Bread in Dry Climates
I moved back to the desert whence I came. It has been hot and dry all summer. All my bread thus far has been totally inedible-- yeasty and dense on the inside. The first few loaves also never browned on the outside. I assumed that this meant that the enzymes were not adequately shredding the starches into their individual sugars, so I increased the rising time. This produced beautiful crusts, but the bread is still yeasty and inedible on the inside (see two loaves below):
I have used both old and new recipes, both dry active starter and the wild yeast I've been cultivating for a year (and I have tested both). Nothing changes. For the last month and a half, I've pretty much given up on bread.
The Dreaded GRE
Home Grown Food and the Benefits of Being a Yuckie
I was not always a good standardized test taker. When I was in fifth grade I could not fill in a bubble sheet. That's how they found out I have a learning disability-- severe visual processing issues. However, I learned coping mechanisms and in high school I scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT, which is how I earned myself a job teaching SAT prep. However, the GRE is a whole different ball game. Although I do spend a lot of time on the computer, I don't think there is any way I can manage to take a 4 hour exam on a computer screen. I've been studying from a GRE book and I'm doing rather well (although I've only looked at the verbal section so far), but these questions are on paper. I also would love to get dispensation to teach GRE-- which means that I need to score in the 90th percentile or above on the GRE. That means 640 or above on verbal (piece of cake), 5.5 on writing (doable), and a whopping 780 on math (oh dear). Wish me luck!
Home Grown Food and the Benefits of Being a Yuckie
A house-guest from Croatia recently left a copy of the UK version of Cosmopolitan. I am not a magazine reader at all-- I read my mom's Health if it's around, but I just do not particularly like the magazine format. However, I thought it might be interesting to discover the perspectives of the popular beat of the UK, or at least as much as possible from a magazine.
One of the features of the magazine was entitled something along the lines of "The Rise of the Yuckie" and it described a theoretically new group of people who were twenty-somethings with or without jobs who lived with their parents. The article essentially painted them as a generation without the motivation to find a way for themselves who were leeching off of their relatives. As someone who, for the moment, lives at home, I was rather offended. I have a job, but it's a teaching job and it's only part time. I have a lot of debt from four years of college which I have been working off for the last three years. I don't feel like I'm leeching-- I help out around the house and in the garden, I'm coaching my mom through losing weight (since I managed to lose about 50lbs in the past two years), I do about 60% or more of the cooking, I constructed and do my best to maintain a website for my father, I have bought cooking supplies, and I'm planning on paying for insurance and gas out of my salary when I get my license. So I felt pretty disgruntled about being lumped in with this group.
There is one benefit to being a yuckie-- as apparently my "kind" is so distastefully called-- and that is home grown food. Even if I could afford my own place, which I certainly cannot on my salary, I would never be able to afford a place with a garden. At home, however, we have a lovely garden and my mom and I have made a project out of growing herbs and vegetables for cooking.
One of the features of the magazine was entitled something along the lines of "The Rise of the Yuckie" and it described a theoretically new group of people who were twenty-somethings with or without jobs who lived with their parents. The article essentially painted them as a generation without the motivation to find a way for themselves who were leeching off of their relatives. As someone who, for the moment, lives at home, I was rather offended. I have a job, but it's a teaching job and it's only part time. I have a lot of debt from four years of college which I have been working off for the last three years. I don't feel like I'm leeching-- I help out around the house and in the garden, I'm coaching my mom through losing weight (since I managed to lose about 50lbs in the past two years), I do about 60% or more of the cooking, I constructed and do my best to maintain a website for my father, I have bought cooking supplies, and I'm planning on paying for insurance and gas out of my salary when I get my license. So I felt pretty disgruntled about being lumped in with this group.
There is one benefit to being a yuckie-- as apparently my "kind" is so distastefully called-- and that is home grown food. Even if I could afford my own place, which I certainly cannot on my salary, I would never be able to afford a place with a garden. At home, however, we have a lovely garden and my mom and I have made a project out of growing herbs and vegetables for cooking.
Etc...
Cerinthus is coming into town for my birthday before he goes for his semester in Italy. I'm totally jealous of his trip. He is going on a Greek Odyssey, where he reads texts and goes around Greece to see important sites. Then, he spends a semester in Florence. I have wanted to go to Florence ever since my first time reading A Room with a View by E.M. Forrester, which is one of my favorite books of all time. Sigh. Maybe I'll win the lottery and then I can join him there...
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