Daily Journal: Day 8 of 365

Today, I started baking Christmas cookies. The batch today only wound up being a couple of dozen, and the girlfriend is going to decorate them tomorrow. I’m not sure that I’ll make any more tomorrow, since the landlord’s carpet guy is supposed to be over during the day to fix the carpet, and who knows how long all that crap is going to take. I need to pick up some more stuff and take apart the TV system so he can do whatever he’s going to do to make the carpet “good as new”.

While driving back to the dealership with an older couple this afternoon, I was reminded again why I should never talk about religion. I really didn’t bring it up at all, and I tried to sort of change the subject, but it wound up with me being invited to their church and them telling me how wonderful it is and how there are all kinds of groups of people there. I really wanted to just tell them to shut up about it because I wasn’t interested in the least, but I didn’t think that would be all that appropriate a thing to say to customers. Oh well…

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The Texas Sourdough Adventure, Take Two!

About a week and a half ago, I decided that I would try creating a new sourdough starter. I had one in Oregon, which died when I was in the hospital with the blood clot in my leg. I knew they did well there, but I wasn't sure how they'd do here in the heat and humidity of Texas. Well, it turns out that they do pretty well. As long as you don't water them with the highly chlorinated city water here in Denton. I'm pretty sure that's what killed it off, but what I do know is that it's now gone down the sink. And there's a new jar sitting on top of the fridge.

So, how does one go about creating a batch of sourdough starter? Well, for me it's a mix of 1/3 cup of Bob's Red Mill Organic Dark Rye flour and 1/4 cup of moderately warm water. The water in this case is regular tap water which has been filtered through a Brita pitcher. That's what I used last time, and it seemed to work fine until I just added the unfiltered water. Some of the websites and such that I've seen recommend using distilled or bottled water, but I don't see any reason not to use the water from the pitcher, since most of the crap has been filtered out of it.

I use the Red Mill organic flour because that's what one of those same websites recommended. They didn't specify the brand, but they said that it should be an organic stone ground flour, and I think they said that dark rye flour seems to have a good strain of yeast, or the right ingredients for yeast to thrive off of, or something like that. In any case, that's what I used in Oregon, and I still had half a bag left, so that's what I used here. I'm sure other organic flours would probably also work just fine.

You take the water and the flour, nothing else, and mix them together and put them in a covered, but not airtight, container. If you put them in an airtight container, the waste gases from the yeast will eventually poison them, and you'll wind up with nothing but a slurry of flour and water which wouldn't make a pancake rise, let alone bread. Personally, I take a dish towel and put it over the top of a wide-mouth mason jar, then secure it on with one of those big rubber bands that comes wrapped around newspapers on the weekends. Put the container in a warm place to let the yeast grow. I put mine on top of the refrigerator, but if you have a nice warm cupboard or something, that'll work just fine, too. Just don't get it too hot or you'll kill the yeast.

A few hours after you mix the stuff together and put it in the warm place, you should start seeing some bubbles forming in your slurry. If you really feel like watching it for a while, you'll be able to see it rise to nearly twice it's original height, before settling back down to near the original depth. If you don't happen to feel like watching a blob of goo all day, and you're not lucky enough to see it near the peak, you can still tell that it's alive because you'll be able to see the little smears on the glass from when it rose and fell.

Every day, add the same amount of flour and water to the mixture, making sure to stir it very well and making sure that the water isn't too terribly hot. Heat will kill the yeast in the mixture. Cold, on the other hand, will just slow down it's reaction without harming the actual yeast. In face, if you have to leave your house for a while and can't feed your sourdough mixture, the best way to prevent its dying is to just stick it in the fridge. In the chiller, your sourdough starter can go for up to a month without feeding if need be.

Anyway, the starter's on the fridge and we'll see how it goes...

Just stuff and things...

I'm getting by still. It's been a fairly useless day, although I did send off a couple of applications that I found in the paper this morning. I haven't heard back from very many of the companies I've sent resumes to, and so far every one that I have heard back from has been a negative response. Either I'm not qualified enough, they have already filled the job, or I'm overqualified for the entry-level positions I've applied for. It sucks. Aside from that, the day was mostly spent copying data from my old desktop computer to the new laptop. I do hope to eventually get everything moved over onto here, so I can retire both of the old beasties, since I really don't use them any longer. Once I make sure I have everything off the old laptop, I do believe I'm going to load Ubuntu Linux onto it. I'm still not sure if I'm going to keep my career moving along the computer track, but at least I can kind of keep up with the whole Linux deal. It won't hurt, anyway...

I think I managed to kill my sourdough starter. I think I tried adding the tap water a little too early in the process, and it killed off the yeast. I guess I'm going to have to try it again, and this time I'll keep using the filtered water for the duration. I guess it really doesn't cost anything, so I might as well. Not sure why I really bothered using the tap water anyway. Live and learn, I suppose...

Hockey's on again tonight. Canada's last hope, the Canucks, got eliminated by Chicago last night, damn it. I just really don't think Chicago is going to be able to do very much against the Red Wings, and I have the feeling the Red Wings are going to close out their series against the Ducks tonight...

Because of all the hockey and playing with the new computer, I haven't had much chance to watch a lot of baseball lately. Oh well...

The daily rundown, April 30

I got up pretty early, when the girlfriend was getting up to go to work. I got my laundry kind of organized, sorted, and ready to go, and went through the paper to see if there were any good jobs available. Of course there were, but I was too lazy to really call or send out resumes. Idiot. I scooped out the litter box, but didn't really do too much else with the morning. I did get caught up on e-mail, at least. Oh, and I tried to get my music keyboard set up again, but it turns out I bought the wrong size power adapter at Radio Shack, so I guess I'll have to go back and get a different one, because who knows when I'm going to manage to dig the one out of my storage unit.

My girlfriend came home for lunch, like usual, and she was in a better mood than she had been recently. She wanted to see if we could do laundry together in the evening, which was fine with me. She also asked me to empty the dishwasher and bake a loaf of the bread mix she had in the cupboard, both of which were also fine with me.

After she went back to work, I emptied the dishwasher, and got the paper recycling brought out to my car, along with the laundry. I started watching a baseball game and nearly forgot all about the bread, which I was kneading as she came home. Once she changed and I had the bread dough rising in a bowl, we headed out into the world. We had to stop at her work first, because she'd forgotten her phone there. That was no problem, and apparently she doesn't mind my driving, even though I think I don't do a really outstanding job on the roads around here. After getting her phone, we headed to the laundromat. It's a good thing that I hadn't decided to go by myself earlier, because the laundry that we'd gone to when I visited last year is closed now, and I didn't know that or where the new one she goes to is located. When we got there, the washers were pretty much all taken, so we decided to head home and try later. She asked if we could go by her bank first, and the recycle place was on the way there. So we stopped there, but it turns out that the recycling dumpster for paper is completely full, and when she called the number on it, it just rang, so the office was probably closed. But we did get to her bank and get out the money so she could pay her rent. So we really went out for two things, and we did accomplish two things, but neither of the things we accomplished were the things we'd originally set out to do. Oh well.

We came back home and I punched down the dough and put it into a loaf pan to rise. I then sat down and watched the tail end of the Canadiens losing to Philly. I remembered to put the bread in the oven after that, and then I sat and watched the Sharks managed to stay alive, just barely, by beating the Stars to force a game 5. Between the games, the girlfriend headed out into the world and paid her rent. She also picked me up the three main newspapers for the area so I can look for more job openings, despite the fact that she seems to think that I have the inside track on the job at her work. Hopefully I'll get that one, but I really do need to start sending out more resumes and such just in case I don't. Can't get work when no one even knows that you're looking, after all.

After the hockey was over, I wandered upstairs, checked my mail to find the usual stuff, nothing much of huge interest. I brought the girlfriend up a slice of bread with butter on one half and peanut butter on the other. Personally, I didn't think the sourdough bread went well with peanut butter, but she seemed to like it. I had a slice myself, but with just butter on it. I read through a few e-mails and then we watched part of the Daily Show before heading off to sleep.