Game Night

Went to Game Night at Kat’s house on Saturday. Great fun. We played Uno, Rock Band (Lissa and I did a kick-ass version of “Crazy Train”. The game gave us 80%, probably because I know the words from way back and not because we’re great singers. Kris and Wendy got boo’ed twice.), Trivial Pursuit and Fact or Crap. I must buy that game. Good snacks, too. One of the things I love about Kat is we have the same taste for food. She breaded and oven-baked pickles. So tasty. My contribution was a sangria-like drink from a recipe I found in a magazine. You take cheap red wine, cut it with apple juice and float some fruit in there. Since it can’t compete with real sangria, I decided henceforth it will be called vino tinto. Emphasis on the “veeeno” and “teeento”. It’s really good, though, and because it’s cut with juice you can drink that much more.

I Made Bread

That’s right. I made my first loaf of bread. It’s cooling right now but I cut myself a big peice. It’s from a very basic white bread recipe so it tastes, surprisingly, like plain white bread. With butter it’s tasty. I got the recipe from my new favorite cookbook The No-Salt, Lowest-Sodium Cookbook bye Donald A Gazzinga.
First, I gathered all the ingredients, bowls and measuring accoutement:

Next I followed the recipe. Here’s what the dough looks like:

Here’s the final product before I cut myself a big hunk:


Now that I feel more comfortable in my ability to produce a loaf of bread that doesn’t taste like crap, I’m up for experimentation. I saw something on YouTube for Mushroom Stuffed Bread…

I’m OK Right Now

That’s my new yoga mantra. It’s what popped into my head Sunday morning at yoga. My gym has a substitute teacher named Mary and whenever she’s on the schedule, you know it’ll be the best gym-yoga class you ever took. She set intentions to start and I began thinking about how I can’t plan much beyond the next few weeks right now because so much is up in the air and it will be that way for the foreseeable future. But most of the time I’m actually OK right at that moment. Except when I’m not.

Also on Sunday, I was watching Clara the Depression Chef on YouTube. I cancelled my cable in anticipation of getting Dish but I’ve not gotten around to it. First, it’s nice not to pay $80 per month for the privilege. I watch everything online now, whenever is good for me. When I had cable the TV was always on. Now I turn it on in the AM for the Today show in the background. And I like to have HGTV on when I’m reading.

So anyway, I’m watching Clara because I need to make my own bread now that I’m on a low sodium diet. I started watching for the bread and kept viewing her other segments because she’s just that sweet and interesting and timely. Who could have foreseen that a 90-year-old woman showing you how to make good food when times are bad would ever be so timely? I think I can make bread thanks to her.

The last time I tried anything like this was the bagel incident of 1983. Living in Idaho, you can imagine that good bagels (or any bagels at all back then) were pretty thin on the ground. So I got it in my head to make my own. I thought to tackle the schmear next even though I didn’t know what that was exactly. No matter. The whole thing turned out to be a disaster; making bagels is effing hard. They were so many doughy hockey pucks that no amount of effort could chisel off the baking sheet which I ended up throwing it away. I haven’t tried to make bread-stuff since.

But now that I must hold the salt it is time to try again. The only low-sodium bread I have found is unsweetened wheat bread I get at the farmers market. One loaf of this bread is pricier than the most expensive bread at Safeway (who makes the best store-bought bread). Each peice might have only 90mgs of sodium compared to the average loaf’s 220 or more, but this stuff is so dense, so very dense. I think the entire loaf weighs as much as Steve, my cat. It makes totally acceptable toast but sandwiches are a dry affair with lots of chewing.

I have all the ingredients so now I just have to make the stuff. I’ll post a picture of the results, especially if it’s embarrassing.

Booklist

As of 03/09/2009:

• Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear – I thought I’d be drawn into this book immediately but I wasn’t. It’s set in a time (London 1929) when people were still uber-correct and at first the main character Maisie Dobbs wasn’t human so much as automaton. Like so many charactors set in almost any time in English history you just want to help them remove the sticks from their butts. It isn’t that the writers are bad or the charactors aren’t likeable. It’s the way people are/were. Thankfully this charactor revealed her flaws while keeping her stick firmly up her behind. I’m glad I styaed with this book because I plan to devour the rest of the books in this series.
• The Hidden Staircase by Carolyne Keene – Yep, still love Nancy Drew.
• The Jasmine Trade by Denise Hamilton – Good first effort. Makes me remember why I can’t be a journalist.
• Slam Dunk by Donna King – Two words: derivative and predictable.

The Psychic Said, Spiritualize Your Challenges

I listen to Beth and Bill every morning. On some Fridays they have a psychic called Fred Rollins. This morning he said something I had to write down. I must remember this. He said you should spiritualize your challenges and they won’t control you. The opposite of this is to emotionalize your challenges. He also threw out another gem, “Embrace it and you’ll grow through it as you go through it.”

Legacy Gnome

Despite my gratitude that I get to stay at the library, it’s been bitter-sweet because so many of my super stellar colleagues are gone. For example, it was a sad-glad day when I came in to the work room to see that Lisa Z had cleaned out her desk (sad) and left me the gnome that I’d been coveting for the past year (glad) This gnome walks that fine line between kitsch and tacky.