home alone
yeah well, for an hour and a half or so. The boys are out at a Daddy playgroup, so I'm bumping around the house by myself for a bit.
For some reason, in my mental list of things I could do without a dude around to tear them apart as I do them, organizing some of my old photos popped to mind. By old photos I of course mean the last batches of photos printed from actual film. (Bob help the photos which are digital- they'll probably never make it to an album.) These include my NYC trip with the Rickman laydeez, some parties with my DC friends cheese4me, jetboo et al (including some with peach nectar guy!), and of course the entirety of my 7 1/2 month stay in Australia. It was good fun having a quick look through it all, but of course, the Australia photos are just going to have to wait until a far longer stretch of free time pops up. ie, my breath, I'm not holding it.
An annoying note to those photos- somehow, I must've had my camera set to panoramic, or some setting between normal photo and panoramic, because a good chunk of my pics from that trip are a lot longer than normal photos. I was considering doing a couple of albums (because let's face it, it's not all going to fit into one) and then using a nice photo box for the rest of them. I have one, and I will do this, but the el stupido longass prints don't fit into that plan at all.
The biggest challenge will be sorting them into some kind of chronological order. That's where LJ comes in! Thankfully, my Oz diary was fairly detailed, and I've got it backed up somewhere in case the big scary LJ Death does ever happen.
So I've been on this sourdough kick lately. I've been making some regular wheat and spelt loaves lately which we all really like, in addition to the rye recipe I started with. Then the 4th of July rolled around, and the local Aldi had their typical (read: random) selection of American Food. This year it included such single-eyebrow-raisers as blueberry juice, and strawberries and cream popcorn. In addition to these wtfs, they had some roasted almonds, tortilla chips, and medium-sized hard pretzels. (I say medium because these aren't like, Snyder's of Hanover things you'll break teeth on. They're just a step up from thin pretzels.) These have re-awakened a desire for soft pretzels in me, so I started wondering if I could make sourdough soft pretzels.
Well, I haven't. And I'm not sure I will. However, in my searching for a soft pretzel recipe, I discovered that the super-secret ingredient for making proper German soft pretzels is... lye. really! Evidently you need to give each pretzeled dough a quick dip in a warm lye bath before putting it on the baking tray. Just using plain boiling water (the more common step in US home recipes) really only produces a pretzel-shaped bagel. Some suggest using baking soda in the water bath instead, for people worried about using lye, but it doesn't produce the awesome results a lye bath does. here is a pic of the non-lye pretzels. Hardly inedible. They look tasty. But I've also had the lye bath pretzels in Germany, and they are just that little bit better. As soon as I can get my hands on some lye here, I'll be giving this a try.
Last night I made some damn tasty lahmejoun (or however you want to spell it) and even the dude was happy to have some. I think I'll be making more of this in the future. They're great wrapped around a bit of salad.
The summer has been great so far. The weather has been perfect up until now (clouds are rolling in and it sounds like they'll be here for a while) so we've been going to the local playground so he can run around a bit, in addition to his usual groups. This week the local schools let out for summer holiday, so his normal toddler play groups are over until school is back in session. (okay this was weird to me, but it makes sense because a good number of the mums at these groups have two kids, and the older kid wouldn't be allowed at the toddler group, so they just shut down for the period. Not to mention, the people running the groups go on holiday, etc) I did find two replacement, summer-only groups, and have found a few one-off options as well. Those of you without kids might think this is a bit obsessive, but trust me, having a few groups for us to attend a couple of mornings a week makes us all a bit happier. He gets to hang out with other toddlers, and I'm forced to be organized enough to get him out of the house by that time. :D Plus I get to chitchat with other mums, though that can be hit or miss.
Monday we've got a one-off event, organized by the charity I've been volunteering with. We're having it in a local church rec room, and it's essentially a little party, with balloons, face painting, a raffle, some entertainment for the kids, etc. I'm going to make a cake or two as we're meant to be offering refreshments. Here's hoping the dude hasn't developed chicken pox by then! (a couple of kids we know from groups have turned up with it, and Monday will be abouth the 10th day since having seen one of them. We'll see.)
eh that was a bit tl;dr. sorry. ooh and I should try to do another photo post soon.
For some reason, in my mental list of things I could do without a dude around to tear them apart as I do them, organizing some of my old photos popped to mind. By old photos I of course mean the last batches of photos printed from actual film. (Bob help the photos which are digital- they'll probably never make it to an album.) These include my NYC trip with the Rickman laydeez, some parties with my DC friends cheese4me, jetboo et al (including some with peach nectar guy!), and of course the entirety of my 7 1/2 month stay in Australia. It was good fun having a quick look through it all, but of course, the Australia photos are just going to have to wait until a far longer stretch of free time pops up. ie, my breath, I'm not holding it.
An annoying note to those photos- somehow, I must've had my camera set to panoramic, or some setting between normal photo and panoramic, because a good chunk of my pics from that trip are a lot longer than normal photos. I was considering doing a couple of albums (because let's face it, it's not all going to fit into one) and then using a nice photo box for the rest of them. I have one, and I will do this, but the el stupido longass prints don't fit into that plan at all.
The biggest challenge will be sorting them into some kind of chronological order. That's where LJ comes in! Thankfully, my Oz diary was fairly detailed, and I've got it backed up somewhere in case the big scary LJ Death does ever happen.
So I've been on this sourdough kick lately. I've been making some regular wheat and spelt loaves lately which we all really like, in addition to the rye recipe I started with. Then the 4th of July rolled around, and the local Aldi had their typical (read: random) selection of American Food. This year it included such single-eyebrow-raisers as blueberry juice, and strawberries and cream popcorn. In addition to these wtfs, they had some roasted almonds, tortilla chips, and medium-sized hard pretzels. (I say medium because these aren't like, Snyder's of Hanover things you'll break teeth on. They're just a step up from thin pretzels.) These have re-awakened a desire for soft pretzels in me, so I started wondering if I could make sourdough soft pretzels.
Well, I haven't. And I'm not sure I will. However, in my searching for a soft pretzel recipe, I discovered that the super-secret ingredient for making proper German soft pretzels is... lye. really! Evidently you need to give each pretzeled dough a quick dip in a warm lye bath before putting it on the baking tray. Just using plain boiling water (the more common step in US home recipes) really only produces a pretzel-shaped bagel. Some suggest using baking soda in the water bath instead, for people worried about using lye, but it doesn't produce the awesome results a lye bath does. here is a pic of the non-lye pretzels. Hardly inedible. They look tasty. But I've also had the lye bath pretzels in Germany, and they are just that little bit better. As soon as I can get my hands on some lye here, I'll be giving this a try.
Last night I made some damn tasty lahmejoun (or however you want to spell it) and even the dude was happy to have some. I think I'll be making more of this in the future. They're great wrapped around a bit of salad.
The summer has been great so far. The weather has been perfect up until now (clouds are rolling in and it sounds like they'll be here for a while) so we've been going to the local playground so he can run around a bit, in addition to his usual groups. This week the local schools let out for summer holiday, so his normal toddler play groups are over until school is back in session. (okay this was weird to me, but it makes sense because a good number of the mums at these groups have two kids, and the older kid wouldn't be allowed at the toddler group, so they just shut down for the period. Not to mention, the people running the groups go on holiday, etc) I did find two replacement, summer-only groups, and have found a few one-off options as well. Those of you without kids might think this is a bit obsessive, but trust me, having a few groups for us to attend a couple of mornings a week makes us all a bit happier. He gets to hang out with other toddlers, and I'm forced to be organized enough to get him out of the house by that time. :D Plus I get to chitchat with other mums, though that can be hit or miss.
Monday we've got a one-off event, organized by the charity I've been volunteering with. We're having it in a local church rec room, and it's essentially a little party, with balloons, face painting, a raffle, some entertainment for the kids, etc. I'm going to make a cake or two as we're meant to be offering refreshments. Here's hoping the dude hasn't developed chicken pox by then! (a couple of kids we know from groups have turned up with it, and Monday will be abouth the 10th day since having seen one of them. We'll see.)
eh that was a bit tl;dr. sorry. ooh and I should try to do another photo post soon.