have the report yet, so we cannot give a specific answer at this time. We know that people are eager to hear the findings and will share what we can when we can.

But back to the agenda. After that DEI "update," Kathryn S shared the Board's roadmap for 2024:

The following is a list of tasks that the OTW Board hopes to accomplish by the end of the current Board year on September 30, 2024. Completing this list is our goal, but it will depend on numerous factors outside of our control. We will continue to post updates on our progress on these and other tasks in the OTW Signal and in Public Board Meetings.

Trust, Safety, and Accountability:

• Enable Elections Committee to pay for elections without requiring Board approval - DONE
• Board Confidentiality Policy - DONE
• Policy for Making a Formal Complaint Against a Board Member - IN PROGRESS
• Improve Board transparency - STARTED
• Improve Board responsiveness and turnaround time for communications - STARTED
• OTW Whistleblower Policy
• Review and revise OTW policies for volunteer discipline

Soliciting Expertise:

• Procurement Policy (Outlines steps to find new consultants, contractors, tools, etc. in a fair and fiscally responsible manner) - IN PROGRESS
• Create Requests for Proposal for various consultants/contractors

Following Existing Plans:

• Stay up to date with Board's goals in the OTW Strategic Plan
• Assist other committees to reach their goals in the OTW Strategic Plan
• Support Strategic Planning Committee through the implementation of the Strategic Plan
• Lead the review, approval, and implementation of recommendations from organizational culture survey

Board Sustainability:

• Board Break Policy (Requires Board Members to take a reasonable break from Board work every year to prevent burnout) - DONE
• Board Hiatus Policy (Outlines procedure for going on and coming off hiatus, as well as establishing limits for how many Board Members can be on hiatus at once and how long a hiatus can be) - IN PROGRESS
• Board Annual Self-Assessment and Still Willing to Serve survey

Board Assistants Team (BAT) Committee:

• Approve creation of new committee - DONE
• Approve committee chairs - DONE
• Approve first committee members - DONE
• Work with BATs to create systems to better manage Board tasks - STARTED

After all that copying and pasting we had 45 minutes left for questions.

The first question was:

Q: Have there been any meetings or other progress regarding updating the AO3 Terms of Service since this summer? Given the timezone difficulties involved in coordinating real-time meetings, is asynchronous meeting being considered (and if it is not, why not)? When do you expect TOS revisions to be complete?

kcdayton: We are getting ready to begin asynchronous meetings about this; we hope to either make significant progress or complete the work by the end of this Board term. We will provide updates at our next meeting.

Someone astutely asked:

Q: I see that the Board has "started" working on transparency in the update. Could you clarify what steps are involved in this process, please?

Kathryn S: For one, better Board meetings! We're making an effort to answer more questions during these quarterly meetings. We are also sharing updates through the monthly OTW Newsletter, which you can find on the OTW website.

We have also made internal changes, such as giving a way for volunteers to request public responses to questions asked in our Volunteer Anonymous Feedback Form, answering volunteer questions in an internal public space, and having a policy for making volunteers and chairs aware when individual Board members are unavailable (e.g. when they are on vacation).

There were two questions about ensuring disciplinary measures are applied fairly.

Q: What internal policy changes is the Board pursuing to ensure that volunteers of color aren't held to an unfair double standard when being corrected/disciplined?

Kathryn S: We cannot currently speak to specific policy changes, but we are committed to reforming our disciplinary procedures in line with best practices, including considerations for holding volunteers of color to an unfair double standard. We will continue to provide updates.

The second, purely based on its wording, got more of an answer:

Q: What standards are in place for dealing with racism and hate speech within the org without being subject to the personal biases of the board and chairs?

Kathryn S: We are in the process of revising our formal disciplinary processes and procedures, and we're also working on a volunteer complaint process that will ensure fairness for all volunteers. We also expect the organizational culture consultant to have recommendations related to this.

Got a bit of clarification on what "soon" means:

Q: What is the Board's time estimate on when the results of the organizational culture firm's report will be shared with the Board? Will it happen before the next public Board meeting?

Michelle Schroeder: We do expect to see it soon, so definitely before the next public Board meeting, which will be next quarter (so in about three months).

Then there were two questions about the Board meetings themselves.

Q: Some questions here can only be answered in real-time with "more information to come". Could such questions be noted in after-meeting reports to help track issues due for follow-up? (Or is there another plan for reporting on them?)

kcdayton: We can look into ways to indicate fuller responses when we add the post-meeting replies, sure! On that note, Board shared the updated responses to 2 questions we answered live in November 2023 meeting in the #questions-answers channel. You can check them here #questions-answers November 2023 post-meeting Q&A.

We are also paying attention to what people want to know so that we can do better next time!

Q: Will we have more frequent meetings?

Kathryn S: These public meetings take a lot of time to prepare for, so it is very unlikely that there will be more than 4 per year for the foreseeable future.

Questions were also asked about improving communications between committees, hiring additional consultants/contractors, committees holding open meetings, what's being done to prevent volunteer burnout, and AO3's policy on AI-generated works. If you'd like to read more on these subjects, I recommend joining the OTW Discord and reading back through the #public-board-meetings channel, which is pretty straightforward now that Board members are the only ones allowed to post there. If you've already joined, you can use this link to jump to the top of the Jan 28 meeting.

The Board took fourteen questions all told, though some were not blessed with what I would call answers. The questions that did not get answered at all will be replied to in #questions-answers starting in two weeks on February 10, 2024.

Meanwhile, at the top of the hour, in the #open-chat channel where people socialize and post their questions for the Board, Kathryn S shared a statement from the Board, with this introduction from dazyndara: "Before we get started, we are aware of the ongoing discussions around the OTW and Israel-Palestine. The Board has prepared a statement on the topic which they will share now. Follow-up questions can be sent in via the contact form but will not be addressed during this meeting."

Dear Meeting Attendees:

We understand that many attending are planning to ask for the Board to make an official statement on the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is the policy of the OTW to not make official statements on anything that falls outside of the purview of the OTW as a nonprofit organization: fans, fandom, and Internet policy.

This is primarily for the following reasons:

• Engaging in advocacy beyond the organization's purview could risk revocation of our 501(c)(3) status.
• The OTW community is enormous and diverse, and is impacted by a huge variety of political issues. Making a statement on some issues would make our silence on others more significant – and more hurtful to those impacted.
• Researching and crafting official statements on complex political issues takes a significant amount of time and effort, and the Board has limited time and needs to focus on the elected mandate of running and improving the OTW.
• The OTW is respected as an advocate for fans and fandom, and our statements in this regard are therefore taken seriously and have an impact. Public stances made by the OTW regarding topics outside of the organization's scope are far less likely to be taken seriously, and could even reduce the impact of future statements made within our purview.

We know that this is disappointing to many of you, and we are sorry. However, as the people responsible for the current and future wellbeing of the OTW, we are not going to break or change this policy.

Respectfully,
The OTW Board

But as satsuma points out in So the OTW Board is still being terrible, but this time about Gaza, the OTW has already taken a political stance when they decided to treat the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" as threatening rather than liberatory, and now they are refusing to comment on that choice.

For this, and other reasons, I found this meeting very frustrating. I am not feeling any kind of increased transparency from the OTW or the Board, and that DEI update was a joke. Also they were back to banging on the drum of the Contact Us Form. I once again took them at their word and threw this series of questions into their mailbox: What is the structure of your agreement with the consultant firm? What are they contractually obligated to deliver? Is it just a report or will they be assisting in or assessing your implementation of their recommendations?

But I still haven't gotten any response to the last ten letters I sent, so at this point I'd have just as much luck chucking them down a wishing well, with about the same results.

{also posted to Tumblr}