Fluffiness

It's a state of mind.

Mooned.

I guess he's had enough of the photography.

Carbs are bad

I haven't had much luck with my bread maker, which I bought a few years ago.

The first loaf, I found too salty.

The next loaf, I used the timer on it so that it would be ready when I woke up. I got up that morning to find dough that had grown so big, the lid had popped off the machine and it had spilled down the side. It was burned on the bottom and (obviously) raw on the top and outside.

I tried that same recipe again, without the delay, and had the same problem. I ended up taking the bread out and baking it in the oven. Not having much experience with bread, it turned out very undercooked and had to be tossed.

I made one loaf of wheat bread that was so-so. It didn't rise properly, though, and was kind of squishy on the inside.

One loaf turned out to be my biggest success so far. It was an herbed French Bread. I cut the recommended salt in half but I still found it way too salty again.

Then, I tried to use the delay function again to make white bread for this morning. I work up to find baked flour, and realized that I'd forgotten to put the blade in that kneads it.

The last time I gave it a shot (over a year ago), I tried to make cinnamon raisin bread. I gave up about a half hour before it was supposed to be done because I could smell burning on the bottom while the top seemed to remain in a liquid form. I put the bread machine in the far back corner of the pantry. The intention was for it to be added to the items available at my garage next sale.


Last month, thinking that perhaps the user might be the cause of the problems, rather than the machine, I decided to give it another shot. Since the recipes that came with it failed me, I bought a cook book that was written specifically for Canadian bread makers. (Our flour is different than yours, and we use metric measurements.)


This is a sure fire plan, right? I could practically taste the bread.


It's not going to happen. Every single one of those recipes lists the ingredients and then provides two basic cooking instructions:
1. Place ingredients in machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer
2. bake in ____ (quick, delayed, whole wheat, etc) mode.


How the heck am I supposed to know what order I should place the ingredients?!?

Needless to say, I've got another item for my garage sale pile this spring. Unless somebody else happens to store the instruction booklet from their black and decker bread machine.

Sam is the plant identifying Queen

After three years, the Mystery Plant has finally been named.

I present to you, Blue Woolly Speedwell.

Thank you Sam.  I hope you've got room for this in your garden:

More spring blooms

Just in time for mother's day, the big mass of tulips are starting to bloom.  I'm having the parents over for dinner tomorrow, so I'll go out and cut a bouquet before they get here.

I took this through the basement window, partly for Linlah and partly because it's raining outside.
That window is going to be in my master bedroom if/when I ever get around to finishing the basement, and I can't wait until I can look outside and see flowers like that.

I took this one a few days ago, just before the tulips started to bloom.

Notice the seedum (behind the juniper) is starting to bloom with white flowers too.

So's the mystery plant.

National Geographic can only wish they had this shot

The hunter in his native environment:

You probably shouldn't turn your back on this one.

Flu bugs, spring blooms and lies of omissions

The first blooms of the spring popped up this weekend.  I didn't get a chance to take a picture of them until now, because I was busy dying of the flu.  I'm feeling a lot better now - I'm pretty sure I'll live, if I don't speak or breath - but man, was it a crappy weekend.

Anyway, back to the blooms.  Not the best pictures, because I held the camera at flower level instead of getting down there myself.  These are what you might call blind shots.

The red ones showed up first, with the lambs ears:

Then the multicoloured ones showed up.

The camera seems to prefer the Toad Abode over the tulips.

And now, the lies of omission.  Before I went in for my recent surgery, I was given a lot of advice and/or  warnings.  Some was true.  Some was unnecessarily harsh.  ".... is going to be incredibly painful". "You've never felt pain like the pain you'll feel when..."  Most, while I'm sure came with good intensions, did more harm than good because it made me dread the things I'd have to do anyway.  Even worse - a lot of it wasn't true for me.   You know what I wasn't told?  I wasn't told that my stomach would stick out like I'm 6 months pregnant for so long.  Sure, I did read that "there may be some swelling in the tummy" but not this much for this long.   I'm actually really lucky that I lost as much fluid as I did after the surgery, because if I hadn't, I suspect that  I'd be walking around in maternity pants... kind of ironic, considering the surgery that I had.

So, today I took the bull by the horns and brought a stability ball in to replace my desk chair.  I sat on that thing for three hours before giving up and going back to my usual chair.  I wasn't sure why I was feeling so shaky (I was sitting the whole time, after all) so I looked it up online.  Apparently, you're supposed to start using stability for a half hour at a time and work up from there.  Oops.