Skip to main content
I have made the Black Pearl and she is mine.

There are these kits made by a company called Metal Works, and this little beauty started out as four sheets of laser-cut metal that I then punched out of the sheets, bent, and put together according to the directions. My near-sightedness made it so that I had to just take my glasses off and do it. I suspect I wouldn't have even tried it if I were still wearing contact lenses.

There are times when it's good to know that I'm getting old.

Today was a gorgeous Colorado fall day, the foliage all the colors of flame, and the wind stiff and solid enough to lean against. A raven glided (the way I knew it was a raven, as crows can't glide), stock still, above my head. It cocked one beady black eye at me, cawed at me, and then floated off backwards. I got another thousand words toward a short story, answered a query about usage of a photograph of one of my paintings on Flickr, and several hundred more words on the blog about Oakland, but I want to get back in the habit of writing blog entries every day. Even if it's just a list of the things I've Done. After hearing Cory Doctrow on the subject, I gained a better understanding of the synthesis I do in my entries.

I've also voted today and am suitably proud of myself for voting for Jon Singer, though not the one with the lovely research bent, but another local one that is running for office. Yes, I know the difference, but it was fun.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Povitica, Traditional and My Take

Strawberry Hill makes povitica for the Kansas City Ukranian and Croatian and Eastern European people in the Midwest. They do an amazing job of it and were highly recommended by John's father's cousins. So we bought an apple cinnamon one and an English walnut one to see what they were really like. We ate the apple cinnamon one, first, and that's what I started my experiments to reproduce. I started with Joy Food Sunshine's Homemade Povitica Bread Recipe , but it was far too light and airy and bread-like for me. It's a very nice loaf of sweet bread with a very light swirl of nuts for flavor and scent. It's a nice thing, but entirely unlike the Strawberry Hill loaf, which was super dense and the swirl of flavors dominated the almost chewy wrapper around the filling. It also had very little cinnamon, something I really missed as the Strawberry Hill apple povitica had a wealth of cinnamon richness. Also in talking to the Arkansas cousins, living in the American Sout
Post a Comment
Read more

Gumbo Z'Herbes

I'm writing this because my son needs this particular version of Gumbo Z'Herbes as I actually do it. It was based off a recipe in Epicurious that then went to Chow that then went to Chowhound, that then... anyway... I don't know the exact origins anymore, and I've changed it substantially from them.  Ingredients 3  lb  greens (two bags of Costco Super Greens is great for this) 2/3  c  vegetable oil 2/3  c  all-purpose flour 1   yellow onion chopped 1  bunch  scallion chopped 1   green pepper chopped 4   celery ribs chopped 2  cloves  garlic minced 2  t  kosher salt 2  T  Cajun seasoning (preferably Lucille's) 2 cups vegetable broth or chicken broth if you're not going vegan or water 2  whole  cloves 2  whole  bay leaves 3 whole allspice 1  T fresh herb (I never have marjoram, so it's been cilantro usually or parsley)  Gumbo Z'herbes Directions Have a big bowl of ice water to the side. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil, add 1/2 tsp salt to the water, then d
Post a Comment
Read more

Sourdough Bread Recipe and Techniques

Ingredients Leaven 50 grams whole wheat flour 50 grams bread flour 100 grams water 20 grams starter Dough 375 grams warm (90-110 degrees Fahrenheit) water 165 grams Leaven 375 grams bread flour 125 grams whole wheat flour (finer ground, commercial/generic whole wheat) 10 grams salt Technique Mix all the leaven ingredients together. I use a quart sized translucent plastic container from take-out soup because I like to see the level of the dough inside. I put a thin rubber band around the girth of it at the starting level, and place it in a warm spot and let it grow until it doubles in height. It can take anywhere from three to eight hours, so sometimes I use a dehydrator set to 80-90 degrees Fahrenheit to speed the process.  When it's doubled, I take 165 grams of the leaven and mix it into the warm water for the dough (it SHOULD float if you let the leaven rise long enough). I put the rest back into the refrigerator for next time. I actually work it into the water, "dissolving&
2 comments
Read more