This article is from Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, Talking to Strangers, others) on the 60 or 70 thrillers he reads annually. He divides them into four genres.
“A Western takes place in “a world in which there is no law and order,
and a man shows up and imposes, personally, law and order on the
territory, the community.” An Eastern is “a story where there is law and
order, so there are institutions of justice, but they have been
subverted by people from within.” In a Northern, “law and order exists,
and law and order is morally righteous, the system works.” (A prime
example is, of course, Law and Order.) A Southern is “where the entire apparatus is corrupt, and where the reformer is not an insider but an outsider.”
Water, flour, salt. That is all it takes from you to have a loaf of bread. There are also microorganisms. From wheat, air, or your skin, one or more of them have wild yeast and lactobacilli. Or maybe all of them have both of them. They do the big work of transforming a glop of water and flour into what I’ll be eating in a couple of hours.
First Loaf #bakewithjack
I learned about how to do this from #bakewithjack. He, Jack, has a new bit on baking each Thursday. A bunch of them have been on sourdough. Including how to make a starter, what you see in the jar. He specifies the wholemeal rye as the source flour to use. But really, any flour will do. That video was my, ahem, starter in sourdough baking. His method is pretty fool-proof and it doesn’t waste anything – the cut the starter in half, pour the rest down the drain. That always put me off. Feeding a starter, throwing away half? What a waste! There’s another method also from Mike Greenfield about just eating the starter. That’s what scallion pancakes are for. But I prefer Jack’s method unless I’m hungry.
To get started you can watch Beginners Sourdough Loaf, Start to Finish. That covers everything. You’re referred to the “how to make starter” video. But everything else is shown in that video.
I’m now going through the pain of waiting for the loaf to cool so I can eat it. It’s just a couple of hours. I think I’ll watch 15 Mistakes Most Beginners Make. It’s from Mike Greenfield’s Pro Home Cooks. He has scads of videos on cooking. Great stuff.
Or maybe read about sourdough on Wikipedia. Another rabbit hole to go down into.
Confession time. I’ll go to an Indian restaurant and look at the menu. Aloo Mutter? Palak Peneer? Malai Kofti? Ask me to tell you in English what they are and you’ll get a guess. It doesn’t really matter if I know what I’m ordering, Indian food is by and large great stuff to eat. It helps that I’m an omnivore and like it all. And If I thought I was ordering potatoes and get spinach instead, well that’s OK.
But what if what you ordered isn’t what you expect when you get it? Like you order an Impossible Burger and they serve a beef pattie instead? Or you order a burger with blue cheese and it is nowhere to be found? OK, the simple answer is pointing this out to the server. But wait, had I ordered what I thought I had? It was loud. I pointed. Maybe they brought what they thought I’d ordered.
I’m perplexed. Did I get what I’d imagined or what I asked for?
Joe Van Cleve has a problem. It is a good one. He has too much stuff. No, he’s not a hoarder. He writes, he photographs, he writes poems, he typewrites, he keeps doing it and keeping it all. Binders and folders of stuff he’s created. Scads of stuff, he has scads of stuff. All filling up space. And he does not know what to do with it.
So he made a video explaining his problem and asking his viewers for their input. I gave some. I don’t think it will be helpful. But maybe it can be helpful, just a bit.
Watch the 10 minutes below for his description of his problem. How much of it do you understand? I’m looking at you photographers.
