I steal other people's ideas

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

June 1998, I was in France for the summer. It was the end of my first month there, so I was probably in Paris or in Amsterdam. The World Cup in France was in full-swing, making travel by train challenging without reservations.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?

Reserve a room for the conference in November
Get new SmarTrip card (mine is broken for unknown reasons?)
Get cilantro for dinner
Finish making charts from the spreadsheet
Work on knitting the Hemlock Ring

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Not much of a snack eater - I usually crave desserts though. Every stinkin' night. But I don't get to eat dessert every night. This is probably a good thing.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire (in no particular order):

Pay off Pants' and my student loan debt; buy a house outside of DC with at least 10 acres to grow new world grains and veggies and raise chickens and goats; buy my mom and sister house(s); get vacation houses in Santa Fe, Malta, and Ireland; give hefty donations to Sisters of Charity, Amnesty, ASPCA, World Vision, Heifer International, and about 20K other charities; buy a Subaru. (What? I like Subarus)

5) Places I have lived:

Denver, CO
Streamwood, IL
Redlands, CA
Boston, MA
Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Pau, France
New Orleans, LA
Athens, GA
Rockland, ME
South Thomaston, ME
Washington, DC

6) Jobs I have had (I feel like I'm forgetting some, as long as the list is):

  • Barrrrrrrrrrista
  • Caretaker for disabled adults
  • Music Therapist
  • Exec Assistant
  • Receptionist
  • Telemarketer for Monsanto (yeah, it was a temp job and I lasted about 3 phone calls before I quit for many reasons)
  • Researcher
  • Physician Liaison
Thanks Jess, Jess, and 8 million others for the non-specific tags. It got me to post something that's not a picture!

All the cool kids are doing it


All the cool kids are playing, originally uploaded by swandive00.

(click through to see the details)

Table Talk


Table Talk, originally uploaded by swandive00.

I am having too much fun pretending I know how to Photoshop or that I have a Lomo camera.

Mainly I love this picture because I love Patty Griffin, and these are the "Making Pies" pies. (Youtube linky)

Dog versus Junior Bacon Cheeseburger




To keep you amused while I drag Pants to Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.
(warning: contains graphic images of a dog eating food)

Also? After 14 months of couch-free living, the new sofa will be delivered hopefully within a week. Woo!

Three Eyebrows are the New Two Eyebrows


Thanks, waxerlady.  I was hoping to have a giant, gaping hole in the middle of my left eyebrow.

My head just imploded

I don't know what to make of the second picture.

And we have bread!

I was all set to have a weeks, months, years long saga of the quest for gluten-free bread that would have the taste, feel, appearance of wheat, rye or otherwise gluten-y bread.

Two weeks ago I started a gluten-free sourdough starter (brown rice and water).

One week ago I made a loaf of sourdough from this recipe.

You see all the ingredients in that? Yeah, it wound up, uh, gummy.
Sourdough Experiment Part 1 - gummy bread, an alternate view
(according to the comments, Annie likes gummy bread so I wish she had been here to eat it) It also wound up short with a fallen dome because, I guess one of the drawbacks is that gluten-free bread is, uh, short in stature and doesn't keep a nice domed top.

This week I decided I'd try a Bette Hagman honey sourdough recipe from this book. For among other reasons, it's one of the only recipes I've found that doesn't use ricotta cheese (I don't understand ricotta's role in it either...), and is entirely lactose free.

Me, not being much of a baker, decided I could make it better, too. Ha! The arrogance of naïveté. So, I omitted the egg replacer, the gelatin, and subbed 1/3 cup of water for the 1 and 2/3 cup water, and after mixing everything for 3 minutes, I added 2/3 of a cup of room temperature club soda.

I plopped it in a greased pan, let it rise for an hour.

(I may have forgotten to mention the last loaf didn't rise at all and that there was a decided lack of air bubbles in it and it was just gross. but the crust was okay!)

Then I baked it for 60 minutes at 350 degrees, and LO! There was bread.
Gluten Free Sourdough Experiment #2 006

It was the height of the pan, and it didn't fall down. It was airy, the crust was, well, crusty, like sourdough should be.
Gluten Free Sourdough Experiment #2 008

Now, it's not perfect. I'm hoping that the starter will get more sour the more I use it because, frankly it wasn't sour at all. Next time I'll try either drastically scaling back or omitting the honey because it's a bit more sweet than I can handle. I'm oddly encouraged by this, and hope that in future endeavours, scaling back the wet ingredients will improve ALL of the scratch baking... because every last one has been gummy. (If you're curious, I used a gluten-free flour mix that was 3 parts brown rice, 3 parts sorghum, 2 parts potato starch, 1 part tapioca starch)

I'm just looking forward to cinnamon toast for breakfast tomorrow morning.

You know, if I had a toaster...

(ps - i went to a bridal shower yesterday and they had personalized M&Ms! I also figured out how to work the macro on my new camera, so woo!
Jackie's Bridal Shower 002)

Ernie with a blue bandana


Ernie with a blue bandana, originally uploaded by swandive00.

My little guy, the geriatric, is starting to show his age...

He's getting cataracts... :(

As long as he isn't running into walls, I guess.

About this blog

erratically updated for food, yarn, or other nonspecified reasons