Author: gkennedy2171

So Much To Learn – Bread Baking Experiment #1

Woven baskets for the proofing step and a couple of my favorite books so far.

Back in the late 60’s and 70’s when I was a young woman and tackled the task of bread making, things were simplified. Find a recipe in a book, follow it, bake it, and enjoy the results of your labor. So when I decided to begin again my bread baking adventures in these winter years of my life, I began reading several books to refresh my memory on the whole process. Little did I realize how very different 40-50 years can make in the simple process of baking bread.

I was overwhelmed with new terminology that I either never knew when I was young or has come into popular use in the years since. Words like couche (French for couch or resting place), or baskets in which the dough can rest and ultimately take on the shape of the basket before being popped into the oven, pizza peel, brioche pans, panettone molds, dough scraper, poolish, oven spring, the crumb (inner portion of the loaf), crust (outer portion of the loaf) and a plethora of equipment like dough hooks, electric mixers, metal measuring cups, scales, oven thermometer, baking stone, loaf pans, bread knifes, cooling racks, silicone mats, measuring spoons and pastry brushes. And I am sure there are probably dozens more. All of this “new” knowledge for me made me glad that as a young woman I just blithely “made bread” without any special equipment and put homemade bread on the table for many years.

So today I purchased a few items at a restaurant supply store and with a trip to the grocery store I was ready to make my first batch of 21st century dough after a 40 year drought. I carefully checked the temperature of the water to make sure it wasn’t too hot for fear of killing the yeast. I measured my flour with dip, level pour precision. I carefully measured the salt and yeast. I followed the recipe for an artisan free-form Boule exactly (well almost!). Recipe used from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day:

  • 6 1/2 cups flour (4 1/2 cups King Arthur 100% Whole Grain Whole Wheat Flour and 2 cups of King Arthur Stone Ground White Whole Wheat Flour
  • 2 pkgs of yeast,
  • 1 1/2 Tablespoons Kosher Salt
  • 3 cups of water, a quick mix and my dough was ready to begin brewing, growing…the yeast seeking, searching and gobbling up the sugar within the flour.

Two hours later, the dough has approximately doubled in size and there is a decisive yeast smell when I lift the lid. The recipe I am following tells me to refrigerator the dough overnight and whenever I am ready, to cut off a grapefruit size chunk to bake. It makes four one-pound loaves and I plan to continue the baking process manana. So now I wait….

Batch #1 – Lots of bubbles approximately 2 hours after mixing

Up late and putting my first loaf into the oven. Smells good, but when I removed it from the oven, it was heavy and definitely not my idea of success. I let it cool for about 15 minutes and sliced it for a taste. Very disappointed…flat taste, texture too dense which I attributed to the whole wheat flour.

80% whole grain, whole wheat with 20% stone ground white whole wheat -Little rise, coarse dense texture

Tomorrow I’ll try again!!

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Flour, Water and Yeast

Bread..the staff of life…Perhaps one of my biggest weaknesses is my love of bread! I would have made an excellent French or Italian woman for I think I could live happily ever after with just bread, cheese and fruit.

Lately I have been toying with an idea, stolen from one of my favorite movies Julie & Julia, where two timelines tell a superior story about the joy of cooking.  Julie decides to cook her way, in one year’s time, through Julia Child’s famous cookbook and blog her progress, trials, errors, travails, successes, disappointments. I am thinking I may try to bake my way through the Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown and document my adventure through my blog. Other helpful books I have acquired are Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg, MD and Zoe Francois and Bread Alone by Daniel Leader and Judith Blahnik.

I think this endeavor was meant to be for various reasons…this past weekend I made a quick visit to my sister’s home in Burton. While I was there, an old friend of hers dropped by to visit. During our conversation we somehow started talking about bread and her friend mentioned the name of a bread book that was popular in the 70’s and that she had used as a young home cook. And then a friend of my sister’s son who was visiting on his way home to San Diego walked in and gave my sister a loaf of bread…bread that we would later enjoy as part of french dip sandwiches for our evening meal. Or perhaps I am being spurred on due to my recent failure in biscuit making (see previous post).

My sister immediately went to her bookcase and extracted two books on bread baking for me to peruse. We left her home and went to a delightful local bookshop to see if we could find other bread baking books. The quest had begun. With the bookstore stop behind us, we visited another local shop and did find a nice copy of the Great Big Cookie Cookbook. Should my adventure be baking my way through a book of cookie recipes? I knew my fellow workers would love the cookie option, but my heart was set on bread. I think my desire harkened back to when I was a young hippie-like Mother of two beautiful daughters and was following my desire to be a good steward of our planet, feed wholesome food to my children and baking bread was part of my twice weekly routine. The pushing, pulling, punching of the dough was a highly therapeutic and rewarding activity.  And the smell of baking bread titillated my senses as I awaited the hollow thump that verified it was ready. Slathering fresh butter on a slice of homemade bread fresh out of the oven is second to no culinary experience.

So my bread baking adventure is on. I will try to describe my adventures as they progress and document the finished product with my camera even if the end result is disastrous. As Julia would say….Bon Appetit!!!

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Fur Babies – Part 2

Bernie at 10 weeks

Maine Coon cats are regular cats on steroids. Enter my sweet, sweet Bernie. He has stolen my heart and each day fulfills my need for a cat I can pet, hold, cuddle and he apparently shares the enjoyment of these mutual interactions. He was so very small when I got him and the long drive home wasn’t without its own adventures.

An overnight stay in a hotel room that had an adjoining sitting room almost led to a catastrophic accident. There was a sofa bed in that sitting room and somehow this tiny kitten managed to get himself caught inside the sofa bed workings. My sister accompanied me on my kitten mission and between the two of us we managed to extricate him from his potential death trap without any injuries.

Bernie sleeping on top of a bed pillow

His daily antics make me smile and laugh. Our mornings usually begin with him walking and bouncing on and off my body accompanied by some very loud cries in an attempt to get me moving in the direction of the kitchen. He wants food!!  As I open the canned sliced beef, he stands on his hind legs and stretches his front feet up onto the counter top reaching for his food container. He means to hurry the process along. He is a big cat and can polish off a bowl of food faster than any cat I have ever had. After feeding time, he begins the patrol of his cat trees and toys rushing here and there with great speed and purpose attacking real and imaginary movements and shadows. He uses his paws and head to lift a coverlet off of my bed so he can crawl under it and then proceeds to wriggle around for what purpose only he knows. All I see is an undulating rise and fall of the coverlet as he progresses. Eventually he wears himself out and slips into kitty slumberland.

He loves his cat trees and only the highest perch or inside the tight box satisfies him. He has already destroyed one cat tree by aggressively scratching the jute posts to sharpen his big claws. Last week he jumped to the top-level of his new cat tree, stood on his hind legs and reached to the top of a bookcase and with the ease of a gazelle leaped up to explore this even higher perch. Silly me, I worried that he might not be able to get down!

There is no doubt that he has stolen my heart and I am always delighted by his antics. I think he is still growing and I hope that his personality continues to grow along with his beautiful furry self.

Bernie- 1 year

Fur Babies are the BEST!!!!

Best Buds

 

 

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Fur Babies – Part 1

Buster & Bernie

A little over a year ago, I fulfilled a desire by traveling a ridiculous distance to pick up my new Maine Coon kitten. My heart was set on a “yellow tabby” color and I was driven by the desire to have a cat that would cuddle with me and allow me to be a hands-on pet owner. Let me explain the “hands on” part of that last sentence.

My other cat, a Turkish Van rescue from a shelter, must have suffered terribly at the hands of his previous owner, because it literally took two years before I was allowed to pet him. And forget trying to clip his nails or brush this hairy beast. It just isn’t happening. A trip to the vet is a traumatic event for both of us. This traumatic event consists of 3 parts…the trap, the catch and the delivery.

Buster

First the “trap”…This consists of cornering him in my walk-in closet and closing the door before advancing on him. Now this doesn’t sound so difficult, but let me tell you that this cat has superior, supercat ESP skills. Somehow, some way, he “knows” when this event is beginning. Perhaps he senses my anxiety or gets his cue from the appearance of the cat carrier even though it is secreted until the last moment, but when the jig is up and he confirms my intentions, he usually runs to hide in some vastly inaccessible place making it extremely difficult for me to catch him. Under the sofa is a favorite which requires a broom to coax him from beneath its dark recesses only to have him bolt to another place.

Next is the “catch”. Once Buster is cornered in the closet, it requires extreme courage for me to reach out and grab him. I am risking teeth and very sharp nails because if this cat doesn’t like to be touched, he certainly goes ballistic if I try to pick him up. Armed with a towel and oven mitts, I make the grab and stuff him quickly into the pet carrier, zipping the top as quickly as possible.

The “delivery” is next. Buster is not a small cat. Carrying him to my car is no easy feat and once there he assails me with pitiful wails all the way to the vet and back home. Back in the safe confines of our condo, he jumps from his mini prison and gives me the cold shoulder for a length of time that only his cat brain knows is considered adequate for the abuse I have inflicted on him.

Richard (the shelter’s name for him), AKA Mr. Big, AKA Big Dick (my grandchildren unanimously rejected this one which I found to be hilarious) and finally Buster (so hard finding the right name for him) has slowly grown to accept that maybe this human who feeds and shelters him and demands little else may be worthy of a little more affection. Now, 7 years later, he is glued to my side as I settle into my fetal position prior to sleeping. And there he stays the entire night. Slowly over time and moving at a snail’s pace, Buster and I have reached a mutual agreement. His close encounters with me are generally initiated by him. He actually climbs onto my chest for brief moments, allows me to pet him when he wants it and seems to have begun to accept me as a “tolerable” human.

His stand-offish temperament left me lacking the sweet connection that I craved from the many felines that have shared their lives with me over my lifetime. Which brings me back to my ridiculously long trip to bring my sweet Bernie home.

Stay tuned for Fur Babies Part 2 – my Maine Coon delight! To be continued…

A cluster of cats
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Failed Biscuit Maker

My new title! I recently went through my old, old recipe book and found a recipe for San Jacinto Inn Biscuits. A simplified Christmas meal this year for various reasons…prime rib, mashed potatoes and fresh steamed green beans with apple pie and/or Eggnog cheesecake for dessert. When I found that recipe, I thought I would try the biscuit recipe and see if it truly was reminiscent of my memory of the buttery flaky biscuits of my youth.

The San Jacinto Inn was a landmark when I was a child and young adult. It was located near the San Jacinto Monument, the spot where General Sam Houston caught General Santa Anna with his pants down to administer the coup de gras for the slaughtering of hundreds of Texans at the Alamo. One of our many hurricanes combined with changing dietary attitudes in the 80’s managed to put an end to an era of full bellies.

It was all you could eat for a set price, and the price that jumped into my mind was $16.95. I am almost positive that when I was a child and had the treat of a visit to the SJI it was probably considerably cheaper. The Battleship Texas was permanently moored there and the Inn fed thousands of patrons thousands of pounds of seafood over its lifetime. Sadly It closed its doors in 1987.

So my biscuit saga has come full circle. Today my San Jacinto Inn Biscuits have permanently crowned me the Hockey Puck Queen. Prior to popping them in the oven, I remembered that I had failed to put in the most important ingredient…baking powder. Trying to rectify this huge blunder, I rolled out the dough and sprinkled the baking powder on top and then kneaded the dough knowing full well that this was a failed effort. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I should have chucked the whole mess and started over but approaching the point of exhaustion after all the holiday bustle, I resorted to a wing and a prayer.

When (and I WILL try again) I decide to duplicate my effort to rekindle this memory and even if the biscuits are sheer perfection it will make no difference. For eternity my grandsons will be asking me to pass the hockey pucks.

Happy baking!!!

 

 

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The Biggest Winners and Losers

If you voted for Trumplethinskin and if you still believe that he and the Republicans are good for our country, then I hope you are happy tonight. I hope you can live with yourself. I hope you can sleep well. And I hope that you hold onto your wallet because the cost for middle and lower class Americans will be life threatening. Unless you live under a rock or on a desert island or unless you simply don’t care to educate yourself about what is happening in America right now then shame on you. You may think this does not affect you, but make no mistake it does. To support the bill as written, Republicans will begin to attack Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid next. This will happen. Watch.

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I am terribly sad because the current tax plan passed by this Republican administration has successfully given the top 1% of the population in this country a huge tax break at the expense of the other 99%. Corporations win with their reduced tax breaks becoming “permanent” and the supposed tax break for the middle class expires after 8 years leaving the poorest of our citizens to suffer the most. Thirteen million fellow Americans will lose health care coverage. This is an egregious misuse of power and the tax breaks provided for the wealthy at the expense of health care coverage for children in the CHIP program and the most vulnerable in our society is just the beginning of their assault on social programs.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

It boggles the mind to watch elected congressional members, sent to Washington to work for the best interests of Americans,  gleefully celebrate the implementation of a piece of legislature that has been evaluated as benefiting the wealthy and harmful to the majority of Americans. Polling figures indicate passage of this bill was extremely unpopular with the large majority of Americans but this didn’t deter Republicans from passing it into law without any congressional hearings (zero) along a strictly partisan vote.

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America is under assault. The only questions is will she survive. Now is the time to choose your side of history.

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Christmas Mania

This time of year can be emotional and stress provoking. The business of making our gift list, checking it twice, planning Christmas parties, baking cookies, purchasing food, making ornaments, buying and wrapping presents and, horror of horrors, going to the post office to mail packages far and wide to friends and relatives.

Each year the dreaded trip to the post office to mail cumbersome packages, evokes feelings of loathing. My recent encounters with the United States Postal Service were no different. I chose a post office that is usually not crowded, a unique phenomena at this time of year. I arrived promptly at 1:30 PM, opening time after the lunch break. Balancing three bulky packages, I struggled through the front door and was disappointed to see the postal windows closed with a sign saying it would reopen at 2:15PM. After mumbling a few choice cuss words, I made my way back to my car, reloaded the packages and headed to the next post office.

Total deja vu as I again gathered the packages and made my way through yet another front door to be greeted by an all too familiar scene…a long line of similarly afflicted humans waiting to be called forward to the one, yes only one clerk that was seemingly oblivious to the length of the waiting line and our mutually shared anxiety and stress.

So, I dutifully waited my turn and was pleasantly entertained by the young woman directly in front of me. She was the epitome of an efficient packaging artist in its purest form. I watched fascinated as she gathered mailing envelopes and proceeded to fill out all necessary forms, recycled mailing labels into graphic art with the names of the recipients beautifully arranged and decorated and then trimmed with her own personal pair of scissors that she fished from the depths of her voluminous purse. She inserted her gifts into the package, made several adjustments to her liking and was still working diligently on her project when I decided to bail from the line and take my chances using the self-service machine.

Machines are always a challenge for me. The pressure is on when you step up to that area of the post office. There were two people in front of me and before long there were others behind us. My anxiety level climbed as I moved closer to my turn at weighing and printing the postage labels for my packages. These machines intimidate me and I frequently seek a young person to assist me but today I was very lucky. Another post office person was circulating in the area assisting people as needed. And boy did I need it. It wasn’t difficult but it is time-consuming  because there is a lot of reading and selecting throughout the whole process. After completing the entry for three packages, the machine told me that my credit card would only allow two self-service transactions so the whole third package was not completed. I ended my session and began again to repeat the information for my third package and reentering my credit card. In essence I was fooling the machine and my bank card, but by this time I was determined to complete the task of getting those blasted packages out of my possession and into the post office delivery schedule so they could begin their journey to their respective destinations.

The entire time I was in mortal combat with the mailing/package machine, I could feel the many eyes of other frantic patrons behind me burning into my back urging me onward to a speedy conclusion of my encounter. With the third package successfully labeled with the appropriate postage tag, I tried to put it in the mail chute and it wouldn’t fit! I carried it to the circulating  clerk who assured me she would get it to the mail room for me. Each step was challenging.

My parting words to her as well as to my fellow postal patrons were ” I am totally exhausted and feel like I have just birthed a 10 pound baby!” I survived my post office mission, but unfortunately I have two more packages to mail so Monday I’ll be repeating the annual battle to send gifts to loved ones as an acknowledgement of how very thankful I am to have them in my life.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!!

 

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Me Too

Another Women’s movement has been spreading across America and this one has been a long time coming.  January 21, 2017,  women, and many men who support and love them, took to the streets all across America to march in protest of the sexual predator who currently occupies the people’s house, America’s Big House. And now the “Me Too” movement was recently named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. It seems that women have finally had enough…enough of the fear each woman wears as a cloak as she traverses her life.

This is something that men just don’t get…the fear of walking to a car in a parking lot at night,  the indignity of cat calls and wolf whistles as you are trying to walk down a sidewalk in broad daylight, the innuendos, suggestive comments, unwanted touching. It isn’t their fault. They aren’t female and have no reference, no yardstick by which to judge. Women live with all of these and more on a daily basis and we are fed up and finally (better late than never) finding our voices and saying…no yelling…no screaming…enough is ENOUGH!!

I have always wondered how any male can justify tolerating or voting for anyone who not only is accused but has admitted to predatory behavior. This is a slap in the face to your daughters, your Mother, your sisters, girlfriends, your grandmothers. When you cast that vote, it is the same as saying “I not only don’t understand what you are feeling but I don’t care”. Small wonder that women across America, and the world, are up in arms.

Every woman has a story, most have more than one, about being confronted with uncomfortable situations and feeling powerless to do anything about it.  Let me be absolutely clear…women do NOT find any of these things flattering. They are offensive, demeaning and decidedly threatening.

This coming January 2018, the resistance will be walking again. Not just women, but men and children, young and old all exercising their right to protest the degradation of our norms. Marching side by side, just as humans, wanting fairness, kindness, and peace. Millions will be participating in cities across America doing what Americans do best….exercising our rights under a democratic government.

Me too!!!!

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Battle Fatigue

I, like millions of Americans, am exhausted and fatigued by the constant attack on my peace of mind. The continued angst and anger created, where none need exist, simply because of incompetence, ignorance or simple greed. I am tired. I want to give up. I find myself limiting my exposure to news stories because I know the emotions these stories elicit may be raising my stress level. This morning when my phone and computer would not bring up the internet, I worried that perhaps some horrible nuclear event had happened that had taken the internet down. It made me nervous but also made me realize how much a part of my life is consumed by interactions with social media and how much it is used as a conduit for information in today’s world.

I wonder how any “Christian” could approve of taking healthcare from millions of people, depriving 9 million children of food and healthcare (CHIP), raising taxes on the poor to give the top 20% of the rich more tax breaks, or prefer an alleged pedophile as a seated Senator over a candidate whose only crime is being a Democrat. I marvel that innocent people are still being murdered with guns everyday in America yet nothing is done to “fix” the problem other than to offer up “thoughts and prayers”. I believe that our forefathers would be aghast at what we have become as a nation. And yes, I believe that we are seeing the end of democracy as we know it and America may be in the waning years of its dominance as a world power and is beginning its journey to an autocracy. And the first part of that journey has already been put into motion.

 

It begins with the disparaging comments directed at the media, planting the seeds of doubt in a gullible or apathetic population. Hitler did this in Germany calling the media the lying press or ‘Lügenpresse’. It continues with daily assaults on norms and values that shock our senses until finally we become numb to the horribleness before us. Slowly it wears us down and we seek to escape the assault  and begin to tune it all out. Friends don’t understand our emotional, visceral response and perhaps pull away from us. We have become isolated and alone with our battle against the attack on norms and if it doesn’t affect us, we might slowly accept the changes and little by little the erosion of freedoms we enjoy.

I worry that if those amongst us who have conspired with a foreign nation to steal an entire Presidential election (treason in every sense of the word) will escape punishment. We have drifted as a nation from equal justice under the law to harsher punishments for the poor and a slap on the hand for the rich. This is a downward spiral toward kleptocracy and sows the seeds of rebellion in any nation. Wikipedia defines Kleptocracy (from Greek κλέπτης kléptēs, “thief”, κλέπτω kléptō, “I steal”, and -κρατία -kratía from κράτος krátos, “power, rule”) is a government with corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political power. Typically this system involves embezzlement of funds at the expense of the wider population.[1][2 This could be describing the Republican 2017 Tax Bill, for it clearly benefits corporations and the wealthy on the backs of hardworking middle America. This is a class war that is reigning debt on our children and grandchildren with little hope of digging out of the ever-deepening crevasse of debt. Whatever happened to “Love thy neighbor as thy self?” If Republicans are the party of conservatism and Christian values, then please let me be among those snowflakes that believe in equality for all.

It’s been a long time coming but the Nothingburger is definitely becoming a Russianburger and with four indictments and two guilty pleas, perhaps we are on our way to correcting the wrongs that are being inflicted on the American people, our World Neighbors, and Mother Nature. We can only hope.

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