I'm hip, busy with baguettes, and winnowing

Hip update: three sessions of Will's exercises and the hip has subsided, much better, clearly the right approach. It's not all gone but the sharp and sharper jab at each turn is down to a pinch. I'll take it. I also did other exercises, toe raises, sit to stands, sideways stepping, all that.

I don't like pie much, even on Pi Day, so baguettes it was. This time I used one third whole-wheat with the ap, and added in vital wheat gluten to compensate. I had to add extra water to get the dough to cohere. It went fine.

Here's a bit broken off to show you the crumb. There's more flavor with the whole wheat, the added gluten made a better rise, and again the crust was great.

I'd taken out a container of strawberries earlier from the freezer with the vague thought of strawberry shake, but realized a bit of strawberry jam wouldn't go amiss with warm baguette. 

Strawberry preserve, to be technically annoying, because there are fruit pieces in there.

Then with hauling out the overstuffed  three ring binder for the baguette instructions,  I realized for the 83rd time that I needed to organize it.

A lot of the entries were either aspirational or more trouble than they were worth, or I just don't fancy them.

So after an afternoon of knitting, reading and sorting, strengthened by toasted  buttered, strawberry-preserved baguette, I got through it.

Quite a few recipes came out for the recycle, and I found a couple I've now noted to make because I'd forgotten about them, raisin bread! I have raisins! and I'm Freecycling a bunch of page protectors.

At some point I need to do likewise with  several binders of knitting patterns hardly any of which I need now, with my limited current knitting arena. But not today.

Happy day everyone, if you're in the windstorms, we're just at the edge, we hope your power stays in, sez Ted and Big Ursy and Pony.

 

Pi Day and Misfits

In countries which write the date as month then day, March 14, 3.14, it's Pi Day. Celebrate accordingly! 

My pi Day cactus is booming 

Meanwhile, around here, it's Thursday and Misfits Day, speaking of pie and other foods.

Lovely Haleem arrived on the dot

And here's the doings. Yogurt and blueberries for desserts and I'll make yogurt dough for pasties stuffed with potato, carrots and scallions. Eggs tomatoes and cheese in house for those baked things I make, which I called Welsh rarebit. That is until I got a storm of criticism, wrong name, wrong name, like it mattered,which cracked me up.

Cannellini beans for I dunamany uses, all good.  Spinach for adding to soup and pasties.

All good! Happy π day everyone!

Today's activism was messages to both my senators demanding they vote NO on the cr cloture.

Pi Day and puzzles

 Also Einstein's birthday.   Happy birthday, dear Albert.

Meanwhile the powerhouse of the small wild animal world threw bits of sticks at my front door, landing on the mat, and defied me when I looked out. You lookin at me? And got busy either burying or retrieving nuts in the lavender.

After a doctor visit for a bone density injection, when she pronounced me and my blood doing fine, I had a walk in the warm 70°f  sunshine.

Pictures of the pond taken between gangs of old golfing duffers, and I tossed back a couple of balls from many yards outside the boundary

And here's a thing to consider, picture taken while waiting for my doctor.

This is where I think  artists, this one, anyway, diverge from the rest of the world. At first I thought this was just a little graphic to break up a dull space.

Then I thought, no, this is a multicultural community, it's probably something written in an alphabet I'm not familiar with.

Finally, after ages I realized it was a literal drawing of how the paper towel dispenser dispenses. I just read things like this so differently from the way the designer intended.

There was a series of graphics like this on the Garden State Parkway, warning people, back before Ezy-Pass, to get ready to toss toll coins into containers. 

One of them I used regularly, having read the text without understanding the graphic, was apparently a really lovely graphic design, balanced, harmonious, contrasting shapes. After  several years of driving the Parkway, I realized it was an image of a hand throwing coins into the container. Oh.

Never mind, my doctor thinks I'm lovely. And there's a baby elephant who really dgaf.

Happy day, everyone, let your ears fly at will!

Art has its downs, and Together helps

Yesterday was a mixture of struggling and temporary defeat on the art work.  Art is about coming face to face with yourself, among other things.

It's a journey and yesterday yielded some learning. The materials I have aren't going to work as hoped. I may have started in the wrong place by making the head, I may need to start over. differently.  I may need to use the head in a different artwork. 

Some scenes from yesterday

These are the sorts of disappointing things that happen. Art is not a straight line activity. So I have to explore yet more different materials in my search for this elusive big figure I've had in mind for so many years. And maybe the black robe with all the embroidery isn't a good match to the concept.. 

Meanwhile I may make other works using the materials I have, while Big Figure is in temporary abeyance. Not sure yet.

So that's where I am, tired,  disappointed, ready to continue though. I feel a bit like the heartbroken guy in Death of a Salesman, who says heartbreak is okay because you know you're still alive! 

Meanwhile Together gave me the guidelines for a terrific couple of meals.

Spicy lentils, greens and pita. A lot of ginger, garlic and berbere, and it's great. The recipe also made a tomato salad, but I didn't have tomatoes. It's a good cooling note with the hot lentils though. They used spinach which I didn't have, so I used cilantro, parsley and scallions, which worked fine. 

This is a kind of modular recipe. You can cook the lentils to go with other foods, greens likewise.  The greens, using fried onions then garlic and ginger, were especially good.

I used up the last of the berbere mix, so I'll make more,  from the Together recipe, which looks milder than the Marcus Samuelsson version I had made before. I think they may have adapted to what's available when you don't have an Ethiopian grocery. 

And here's the scene from the kitchen window of my early childhood, as of yesterday. Probably from the other side though.

Happy day everyone, hoping for a better one than yesterday! I mean, it's 3.14. Pi Day!

Happy Pi Day

 March 14, you know.

Just back from the post office where my friend Lou the Postie processed the parcel of Ministry Socks

and they'll be there in a day or two, and with new owners soon.

Meanwhile I'm onto a new pair, spiral socks in different colors.

The turquoise is cotton, the beige a cotton/wool mix. 

I got my annual letter from the Brit gov about my tiny pension, which is going up by a couple of dollars a week, wheee. It's fine. Every little bit is a bit more than I had before.  

And they still use the kraft envelopes they've used for my lifetime. They must have got a job lot during Gladstone's time. They certainly don't waste taxpayer money on fancy stationery.   

After the exchange rate is calculated, and the bank takes its fee for processing this minuscule account, it ends up more as a matter of principle than the money. 

Anyway speaking of numbers, happy Pi Day. Eat pie.

Mourning for the innocent lives taken in Ukraine. Praying for the brave survivors.

Pi Day, another thing to divide the UK from the US

Happy Pi Day!  3.14, that is.  And another thing to divide us from our UK friends, where the joke doesn't work.

I remembered this recently when I got one of those scary official brown paper envelopes from the British gummint, telling me about something that will happen to my (so tiny, why do they bother) pension.  It will happen, I thought, on December 4. Nice of them to give me so much notice, I thought.  Then remembered, ah, brits count the date differently.  They're telling me about something happening on April 12.  In that case, a suitable period of advance notice. And they're increasing it, yay.  So now it will buy TWO cups of coffee, well, can't complain.

And, not pies here, but a batch of raisin sort of scone things, I guess.  Handsome Son visits this afternoon and I needed something to go with the statutory pot of tea

Then, since yesterday's reading and watching wasn't too inspiring, I thought I'd right the balance with this rattlin'  good read, now a permanent resident on my Kindle, only way I could get it, the library having none of this writer's work.  

Recommended by the Hatttatts, whose Hattatt blog, check it out is great to read and follow.  And they're meticulous about returning the compliment, much appreciated.

Anyway, this writer is not only very entertaining, but a friend of theirs, and they were quite right in suggesting I read him, since I like Donna Leon and all her Venice based books involving police procedure, mysteries, danger, history, and the geography of Venice from the eyeview of someone who's  lived there for ages.  

The atmosphere comes across as it does in Leon, which is one of the great reasons for reading both writers. And the narrator has a humorous take on what's up.  And there's mystery, and ancient wealth and all sorts of good ingredients. So there you have an unreserved recommendation.

I can not say the same for the godforsaken habit of changing the clocks twice a year. It's unsettling for days, when the light is all wrong for the time of day, and you're not hungry at the "right" times, and animals can't tell time, so their owners are being hauled around until they get used to it, and you have to show up for appointments all weird. And little kids get all upset.  I see little advantage to it, and I don't care what they say about waiting for buses and farmers, I say shenanigans.

Also by the time I've got the kitchen wall clock down and reset, it's time to climb up and do it again..  My old car, a 99 Honda Civic, had a manually resetting clock, so I didn't bother changing it, since it took several pages of the owner's manual to do it.  It also lost a bit of time as it went.  So people would look at my car clock and I'd explain, no, it's one hour and seventeen minutes wrong, just think about it, it will come clear. At least it did to me.  Then in the Fall, it would be about 23 minutes wrong, but nearer, anyway. Since I'm not running a nuclear reactor, or launching rockets,  I don't need to be too exact.

Pi Day, last before next century 6 WS

2.141592653

 Geek alert! This pi day, celebrating the math expression, is a super pi: next time the date works out this way will be a century hence. So seize the day and celebrate, on March 14 2015, at 26 minutes and 53 seconds after nine, either am or pm will work.  Eating pie works,too.

Elton, accompanied by tiny dolls,  obliged with That's Amore, and There'll be Pie in the Sky By and By, and leaves you to remember the words to That's Amore!!