stupidhippy.com

I may be deleting this blog soon. It’s been hacked and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to repair the fucking thing. I’ve spent the last three hours reading about what might be wrong and how it might be fixed and I’m just… confused and upset. Whatever. I don’t think my feed is working anymore, so I don’t even know if anyone is reading.

Handy is such a sweet cat, I just adore her.

I made bread yesterday. It took forEVER for it to rise, I’m not sure why. It was a bit cold yesterday, but I’ve made bread when it was cold before and everything was fine. Last time I bought yeast (I buy it online, a pound at a time, from either Bob’s Red Mill or King Arthur Flour, buying yeast at the grocery store is a joke, even factoring in shipping cost, yeast at the grocery store is 3 or 4 times more expensive), I decided to try instant yeast instead of the active dry yeast I usually buy. It hasn’t made any difference as far as I can tell, although I actually sort of miss the proofing. Anyway, yesterday I poured the water into the bowl, followed by a little sugar and the yeast and stirred it up, and started measuring the flour, but then got distracted by something with Rebecca and didn’t get back to bread for at least 15 minutes. I finished mixing and kneading and set the dough out to rise, set the timer for an hour, came back and there was hardly any difference in size. I turned on the oven and set the bowl on the counter next to the stove, let it rise for another hour, turned it into two loaves to rise again. The loaves never did rise as well as usual, but I baked them and they taste fine, the texture is fine, they’re just a little shorter than normal. *shrug* I wonder if the instant yeast didn’t like the unintentional proofing?

This morning I had some with butter and jam. Handy was in my lap while I was eating. She’s not normally a food beggar at all, although she’s the only cat we have who isn’t a super picky eater (Wombat and Mister turn their noses up at pretty much all human food, Emily will eat fish or cheese, and a few random weird things, but Handy is sort of like a dog, she will try anything if she has peace from the other cats to thoroughly check it out first). But she got a whiff of my bread and got super excited and was trying to climb on my plate. Highly unusual behavior for my practically feral little girl, I’m telling you. I gave her some bites, strawberry jam and all, which she inhaled, and then she spent several minutes scouring my plate of crumbs. So cute.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, a recommendation from Amy.  Fun fun book, I loved the Olympians theme.  I got the second book from the library today.  I brought home too many books today, but they all looked so good, I couldn’t leave them!

Rebecca had a renewed interest in her Easy Bake Oven. She made a bunch from the Official Mixes that Taste Terrible after she got the thing *shudder* I found some recipes online, though, and they’re much better. They don’t look very pretty, but they were pretty yum for tiny cakes cooked by the heat of a light bulb, heh. Anything is better than those awful mixes.

This one mostly needed to have less batter in the pan and to be cooked a little longer, but the flavor was good.

The brownie was actually really good, tasted like…brownie!

The lighting in my kitchen really bites, and since it was rainy and dark, I couldn’t even get any good natural lighting. So these photos sort of suck. But you can see how cool it looked, the second one Ed made got really tall!

Don’t mind the dirty lemons. One of our neighbors has a lemon tree and the lemons fall over the fence and Becca picks them up so she can make Ed eat them so she can laugh at the faces he makes. Heh.

And here, you can see the crackly surface, it has just the most divine delicate crispiness. Heaven!

I wish I’d taken a photo but it’s too late because we ATE IT ALL UP. Ed just made this dutch baby recipe (except at the end of the time, it wasn’t thoroughly cooked, he ended up upping the temp back up and cooking it about 10 minutes more). It was excellent, fabulous, sublime. The best part was that the crunch was very subtle and delicate, it was every so slightly crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy inside, not quite as eggy as ones we’ve made before. I’m not sure what was different about this recipe, but gosh, yum. We didn’t have any powdered sugar, I just drizzled a little maple syrup on it and it was perfect.

Rebecca is still sleeping, we may make another one when she gets up, I’ll take a photo if we do :)

It’s been raining this week. Rebecca and I have been going out whenever there is a break in the rain, short jaunts to the store and the library. We got caught in it Tuesday, though, when I had three bags of groceries in one hand and a big bag of books and DVDs from the library in the other. We were waiting at the stop in front of Safeway when it started to rain, soft, then harder, and was just starting to pour when the bus came. We got off the bus and the rain was lighter, but it was sort of not that great, walking down our steep hill to home with water gushing down the sidewalk and my arms full of wet things. I don’t have any decent rainy weather clothes or shoes, I was actually wearing sandals out in the rain. I have two pairs of nice shoes that are comfortable and good for walking, and they could certainly survive a little water, but I didn’t want to wear them in the heavy rain we’ve had this week, so I wore my sandals with nylon straps. Cold feet, maybe, but the shoes (and my feet) dried quickly.

Now I’m going crazy, though. Ed is off three days a week and I often go out alone for a couple of hours one of the days. Being home with Rebecca all the time, well, it’s my choice and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but it’s not always easy and I really cherish a couple of hours alone outside the house a few times a month. The last week has been trying, with the rain keeping us in and some, uh, hormonal challenges making me grouchy, so I’m torn about going out in the crappy weather or staying home feeling insane. Heh.

Today I watched about half of the second season of Carnivale. I liked it a lot, I’m sorry there weren’t more seasons. I watched it on my computer with headphones on and did my best to ignore my family (I’m awful, I know). I got a lot of work done on my scarf. Even unblocked, it’s awesome. I should be able to finish it tomorrow, but I have no idea where I’m going to block it, it’s so long and the cats are so… terrible. I might go in my bedroom and barricade the door and listen to my iPod and pretend I’m alone for a couple of hours.

I read an entry on some blog (that I don’t normally read) about going paperless in your kitchen. We’ve had a (nearly) paperless kitchen for almost ten years. I still use paper towels for cat vomit (it takes me a month or two to use a whole roll), but we use hand towels, old cloth diapers and hand-knitted dishcloths for all other cleaning. My current set of cloths and towels are in a basket on top of the microwave and wouldn’t fit in this thing, but I saw a cute container for holding “unpaper towels” in the comments of that blog. It’s an etsy shop, they sell “unpaper towels” and cute wooden boxes to hold them on your counter or kitchen table. They’re not super cheap, but they look well-made and they’re attractive, and they’d pay for themselves pretty quickly with all the disposables you wouldn’t buy. I don’t need something like this, but if I were just going paperless, I’d sure consider it!

My step-mother, Rebecca’s Grandma Pattie, gave me some yarn for Christmas. It’s a hank of sock yarn from Furnace Mountain Alpacas and it’s absolutely gorgeous. This is sock yarn and has a small nylon content, but the yarn is so luscious and lovely, I couldn’t bear to put it inside shoes (which is rare for me, I usually have no trouble making socks with beautiful yarn). I decided to make a scarf with it, instead, and I’ve cast on an non-beaded version of Tesla. I took a couple of in-progress photos, but they don’t do justice to the yarn, they don’t capture the warmth of the color or the pretty shine. I think this is going to be a favorite scarf. The yarn is warm, but it’s light and airy, it’s really delightful. I can’t wait to get it finished and blocked so I can wear it!

For the last week, Bastard Nation, like the rest of the world, has been watching the devastation of Haiti. The images are frightening, sad, and heartrending, especially those of the children. We have also watched with alarm the rush to rescue Haitian children by adoption.

“In the post-quake chaos, children need protection from predatory snatchers. Bastard Nation, therefore, supports the expedited removal of Haitian children, orphans or otherwise, to credible and documented parents or family members in the US for temporary or permanent placement depending on the circumstances. These children must not be assumed adoptable and scooped up for fast-track adoption. They should be a top priority. We urge the State Department or other government or credible private and disinterested agencies to assist Haitians in the US to locate child kin and bring them to the US.”

Amen.

This issue is made a little confusing for me because I know someone who has adopted children from Haiti and I like them very much and the children are very much better off here than they were in an orphanage in Haiti. But really, taking a community’s children away isn’t much of a solution to any problem.