Kitchen Art

Remember the bread that I was making on Sunday/Monday? Well I forgot to post pictures. It came out well. I am going to tweak the wheat recipe a bit and play around with add-ins for the white. Maybe I'll work with some whole grain white flour so it's at least a little healthy!

Here's the wheat:

Sliced:

Now for the white:

Sliced. The crumb and interior was much better for this one.

Now that I am posting pictures I am really wanting to make some more bread!

as my granny would say. Yep, snow in April. The world is coming to an end. The driving rain of the morning turned to snow by the afternoon and the dog wouldn't go for my suggestion that he just stay inside and hold it until the weather changed. *sigh* The odd wintry mix has inspired me to do some cold weather cooking. I checked the deep freezer and found both chili and beef stew. Did some thinking and decided to mix up a batch of No Knead bread to serve up with some kind of soup/stew for dinner tomorrow. I used half whole wheat flour so we'll see how that turns out. Since this process takes about 24 hours total there will be no whipping up a new loaf if this one fails miserably. I'll have to run out and find bread at the store.

On a more scholarly note, as I start prepping for my C&W presentation I am struggling with the ethics of using game ROMS and emulators for research purposes. My talk is going to cover some hand held games and I can't think of any easy way to record game play that would make decent video. The only thing that I can think of is using emulators and recording the game play from my computer. So the question is...is it still wrong if I already own the game? If a ROM runs in the forest and no one is around to catch me doing it is it still illegal? :-)

Last night I did some major cooking in order to relieve some stress. For dinner I did a chipotle and mixed berry (raspbeery, blueberry, and strawberry) marinade for a pork loin (I also made a chipotle and mixed berry glaze) with chipotle rice and steamed veggies. That was by far the best new dish I came up with in a while. For dessert I pulled a tart shell out of the fridge (the perks of living with a pastry chef) and made a white chocolate and cream cheese pastry cream and topped it with strawberries and blueberries. It was damn fine! Cooking always makes me feel so much better. I don't think the eating hurts either, but cooking really helps and the more difficult the dish the better. I was gonna take pictures but the pork was such a big hit that it was really ugly really quick and the same thing went for the tart :-)

Having a lazy Sunday before going back to preparing the tenure file tomorrow. Watching a bit of tv, knitting some socks, reading some blogs (no I didn't get the latest Harry Potter yet, shocking isn't it?), driving around trying to find "ehtnic hari care products" (I knew I shoulda shopped while I was in Indy yesterday), and watching Lisa try out a whole new batch of pastry recipes. That means local folks might want to check in on the English Department main office tomorrow!

Just trying to relax. Contemplating a career as a barista if tenure falls through. Lisa warns that she can't pay me enough to keep us living in the style to which we've become accustomed. Hmmmm...I wonder if Starbucks is hiring?? :-)

Sitting in one hot ass house that refuses to cool of because I'm doing so much cooking tonight. Latley I like to cook for the week all at once so that life is a bit easier. Lisa is taking finals this week and I am on the other side of that desk. I'm also making the world famous bread pudding with homemade pralines and sour mash whiskey sauce for my Tuesday night Minority Rhet seminar.

*Now I've just discovered that the only sour mash in the house is several bottles of limited edition stuff that I got on my tour of the Jack Daniels plant. Now I love the students in my seminar, but you gotta draw the line somewhere! So I'll have to whip up the sauce tomorrow because the L word is coming on and I can't go to the store right now :-P

Back to the usual routine. Thursday at 6 means that I am in the office catching up on paper work, blogging, and thinking about my academic life in general. Don't worry, I don't think that I have enough energy for snarkiness this morning.

I think the months of insomnia and the craziness of Cs last week have finally caught up with me. Lisa says that it's mind over matter and I should just tell myself that it's allergies, but that's kinda hard for me to swallow considering the fact that I feel like I've been hit by a Mack truck. So today I am going to go home after I teach. I'm skipping racquetball, rescheduling my directed study meeting, and canceling office hours. Let's see if the world really stops turning if I do this.

I'm going home to put my feet up and try to wade through a mountain of dissertation chapters that await my perusal. At some point I also need to address the 3 scholarly projects in process that are also demanding my attention. It looks like it'll be a working weekend for me, but I like to think that at least by being at home and working from the comfort of the couch that I will be recuperating.

I am trying to avoid the bi-annual case of pneumonia (or as granny says pee-neumonia ) that I get when I burn the whole damned candle at once.

Oh yeah, gotta go home and make snacks for the GTA knit-together at my house tonight. Guess that means I'll need to dust and do the dishes that I skipped last night too, eh?

What happened the tropical temperatures from last week? What did I come home to? I had avoided a flu shot because I hate them. I get achy and cranky for a day or so afterwards. But coming home from vacation we saw that everyone had "the Crud". Yes, that is "Crud" with a capital C. So, I made appointments and we went and got flu shots today. I came home, fought with the dog who decided that going outside in the rain was a bad idea, and made a big pot of chicken florentine soup and a monster greek salad. That with a good bit of foccacia bread was dinner. The soup was warm and good and made us feel better immediately. And then, the psuedo-crud (lower case C) kicked in and I passed out for about 2 hours. Now I should be sleeping, but instead I am up preparing to watch one of the TiVOed episodes of Digital Future from CSPAN. Oh well, maybe I can refine my domestic goddess skills by knitting some during the program.