Thanks, waxerlady. I was hoping to have a giant, gaping hole in the middle of my left eyebrow.
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.
(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.
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.
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!
Ernie with a blue bandana
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.
Look! Deers!
Yesterday? It was an amazing day. I got a fancy new haircut (woo!), had lunch with a friend, bought a new pair of work shoes. Just before leaving the mall, Pants wanders up and oohs and ahhs over my hair (he's a good boyfriend), and hands me a Nikon Coolpix L18.
You know, since my crappy camera I'd had for 2 years died in December. Time to reiterate the "he's a good boyfriend" parenthetical note.
Before I forget, something many people do not know but that is TOTALLY TRUE: Nordstrom will price match if another retailer carries the same item for less. And has free shipping. And the best return policy and customer service ever.
Anyhow, we've started walking around 2 miles a day, every day. Last night, I'm waffling about whether or not to bring the camera. Decide no, because although Crestwood is beautiful, and abuts Rock Creek Park on 3 sides, there's nothing I feel like photographing in particular.
We had been walking for 15 minutes when I saw a gorgeous flowering tree in front of a gorgeous house in the dusk lighting, and I thought, dude, I wish I had my camera...
About 10 minutes later, we're walking and discussing how we had seen a deer on the park slope about 8-9 months ago. We round the corner, and there's a deer standing in the middle of the road.
There's another deer peeking out between two houses.
The first one makes a break for another backyard, is followed by another deer hiding behind a car. The one between the houses takes off and meets his friends. Then a fourth deer emerges and crosses the road.
The only sound is deer hoofs on the pavement.
We start walking again and see the 4 deer have leapt a fence and are milling about in a backyard eating berries. In the center of the District of Columbia.
I'm never leaving without my camera again.
Unsubstantiated rumors, or, it's Armageddon, people!
The District of Columbia is NOT where you want to be right now. It gets a bad rap for the crime and the pomposity of its residents but in the last 24 hours, there were:
- Highway closures from burning or overturned vehicles
- Manhole fires resulting in power outages
- Rumors of armed robberies at the new Target in Columbia Heights (the Metro muggings were not from the last 24 hours)
- My co-worker's apartment was used as a staging area for U.S. Marshals and MPD to take his fugitive neighbor into custody
- Several people lost water last night
- The people who drive my shuttle said the numerous cop cars (and, a co-worker later reported ambulance was present) at L'Enfant Plaza station were for a reported jumper on the tracks. No service disruptions reported on WMATA website, though.
- The Eliot Spitzer story doesn't really fit in the timbre of these other occurences but has a DC element to it.
- Also not an unsubstantiated rumor, but a darn good graphic in this story about pedestrian safety.
Nice to know my student loans went toward something useful...
You Should Be an Artist |
 You are incredibly creative, spontaneous, and unique. No one can guess what you're going to do next, but it's usually something amazing. You can't deal with routine, rules, or structure. You're easily bored. As long as you are able to innovate and break the rules, you are extremely successful. You do best when you: - Can work by yourself - Can express your personality in your work You would also be a good journalist or actor. |
filched from cyn
Stop and smell the bandwagon
I think this may very well be my fifth (and final) post for the month of February. It's a long month, I may as well have extra posts.
Of course five posts in February is a ballpark estimate. I could go and actually count my posts, but where would the fun in that be? There I go, justifying laziness as whimsy! Try it, it's fun.
This month has involved much contemplation on the topic of food. Not as in what should I eat to help me lose that 989123 lbs. I'd like to lose some, but more by way of feeding Pants and I healthily, thoughtfully, and deliciously. I've still been ever so obsessed by thoughts and chapters and meals in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Reading Sarah's thoughts and challenges on eating locally, taking the plunge and chucking all the processed food out to make room for the good stuff invigorates me. Even more so, reading her posts on the Dinner Guest Blog (especially this one) start to light a fire under me.
But...
And there's always a but. I'm looking at my checking account. I'm thinking of the time I spend waiting for the shuttle, then the Metro, then the Bus and the idea of going to the grocery store seems so horrifying. I see the free range, grass-fed meats and eggs and dairy products. I even found a dairy that delivers to DC, heard of a bodega selling local foods at 200 Rhode Island NW. My landlord says I can grow potted tomatoes and chiles in the back yard this summer! I think of the rows and rows of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce that I will have canned to last me through the winter.
But...
That threshold isn't easily crossed. My bargain hunter thinks of the half-gallons of milk that cost $3.50 that are from happy cows who wander around pastures eating grass and contemplating entropy and doesn't want to justify the purchase when I could get a gallon for $3.79. I see the organic chicken who eat worms and beetles and grass and peck at the dirt and wander around but notice that it's $11 for 0.80 lbs when I could get Purdue chicken for $6.00. I open my cabinets and see the lovely, healthy boxes of Pacific Organic broths and soups - organic and gluten-free that have been driven conveniently to Silver Spring, MD from the exotic, far-flung land of Tualatin, OR.
The gluten. That's the other issue. I don't have a lick of gluten in my house.
[Okay, that's a lie. Ernie's food (made of fish and potatoes since he, like his mama, has food and skin allergies) has salmon as the number one ingredient. However, he has barley as the number two ingredient.]
Going gluten-free is better for me. I feel better, I'm happier with my choices at home. i make more foods from scratch and experiment with alternative grain flours. (However, I'm not so gluten-free outside the confines of my humble abode. That's my other issue to conquer) The fact of the matter is Bob's Red Mill is, like so many other wonders, in the Pacific Northwest. 'Cause You're Special is also not all that nearby (Wisconsin). There's also the issue that if I want to bake cookies or bread or birthday cake without gluten, I've got to add xanthan gum to the mix or it will all fall apart. Xanthan gum. You may know it as a thickener in your processed food. That's not part of "natural." So, I can't go to a local grist mill and get some whole wheat, stone-ground flour. I need to get mixtures of rice and starch and exotic things called quinoa and amaranth and millet.
It's clearly not going to be all-local, all the time around here. But I'm trying. The urge is there. It's crossing over into my purchases.
I picked up some garlic, saw the "Product of China" label and put it back down.
I made chicken stock from the leftover carcass of my roast chicken the other night and used it in Esau's soup for dinner tonight. Instead of buying injera from the Ethiopian bodega around the corner, I made it (almost comically dismally) from scratch - I started fermenting the teff and water on Wednesday and by tonight it was wonderfully sour. My coffee is Brazil Organic Fair Trade from Peaberry (okay, it was "local-ish" because I was in Denver when I bought it).
It's a process, and it just won't be 100%. But for me, for us, it doesn't need to be. We have our vices that we're allowing. For me, the biggest is coffee. And until I can grow coffee beans in Columbia Heights, I will work hard to forgo the Dunkin' Donuts in the grocery aisle and support the small farmers who are paid a fair wage for their labors (and make a damn fine yergacheffe... business practices aside, Starbucks can do the right thing!) I will use less and less white rice flour and gravitate toward whole grain flours (sorghum, teff, brown rice, buckwheat, millet) and experiment and play. I will work hard to find a CSA to support local, organic farmers. I will sit down and make a budget that allows me to spend extra on healthy, organic animal products, even if that means - gasp - less yarn. I will clean out my friggin pantry and put some order into it and throw out what doesn't have an expiration date, to make room for the canning I will start this summer.
It's hard for me to recognize that it won't be 100% out of my own backyard all of the time, but I will stop and be grateful for what I can do.
