Personal Reminiscences – Page 22

The late March breads

2014-03-26 2014-03-26 Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

A couple more loaves were made this month and a third will be started later this week. Both were made in the oven, not the machine, at 425F for roughly 35 minutes. Neither rose very high, but both were edible and tasty. Only about a third of the second loaf remains, so I will start a poolish today for baking a new loaf tomorrow. First up: a sourdough, made from the levain I keep in the fridge. All-sourdough: this time I didn’t use any commercial yeast as a helper. It seemed to be rising well in the bowl, so I put ……… click below for more ↓

Thinking about a new ukulele

2014-03-23 2014-03-23 Musical Instruments / Personal Reminiscences / Science & TechnologyOne Comment

I’ve been thinking seriously of adding another ukulele to the herd. A tenor resonator, or resophonic, like the Kala shown above. That’s the re-designed 2014 model. I’ve played earlier models, including the 2013 version with the strings attached to a tailpiece (see photo below, left). The 2014 design (shown above) anchors the strings back into the cover plate, which I expect will be a better design; it looks cleaner, too. But I believe the biggest change is that the through-the-plate model has more tension on the biscuit (see below). And I like Kala products, too. I really like resonator instruments ……… click below for more ↓

Machiavelli and the Elizabethans

2014-03-16 2014-03-16 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / My Writing / PoliticsLeave a comment

In 1555, Bishop Stephen Gardiner wrote a treatise to King Phillip II of Spain, in which he borrowed (aka plagiarized) extensively from Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Discourses. Gardiner did not credit Machiavelli or attribute any of his quotes, but rather copied some of Machiavelli’s content verbatim or very closely. This was less than two decades after Machiavelli’s works had been first printed, and before Pope Paul placed it on the Index librorum prohibitorum, effectively banning it in Catholic countries (but also making it more interesting, as any banned book inevitably becomes, thus guaranteeing its publication and translation). Some two ……… click below for more ↓

Loafing around again

2014-03-10 2014-03-10 Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Been at it again this month. Bread making, I mean. You knew that from the image, right? Several efforts so far this month and March isn’t even half-way through its course. Winter remains firmly entrenched here, and spring – or any time without a thick layer of snow – looks far away. So it’s a good time to be making bread. First up: banana bread. I haven’t made many fruit loaves – mostly raisin-cinnamon – but have always wanted to try this. And it’s not a yeast bread: rather a soda/quick bread. We had some over-ripe bananas on hand, and ……… click below for more ↓

100,000 thank yous

2014-03-01 2014-12-18 Blog & Blogging / My WritingOne Comment

Last week (late Feb, 2014), I passed 100,000 unique views on this blog – in slightly over two years since it was started. Not large by any means, given that some sites easily get that in a month. But a personal milestone for me.* Thank you, gentle readers, for coming here, for spending time with my humble scribblings**, for taking time out of your busy day to read my words. I hope I have managed in some small way to entertain, amuse, delight and inform you. At the very least, I hope I have encouraged you to think about what ……… click below for more ↓

BL2: Resistance is futile

2014-02-15 2014-02-15 Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

I tried to resist. I really did. I avoided it for more than a year, skillfully averting my eyes from the store shelves where it sat, ignoring the emails with invitations, sales offers that dangled newly-released DLC packages before me. I looked the other way when ads popped on on websites. I have more serious things to do, I’d tell myself. Getting too old for games, I’d mutter under my breath. I have better things to do with my time. Like reading. Studying. Developing website material. Learning music. Besides, I’m running out of hard disc space. But then I saw ……… click below for more ↓

Raisin and sourdough this week

2014-02-08 2014-02-08 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

While I haven’t tried to make a sourdough raisin bread yet, that idea occurred to me while I was making my latest breads, this week. I’m sure it would be a good mix, but I’ll have to build my levain up again, since I used all my countertop levain in yesterday’s bread (about 350g). I still have a culture in the fridge, however, and will take some out to get it going in the warmer kitchen, today. I made a medium-sized sourdough loaf, and two smaller raisin-cinnamon loaves, Friday. Somewhat ambitious of me, but with mixed results. Two? You ask. ……… click below for more ↓

Corn and other breads

2014-02-03 2014-02-03 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

The last loaf of January, 2014 was a machine-made corn bread, made using a recipe from Washburn’s & Butt’s 300 Best Canadian Bread Machine Recipes book that I’ve mentioned previously. It’s a good book for bread machine users. Unlike my previous efforts to tinker with bread recipes, I used the basic, printed 1.5-lb. recipe without any alterations this time (not even in the salt). Medium crust setting, basic (white) bread menu selection. The results were good, if not spectacular. The recipe calls for 1/3rd cup of cornmeal. I used a commonly-available, supermarket brand, the sort I often use for dusting ……… click below for more ↓

Running for re-election in 2014

2014-01-29 2014-01-29 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Earlier this month, I filed my nomination papers for municipal council. I am running for a fourth term as Collingwood councillor. I will post a new election website with updated information and campaign content later this winter. I would appreciate your support, your trust and your vote. I believe I have earned them during my time on council, and will continue to do my best to serve the residents of Collingwood, and meet the needs of our growing community, when re-elected. Until the new website is available, I want to let any eligible Collingwood voters who wish to contact me ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Thucydides at last

2014-01-29 2014-01-29 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / Politics / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Somewhere on one of my bookshelves, is an old Penguin paperback copy of History of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. It’s a bit worn, pages lightly yellowed, glue a little brittle. It’s been sitting on the shelf, stacked with many other paperbacks, piled two deep, floor to ceiling, for the past two decades and more. It’s never been read, not completely. I read the introduction, maybe some small sections, back in my wargaming days, 30 or 35 years ago. Like many of its companions on that shelf, it’s a book I put aside for the days when I expected to have ……… click below for more ↓

The Mac celebrates 30 years

2014-01-26 2014-01-26 Computers & Programming / History & Biography / Media Issues / My Writing / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

A recent article on Gizmodo shows off some previously unseen (or perhaps just forgotten) footage of a young Steve Jobs unveiling the Macintosh computer, back on January 30, 1984. Thirty years ago, this week. Seems like forever ago. But I remember it, and reasonably well. I remember where I was living then, what I was working on, and who I was with (I’m still with her…) The video clip also includes the famous Orwellian “1984” TV ad Apple used to launch the Mac. That’s worth watching for itself. It was a really cheeky ad, and generated a lot of chatter ……… click below for more ↓

Water, water, everywhere

2014-01-23 2014-01-23 Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Hydration matters. Not just to athletes and long distance runners. It matters to bakers. How much water is in your dough is crucial to how the crumb develops. It’s amazing how a few grams more or less of water can make a real difference in the resulting loaf of bread. This week I did a little experiment that got me thinking about hydration. I made a loaf of bread in the machine using the “French” recipe and settings, (see my previous post about making French bread in the machine) but this time substituting the same volume of K2 organic bread ……… click below for more ↓

For want of a nail…

2014-01-21 2014-01-21 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Bought a book at Loblaws (of all places) this week, one by Harry Turtledove: The Big Switch. It’s one of his many alternative history novels, about what might have happened if things had happened a certain way – a different way from what actually transpired – in the opening years of World War Two. He’s written several in this vein and they’ve all been generally well received. I’ve liked what I’ve read of him in the past. Many authors have taken up this sort of speculative fiction, although none as frequently as Turtledove. What would have happened if Hitler had ……… click below for more ↓

The Short and the Tall of It

2014-01-20 2014-01-20 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

This past week saw several new experiments in my bread laboratory. Okay, it’s a kitchen, but sometimes it feels like a lab, what with all the tinkering and testing I do. I just can’t seem to stop trying new things in bread. It would fee even more science-like if Susan would let me buy the implements and tools I want. First, however, the good news: my levain remains thriving and healthy. I have two batches now: one on the counter, the other in the fridge. The counter batch is used as a poolish right now; the fridge is the long-term ……… click below for more ↓