Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi

Happy Fat Babies in Hats Day!

Apologies

We had off school on Monday, and a blizzard too, so my days of the week are all screwed up and I totally missed this week's Tasty Tuesday. I apologize, and I will make next week's Tuesday twice as awesome.

post #101! hooray!

I guess I missed my 100th post, so here's celebrating 101 posts here on The Floating Violin.

Your photo today is a Dali-inspired clock art:
(apparently set something hot on my timer and melted it)

On to new things!

Now that we have perfected sourdough.... (third time's a charm! the bread bible starter + the betty crocker recipe + letting it rise way longer than expected = really, really yummy)

I need some new recipes to try for Tasty Tuesdays - I need to get out of breadland and into dessertville! Or just anything besides bread...

Here's how:
Email a favorite recipe to thefloatingviolin@gmail.com.
It MUST be a favorite recipe - something you have tried before and know it works for sure!
Include TT in the title of your email so I know it's a recipe for my Tasty Tuesday!
Let me know how you'd like to be credited (I use initials, so tell me those, and also if you have a blog you'd like me to link to!)
To be eligible, you must be a follower of this blog or a blood relative.

Ready, go!

PS. No, seriously. Email me recipes.

Quilt!

Eliz and I have talked for a few years about making quilts together, but we had never been able to gather enough time to do it. But this week of visiting was the perfect amount of free time! Over the weekend, we drove far away to (the closest) JoAnn's to buy fabric. And ate lunch at the closest Chipotle (which neither C nor E had ever tried before!). (Maybe someday I will rant about how lame it is to live so far away from civilization - I like the small townness but I would prefer closer proximity to the cities) (that's really it, now I don't have to write a whole rant about it.)

Let me Tarantino it for you! Here is the end result:

And here is the rest of it. Don't worry, everything is in order from here!

Here are the pretty fabrics we used. 

Warshing the batting!

Pretty things. 

this machine did a great job until that there light burnt my wrist at the stake.

(dont worry. minimal scarring)

Black and white plaid sews darkbrown and white Irish chain. 

top row done! hooray!

Eliz ironed the things and handed them to me and I sewed them. 

We had a whole "draped over the chair" system that pretty well took care of business.

Had to make 50 billion of these squares. So many squares. 

It's a good thing my brain thinks in squares. 

and a toga party. 

at the end of day 2.

getting there!

the whole top done! 

the hard part hasnt even started yet. 

I look super goofy, only because I was trying to be the statue of liberty. 

laid out the back, the batting, and the front. 

spread, pinned, sewed. 

grueling, but rewarding!

glamour shots of the fantastic quilting job. 

The end! And I'm so very pleased with how it turned out! 

Sourdough: The Sequel

My lovely sister is visiting this week, and she is way better at all baking things than I am – so I was glad for her help with my second attempt at sourdough bread.

Eliz brought The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, whom I think is just fabulous. She completely overloads the reader with useful information. When you muck through all the thorough and exact instructions for breadmaking, you can see her personality and lovely sense of humor in her writing.

Ms. Beranbaum describes sourdough as being “the final frontier” of breadmaking. (she also calls it the breadmaking “holy grail”) Her appreciation for how difficult it is to make proper sourdough made me feel better that my first attempt didn’t go quite right – and to be honest, this attempt (although VERY yummy) was also not quite there yet. But apparently the longer the starter continues to be fed and used and fed some more, the better and more sour the bread will turn out. It is on its way, and I’ll tell the steps we took to make the starter.

Day One:
On Wednesday evening, we decided to start the bread, since the whole process takes a few days. We mixed a scant cup of flour, 1/16 teaspoon of yeast, and half a cup of bottled water (and a few more drops to moisten it a little more at the end). We mixed it until the flour was moistened and a stiff dough was formed. How do you measure 1/16 tsp of yeast? Like this.

She specifies to use an “immaculately clean bowl” when doing this, yet allows us to mix with our hands, which Chris points out is not completely sanitary anymore, so what is the point of making sure the bowl is so immaculately clean?

Anyway, you end up with this moist ball of dough. 

It's also useful to have a brother-in-law/husband reading on the couch during this process. 

We covered the dough and left it on top of the refrigerator for 24 hours.

We'll be back right after these messages! 

....

Need to cover a bowl and make it airtight??

Normal plastic wrap not sticking right 

and getting you down?!

It's time to switch to Glad Press-N-Seal!!

I. Love. This. Stuff. 

Seriously, it has changed my life. 

It's a little more expensive but a lot more awesome. 

I made a chai mix in a normal drinking glass - 

covered it in press-n-seal -

shook it up as if it had an airtight lid. 

Yes, it really is that good. 

Go buy some. 

aaaaaaaaaaaand we're back.

Day Two:
The batter had begun to bubble. (as it was supposed to)

We removed about half of it (scooping it with a clean spoon and throwing it away), and stirred in ½ cup of flour and ¼ cup of water (bottled). Again, we covered it and left it to bubble away in the warmth of the top of the refrigerator for another 24 hours.

Day Three:
Same song, third verse, a little bit faster and a little bit worse! The dough was more fermented.

We scooped out half of the batter, threw it away, added ½ cup of flour, and ¼ cup of bottled water. Covered and left to bubble some more.

Day Four:
Yep, same thing again.
Ms. Beranbaum suggests at this point to name your rising dough, as it has begun to live and breath and is every bit as high maintenance as a pet. (She named hers "Billow." I named ours "Harvey.")

Day Five:
Today we began the process of making the bread. We turned the liquid starter into a stiff starter, at the suggestion of Ms. Beranbaum. We achieved this by mixing one cup of the starter with ¾ cup of flour. (The rest of the starter went into the fridge to be fed and coddled for the next batch of sour dough.)

Surely there is a faster way to make a loaf of bread. It rose eight times over two days, and it wasn’t until the last rising that it began rising horizontally instead of vertically, and began to appear as if it might not work. The end product was tasty, though not ideal in look or temperament.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Which also happens to be Fat Babies in Hats day. :) Don't you want to just nom this little cutie's head off?

Also, here's the loot from today:

P.S. I'm telling you now that you can't wait til tomorrow's bread update! It's glorious!

Coming soooooon!

It is Day 4 of new sourdough attempt, and Day 1 of first quilt endeavor! Stay tuned for pictures when things are finished!

Failure

It was Thomas Edison that said, “I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work.”

I have discovered one way in particular that does not make good sourdough bread. I tried, but I came up with something decent, although too heavy and not very sourdoughy. (Still made a good PBJ sandwich for lunch today though!) It is sort of vaguely sour, but mostly just tastes like white bread.

It looks pretty, at least. 

Some found it amusing that I had to stand on a steppy stool in order to get enough leverage to knead the dough properly:

So instead of posting a whole blog on how NOT to do it, I'm going to just try again this week and then post it when it DOES work. Good thing we have Plan B and Plan C for this Tasty Tuesday!

I also made some yummy spinach dip to go with my (notsourdough) bread, and it turned out just perfectly. I guess that's what happens when you use an idiotproof recipe on the back of a Knorrs Vegetable seasoning packet.

10oz package of spinach
16oz package of sour cream
1 cup mayonnaise (I used less than a cup)
Knorrs Vegetable Packet
That’s all.
Mix thoroughly and dip whatever you want in it, because anything will be good. Especially crusty bread right out of the oven. Even if it isn’t sourdoughy.

then

Om nom.


While the bread was cooking, I took inspiration from this blog (sent to me from this sister) (who just arrived here in Minnesota to visit me! yay!) and tried roasting a garlic clove. I happened to have all the ingredients (a clove of garlic, olive oil, and salt and pepper)

All you do is chop off the head so you can see all the brains.

Drizzle olive oil into the cracks, and salt and pepper the whole darn thing. I really enjoy having a pepper grinder with different levels of coarseness! I had the grinder a whole year before I discovered that it was something I could control, and I think it’s the coolest.

Wrap in foil and roast at 400 degrees for 30-40 minutes, or until it’s tender and spreadable ish.

It was good. It wasn’t amazing. I coulda put more salt and pepper on it, was the general consensus. I think it would be best if I had something like pasta to put it in, instead of just eating it on bread – that would make it more useful.

Anyway, it was interesting and fun, and I had some taste testers that gave me very valuable feedback!

Like this:

.

"Imperfection is beauty, 

madness is genius,

 and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."

— Marilyn Monroe

Happy Fat Babies in Hats Day!

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

Go Packers! woooo.


P.S. I'm just letting you know now that this week's Tasty Tuesday is a threefer, and it will be EPIC.

more music!

I have another new music to share with you!
I heard about this group, Tennis, on the radio. It's a husband and wife duo from Denver, and their EP "Cape Dory" was written during an 8 month long sailing trip around the East Coast! Apparently they started out this adventure with "With $1,600 and a knowledge of the seas that came entirely from “The Annapolis Book of Seamanship” and DVDs." (You can read a full NY Times article about them here)

Anyway, I love that they did the trip, and I love that they wrote a concept album about it, and I love the sounds that they made. And you should too!





(I was only gonna post one video just to give you a taste, but I have to give a shout out to my dear hometown:)


What do you think? Yay or Nay? Like the whole retro thing they do?

TT: Do you like... bread?

Ok. I'll freely admit that I have stolen this recipe from my sister, who posted it on her blog within the last couple weeks. So, I apologize to those of you who read both our blogs, you're gonna get a little bit of a repeat recipe - but I am low on money and ingredients, so my Tasty Tuesday this week is not that exciting. I have a plan for next week though, and it will be amazing and delicious! (not to mention this saturday marks day #10 of Limoncello, so I will be sure to post some results and taste tests from that!)

Let me preface this by saying that this is the greatest loaf of bread that I have ever made in my life... I have tried a handful of white bread recipes over the last few months, and what I've realized is that I lack patience and warmth (just with bread, right?). I'm pretty sure my past bread failures are due to not letting the dough rise long enough, or not being in a warm enough place (who would guess, being cold in Minnesota? what?) (P.S. Today Red Wing is only 4 degrees warmer than the North Pole!). Anyway, here you go. It turned out beautifully.

White Bread
Ingredients:
1 pkg (2 1/4 tsp) active dry yeast
1.5-2 cups warm water (100-115F)
2 tsp granulated sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp salt
a bit of softened butter, or vegetable oil

In a small bowl, mix half a cup warm water with the sugar, and add the yeast. Stir well and then let it proof for a few minutes! While it is sitting, you can get everything else ready.
Mix the salt and the flour, and put some of the water in there. Like a cup. Then mix the yeasty water in there, and then add enough warm water to make kneadable dough.

+

Knead until elastic, form into a ball. Rub another bowl with butter or oil and put the dough in there, turning the ball until its covered. (Keeps it from drying out)

Cover and let rise in a warm place for an hour or so, until it has doubled in size!

Once it has risen, punch the dough down, dump it on the counter, and knead for a couple minutes. Put it in a bread pan or a cookie sheet (depending on how shaped you want it to be) and let rise again, another 45 minutes or so. While this is happening, you can preheat the oven to 350. Bake for 30 minutes or so - my oven is a little finicky and I usually end up sticking it in for more like 40 minutes. If the loaf is brown, though, and sounds hollow when tapped, its done. 

Enjoy a few slices with butter and honey, fresh out of the oven, and then the next day make a sandwich out of it, take it to school, and brag to all your friends that you made it yourself! At least, that's what I did.