Debzblog

OK, so the first project is mostly indulgent. I will still be doing the dietary experiments, but as the weather gets cooler here, my thoughts turn to baking. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of bread baking with my Dad (though I think he largely used it as a way to keep smartass kids productively occupied between school and dinner, with the added bonus of supplementing dinner). We never did sourdough, and store-bought sourdough was not readily available in Seattle, at least we never bought it, until I was around 10 or 12.  But I have always loved the process of taking basically three simple ingredients and turning them into the miracle of bread. A basic white loaf is made from just flour, water, and yeast. An addition of milk, or butter, or cheese, or… any number of things can produce a richer, tastier, more tender loaf, but the basics are the original three- flour, water, yeast.

Sourdough simplifies the process even further, by drawing yeast from the air. A combination of flour and water, plus a little time should produce what it commonly known as a “sponge”. This naturally grown yeast is slightly fermented, which is what gives sourdough its tang. While  a crusty loaf, similar to French bread, is the ultimate in bread perfection, most of us don’t have ovens in our homes that get hot enough to produce one. The iconic ‘bowl’, hollowed out and filled with chili or chowder also falls into this category. So I intend to take it back to the original for starters (pun intended). Which is the humble, frontier inspired biscuit. (OK, I could, and may, go *all* the way back to neolithic inspired bread-this is more or less how cavemen leavened their bread, but that would require a coarser flour that I currently have in my kitchen).

In this first attempt, I have used just flour and water, which is not always enough. Some areas just don’t have enough natural yeast in the air to create the sponge. But here it is on day one:

So I had been thinking of primarily posting recipes if I came up with something spectacular. But tonight I had an idea. For a long time I have been interested in food advice and how it fits into our culture and how it evolves from decade to decade. Low-fat, low-protein, low-carb; they’ve all been ‘the’ way to eat at one time or another. While I’m not interested in exploring something like ‘The Grapefruit Diet’, I thought it might be interesting to spend a week, or more, attempting to adhere to some of the more current ones. Adkins, South Beach, Paleo, to see how easy they are to adapt to, if it was a lot of work to find and prepare ingredients, and if the food itself is any good. I also thought to include in the experiment the levels of vegetarianism, from ovo-lacto inclusive through vegan. And to investigate how easy it is, or isn’t, to cook for health issues such as diabetes and celiac since I have friends with those conditions.

Anyway, this was an idea that really just popped into my head this evening, there will need to be little research done before I start, not to mention I had already planned this week’s meals. When I do go ahead with this, I will post journal-style observations, as well as my recipes, photos of food, and links to any websites I find particularly interesting or helpful.

So this is something I’ve been considering doing for a while. this blog thing. I often have random thoughts or rants I’d like to share with my friends, but the status on FB doesn’t have enough space and it’s kind of a pain to post a “Note”.

Also living alone, I find myself discoursing to myself when something I’m reading or watching on TV sets off a cascade of thoughts I need to get out.

And then there’s the main thing. The food thing. One of my main passions in life, that I love to share with friends. I have in the past posted photos, and recently posted a few recipes in Notes on FB, but I figure in this format, I can keep them all together in one place. I may need to work on some of the engineering aspects of the recipes, since I tend to improvise when cooking and mostly measure by sight. I may resort to “Rachael Ray” style measurements (palmfulls, pinches, and around-the-pans) rather than try to convert to table or teaspoons.

Also, I have gone back and forth on getting back to jewelry making, mostly beading, and creating an eBay or Amazon store, and may use this for that as well, at least as a place to link from if nothing else.

Well, that’s the main points of the introduction, more as events unfold. :)