AROS#15: Earl

Good blues,
And my fingers are strumming

On the steering wheel;

NPR has Chris Smithers at Godfrey’s,
 playing.

I remember

Drinking wine there

Rocking along; catching his eye,
In that small, warm space,

Drunk and horny;
A lifetime ago.

As I drive through the parkway tonight,

Posh houses alight

With HD TVs and game rooms,

Leftover Christmas lights,

Driveway LEDs,

I know you are listening to the

Trout breathe; damp, green breath.

Those last, hardy spiders in your hair;

Your beard keeps your chin warm.

Toes bundled in socks

That you put on in November.

Burrowed deep,
The mice keep you company

In your free, 25th winter,

streamside.

AROS#14: Arctic Air

Arctic Air

Snow so cold

it squeaks

in protest under my feet.

Dinner from the Freezer, Organic Style

It's January, and after a long, hot summer, a frantic fall, and an equally frantic holiday season, we're all settling into the winter doldrums.  NOT SO! Unfortunately, I don't have pictures, but we had summer for dinner tonight:

Fresh (frozen) local organic sausage roulettes, garden grown kale in a wild oyster mushroom cream sauce, oven baked sweet potatoes (Amish grown), and frozen strawberries (from the market last summer) over homemade, raw-milk ice cream.  And it all took about 40 minutes, and came from my freezer and pantry.  Yahoo!

I think I'm beginning to like winter!

AROS#13: Why?

Research

I think in questions. Don't you?  Research is natural.

Help! I'm a Hostage of Sourdough!

I am being held captive by a colony of yeast.  It's true: I captured them myself about a year or so ago, but I've fed them, nurtured them, kept their home clean.  They've contributed to the occasional flatbread, it's true, but when I asked them to perform a slightly more difficult task (a loaf of sourdough bread), they went on strike.

The sponge

They're alive and well in there..I can tell. Here's what they looked like at noon yesterday. They bubbled away, looking mildly happy...so I waited awhile, then added some flour.  And what did they do?



 Not much.  So I went out for the evening, and returned to see this: a little action.

 OK...I took the hint.  I have a slow yeast.  I went to bed.  By the way, my house is rather, um, cool at night. That might be an issue.

 By noon today, this was the state of my sponge.  OK, that's more like it!

 I added some sugar, oil, and salt, and kneaded in the flour a half cup at a time, then left the dough to double in size. Here's the site I'm using for instructions and the recipe.

Do you know I used to bake bread regularly when I was a young woman? Of course, I used commercial yeast and soft white flour. There's not a bit of yeast in this sourdough except for the yeast that is natural to my home environment; this should impart a unique flavor to the bread I bake, a "terior", exactly like the "taste of place" found in fine wines from various regions.  It's also a random blend of the various organic flours I had on hand, all mixed together into a batch. 

I suppose good things are worth waiting for.

It wouldn't rise on the table near the heater; it wouldn't rise on top of the stove, so I put it IN the stove and occasionally turned on the heat for a minute or so.  My dough was unenthusiastic, but eventually it did rise a bit, so I punched it down, then formed a loaf.  That's supposed to double in size before I bake it.

I'm not holding my breath.  It's 6 PM of the NEXT DAY!  How did people survive on this stuff????

And more importantly,

will it be good?????

----------------

***UPDATE***

Epic Fail.

It looks harmless enough. 

It even got nice and brown.  Smelled good, too.

But where are the bubbles, I ask you? Where?  It's like unleavened bread!  Lazy darn yeast!

Well, it's not over, I tell you.

You're trying again.  Starting NOW.  I'm breaking out the heating pad!  Big guns!

I DARE you not to rise!

You're going to do some work around here, darnit!

Just see if you don't!



AROS#12: Yeast

Bread

Note to self: bread won't rise in a cold kitchen.

AROS#11: Dusk

Dusk

An hour before sunset

looking west

the black-white cattle

grow golden halos,

a spiderweb.

of trees behind them