I have been writing a bit. I've fleshed out my Sarge and Lt. mystery story into about 2/3 of a book outline. But 1700 words a day for NaNoWriMo is right out of my league, given present work-and-play load.

Feeling a bit out of control lately. Not in a fast and wild sort of way, in a drifting towards icebergs sort of way. I know this is related to my workout prohibition.

Last weekend I made a whole wheat sourdough that has lasted me the whole week. Not because it was big, but because it was so very sour. I think it needs more sugar. Most 100% whole wheat recipes you see have about a tablespoon of sugar for each cup of flour so I guess I should have expected it. I let it rise in a bowl but when I plopped it on the baking stone it just pooled, so it was very wide and flat. This seems to happen with all my sourdoughs. If I want to make sandwiches I need to use loaf pans.

This weekend, I'm making 10% and a 40% sourdough rye loaves.

Our club Halloween party was last night and was a good time if not a huge party. Last year I organized the party and justified my costumelessness with being too busy. But I was the only one there out of 40-ish people to not have a costume. Chastened, I made a costume this year. It seems to have been a success. Will post pictures as soon as I get any.

I found them! I found the non-flours. In the bulk goods, not in the baking aisle.

- spelt
- semolina
- rye

Time to now make some bread that is actually interesting and not merely nourishing!

There's also bread flour over there that costs about a third what the Gold Medal brand does, and whole wheat bread and cake flours, which are finer ground than the mealy stuff in the baking aisle.

Projects this weekend...

- Working on Halloween costume. It was supposed to be ready for a party tonight but isn't coming together, and I'll be putting on the Charlie Brown outfit. Hopefully it will be done for next week's thing. I've nevertheless learned a lot; for instance, fabric glue takes forever to dry, better to use glue gun and staples; also, flannel cuts easier with the tin snips than with the cheap scissors.

- Bread... I'm preparing a sourdough whole wheat loaf. In the past this has been a muddy and not very appetizing disaster but I keep trying.

- Beer... The pale ale I made last month is way too bitter. I'm going to make a half-batch of beer with dry malt extract and only a little hops, and make a blend. I've never tried this before, should be interesting to see how it turns out. Also it's time to keg the stout I made two weeks back.

Oh, and Facebook and dog walks and laundry. Lots of that.

In addition to a lot more bread, I made butter yesterday. This turns out to be pretty easy:

1. buy pint of cream
2. put in food processor
3. whip til it's whipped cream. This took a long time, I think cause my pint was "ultra-pasteurized"
4. then keep going til it grains up into butter
5. Strain and knead a little to get rid of the buttermilk

I have to say that, while this made good butter, it isn't any better than what you can buy. And having proved I can do it, I don't need to do it again.

I made beer and bread this weekend. And I thought, how much of a pain in the ass must this have been before gas and electric? When you had to use wood for everything? How much wood did it take to boil a pan of water, much less boil a whole barrel of beer for an hour, or keep an oven hot enough to bake? Wood that you lit with flint and steel?

I'm getting past the stage now where I was a nerd for my heart condition. I don't have to explain it, or mention it, or talk about my new meds. I had become very self-aware of this and annoyed with myself for it. I'm back on to talking about frivolous things that people want to talk about: gossip, movies, etc. I played Rock Band last night and today I'm making a nice pub stout to replace that awful pale ale, as well as a batch of bread.

( The former went nicely, the latter...  )

Mead update.

Fermentation is stalled out again, it seems.  Or at least the yeast isn't flocculating.  Didn't get a chance to check the gravity.  I transferred it off the oak chips tonight and did manage to check the pH.  Pretty low!  Need to add some buffer, calcium carbonate or similar.  My mead book scolds me for not having checked it to begin with.

I also transferred the latest beer to the fridge.  It's supposed to be a Sierra Nevada clone but I don't have high hopes for it.  It seems on first runnings to be super bitter, and not enough hop flavor to go with the bitterness.

A few weeks ago, at work, I was moved to a freshly remodeled building.  About the same time, our charity club took over the snack bar in the previous building.  So I started up an outpost of it over here.  It's right next to the snack machine so I have it pretty limited to a few items that aren't in the machine.

Sales started slow and I wasn't counting out every day.  The last time was 9/17, and I left $5 change in the cup.  Today I brought in some inventory and checked the cup.  It had $1.25 in it.  I've been ripped off.

Now I work in an office behind a locked door.  I'm pretty sure no one is in need of the lunch money level of cash that was in there.  What kind of dick steals from charity?

Inventory has been steadily disappearing, too, as it should.  I choose to believe for now that it's not also shoplifting.

(continued from last post as full realization continues to break)

No baking powder means no muffins. No waffles.  No cornbread. No brownies. No cake!

I will need to switch entirely to pie.  Well, that's not so bad.


Meanwhile, this, courtesy of Jalopnik.

I've learned that MSG, baking soda, and baking powder count toward my sodium tally.  No pancakes!  No biscuits... aiee

I'm purging salt from my kitchen.  If you think this is a pain in the butt, you have the right idea.  For your reference the government recommended dose is 2300 mg per day.  That's about 1 tsp.  Or 1500 for people with the need to reduce.  When the Feds say "sodium" they mean the ionic sodium part of the molecule, so table salt is about 2/5 sodium by weight.

We start with the spice rack, and my beloved Montreal steak seasoning goes in the bin.  And the salt, of course.

We move to the fridge door, and start with the obvious.  Soy sauce and teriyaki sauce must go.  Then we go through the labels.  Blue cheese dressing, 380 mg / 2 tbsp, so long.  BBQ sauce only a little less.  Ketchup and 57 sauce about half that, still pretty high.  A1 steak sauce is 280 mg / tbsp, gotta go.

Move to the cheeses.  Actually everything is eaten at the moment but I was looking at labels in the store.  180 mg / oz is about normal for processed cheese, and a skosh too high.  My mom recommended some alternatives.  Have a look next time you buy a block of parm or romano - 700 mg per ounce!  This comes from being soaked in brine for 24 hr and it's why it ages so long and keeps so well.

Let's not even talk about the lunch meat.  Nothing cured at all in fact - jerky, ham, bacon, lox, pickles, sauerkraut.

Over to the cupboard.  All the chips and crackers need to go.  Peanut butter?  Mixed nuts?  Outtahere.  Low-salt versions available.  Bread?  Plain bagels have about 400 mg/ea - so no more bagels.  A slice of bread from the big sourdough loaf is 200 mg.  Need to consider baking again to get appealing low-salt bread.  Cheerios?  Heart-healthy, right?  A bowl is two servings and about 380 mg.  But it can stay, cause it's not like you're going to eat anything that meal besides the bowl of Cheerios, right?  Except the milk, which at 140 mg / cup will pad it up near 600 for the meal.  Can't be helped, the cow secretes it that way.  Canned goods?  Forget it - a can of chili is 2300 mg.

What comes out all right?  Well, all the fruits and vegetables and products thus derived.  Any spices or spice blends without salt in them.  Concentrated sauces like hot sauce or worchestershire sauce.  Beer!  Pasta.  Baking ingredients.  Raw meat.  Any processed food that claims to be "low sodium" or "lightly salted" or if they're being fu-fu, "hint of salt"

It's amazing how all this stuff adds up.  Consider a full-size turkey club
2 slices bread (400 mg)
4 oz turkey (1020 mg)
1 oz bacon (650 mg)
1.5 oz cheese (270 mg)
2 tbsp mayo (180 mg)

That's 2520 mg salt. 

I have been buying and reading the Complete Peanuts collection.  These are pricey and printed on nice paper, two years per each hardcover book.  Each has a nice introduction by some relevant luminary.  The lack of colors in the Sunday strips is the only off note.  I'm a bookstore, not Amazon, kind of guy, so I keep an eye out for the next one I don't have whenever I'm in Borders or whatever.  I just got the 67-70 box (2 books) but I'm missing the 65-66 book.  The 71-74 box is out now, and gets us up to Peppermint Patty and Woodstock.  Books come out every six months, so no hurry.  I do wonder how long to pursue it.  Peanuts wasn't always funny.

This has started a trend of fancy completist comic strip collections.  There is now a Dick Tracy collection series, which I've been ignoring.  I just picked up a Buck Rogers collection, clearly intended to be the start of a series.

If they'd do it for Krazy Kat, I'd buy the lot, but I suppose that's too much to hope for.  So far they've only really done Sundays and the publication is sporadic due to publishers going under and other publishers picking up the torch.  There are 30 years of dailies with meandering complicated plots I'd love to see.

From the WTF file:  The production arm of Orange County Choppers is going to make a hybrid bike.

No one has really attempted this before, so far as I know.  There are several outfits making fully electric motorcycles.  But the complexity of a hybrid in the compact form of a motorcycle would seem to be difficult.  Motorbikes often get good city and poor highway mileage compared to the ratio for cars, due to their light weight and poor aerodynamics.  So the case for a hybrid, which improves city mileage, would seem hard to make.

Over the last year or so, during workouts, I've had increasing discomfort.  I guess you could call it "chest pain" though it wasn't sharp or urgent.  I also sometimes got dizzy after a sudden exertion.  Finally having convinced myself I was really sick and not just out of shape, that working out ever harder would not make it better, I went to the doctor.  I've been diagnosed with

HYPERTROPHIC OBSTRUCTIVE CARDIOMYOPATHY

which is the thing you sometimes hear about athletes suddenly & unexpectedly dying of.  Basically it means that the heart muscle has become muscle-bound.  Though strong, its volume is reduced, and the excess strength causes blood to flow fast and interfere with operation of the valves.  Hence, decreased blood flow to the brain and heart muscle.  The cause is probably genetic, though it might also be blood pressure related.  I'm assured it responds well to medical treatment and have been given a beta blocker ($4/mo, win!).  I've also bought a blood pressure tester and am supposed to log readings a few times a day.

You may worry for me if you like but I thought I was going to need aortic valve replacement, which would have been open heart surgery.  Frankly I'm terrifically relieved.

aieee!

The sequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is called Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, with a Lovecraft and Verne vibe.  No vampires to be found, thank God.

California Capitol Air Show 2009. Attended with Melisa, Jasmine, Aiden, Jon, and Daniel McC. What a great day for pictures!

Meanwhile the mead is down to 1.05 and still cloudy.  Slowest fermentation ever... I'm putting it on some oak chips today.

For camping I have a stove called a Jetboil.  It has vanes on the bottom of its aluminum pot that suck up the heat of the flames, and it can boil a pint of water in about two minutes flat.

For brewing I have a friggin' enormous stove, which supposedly can make 150,000 btu, about two turkey fryers worth.  But in fact it cannot make full throttle because the gas can be cranked up until it snuffs itself from too rich a mixture.  (I should try making a chimney or something.)  I have no idea how much it's putting out at this point.  I have a 7.5 gal stock pot to brew in.  This combination seems to take ages to boil... keeping in mind it is five gallons.

What I'd like is a 10 gal stock pot (larger to catch boilovers) with the same sort of vanes the Jetboil's got.  I suppose this will have to wait until I finally learn to weld?  Or at least braze.

Maybe I can come up with some kind of reflector, too?