I baked two of these for our office Thanksgiving potluck.
The pretty one went to work.
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Bread, 13 November 2018
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Monster’s University, Dan Scanlon, 2013
We watched Monsters University a couple days ago and I have to say I was quite surprised. I had very low expectations at first after realizing it was a prequel during the first scene. In fact I almost walked away to do some chores. However, by the end of the movie I was impressed. It showed me the story telling potential of a prequel, which I had previously written off as an impossible task after the weak Star Wars movies as well as the horrific Assimov infill Foundation infill novels.
The movie did the basic job of a prequel, illuminating the characters and the relationships of the main protagonists. Unlike other prequels that seem to repeat the genre structure and tropes of the original, Monster’s U also does a good job of telling a different and amusing story. It’s not a groundbreaking story, but as a sequel to another children’s film it doesn’t need to.
Ultimately it made my wife and I want to rewatch Monster’s Inc, to see how knowing that original story would be different now that we know the backstory of these guys. I’m not sure if there’s a higher recommendation that I can give than that.
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Kahuna, Günter Cornett, 1998
We bought the game Kahuna on a sale the other day. I had not researched it thoroughly but the price was right and I had heard good things about it. Even if the game itself is a little to complex for my daughter’s age, I knew the rules were very simple so we started playing it anyways.
A few plays in, a chain reaction revealed itself on the board. At that moment, I was reminded why I love boardgames, especially the old german style games that was popular in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
For me it’s not about winning, even though the fact it is a competition does sharpen the mind. The true joy in boardgaming is found in these moments where the game mechanics come together to create an emergent moment you couldn’t easily envision after a straight reading of the simple rules.
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Bread, 7 November 2018
I am publishing this way after the fact, but I believe this is one of our early forays into steamed bread.
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A new food lifestyle
I’ve been enjoying the products of the food scientists at the local fast food chains and it’s become clear it’s time to change things up.
Our office has a large break room with a good sized kitchen sink, so I woke up this morning and realized that if I brought some balsamic vinegar, olive oil, the salad spinner, some greens, and nuts, I’d be doing pretty darn good. There is also a range, so I could also bring eggs if I’m feeling particularly fancy.
I suspect I’ve been trapped in a mindset created way back in Houston when we didn’t have a car for a year and a half. But I have one now, and if I’m gonna drive to BK, I might as well go to Smiths and get something slightly less unhealthy.
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An organic block party
Last night, we went again to a big block party down in the southwest part of town. Almost two thirds of the houses in this cul de sac was seriously decorated, as was many other houses in the subdivision leading towards their street.
Last year we were invited by friends to this block, who were themselves invited by friends of one of the originators of this event. My wife was pregnant with the boy at the time so we took a moment to rest on chairs on their driveway. The originator came out and chatted with us and could not have been friendlier.
She said the whole thing started up years ago because she and some neighbors got tired of going to the mall for halloween and decided to have a small block party instead with a couple folding tables in their driveways. Over the years it has just grown and really become a major event.
Sometimes things just happen, we just got to be there to ride it.
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Bread, 26 October 2018
As a state employee, I got to take Nevada Day off. So the night before, I went ahead and mixed the dough at the next step up, 75% whole wheat.
100g all purpose flour (Arrowhead)
300g whole wheat flour (Montana Wheat)
300g water
100g starter
11g salt
11g olive oilI have a habit of waking up early during the work week, because I starting thinking about work the moment I wake up, which then makes me unable to fall back asleep. However, since this was a weekend day for me, I managed to sleep in to 0740 and it meant the dough was on the edge of overproofing.
I fired up the oven, preshaped the dough, and once the oven hit 450, I pulled out the pot, folded the dough and threw it in, and gave it the new square snip patter on top. The thing was a little misshapen, but it came out well. The flavor is fairly wheaty, but noticeably more than the 50% mix.
The next step would be to either go up to 100% and see where it takes me, or to try making the 75% without the olive oil. I’m not sure which one will come next.
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Advertising works
But sometimes it takes a long, long time. I signed up for the NPR classical music newsletter one year ago, and the item that keeps popping regularly is their Tiny Desk concert series. As the name implies, it’s a short concert of three our four songs by a single artist.
A few weeks ago, the newsletter advertised a Tiny Desk Concert with Yo Yo Ma who was making the rounds with his third recording of the Bach Cello Suites. I finally just got around to checking it out. It’s been a year of drip, drip, drip advertising, but NPR is finally back in my podcast feed.
Postscript, word of mouth also works, I just watched Grosse Pointe Blank after my buddy told me about it in 2008. And yes, a decade later it was indeed great fun.
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Four apps, two old, two new
We’ll see how long this lasts, but I came across two apps this past weekend.
The new app was Duolingo, via a recommendation on the Hello Internet Podcast. Its a fun gamify way to learn a language, and so far its been interesting to test myself against the system for Chinese. Over the past few years I’ve spent a bit of effort doing flashcards on Pleco, the excellent Chinese dictionary, but I keep running out of steam because individual words is but just a part of the language.
It seems that I am just advanced enough that I won’t get a ton out of Duolingo, but plowing through their available lessons for those quick breaks over the next couple weeks till I finish them all up will certainly be more productive than Facebook. Hopefully this will kickstart me back into some sort of regular chinese practice.
When I went on a walking kick a few years ago, I settled on using the Pacer app, until life got in the way and I became sedentary again. I re-downloaded and it seems that the developers have not done anything to ruin it and added a nice 7 minute workout routine, aping the official Johnson and Johnson 7 minute workout app. We’ll see where this goes, between jump roping, calisthenics, martial arts, and just plain walking around I need to get moving again. At least this is a good tracking tool to start.
In the end I’ve always wanted to be able to read the mother tongue and I know I need to exercise. It may well be another phase that quickly peters out, but hopefully it will be different this time, a little bit at a time.
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Bread, 20 October 2018
As I’ve mentioned before, I am revisiting whole wheat flour in the bread. As the ratio goes up, I’ve decided to strip out the supplemental fun stuff and just focus on the dough until I can get it working right. This week was 50% whole wheat.
200g all purpose flour (King Arthur)
200g whole wheat flour (Montana Wheat)
300g water
100g starter
11g salt
10g olive oilThe dough came out nicely. It was in a good mood in the morning and while it had to wait in the fridge while we ran errands, it seemed to be quite happy after warming up in the afternoon sun.
However, as you can see in the photo, the loaf did not expand as much as I expected. Maybe it was because it was baked in a 350f oven because we were cooking some other items. Or maybe it’s just the whole wheat flour. That said, it rose well enough that I’m going to go to 75% whole wheat next week. I expect to run into some bad loaves as I keep pushing it up to 100% over the next month, but I intend to get some good 100% loaves before dialing it back to a happy sweet spot.
Even if the rise was not as explosive as I would have liked, this bread tastes quite good. With 50% whole wheat, it is starting to take on a distinctly whole wheat taste. It’s not one I necessarily like, but I don’t dislike it either. In lesser amounts like my old standard of 15% to 20% whole wheat it definitely adds a very nice complexity to the loaf. I’m curious how I’ll like the flavor as the ratio starts to reverse.
