Misery, they name is Aunt Flo. If I thought the last two weeks of being a hormonal mess was awful, the next seven or so days are going to be pure hell. I’ve spent the day in bed. If I didn’t have to get started on the pizza soon, I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed. I would love nothing more than to go back to bed right now. As soon as we have eaten and watched Dr. Who, that’s probably exactly what I will do. I could take an entire bottle of Midol and not feel human (or even alive). Just … freaking … awful.

I didn’t really want to make pizza tonight, not feeling like I even have the strength to put the dough together and chop the veggies, but Lin is having an awful day at work. I know he looks forward to pizza night, and I don’t want to bother him with asking to bring home some burgers or something. Somehow, I’m going to have to get a pizza made. I thought about ordering one from Papa John’s, but I know we’d only be disappointed. I have ruined us for ever ordering delivery pizza again. The homemade stuff is just so much fresher and better.

I wish we didn’t have to go to the farmer’s market this weekend, but we do. I need some hamburger, and I can’t bring myself to buy it at the grocery store. I’m also hoping there will be some nice organic veggies this week too. I’ll be seriously upset if the pickings are as slim as they were last week. I don’t anticipate feeling like going to a new place to shop until at least later next week, and we need veggies now. How we made it through this week with only one tomato, two potatoes, a carrot, and a handful of small onions is a testament to my being able to be creative with what I have. I really don’t like having to be quite that creative.

Eh, I’m going to shut up now. Anything I could possibly have to say is only going to be so much more whining about how dreadful I feel. That’s not going to make me feel any better, so no point griping about it. Off to the kitchen to get everything ready for the pizza so all I have to do is throw it together when it’s time to get it started. I am so looking forward to going back to bed.

My hometown is doomed to become an ever-increasing pit of tourist crappiness. I just found out the county I grew up in was named one of top ten best rural counties in the USA. In fact, it came in at number four. Great. Now everyone will want to live there, not just come visit on the weekends to eat German food and drink beer and buy over-priced trinkets.

I do have one issue to take up with the article by The Progressive Farmer.

…this county is more well-known for citrus than cattle.

I am not going to attempt to deny that cattle have never been the focus of Gillespie County, though they do play a large part in the life there, but since when have peaches been considered a citrus fruit? They aren’t, and I would think a magazine called The Progressive Farmer would know that.

Don’t mind me. I’m just a little bitter. It seems that as the years have rolled by, my heart has changed about ever living in a small rural Texas town again. I would love to go back, but unfortunately, the place I want to go back to isn’t there anymore. It’s little more than a roadside attraction, and it gets worse and worse every year. I have never found another place like the place I grew up in, and I doubt I ever will.

I could go on (and on and on) about my dissatisfaction with the ways in which my “homeland” has, in my opinion, devolved over the decades since I grew up there, but then I would start sounding like a crotchety old woman. I’m going to be grumpy in some other room of the house now.

Oh, and if you have a minute, the photo gallery at the link above is worth a look if you want to see my roots. Aside from the few images of rich city-folk that have moved there to live their “rural dreams”, there are a few great shots of life in Gillespie County and some awesome landscape images that really capture the look of the place.

Cookbooks. I own too many cookbooks, considering that I pretty much never, ever follow a recipe. I used to use the cookbooks for inspiration and to discover new combinations of things, but as I flipped through the pages of my favorite ones, I didn’t feel at all inspired. In fact, I felt bored. After looking through a short stack of colorfully printed books, I put them away with the thought I should get rid of them somehow, which, with me, usually means finding someone who can use them and really wants them and passing them over. After I have given them the once over one more time to copy out any interesting bits of information I don’t want to forget, that’s exactly what I am going to do.

For some reason, I stood in front of the overstuffed shelf of tomes regarding food, I saw one small old and sad looking thing stuck between two much larger books. I pulled it out and looked at the title: The Tassajara Bread Book, published by Shambala Publications, Berkeley, California. It was printed in the early 70’s. I have no idea where I acquired it or when. I am certain I bought it not because it was about breadmaking but because it looked like it had lived an interesting life, and I fell in love with the look, touch, and smell of the book itself. I am also certain I have never once read it.

I started reading it tonight. It is, in a nutshell, everything I would want in a book about the making of bread. It’s a California, 1970’s, hippie bread book. The hippies … they knew a thing or two about making bread.

It’s just chock full of explanations and information about tools, ingredients, kneading, forming, and baking. It also has basic bread recipes for almost every kind of yeasted and un-yeasted bread … all kinds of bread. It’s the perfect bread book. I can’t believe I have had the perfect bread book sitting on my bookshelf full of cookbooks, and I didn’t even know! I am quite happy about discovering it. My search for the perfect bread book is now over. Crazy that I have owned it all along, isn’t it?

Even crazier is that more and more often, as I go through the things from my younger years and begin deciding what stays and what goes, I am finding that Silly Younger Orb often bought things she had no intention of using and didn’t need and fell in love with for the dumbest reasons, and now Less Silly Older Orb is thrilled that she did (and that she held onto them through move after move). It’s almost as if Silly Younger Orb had some sort of subconscious idea of who she was going to be, or who she wanted to be, and brought things into her life that would be immensely useful to the Less Silly Older Orb. If you had met me at age twenty, I don’t think you would have imagined me ever being an eater of health food and a baker of bread, yet that’s what I seem to have currently morphed into.

I can’t wait to start using the recipes in this book, and for once, I might actually follow them.

You can still get this bread book. In fact, it celebrated 25 years of publication in 1995. Without having read any more than the little bit I did tonight, I have to suggest The Tassajara Bread Book for anyone interested in making bread. I’m debating getting a new one. It might have some new information in it. But … it wouldn’t have the worn-in, well-loved personality that the one I have does. Mine was obviously owned by someone who actually used it in a kitchen, and so now I will use it in my kitchen too. Maybe someday I will pass it along as I plan to with my other cookbooks, but not yet! I have a lot more to learn about breadmaking! Get your own copy!

It looks right, smells right, feels right. I am tentatively declaring it good bread. I guess we’ll find out later what it tastes like, but I think I may have successfully saved myself from forgetting to put the salt in when I was supposed to put it in … like at the very beginning of the process and not the very end.

I’m going to take the sausage out of the freezer to thaw, and I believe a nap is in order until it’s time to make dinner. The only things left on my long list of tasks is cleaning the litter box, and bringing in the trash bin and the new bag of cat food. All of these things are more than capable of waiting until after a nap has been had and dinner has been eaten. I’m sure the cats will disagree with me on that, but too bad. Mommy is fatigued!

How about a break from my tales of housewife woes to gaze upon my furry beasts?

You can tell by the look in Ronin’s eyes, he’s up to no good, and there in the background is the glowing-eyed ninja kitty, Myu.

Time for the next installment in the Tale of the Disastrous Thursday:

I’ve been doing laundry this morning, and all morning, the dryer has been squeaking as it starts up. Not an obnoxious squeaking. Just a little squeak-squeak-squeak for a minute or so. My first thought, seeing as how the day has been going so far, was that now the dryer was going to go out and how very badly that would suck. I decided to ignore it, seeing as the squeaking stopped after a bit and the clothes were still getting as dry as ever.

A few minutes ago, I opened the dryer door to take out the latest batch of fresh wearables, and there in the middle of the opening is hanging a pair of my microfiber panties. It’s just hanging there, obviously caught on something. I give the panties a tug, seeing as they are already pretty much destroyed anyway, and I see they are wrapped around a black cord of some sort. Hmmm … it looks exactly like the black cord in my pajama bottoms. I give the cord a tug. It’s not moving. Jammed in there, wherever “there” is, really nice and tight.

I get down on the floor to get my head into the dryer so I can see what’s going on with the jammed cord. It had somehow worked itself into the edge between the basket part that turns and the dryer body that doesn’t turn. I don’t want to pull on it too hard, because I would like to not break the dryer, but as these sorts of things tend to progress with me, I finally just gave it all I had and it popped out.

Well, guess what? No more squeaking dryer! It’s a shame a really pricey pair of panties had to commit suicide, but at least the dryer isn’t about to stop working. I guess this disaster could be deemed minor, since it technically had a somewhat happy ending. But still … ARGH!

OK, here’s what salt does in bread:

• It strengthens the gluten strands.
• It adds flavor.
• It inhibits the yeast growth so the bread doesn’t rise too fast.

Well, at least my bread won’t be a rock hard brick. I can tell you, in the ten minutes it took me to make my last post, walk to the oven and check on the dough … it had risen so much it is almost overflowing the bowl. So yeah, it won’t be a brick of a loaf, but it might taste like cardboard.

I’m pressing onward. We need bread. At this point, all I want is for it to be edible. Flavorless I can live with. I’ve eaten store bought bread almost my entire life, and that stuff is pretty damn flavorless. I don’t think a little somewhat salt-free bread is going to kill us.