Michael

Bread Again

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This is a place to share successes. Yet, without mistakes and failures, you don’t learn. After my first “good” loaf I took off on changing things. I had failures. Yet, I don’t know enough about the bread process to know just where I went wrong.

I think part of it was too wet dough. But was I using a starter that wasn’t fully ready yet? For a loaf we wanted to eat I had to return to the basics. Verify the starter by float testing it. Verify the dough by measuring everything out completely and not futzing with it later. I did both of these things yesterday.

And gee, just like Jack says, it works. It works well. Really well. On to repeating it!

Morning Thoughts

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If I could read my own handwriting it would help. I think I wondered about these things.

Buying things on a whim. I used to do this all the time. Those days are gone. I’m living on savings! Yesterday I bought replacement pens for those that went missing.it’s not like II/we don’t have plenty of pens around the house. But I’ve gotten attached to a ballpoint pen and these models specifically. I’ll have them soon enough.

Kent Peterson seems to buy a bunch of things via eBay. As it turns out he does. For small things, he can buy things for half the price he’s found them elsewhere. That does come with the cost of waiting for the items to be shipped from China. He’s willing to wait.

Last night at Bella’s, an Italian bakery and market, their guy Matt came by with or bottle of wine and another bottle. He was pouring samples of a white. It was a mixture of varietals from southern Italy. It was dry, it was great. We’re hoping he can get it in for all the time. It was a fine start to our evening. (Thursday night is Pizza Night – from 4:00 to 8:00.)

While I’m on my whim I ordered up refills for my pens. Like Kent, I have time to wait for them to arrive. I noticed that Amazon’s listing also stated “Note: Available at a lower price from other sellers, potentially without free Prime shipping.” The “other sellers” were from Japan, who also ships for free. I had ordered from these other sellers a while ago. I’m looking forward to receiving them. Especially with the thank-you note.

As to the last thing I noted this morning, well if you can figure it out please let me know. I’ll talk about it then. Yes, I have a pack of table order things, like they use in restaurants. They’re great for keeping todo lists.

A Glut of Books

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There I was, reading through a pair of books I have. It was great. Then boom! Five books arrive at the library after weeks on hold. Lots of variety also. Two novels, two instructionals, a book of poetry. It’s heaven. If I could read at a normal pace.

We should always have problems like this.

Lips Pursed

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She watched me as she chewed her gum with concentation, lips pursed.

Open Door, Iosi Havilio

As I was reading Open Door, by Iosi Havilio, from And Other Stories I tripped on the “lips pursed”. What does that really mean? A page of images shows a variety of lips even in the first six images. A dictionary is not much help, talking mostly about handbags. Though that might be because the word is not used in that way very often.

In this case, with the girl chewing, it well it gets you to thinking. That’s a great thing for a book to do.