A Restless Mind

1.  Craft on diaper bag.  I don't know how a beginner project can give someone such fits.  I mean I'm a reasonably intelligent individual, and I'm using internet and book resources to make sure I'm interpreting these directions correctly.  It isn't a matter of errata.  It's a matter of semantics.  When you use the phrase turning chain, I assume that means the work should be turned even if you don't spell that out.  Yet my stitch markers keep moving rather than staying in the corners which would imply I'm crocheting on a slant.  If the baby hadn't come early, I might feel more kindly about the amount of experimentation that is having to take place here.

2.  Catch up on house chores after working through last weekend.  I was behind, but now have the laundry done, house cleaned, and pantry stocked.

3. Make more bread.  Honey Wheat, my new favorite. 

4. Garden.  Pick and process green beans for 5 pints.  Pick zucchini weighing 3 lbs.  (It was hiding).  Discovered that my zucchini plants have beetle borers and will likely be dead within the week.  This happens to me every year and only to zucchini and squash plants.  Try eco-spray anyway.  Dig up garlic.  Got 14 inchelium reds and 25 chilian silvers.  I will not use the chilian silvers again.  The growing circumstances were ideal and those "bulbs" are barely the size of nickels.  The flavor is good but they just aren't big enough.

5.  Finish second panel on the sweater.  Until my needles come in from WEBS, I'm in a holding pattern on this one.Thankfully, I seem to be able to manage a beginner sweater pattern.  Apparently, stockinette I can do.

Saturday, I was struck with an urge that hasn't been seen in nigh nearly 10 years.  Make sweet rolls.  So I assembled my stuff and tried it out recipe in the breadmaker.  I couldn't help but reminisce to Shawn about how tasty these sweet rolls were and how many people raved about them.  I even dug around and came up with a way to improve upon the simple confectioners sugar icing with a cream cheese icing.  My mouth was watering in anticipation.  I rolled up the cinnamon and sugar into a jelly roll shape and cut the loaf into roll sections.  After the rolls finished rising, I popped them into the oven and proceeded to burn them to a crisp.  Not slightly over done but nearly blackened them.  It was heartbreaking.  I may have shed a tear as I pried them out of the pans into the garbage can.  In fact, I'm welling up a bit as I type.  Oh Baking, you are a cruel taskmaster.

I don't know how we got on the subject of banana pudding but for some reason, Sunday afternoon, Shawn and I were musing about different restaurants that had banana pudding and which one had the best.  Shawn asked if I had a recipe for the old fashioned banana pudding.  I whipped out my trusty Better Home and Garden's cookbook which may not has the best but reliably has good basic recipes and found no banana pudding recipe.  Perplexed momentarily at the lack of banana pudding, I recovered and reached for my standard Southern Living.  And behold banana pudding in all it's homemade custard finest.  I even managed a pretty decent meringue.It was really good but really rich.  Even though there was only 1 and 1/3 cups of sugar, just a tiny portion went a long way on the sweet tooth.  We're nowhere near having finished it all.

1.  After the pancake success, I wanted to try another dish described to me by a co-worker.  Hash-a bit of everything that suits your fancy.  I made mine by frying up a potato cubed with some onion and pepper.  Then I added 4 eggs and 1 egg white to the skillet.  Topped it all off with cheese and some salsa and it was a little taste Santa Fe in Tennessee.

2.  I also decided to give another one of my whole grain bread recipes a go.  I picked Cinnamon Pecan Wheat and Rye Bread from Whole Grain Breads by Machine or Hand.  

I picked by machine (bread maker).  I doubled the amount of cinnamon called for and even though the bread is very good, you can't really taste the cinnamon.

3.  We had terrible storms predicted for Saturday.  So I cranked it out early to get the garden plowed, the green and lima beans planted, and the onions I started from seed planted.  And it didn't rain.  Not a drop.  

4.  Sunday was Chest and Back.  I really must have been applying myself because as I was attempting the decline push up from my knees, I went down and failed to go back up.  Instead I kind of smushed my nose into the rug.  I had to do something because the angle was seriously messing with my back except I couldn't make my arms work.  I ended up flopping/wriggling over to get my knees off the bench I was using.  For a minute I was afraid I was going to have to call Shawn to roll me over.  That wouldn't have been at all embarrassing.

3 weeks, 5 lbs  of flour, 1 1/2 gallons of water and finally, it LIVES!!!  The tipping point seemed to come when I stuck it on a heating mat I use for starting seeds.  Maybe our house wasn't quite warm enough to encourage those little yeast suckers to grow.  At any rate, this morning I took the starter and carefully (not wanting to blow it at this point, after all this time) mixed up my ingredients for sourdough pancakes. Pretty cool.  Pretty tasty.  We couldn't decide which was better -the sourdough or the buttermilk.  So I might have to do buttermilk tomorrow for comparison.  It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it. : )

Whew.  Got a bit side tracked the last couple of days and missed my blog posting.  I’m getting concerned about planting the garden.  We had terrible weather on Saturday which was a bit of a blessing since I was in Knoxville all day at the Girl Scout Council of the Southern Appalachians  Annual Meeting and would not have had time to plant anyway.  Sunday it was too wet to plow and I had to do my Saturday chores.  This weekend’s weather is not looking too promising either.  I was going to try for Friday, but remembered that I’ll be in Nashville for continuing education.  So right now, it’s anyone’s guess.  I may be plowing by moonlight Friday night. 

Sunday, I tried out buttermilk pancakes, which I’d never made before.  They were way tastier than the ordinary variety and I think I can safely say we won’t be going back.  Now, if only the sourdough starter would cooperate, we could try out sourdough pancakes.  I continue to make a go of the sourdough starter.  It looks pretty good these days, no hooch, plenty of bubbles, decent smell but all of my resources give the indication that the starter should be doubling.  It’s not.  I have switched to bottled water in another effort to make everything come together for this stuff.  I really, really don’t want to admit a microorganism has defeated me despite the fact I’m closing in on having used nearly a 5 lb bag of flour on this now epic experiment.

1. FRIDAY-Decide to try out the Cranberry Orange Spelt muffins for breakfast this weekend since the whole sourdough thing failed miserably.  This necessitated a trip to the hippie grocery store (b/c in this area of the country you don't find spelt flour in those suburban supermarkets).  Anyway, after being in the green hippie mart, I had enough self-righteous smug to power my eco-unfriendly SUV all the way home. (Don't get me wrong.  I like the self righteous smug.  I think they pipe it in to help you get over paying $5.99/lb for the same grass fed beef I can get at the farmers' market for $3.50/lb.)  Once home, the spelt flour went into the cranberry orange muffin batter and the whole thing rested overnight.  

SATURDAY-Bake the muffin batter with the streusel topping.  They looked really good.  And let me tell you, they tasted amazing.  I had mine with butter and apple butter and they were swoon worthy.  Recipe coming in a different post.  

2.  SATURDAY-Make up for being a total slacker in the garden and spend 1.5 hours resurrecting the peas, garlic, and onions from the weeds.  Make up for being a total slacker in the flower beds over the last YEAR and spend 3 hours muttering obscenities at bermuda grass and wild hedge while promising self we'd be a grown-up this year and exercise way more discipline in the weekly weeding.  SUNDAY-Spend copious amounts of time whining about muscle soreness and back pain but admit it is proper punishment for having let the weed situation get out of hand.

3.  SUNDAY - Remix a sourdough starter using non-chlorinated water and unbleached all purpose flour.  I want my sourdough pancakes and I will get my sourdough pancakes.  So really, it should just give up trying to thwart me and cooperate.

 Drool.  That's what you're going to do the entire way through this book.  Well written slips of stories are woven around some of the tastiest range of recipes that will have you checking the pantry to see if there is anyway you can make it - right now.  A foodie's dream book of all kinds of recipes from pretty down to earth (veggie soup) to ones that involve a dictionary but also a book lover's dream with well spun stories to be shared over what's cooking tonight.  I loved it.  And I'm making the chocolate cupcakes this week!

I'm really hoping that this is harder than it looks.  My starter is a bust.  It smells and not the right kind of smell, either.  More along the lines of soured yogurt.  Not good.  It isn't doubling like it should at this point.  It isn't bubbling.  In short, it's not sourdough starter.  I think my first mistake was self-rising flour.  My second was switching mid process to bleached all purpose.  I haven't found anything that says self-rising is wrong; in fact the only mention of flour type I've found is unbleached.  Come on folks,  pretend I've never done this before.  Pretend you're talking to a cook, not a baker.  More research is in order and then I'll try again.  I really want my sourdough pancakes.

1. HOOCH!  Apparently, I'm making moonshine instead of sourdough starter.  When I noticed separation in the starter mix, I thought I'd done something wrong, but apparently this is normal.  At least I think it is normal.  My concoction isn't smelling so great right now...  (Picture coming)
2. Inspired by the sourdough science experiment, I went out this weekend and bought 2 cookbooks, Whole Grain Breads by Machine or Hand and King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking.  I was really excited to find some whole grain recipes I could use with my bread machine.  Much like my slow cooker, I love the fact I insert ingredients and a finished product emerges with little effort from me.  It's the closest thing to a personal chef I'll probably ever have.
3. The spring cleaning continues.  This weekend the blinds were wiped down (which takes FOREVER, now I know why I don't bother every week.), hosed down the air duct return grate, and for the outside of the house, trimmed back all the monkey grass and reassembled the landscape lighting.  The outside work moved us down the shacky scale about 1 point.  Besides needing fresh mulch on all the landscaping, there is still the matter of the two dead azaleas that have been there for 2 years.  On the plus side we have some neighbors who, bless their hearts, are doing their very best to make us look better.
4. I finished The Book Thief on Friday.  Narrated by Death, the overall tone of the book is what comes to mind when I hear "heavily stylized."  There is a huge emphasis on word painting.  The descriptions are not flowery or flowing.  The entire prose is fairly terse but the phrasing is distracting because no one (at least that I know) talks that way.  Set in WWII, beware of a heavy emotional drag on the whole book and if you're looking for a happy ending, pass this one by (what can you expect when Death narrates?).  However, there is very satisfying character development, and you can't help but root for them as they struggle as non-Nazis in Nazi Germany.