Baking bread

I haven't baked bread for several weeks. I really like doing that - it's much better, always, than store-bought and (I like to think) more frugal. Someday maybe I'll run the actual numbers on that theory.

In the meantime:

Whole wheat with several other goodly things mixed in

"Grandma Be's Favorite"

Yes, that page is old. I created my bread recipe notebook back in...early 1969. We were living in a basement apartment, renting it from a sweet old lady across from the Dana College campus. I wish now I'd been friendlier with our landlady. I was 19, and pregnant, so doubly self-absorbed, and impatient. But still, I wish I'd been a better friend. Aside from that, I look back on that semester fondly. It was the first three months of my first marriage, romantic and exciting to be on our own. Just thinking about those times, I can smell the apartment, hear how our footsteps sounded on the old linoleum floor. The kitchen was - literally - 6 feet wide and ten feet deep, wall to wall - much smaller of course by the time you subtract the sink and small stove. A true one-person kitchen! But it had a nice big living room and bedroom.

That was the same apartment that a Dana college student couple about 10 years older than I, who became my "adopted" older brother and sister via a church connection back when I was in grade school, lived in when they were first married. These memories are so precious and tender that I can hardly bear thinking of them, and that's all I'll say about that. 

In that apartment I first read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and The Lord of the Rings. And The Hobbit. I first tried my hand at baking bread there, and my mom and my dad's mom both gave me tons of their own recipes, which I still have. I treasure the dog-eared, stained, time-yellowed cards with their handwriting. I had a looseleaf notebook lying around so I covered it with some beautiful pastel paisley fabric (we'd call it "vintage" these days - I found it in an antique shop in Missouri Valley) and glued 8" x 10" envelopes on the insides of the covers, and drew (badly, lol) ball-point pen cherubs with flowers and ribbons: one for quick-bread recipes I hadn't tried yet, and the other for yeast bread recipes yet to test. ("Virgin" recipes, thus the cherubs. So clever.) When I'd try one, I'd re-write it on a typing sheet and make notes on how it turned out, with the date, and put it in the notebook proper. Sometimes I'd add a little drawing to decorate the page. I thought then that this would be a nice thing to keep up and have when I got old. I had no idea what a flood of memories it would evoke every time I take it down to find a recipe.

One recipe is copied from an article about the first female leader of one of the big Native American tribes, in the short-lived Avant Garde magazine. She had supplied a recipe for Indian Fry Bread. We got that magazine when my son was about two months old and we were by then living in a trailer by the Missouri River on the east end of Blair. We were so poor; my husband was still in college and we were living on help from our parents and some college money (I think). I also had a waitress job for awhile then. I bought carpet samples for a dime apiece to cover the skanky kitchen floor. 

See? Memories come flooding back. But the bread dough is ready to punch down and put into loaf pans to rise again. Enough nostalgia...

ETA to add photo of finished bread! It turned out very tasty.

Map-geek heaven

I just discovered a new free film-viewing web site, called SnagFilms. I've signed up and started going through their lineup. Much to my joy, I found a four-part series called "Terry Jones' Great Map of Mystery," wherein he follows the very first map made of the British Isles. It has everything - wonderful scenery, towns and villages, inns, cats, tea shops, fields, ricks, and cots (whatever those are) - massive ancient trees - and those maps! They were drawn in strips! *geekflail*

This is SO just what I need this week!

This morning's unexpected journey

Despite not getting to sleep last night until 1 a.m., I awoke at 5 a.m. and could NOT get back to sleep. This lays fertile ground for The Horribles to make a landing so I lay there for awhile trying to get back to sleep. I heard the distant drone of The Horribles' soul-sucking landing craft so I started trying to think of something to get me out of bed. It's Tuesday...Aha! On Tuesday mornings at 8:30, Lauritzen Gardens opens for the Walking Club. (I don't know if that's the exact name of the activity or not.) I could go down there, I had plenty of time to eat breakfast and get down there.

So that's what I did.

I had forgotten the Lego sculpture exhibit is still there. I didn't think about it until I tried to figure out what the heck those lily pads were.

They're LEGOS!!!!

I won't post all the other pics I took of the Legos sculptures, just one or two:

Those were my favorites, I think. Incredible work. I can't imagine doing that. 

And then my 1.35 mile walk was nice, too. There were flowers.

There was cool architecture and statuary:

And close to the end, there was a mystery:

I dunno. What do you think they are?

Books much?

Awhile ago - a few months - I looked around and realized I had already read ALL the books in my home that really grabbed me. I have numerous books on European history, particularly in the sciences, several of which I've read partly but put down for whatever reason - I'll go back to those as they strike me. But fiction? Not a single book in the house had I not read.

I was in the midst of a clamp-down on my spending (house taxes coming up) so I started requesting books from the library (I normally do that anyway but I ramped it up). Since most of those were ones I read reviews of, some of them haven't even come out yet and others have long queues waiting. But, I got a few, maybe one a week.

In the meantime I made myself busy with other things, was preoccupied with a certain self-imposed deadline, and generally didn't think about books much (I read before going to sleep at night, but I like re-reading things for that - keeps me from getting so absorbed that I read straight through to morning).

Until last week, I turned around, and there was a stack of EIGHT library books on my coffee table! I'd just gone and got them as the email notices came in, put them on the pile and forgot about them. Literally, in some cases - I don't even remember where I got the titles. Anyway - clearly, I needed to apply myself to this pile! I didn't think of posting this until I'd already read and returned a few of them and I can't pull their titles out of my spongy memory banks right now, so there are only five listed.

Friday I finished Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin. It's a good mystery, and I recommend it. Lots more going on there than just a whodunit. It's the book for the next meeting of the library mystery book club.

Last night I finished The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters.  Cool, actually chilling, set-up (a big asteroid is going to hit Earth in 6 months and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Our protagonist, a young police detective, just keeps on investigating murders, while most everyone else does anything BUT their usual jobs.) There are two more in this trilogy and I will read them both. I want to earn reading the last page of the last book, heh.

Yet to read:


The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. This is the second book about The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and I see that there are now three of them. *sigh* I'm going to have to read this one, go back and read The Shadow of the Wind, then get the third one, The Prisoner of Heaven. So, yes, I love the first one and cannot WAIT to read this second one.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I don't remember where I saw this one reviewed. I started reading it and it looks good, but others are due earlier so I set it aside until I get those read.

London Falling by Paul Cornell.  I don't remember where I saw this one reviewed.  Some young cops become cursed with the ability to see through the human facades of certain monsters stalking the streets of London. Sounds *scrumptious!*

And, I bought a couple new ones. After I get the library books read and released back into their queues, I'll *finally* get to read William Kent Krueger's newest, Ordinary Grace. And then tackle Paris, by Edward Rutherfurd.

I've got books in every room in the house. I vacillate between thinking I should get them all organized by genre and topic, and just letting the hodgepodge keep propagating naturally. My inclination is the latter, and my native laziness will probably make it so. Besides, I *like* finding books I'd forgotten about tucked in amongst completely unrelated books.

Entertaining, and true. You need to read this.

'Fraidy Cats.

Odds & Ends

I attended a most interesting workshop yesterday. It was the Walking Action Workshop, and I thought it was a grass-roots type thing, but it turned out to have various government (city) agencies, non-profits, and consultants there. I may have been the only one attending just for myself as an individual.  I met some really cool people. It was an interesting experience, because for twenty years, I attended lots of meetings like this only as a state agency representative. Yesterday I could say anything I felt like and didn't have to worry about sticking my foot in some kind of mess.

As it turned out, we were all there for the same reason: figuring out how to make Omaha more of a Walking City. There are myriads of reasons to do this. Economic, health, safety, aesthetics, environmental. It was an intense five hours of learning, brainstorming, discussing and looking forward. However, at the end of the day (and I hate that cliche but here I mean it literally), I left as an individual. I made a contact with a city organization where I might do a little volunteer work but that's not done until it's done, so I came home wondering what I can do.

I tend to get really bizarre, impractical ideas on my own. In the past it was my husband who would listen to me rattle on, a small smile on his face, and then he'd ask gentle, probing questions until I'd realize I had been in lala land again, LOL. I have to talk myself in off those ledges, now. So after going through the first two goofy ideas I had, I finally settled on knowing that all I can do *right now* is just walk, myself. Just get out there and do it. And blog about it! So that's what I'll start out with.
--
Made bread Thursday.

This was one of my own recipes from oh...long time ago. 1979? I keep tweaking it and it keeps getting better. 

--

I've had two of those heavy plastic floor mats with the pointy studs on the underside, that you use to protect carpets and make your desk chair roll easier, lying out in the garage to be disposed of, for months. I've dithered about what to do with them, because I assumed the recycle guys wouldn't take them. But they are far too thick and heavy for me to cut by any method. So there they sat. Finally last week I put one out propped up against the recycle bin, thinking the worst that could happen would be it got left. Well - surprise! They took it! So this week I'll set out the other one. And that success has me itching to get out there and break down all the cardboard boxes and get those out of there, and then I come to those two heavy particleboard doors, the ones from the shed, that have been taking up space in the garage. I need to have someone haul those away. I'll talk to my neighbor to see if he knows a hauler. It's getting to be time to organize the garage better, and get the yard stuff brought out from the shed and the snow stuff stowed back in the shed. I have hopes that someone will come help me identify and organize all the tools that still languish out there due to my being overwhelmed by the scope of the job. And my ignorance.

--

Next weekend I'm going to a free workshop at a local garden center to learn how to put together nice summer container gardens. I want to really dress up my front porch this year. The whole front yard, actually. Get some pretty annuals to fill in the gaps in the perennials in the boomerang. Edge the sidewalks and driveway (hasn't been done in years and it's looking ragged). I love this nice weather. Somebody said we're supposed to get SNOW next week but it's really hard to believe that - but you have to remember this is Nebraska so it could happen. Wouldn't last long, though.

A good time was had by all

My TableTop Game day was great fun. I wonder how many others celebrated like we did: 3 Boomer ladies playing Book Lover's Trivial Pursuit, then Bookology. And noshing quite a lot. We all agreed, we have to do this more often!

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures. Ah well, there's always next year!

TableTop Day!

I'm doing it. Having some friends over next Saturday afternoon, and we're going to do justice to snacks and tasty beverages, and play some table-top games! No twelve-sided dice here, though, we're Old School Boomers. My guests might bring some games, and the ones I have on offer to play are Doctor Who-themed Yahtzee (lovely recent gift from a friend), Book-Lover's Trivial Pursuit, Bookology...there's another one but I can't think of it right now. Anyway - fun times!

Now, to plan...cleaning, baking...

Oh, and here's the web site that explains what it's all about.

Bread day

OK, OK, where's the drawings, I petered out on that one, OK. Let's move on.

Making bread today. For your amusement, I've taken a Food Channel photo:

Dough's still rising so I'll post another picture once it's baked. I started with mom's white bread recipe and substituted some whole wheat flour for some of the white, some molasses for some of the sugar, and I'll make round loaves and fancy them up with a mix of corn meal, ground flax seed, ground wheat berries, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and some other stuff I can't remember right now. I like fancy bread. 

...Several hours later. Bread's done. Good batch this time.

'Scuse me, I need to eat dinner now...

Day 5, Drawing 5

Annnnd. here's a small corner sneak peek at tonight's effort. I always bite off more than I can chew. This is gonna have to be a two-parter. I'll finish it tomorrow and post the whole thing, scanned, but for proof that I'm doing it, here's a snippet:

Day 4, Drawing 4

I forgot to post this here yesterday.

It's really more of a doodle; I was trying to think of something cute for a note-card to an old friend. I think he looks pretty friendly, don't you?

Day 3, Drawing 3

Tried some colored pencil today. Well! Now we can certainly see where Terry needs practice, can't we!  I've never been very good at colored pencils. And I never found any medium that I could get to portray metal at all. Not even close. So...here's the thing:

Day 2, Drawing 2

This isn't much because I didn't get around to it until I was almost asleep, but when I know I don't have much time (before my face hits the desk) I try to focus on one aim. This time it was trying to convey both wood grain and native color, AND shading. I don't judge (lol) I just hope to get practice at something useful, and I think I did that, anyway, no matter how poorly it was executed.


It's a wooden box with a velvet-lined drawer, and a little house, er, can't remember the name - a Russian house elf? I couldn't remember from where I was sitting what he's got, a violin or a flute, which was excellent because it forced me to just draw what I saw. (It's a flute.)

Re-setting my 30 drawings in 30 days

So, let's try this again.  Here's today's entry, No. 1:

So, once more into the breach. 

ETA: Put in a scan instead of the crappy iPhoto copy.

OK, I'm re-committing

One drawing, one day, and then three days of feeling so cruddy I didn't even want to think about a pencil. So I'll re-start the 30 days. Typical of me, I know.

Looking around for something to draw...

30 drawings in 30 days

OK, I'm finally committing.  I really do want to get back to doing art like I did it as a kid - for fun, all the time. It's so easy to put other stuff ahead of that. So I'm going to take the pledge: post a piece of art - drawing, watercolor, charcoal, pastel, *something* - every day for 30 days. If anyone wants to join me, I haven't seen one of these challenges lately so let's brighten February up a little here, what do you say?

Here's today's effort:

It will be interesting to see how well this scan transfers online...

My mom used to call me "a little merchant"

but I think it was because she thought the words sounded cute, because I've never been much of a business-head. It wasn't like I was out peddling lemonade on the curb at age four, or nagging to get a paper route. No, as you know me now is pretty much as I have been: not that avid for money. I admire kids who get started knowing the entrepreneurial spirit early.

But occasionally I have a flurry of an inkling of liking the ol' buy & sell from the seller's end. Like this weekend, I've been posting some of my Excess Stuff on Craigslist. And I keep unearthing Stuff I didn't even know I had - like, there's been this big cardboard box in the basement that used to hold a lot of my late husband's darkroom equipment. A couple years after he died, I spent some months unloading most of it online, and I thought all this time I knew what was still in the box: a couple of used, dusty, plastic darkroom trays. I thought of them today because I was thinking I probably have the items I need to build my own seed-starter system with a light and everything. I thought one of the trays would be useful as seed trays. Imagine my surprise when I got into that box and found TWENTY darkroom trays, from 6"x 10" on up to , I don't know - 20" x 36"? or so?

So I got out one of the big ones and a medium-sized one to use for my seeds, and put the rest on Craigslist. We'll see how other people view their usefulness at $1.00 per tray...

I also discovered 6 sheets of MDF in the garage. Now - it's not like I've never been in the garage before - so why didn't I remember ever seeing those? Onto Craigslist they went. NO idea why Bob bought them, but he must have.

It's like my house is a mini-shopping mall or something...

The sekrit project is done!

I built an extension onto a little bookshelf unit my late father-in-law made for me to do sewing on. He added a particle-board top that sticks out 5” from the shelving unit but that really wasn’t enough to make the piece very useable for a sewing/crafts table, so I added more.

Before:

After:



Why did I stick those funny legs into the middle? You might well arsk. It’s because the hinges I used to attach the tabletop to the shelf were pretty small, and I had to switch down to shorter screws because the ones that came with the hinges were too long. Therefore, I was concerned that if I put too much weight on the tabletop, it would work the hinges loose. I could envision a complete disaster with my sewing machine crashing to the floor and the table wrecked into splinters. So I added those two funny legs to support the hinges. 

It took an unbelievable amount of cogitating to figure out how to put this thing together. I mean, it should be simple and straightforward, right? Nope. Not that simple. I give thanks to my friend E.T. (Not, *that* E.T. - the one I know personally) for figuring out for me how to do the folding-legs arrangement. 

This is one of those things that if my son has to dispose of all my assets, this one will embarrass him, I fear. I can just see him conducting the yard sale out front, with someone asking what the hell is THAT? And him rolling his eyes and saying, “Oh, my wacko Mom made that.” LOL - I’m leaving you such a rich legacy, my son!

Edited to add: I've decided against the carpentry class. This project taught me that it's not something I care to do very much or often, and also that I *can* cobble together something if I need it badly enough - and I doubt there'll be anything else I need this badly. Not having a sizeable work surface presented a bottle-neck to a LOT of projects that need doing. Sorting, creating, etc. So now I don't have THAT excuse any more!

Belated follow-up

The Christmas cookie extravaganza seemed to be a success, if people's ravings about the cookies are any indication. There's always the possibility that they're just reluctant to hurt my feelings. But for the sake of sanity, I choose to accept the compliments as stated, and everyone who received them is very welcome.

To prove I really did bake cookies, and that the "halfway" photo wasn't just a staged scene, here's a picture of some of the cookies:

Clockwise from the top, they're: Ginger sticks (they have fancy gold and green sugar on them but they're turned on their sides in this picture); eggnog cookies with eggnog frosting; lime & ginger cookies; chocolate chip cookies, and Jammy Dodgers. 

Jammy Dodgers, you will no doubt recall, are proclaimed by Doctor #11 as "The Best!" and he even uses one to bluff the Daleks in one show. These are made from scratch and I vow, as Chthulu is my witness, I will never ever do that again. WHAT a pain in the neck! I'm so slow, it wasn't until I had the  sugar boiling in the pan that I realized that this "raspberry caramel" stuff I was making WAS CANDY - you know: caramel! And I don't make candy. I learned long ago, candy and I do not get along in the making process. But, since I'd bought fresh raspberries and gone to the trouble of extracting the juice, and since the cookie parts were already baked and waiting, I followed through the best I could. It did not turn out perfectly, but no one has complained so again, for sanity's sake, I'm going to assume they were eaten and enjoyed. But next time I'm buying caramel candies and frozen raspberry juice, and saving myself a lot of work. 

New Year's Eve 2012

It has been a pretty good year for me, all things considered. I mean, a whole year of being retired! Wow has it been nice!

It has had its ups and downs but the latter are mostly troughs self-imposed, in a way. I fight depression daily - not suicidal depression, just what you'd call The Whumps, which keep me inert and in my evil nest, over-eating and feeling useless. They're kind of cyclical and I've learned that when I'm feeling OK, like a grown-up, tending to my home and pets and friends and family, staying active (for me), I need to really double-down and get things done, because when The Whumps arrive, and they do, I have visible accomplishments to look at and think about, and that seems to both enshallow the trough, and shorten its duration.

I can tell I've succeeded to a measureable degree in resisting the allure of the evil nest because in the past 365 days, I have reduced my BMI by 3.1 units, having lost 8% of what my weight was on this day last year. I still have a long way to go but my approach seems to be working so I will continue to work on that. The less I weigh, the more I feel like moving around, so it's all good.

This spring and summer I also got out and just walked around my neighborhood a lot. I really enjoy that, and walking certainly shows you a LOT of interesting, amusing, and beautiful sights you don't notice when you drive past!

I got out and joined several local organizations: The Henry Doorly Zoo, Fontenelle Forest, Joslyn Art Museum, Lauritzen Gardens. All of these give me privileges that include hiking and walking, seeing wonderful things, and being with people, terrific places for practicing my own amateur art work and photography. They've certainly made it more fun for me to write blog posts here! And they've got me out of the house, which is the point. I also joined the neighborhood library's Mystery Book Club, which has been great fun.

In 2013 I will apply to volunteer for The Literacy Council of Omaha, hoping to be trained and then practice helping adults learn to read.

I am looking into what it would take to get into an Intro to Carpentry course at Omaha Metro Tech CC; there are several factors, not the least of which is the cost. But I have a chaotic garage full of tools from three generations of Hickman men:

(My son, looking put-out about it all. He helped me organize *some* of it, bless him. That's going Above and Beyond the Call of Duty!)

And it's high time I found out what all that stuff is, and figure out what I want to sell and what I want to keep. Because I could definitely see the use of knowing how to build simple wood projects and make simple repairs myself.

I've made strides in Getting Rid of Extra Stuff around here. There's a long way to go but the place is much nicer to inhabit already. Seeing the corners and spots where I've cleared away and cleaned out is inspirational. The Secret Project (the one hinted at in the picture with all those tools a few days ago) is kind of at a standstill until I get some additional advice from a friend who knows how to do that stuff, but once it's done, that will eliminate a hindrance to rapid progress in this realm. Also it will help in a different realm. Isn't that mysterious though? Don't be too impressed or you'll be disappointed when I report success, lol.

I've enjoyed honing my baking skills by 1) baking cookies once a month to send to my grand-daughter! She seems to appreciate them (she's just 4 so isn't terribly articulate about it yet) and her folks *definitely* do. and 2) Switching to baking almost all of my own bread. I really love bread-baking and it's a great way to boost the nutrients of what I eat.

Somewhere around April I seem to have emerged from a long dark cave I entered when Bob died. It took more than 5 years, five years during which I thought I was doing OK the whole time, but sometime early this year I stopped looking back and started looking forward. I don't make resolutions, but I can say, I like the view forward better.

And here is one of my favorite things about 2012:

That's a billion-dollar piece of machinery that humans sent up into space and actually landed on the surface of another planet, and that is now sending back incredible amounts of data about that planet, all remotely-controlled. I am so glad I stayed up late the night they landed Curiosity during the famous 8 Minutes of Terror! That was a lifetime high point, just watching it. Wow wow wow wow!