random thursday on....Thursday! Wow!

I have dishes to do, a sickle to make, a costume to finish, and a sister to pick up at the dentist office, as soon as she calls.
But all of that pales in comparison to actually making this uber-flexible deadline.
I began a new batch of sourdough starter on Sunday. It starts with rye flour and water, and goes from there. I just did the third refresh about half an hour ago, and my little dough balls (one for home, one for work) are already beginning to rise. Yeast and I play well together.
The chocolate and I.....well. It seems to be back in the 'on' phase of our on-again/off-again relationship. Mostly. At least I'm not the only one having the same problem.
I am seriously considering further my education and broadening my options by attending culinary school. I'm leaning toward Cook Street (short commute, short intense program, month in France & Italy, lots of wine....). I'm searching for grants, because I really don't want to take on a massive amount of debt. If you know of grants for middle-aged, childless women (doesn't Obama want us to better ourselves too? Why just "Obama wants moms to go back to school" ads?) please let me know.
The roofing saga continues. 2 sections of the new shingles need to be replaced. At the company's expense. The gutter guys mistakenly put gutters on the garage. We get to keep them. At the company's expense. So...yay.
I have about a dozen or so iris bulbs to plant. I keep waiting for that magical combination of good weather, a day off and feeling well. Saturday or possibly tomorrow afternoon may be that day.
The Witches Ball is Saturday night. I have finally decided to go. (Yes I made a costume. Just for fun. It was my Artist's Way project this week). I was invited to participate in the opening ritual, but declined. Najah told me the planning meeting got a bit contentious, what with people trying to blend various pagan traditions, taking exception to certain words and making assumptions about other people's practice. Glad I missed that.
Project Runway tonight - I think the only reason Logan is still on the show is because he's pretty. If he was plain or homely, he'd be long gone.

Random something resembling thought process

My sister/friend Laura gave me the best key chain ever : Pocket Vlad, (PV for short). His tag says that he will protect me from harm when I am outside past my bedtime. That doesn't happen often, so PV will have an easy life.

Note his classic formal attire; PV has old-school standards. He wouldn't be caught undead in polyester, leather or denim, or Dracula forbid....sparkling. He's going to be my version of the gnomes and barbies and suchlike that people take on trips and photograph in front of tourist attractions.



He's posing in front of cairn-of-the-day. Building cairns in the creek at Prospect Park is a hobby. It's oddly soothing, and very satisfying in a get-your-zen-on kind of way. It's a practice in non-attachment, both in the falling rocks as I build one, and in knowing that it won't stay up after I leave. Wind, water, critters, people, gravity.....something will knock it down. It's sort of like making beautiful pastries and confections knowing that they will be devoured and gone. Impermanence in action.



I am slowly figuring out how to work training an intern into the work schedule. I tend to focus on the production list, and getting everything done, and things like teaching the intern how to do something properly sort of gets pushed off to the side. So, today I delegated something I love to do (making tart dough) and spent some time one on one with the intern, showing her how to shell and fill truffles. She didn't tell me she'd had almost no experience with that when I asked her to fill the molds yesterday. So, there was a lot of overfilling, which makes backfilling (putting the bottoms on) really, really difficult. So, now I know to watch her more closely, and walk her through every new thing, and she knows to speak up and tell me when she doesn't know something. Tomorrow I'll show her how to backfill, and she'll find out why filling the shells with ganache is such an important thing to do correctly. Because some of her filling was a little over-full. It's a great learning tool though, trying to deal with overfilled molds. Mwah hahahaha.



Cold weather is coming in tonight, and I want to make soup and whole-grain bread. I like chilly days, like bundling up in fleece or flannel sheets. I like that the cooler weather and darkening days has prompted Chef to change our start time from 6 back to 7. That hour makes a real difference. Today was the first day, and Puppy was confused and disappointed that sleeping in did not mean this was a day off, and that there would be no morning visit to the park.

I'll be making a new sourdough starter tomorrow. I will try not to kill this one. I think whole grains would be more appealing in sourdough bread.

I finally tried my pumpkin marmelade (aside from the initial tasting when I made it). It makes an absolutely lovely sandwich with smoked turkey & harvarti. My friend Marla said she has been putting it on everything, including French toast. That does sound good.