Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I promised dreamshark  that I would post any pictures of things that I've made from the cookbooks that she gave me from her big clean-out. So, this weekend, I made a rye bread from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.


Image: two lovely round, extremely delicious dark rye loaves cooling on an accordion rack.


I followed the recipe fairly closely, except that since I have Vera, the sourdough starter, at my disposal, I hived off a cup of her and added it to the mix. I will admit to being somewhat distrusting of the sour dough, so, where the recipe called for two packages of active dry yeast, I still put in one. I know, I need to trust Vera. Thing is, we had a somewhat disastrous attempt at sourdough donuts on Saturday. They did not rise nearly enough... and so we ended up with fairly leaden donuts. Good flavor, but so chewy and dense as to be ALMOST unappetizing--we still ate almost all of them, of course.


Image: they look like decent donuts, but they're secretly trying to break your dental work.


So, I didn't trust. Listen, Lyda's Lead Bread has been a thing of far distant past and I would very much like to keep it that way.

When I first started making bread, I did probably every thing wrong at one time or another, but Shawn (my only family at the time) would still bravely try my failures. We started calling anything I made with yeast Lyda's Lead Bread. It made me laugh enough to keep at it, keep trying. The truth is, now that I'm where I'm at, I am secretly very embarrassed by those early loaves and very proud of my current prowess. So, if this sour dough experiment is to continue, I'm either going to have to keep cheating or abandon it, entirely.

I was tagged on a Facebook post today citing the "cult" of sourdough, as in, someone lumped me in with all the people who are extolling the virtues of wild yeast.  I guess I approach this cult the way I would any new religion, with much skepticism. I'm just not convinced in the miracle of the wild yeast. I am happy to have seen results in my starter, but after that...? I have yet to become a true convert. In fact, I am definitely seeing the down side of sourdough. Everyone is talking about how yeast is basically free, so it's an easy way around the yeast shortage. But, NO ONE is talking about how much flour you have to feed your starter on a regular basis. I'm at the point where I can safely put Vera in the fridge and only feed her once a week, but previous to this? I was supposed to be throwing away half the starter and adding hot water and flour every day. It's starting to be fine, because I've been using the discarded half to make daily bread, but before it was ready I was throwing it away because it wasn't good for anything yet. We have a flour shortage here, too, although I did see flour making a comeback at Kowalskis.

Enough of that.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is the postal service. There is a thing going around various social media platforms suggesting that we all do our part to try to keep the post office afloat by buying postage stamps. I have no idea if that would really be enough to get them through another fiscal year, but I highly recommend this, regardless. There are some really neat stamps out there. naomikritzer  sent me a link to the T-Rex forever stamps and so I will pass it on to you: https://store.usps.com/store/product/buy-stamps/tyrannosaurus-rex-S_479204?fbclid=IwAR0W8EkhwUH3NqoxWzTJ7-zNZX_OrFppwXtfbB9umAPyx21Ne-VyQ66_gZ4 

Also, this is your regular reminder that if you need someone to write to with those fancy new stamps you're buying, I am always willing to be the one.  Just drop me a PM or email at: lyda.morehouse@gmail.com with your snail mail and I will send you a long letter and probably a very weird card. I have a huge collection of greeting cards that I have picked up over the years from estate sales. Not to mention very fun, cute stationary from Taiwan, courtesy of jiawen .   

I was also going to do the pandemic meme that was going around, but perhaps another day.

I hope you all are doing well.

 
Image: Void cat peeking over a purple plaid blanket.

It's difficult to get work done in these conditions. I believe this co-worker may be flirting with me. 

Yesterday was sunny, at least. Shawn and I went for a long walk around the fancy neighborhoods of St. Paul. I took a ton of house pictures again. So many, in fact, that a lady out walking with her dog and child (safely across the street from us) yelled out to ask if we were new to this area. I yelled back that we were playing tourist in our own town and that I absolutely adored the architecture of Saint Paul and that seemed to make her happy because she yelled back that "now was a good time to do that."  We later watched her go into one of the lovely houses, so I'm sure she was actually very worried that we were out casing the neighborhood. Though, how you would think we were up to no good with Shawn and I loudly blathering about dormers and other such house features, I don't know.

Mason was funny, too. He had us drop him off at the top Summit, near the Cathedral, and told us that he wanted to see if he could find his way home. He must have been walking for four hours, but I am happy to report that he did, in fact, find his way home. He loves a long, long walk, so that was good for his soul, too, I think. 

I probably won't post the house pictures here unless someone begs me.  If we go out again today, I will take more, however, because I think people who are scrolling through Facebook really need relief from coronavirus updates.

I was able to poke a bit a fiction yesterday, too, which was lovely. I didn't get a lot written, but I did commit words to page. It's kind of a break-through, honestly.

Wyrdsmiths, my writers' group, had an impromptu Google Hangout, which worked pretty well... though, like everyone, we are still working out some of the virtual hiccups. But, we got four out of six folks to join and it was lovely to hear everyone's voices again and find out how they're all coping. Turns out my phone works perfectly well for all of this, though I am still sorely in need of a new computer, as mine has a "best if used by" date of 1999.  :-/

We will probably take our government stimulus money and spend it on new computers all around.

Anyway, that's me today.  

I made a pretty amazing bread yesterday, a French boule, for dinner. The dinner was otherwise underwhelming. I had picked up some pre-made chicken Kiev from Kowalski's that I liked the spices of... but the rest of my family really didn't. However, we had baked potatoes and asparagus on the side which were darned good.


Image: smol, crusty loaf

We will at least eat like kings for the apocalypse!  Tonight, I have to pick up some cabbage during our afternoon walk, so that we can have potsickers tonight. Yum, yum!

Today was the day I'd signed up for a friend's meal train.

She was coming back home from fairly complex surgery yesterday and I'd agreed to bring "chili, and maybe bread, If I'm not too lazy." (Actually, I wrote "bead" on the form, but I meant "bread." I'm not sure how one would eat bead.) That meant that I started making bread around 8:00 am, right away when I got back from dropping everyone off. Bread is one of those things that is both time-consuming and takes no actual time. 4/5ths of the "time" bread takes, it's just sitting in a bowl doing its own thing. I put the bread in the oven at 10 am and started the chili, with the plan to drop-off precisely at noon.

The nice thing about making this particular bread (which these days is in the cookbook as "Lyda's French Bread,") is that it makes two loaves. I planned to give one to my friend and save the other for dinner tonight. I'd bought pork chops, thinking it would be a nice meat and potatoes + bread kind of meal... but that's a later story.

My friend lives in Minneapolis, so I got everything ready around 11:30 am (I'd bought flowers for her when I was at Kowalski's this morning, too,) and headed over probably a bit too early--but I'm like that. I'd much rather arrive five minutes early than five minutes late. Plus, now-a-days, I tend to get lost going into Minneapolis... which is weird, since it's the city I first moved to. But, apparently, I've been rejected by the Minneapolis fairy (and adopted by the St. Paul trolls.)

I only made one wrong turn and so drove around aimlessly, wasting time a bit before pulling up to the house.

I was really surprised to see her up and walking. Did I mention major surgery?? But, good on her. She and her wife were getting rid of some books and so I looked through those and chose a few for the little free library (Full Metal Alchemist light novels!) and myself (yaoi!). Their kitty inspected me very closely. Much sniffing. They have one cat named Uryuu, named after Bleach's Ishida Uryuu.

But, I wasn't there to have lunch WITH them, so I made my excuses and headed home.

For myself, I ate a couple of bowls to the chili before going over... so it was kind of breakfast/brunch (?) --though, ostensibly to taste test them. I'm not sure what to think of the fact that I gave myself heartburn. Mmmm.. Hopefully, my friends did not suffer the same. I'm telling myself that I got heartburn because it was the first thing I ate, and I had TWO bowls of it.

Dinner turned out to be "ah... no one really wants that" when I picked my family up, so now Shawn is in the kitchen eating bread and butter (and complaining that we don't have milk for cereal,) Mason took himself to Culver's just up the road, and I had a sausage sandwich at Caribou Coffee. I've had a little bread and cheese and butter, too, along with my tea. But, it's sort of sad "yoyo" (you're on your own) dinner. I probably should have put my foot down and declared the pork chops a "shut up and eat it" meal. But, bah. Thing is, I really like making food that people WANT to eat. Thus, when people don't want what I'm making, I don't want to make what I'm making, if that makes sense.

I'd rather save the pork chops for when everyone is in the mood for them.

In other news, last night's spell-of-the-day was the first one I've actively decided to 'unwind.'

( Spell-a-Day Project (Jan. 16) )

 Took Mason to robotics this morning.  Apparently, today was "bring your pet to work day" (okay, not OFFICIALLY!) and one of their teacher/coaches brought in her adorable Corgie, which prompted a number of shenanigans.  The point is, Mason had a lot of fun today, and their robot has a name, "Onyx."

I meanwhile, have been cooking and baking up a storm. I decided that what I really needed for lunch was a mess o' beans, so I made a big pot again for me to eat lunch from for the remainder of this week, into next.  Shawn made some orange, date, and pecan bread and a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  I've started a loaf of bread, half of which I'm thinking of making into onion rolls.  I may post pictures of some of this extravaganza later.

I'm trying a new white bread recipe from The Gasperilla Cookbook, which Shawn found at the library friends sale.

In about an hour or so, I'll be taking Mason over for movie night at his girlfriends'.  Mostly, at her house they watch "Great British Bake-Off," and here they watch an anime called "Haikyu!" and various other movies.  Shawn and I might have a movie night of our own and watch "Dark Tower," because we still get the occasional disc from Netflix and that's what we have at home right now. But, if we're not in the mood for that, we'll see what's streaming.

Otherwise, it's been a fairly quiet Saturday. How about you?