I spent yesterday afternoon at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. It was an overcast day, which is never ideal for photos, but here they are:
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The big excitement of the day: I had my first deep-fried Snickers bar. Sure enough, it was delicious: a melted chocolate bar surrounded by a donut.
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Quite a few more photos on my Flickr photo stream for the festival.
I’ve blogged before about my nascent bakery business and the process for putting ingredients in a bread machine. Now I’m going to share the secret formula for bread.
Really.
It’s 3 parts water, 5 parts flour, a little yeast, and a little salt.
That’s it.
What about the punching down and the rising and all that? That’s easy: 2–400. Mix it, let it rise, then “punch it down” (push it into itself). Do this a total of 2 times. Then put it into a 400° F oven until it’s golden brown and delicious.
You now know the Secret Formula. Use small amounts of water and flour for a small loaf, or a lot of water and flour for a large loaf. How much yeast is “a little”? Oh, maybe 2 teaspoons for a
That’s part of the secret: Bread really isn’t as finicky as most people suggest. Keep to that formula, and you’ll have great bread.
What about variations? Fine; just add them to that formula, or replace if it’s similar to an existing item. So, if you want whole wheat bread, just replace some of the flour with whole wheat flour. If you’re adding lemon juice or syrup, count that as part of the water. But if you’re adding seeds or raisins or whatever…just add ’em.
Hey! You can now bake all kinds of bread. Congratulations!
I’m always here to answer any questions you may have, too.
Yeah, I haven’t been keeping up with this for a couple of weeks, so it’s more like week 10. But it’s week 6 of keeping track. Whatever!
| Saturday | $44.53 | Gas and shipping a DVD | |||
| Sunday | $16.08 | Lunch | |||
| Monday | $50.80 | Pumpkins, mums, and veggies | |||
| Tuesday | $7.24 | Lunch | |||
| Wednesday | $0.00 | ||||
| Thursday | $9.79 | Lunch and a brownie | |||
| Friday | $92.41 | Groceries, Halloween stuff, lunch | |||
| Total | $220.85 |
Not bad! This doesn’t count bills, of course (electronic bill pay). I really should include that in future, now that I look at it.
Anyway: I’m pretty pleased! That’s not bad for a week.
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You may have noticed the lack of Weekly Expenditure Adventure posts on here. Why? I fell off the wagon.
As easy as it is to track one’s expenditures, it’s just as easy to forget. And then you face days’ worth of half-remembered purchases, and going to the mental effort of remembering just feels like too much work. ‘Cause there’s always something else to do.
Which is no good excuse. I’m reporting my expenditures to keep myself honest about my finances, and I can’t be honest if I don’t know what’s going on. So these records are important, even if I can’t remember every price down to the penny.
So I sat down a few days ago and rebuilt my expenditures as best I can remember. I’m back on the wagon.
I refuse to let laziness get in the way of improving myself.
Cooking is hard. Well, no, the actual act of cooking isn’t particularly hard; it’s the knowledge. How long does an omelette need in the pan? How hot should the pan be, and within what range? All that stuff.
Plus, once one moves on in one’s cooking life from rotely following recipes, one is confronted by the bewildering jungle of choices known as flavor. What goes with what?
Along comes The Flavor Bible to help. Simply, this is an alphabetical list of flavors along with their accompanying flavors. So, if you’re making an apple dish, flip to the Apple section for a list of flavors and ingredients that pair well with apples (caramel, raisins, cinnamon, etc.).
Interestingly, each section is accompanied by the names of dishes from famous chefs using that ingredient. No recipe; just “Baked Pear Torte with Caramel Sauce.” Not only does it make your mouth water, the mind responds with, “Now, how would I make that?” Perfect.
Of course, if you always want to follow the recipe, this book is pretty useless. But if you like to experiment, this is manna from heaven. You can learn the basic process for, say, making a cake, and use The Flavor Bible to come up with dozens of variations without ever touching a cookbook.
I’m definitely glad I bought it.
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I recently started a side business.
I love to bake. For some reason, I find it easy: you combine a few ingredients in a bowl, toss the results into an oven, and come back later to find something awesome.
Then I stumbled on a beautiful old book, Beard on Bread, a yellowed hardback with dozens of bread recipes and pencil sketches. I tried a few of the recipes. They were excellent. I gave out some bread. People loved it.
And thus I discovered that I’m good at baking bread.
To my surprise, folks to whom I gave that bread told me—repeatedly—that they’d pay good money for it, and that I should sell it. After enough of this prodding, I thought, why not?
It’s not like I need to drop my life savings into opening a physical bakery. I can start small.
I made up some simple order forms, and recently created a simple web site for it. Folks can fill out the order form and email or hand it to me. That’s enough for now.
To my further surprise, I’ve gotten a couple of orders. This is working, on a very small scale. And at that scale, I can easily fulfil orders in my spare time.
Where will it go? I’ve no idea, and frankly I don’t care. This is a fun little experiment, and I’m happy to experiment.
If you want to order bread from me, go to bakery.brentnewhall.com. Note that I currently have no way to ship bread, so it’ll have to be local delivery only for the time being. ;-)
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This is the post where I apologize that I haven’t blogged in a while.
As usual, it’s not because I’ve been terribly busy. I have been busy, but I can usually blog when I am.
It’s the normal problem I Have with this blogging: I can’t come up with a consistent schedule of content that continues to inspire me, so I write about neat stuff for a while, then…forget. It lapses. Like anything.
Perhaps this means I should be more diligent about it, like I’ve been with writing. Or that I should relax and be okay with an erratic schedule.
But an erratic schedule doesn’t feel right.
Anyvay. I’m at the New York Anime Festival this weekend, which greatly intrudes on blogging time. Moreover, I haven’t been keeping good track of my expenditures for the past couple weeks, and I’m not quite done with my current book (Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares, which to be fair is 295 pages long).
Meanwhile, I’ve…actually got a lot to blog about, now that I think about it. Like my new baking business. Hmmmm.
I guess you can expect more blog posts soon!
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The toughest part of writing is to keep writing.
It’s easy to type merrily away when inspiration strikes. Ideas flow! Characters pop out of one’s forehead, full-formed!
The question is, will you write the next bit tomorrow? And more the day after? And again next week?
An 80,000-word novel is a Frankenstein’s monster of tiny parts added every day. Another five hundred words one day, maybe two thousand words the next. But this is accompanied by horrific surgery, as large sections are gutted and replaced with another few hundred words pulled from this bin over here, then carefully massaged and sewn into place.
So, a real writer writes. Every day.
I’ve heard of some writers who only write, say, once a week. I don’t quite believe it. There’s too great a chance you’ll miss a day. Besides, this is like saying that, instead of running for an hour a day, you’ll just run for seven hours every Saturday. The muscles atrophy, whether they’re physical or mental.
How to find time to write? You make time. I set aside 9:00pm every day to write. If I’m laying in bed at eleven o’clock or midnight and realize that I forgot about it, I get up, go into my studio, and write.
I wish there were shortcuts. I wish it was easier.
But every day, I write. And I’m now several thousand words into this novel, and I have a grip on it. I can move forward.
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Making Things Talk is intended for a specific audience, but one which I wish were bigger. It’s aimed at folks who want to wire up stuff.
Stuff like motion-sensing stuffed animals. A doorbell that chimes every time someone visits your website. Real-world, physical objects.
But without all the hassles of soldering.
Enter Making Things Talk and the Arduino module, which you can plug into any computer with a USB port and program using a simple language. The book—written very well by O’Reilly—explains how.
If the above description fired off an idea or two for something you’ve Always Wanted To Make, this is the book for you. It starts at the very basics, assuming you’re intelligent but uneducated about electricity, electronics, etc.
You’ll need to spend a fair amount of time fiddling with small parts, of course, and a bit of basic equipment. Which is why I bought Making Things Talk as part of the Advanced Arduino Starter Kit (US $115), which comes with most of that basic equipment.
If you’re willing to put in the time, you may find this to be a fun hobby—one that I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of—which provides a satisfying sense of accomplishment. At the end, you have something you can literally carry around and show off to your friends.
And there’s a lot to be said for controlling and inventing your environment.
A month into my experiment in spending less! Let’s see what this week totals:
| Saturday | $0.00 | ||||
| Sunday | $5.50 | Snacks | |||
| Monday | $114.23 | Candles, bird seed, plant bulbs, groceries | |||
| Tuesday | $17.42 | More groceries, cookies | |||
| Wednesday | $3.47 | Milk | |||
| Thursday | $10.07 | Dinner | |||
| Friday | $0.00 | ||||
| Total | $150.69 |
To be fair, I was at a wedding last weekend, so I didn’t have to spend any money there.
What I find most interesting here is the large amount of money I spent on Monday, just on a $15 candle, $44 of groceries, and $53 at Home Depot. Without those, I would have spent practically nothing this week.
I’m also surprised that, for me, a day without spending money is rare.