Liralen's Adventures Through Life

I used an old bread pan instead of a banneton, and shaped the bread before putting it let the dough in the pan in a tea towel rubbed with rice flour overnight in the fridge instead of just in a bowl in the fridge. The dough was just under the lip of the pan when I put it in, and I wrapped the whole thing with a produce bag that I closed with a twist tie. When the oven and Dutch oven were hot (at 500) in the morning, I got the dough out, and it had risen over the lip of the pan. I dumped it out onto a piece of parchment paper a little more roughly than I wanted; but it got there, and tried to brush off some of the loose rice flour, but didn't get even most of it. The dough just barely fit onto the lid of my Dutch oven, and I got the pot over it handily. And then I forgot to turn the temperature down to 450. I let it bake at 500 for 25 minutes and then uncovered the most glorious oven spring I've ever had. I turned it down, then, to 450 and let it go 20 minutes, and it came out a...

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...

We've been doing a lot of experimental cooking during the pandemic, much as everyone else has been. Some notable highlights have been the TikTok Baked Feta pasta dish (with our garden basil, some added whole garlic, and sundried tomatoes because why not riff?), the Lion's Mane crab cakes which surprised us by how GOOD they were, and the usual meanderings about sourdough, which are too numerous to actually link, though I ended up basing my experiments off of The Woks of Life's dad's recipe , as he went at it like an engineer. All good things, but Jet recently asked me for my bao recipe, AND he asked for all the changes I made to it for our food. Jet knows me way too well.  So I'm gonna write it up as I would make it. The only reference I have is the Wei-Chuan's cookbook "Chinese Snacks" and it's entirely for the dough, not the filling, and I've modified it heavily for baking at 5000 feet. Dough Ingredients and Instructions 6 c flour AP or brea...

It's funny how something as simple as a toothbrush working again as it should could be a sign of hope. Small things working as they ought to. The signs we choose to make into Signs for our lives.  We have a very old Sonicare toothbrush handle, with just one button, and there are no online manual for it that we can find, and one day, during the pandemic, it just decided to stop signaling every quarter of it's full 2 minute working time. I had been used to swapping halves of my mouth on those signals and I felt oddly lost without it, the two times a day I was brushing my teeth. When the cleaners came, I'd been bundling away all the stuff what was on the counter of our bathroom, and I threw it into a very narrow space between somethings John had put under the sink and my WaterPik. It might have gotten its button mashed into doing what it was supposed to again, or something, but whatever it was, it made me feel like there might be good things possible again. Yes, I still do my ...

I burned Hell Money for Morgan when he died during COVID in an ICU for an infection. He was younger than I, and he was a kind man whom I had shared sushi with in a restaurant near BigBadCon when all the other folks went for BBQ with deep fried things. We had enjoyed the lighter fare and the smaller amount of company and we'd talked without the whole crowd of folks he'd always happily entertained, and it was good. I mourned him at a distance, for reasons you all well know. I still miss Isabel. That's to be expected for a while to come, and I find that I miss George more, too, with that. She kept his memory bright, and that kept them clear for me, too. Now I need to do the work for both. My stacks of hell money have been depleted significantly this last year, and it's a reminder for me that it's okay for me to feel sad when I'm still mourning. The incense and the smoke comfort even as they sting, and I remember all my dead. Even the ones I didn't know. The Bou...

I started reading James Clear's Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven way to Build Good Ones and Break Bad ones, and it started with a really interesting premise... I do recommend the book, as it's got a lot of specific details on how to improve life with a lot of small, doable changes in the systems one has for doing things. But the starting premise that really struck me was that habits often change because ones self-definition changes.  I really loved that. I had to drastically cut my sugar intake when I became pre-diabetic. And I realize now that "I AM pre-diabetic" became something of my mantra while I did all the small things I needed to cut nearly all the added sugar from my diet at that time. I lost 20 pounds, lowered my blood sugar, and even had half a dozen side effects that all improved my health; but none of those were what precipitated the change and none of those were my stated goal of the time. I just realized that I had become pre-diabetic and that my old s...

Lately, I've been feeling like I've been run over by a truck, but got away with it. Bruised, battered, aching all over, but I'm alive, and I'm whole and I can keep going. It's not physically difficult for me to live and do the things that life needs of me, but so difficult mentally and emotionally. The Capitol Riot occurred on January 6th. That reminded me, in a huge, emotional way, of the fact that my family was wiped out by the Cultural Revolution. Armed insurgents destroyed local governments and moved, eventually, on the capitol of China and destroyed the old way of life. On the way there, they killed, detained, or executed most of the countries intellectuals and artists, including half of my mother's family, and all of my father's who didn't move to Taiwan. I had a very emotional few days, and wrote a big thing on Facebook about that and had hundreds of people respond, forward, and eventually one took exception to my equating Trump and his Proud Boys...

I've been binge watching The King's Avatar on Netflix. It's based on Chinese graphic novels which, in turn, I believe, were based on serial novels, and it's been fascinating seeing so much of what it was like to be on a competitive team. And old friend of mine recommended it and I've been really grateful for the distraction. It's been a balm after the happenings in DC.  John and I were delivering Jet back to Mines when all of that happened, and I didn't let it affect me much, as we had plans. We went to Vihn Xuong Bakery to get bahn mi. They had amazing sandwiches, with their own fresh baked rolls, delicious pickles and veg, and Jet and I got the combination, which included their BBQ pork, their ham, and, of all things, headcheese as well as their house made pate and the usual Magi sauce and other condiments.  Momofuku published a cookbook, a while back, that I've been using to make ramen with. The noodle recipe isn't that useful for a home cook, bu...

The President and General Minister of the United Church of Christ, John Dorhauer, made some really insightful statements about seeing true Evil on the rampage at the Capitol today and for all that it can be daunting, that there is love enough to overcome it, as evidenced by the Georgia elections.  Carl sometimes quotes me about when I said something like that while the world is broken, I can fix it, and while it can and will cost me dearly in a myriad of ways, I'll still do what I can.

It has been really nice having Jet back in the house, even though I tend to revert back to old behaviors and patterns when he's around. I want to take advantage of the time when I can interact with him, so we watch YouTube together while eating breakfast and lunch. There's always the afternoon walk with John and then we either play video games that all three of us like or we have, since Christmas, watched The Mandalorian  together.  Kathy, my sister, gave the family Disney+ for a year, which has been really nice, as I finally got see what was up with the bone broth. The series was a lot of fun, especially with all three of us getting to see it at the same time.  We've done most of the usual things, including Jet baking "Crack Choix Buns", which are basically cream puffs with a crackling crust of cookie that crisps everything up really nicely. I've made Shrove Pancakes, he's made baked pancakes. We had prime rib, Yorkshire puddings, and Brussel sprouts for ...