Bread

So I'm making bread again.  I have a bread machine, so I can really do this any time I want with set-it-and-forget-it convenience, but it makes 1.5 or 2 pound loaves, and I can't realistically eat it fast enough to get through that much bread.  (I mean, I probably could, but it's not my habit.)  I have a great bread machine recipe book, too.  Most of the loaves turn out too soft for sandwich bread, though.

Instead I'm making Diane Duane and Peter Morwood's bread recipe, in a Pullman pan, because I want sandwich bread that fits in my sandwich containers.  (The Pullman style pan was an adventure in itself; I got it on sale from Amazon, and they initially shipped me a bag of dog treats. ???  I got the pan on the second try.)  Now as I'm writing this, I realize I'm doing the simplified version that was on Tumblr.

Anyway, the first time I made it, my little mixer could not handle the kneading.  It tried, but I ended up kneading it by hand.  The second time I made it was after my husband got me a KitchenAid mixer for an early birthday present, and that's what I've got going right now in the kitchen, kneading the modified version I'm doing.

Modified how?  I mathed it down to an actual 1 pound loaf, since I want it to fit in the pan I've got without overflowing.  That makes it 16 ounces of bread flour, about a quarter ounce each of yeast and salt, 15 1/3 tablespoons of water (just under a cup), and about 2 tablespoons of oil.  That came out fine the first time I made it.

The second loaf I made with the 1 pound recipe was mostly all-purpose flour (I ran out of bread flour), and I added an egg and swapped in milk instead of water; it tasted fine and had a nice texture for sandwiches, but it did not rise well.  (My yeast is getting older, so that may be part of the problem... or I needed more because of the other substitutions.)

This time I've mostly used the base 1 pound recipe, but substituted 1/4 cup of flax meal for 1/4 of flour, and I added an egg again since I think it does well for the sandwich texture.  I did end up adding about a half a cup of flour to get it to come together, so either it's really humid today (probably; we're expecting rain) or I can just add the flax meal without taking out any flour.  I'll find out how that turns out in a couple hours.  Hopefully well, because I made blueberry jam yesterday that is amazing (thank you, Ball Preserving book), and I'm kind of planning on that for lunch several days this week.

Anyway, here's the mixer that's saving me from kneading dough by hand.  It's a KitchenAid Professional 600 series, and he found it very on sale.  I wasn't sure I was going to like the bowl lift, but it's been fine.  It's also like, 25 pounds, so it is living on the kitchen counter now so I don't have to move it much.

So far I've used it once to make meatball mix (I hate touching raw meat and this plus the new cookie scoop were great for meatballs), bread 3 times, and sweet roll dough once.  I think next weekend I might make cookies again to see if the smaller cookie scoop turns out better.  I've kept the old mixer because it's fine for things like buttercream frosting and cake mixes and whatnot, and it's a smaller bowl, so that's less room in the dishwasher when I'm making something smaller.  When it eventually dies (it's about 14 years old), I won't bother replacing it, but it's fine while we've still got it.

Joy and Music

So I've been reflecting on joy again recently.  The keynote by Naila Ansari at the SUNYLA conference in June was, in part, about joy (as well as archives and archival silences and community), and the word has been floating around again the past week or so.  And then I'm driving to work this morning, and I've got my energy playlist up because it is not below the fold, so to speak, on the screen like my current vibes playlist is, and I never remember to switch VLC on my phone off my sleep playlist until I get into the car and backed out of the driveway, and I don't like to fiddle with the screen too much while I'm driving.

Anyway, I'm driving to work, and Holst's Jupiter comes up as I get to campus, and I'm thinking about the anecdotes about The Planets and how the cleaning ladies were dancing in the aisles during the rehearsal for Jupiter.  I turn the volume up for Jupiter; my husband got us tickets to see The Planets live in New York City at the Lincoln Center years ago, and live music that I like affects me pretty strongly.  (I was similarly thrilled to go see a Vince Guaraldi Christmas music tribute.)  So I'm a bit verklempt by the time I get to work, and it was kind of good that there was no parking (due to some event that took up all the close parking) and I had to drive around to the other side of campus for parking so I could emotionally settle again.

And so I'm thinking: I need to make a playlist for joy.  With Jupiter and I don't know what else yet, because I haven't had a chance to actually put it together.  "An die Freude" and the Flying Theme from E.T. and "Joy to the World/Jeremiah was a bullfrog" and??? 

There is some music for me that the joy is in the listening, and some that's in the playing/singing, so Moonlight Sonata is not likely to be on it (because that's a playing one, and I... critique the recordings of it I have).  And it's not the same as my energy playlist: that has music chosen because it works well for either exercising or staying pepped up while working, similar to how my mom would put on the Mike Post TV themes album or Queen's greatest hits or Harry sometimes for big cleaning days.  The joy playlist would be more like the feeling I get from a fireworks show, where I want to be close enough to feel the concussion of the blasts. (I recommend going to fireworks at the Empire State Plaza for this.)

In some regards this has been a longer introspection than just going back to June; I read Marie Kondo's book several years ago, and as someone who collects hobbies, reflecting on why I am doing them and what purpose they serve in my life has been useful.  It's why I got a new piano and play regularly again after years of not.  It's why I'm trying to find time in my life again to write regularly (still a work in progress).  It's why I've tried to be more intentional with my time and do pros and cons evaluations (and time audits) rather than just taking on every opportunity/committee/hobby that looks interesting.  (Somehow I am inadvertently on the governing boards for three professional organizations anyway for the next two years, but I have acknowledged that I am At Capacity and am not accepting additional responsibilities at the moment.)

A joy playlist, at least, shouldn't require anything new; I have access to a good-sized music collection (I have been buying CDs for 30 years now).  And since I deleted my music folder on my phone and redid it, VLC has stopped wiping my playlists every time it rescans for media. (If you are having this problem, I fixed it by not having all the music files in one folder, but having them in folders by artist/album.)  So I can safely make playlists without having to redo them every couple of days.  Preferably it will not all be stuff that makes me happy-cry, because that's not particularly helpful while driving.

Anyway, that will probably take me all weekend.  Scrolling through 6000+ songs in VLC takes a while.  And then my morning commute can, until I feel like I need a new playlist for something I'm writing, focus on joy.  Maybe we can sustain that feeling through November, and my NaNoWriMo story won't get derailed by some new panic this year.

World of Warcraft 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition

I didn't plan to make a post about this, partly because I had thought it was not happening.  Fedex delivered my package somewhere else (with a photo confirming it had not been at our house) and couldn't find it again.  Luckily it turned up at the house of neighbors who were out of town at the time of delivery.

The War Within part of the collector's edition is pretty stripped down compared to past collector's editions: you get an art book and a pin, but there's no soundtrack (physical or download code) and no mouse pad.  The game key (which, in-game, does have a goodly amount of bonuses) does not come in the CE box itself, but is in a little envelope in the packing foam, so if you buy one of these third-party in the future, even if the package is still in the plastic, you may not get the game key

 

 

The CE box is a pretty sturdy clam-shell style with some subtle holographic effects that I couldn't get to photograph, and the art book is similar to previous editions.  The pin also seems to be of decent quality and has been added to the bookshelf next to the Shadowlands and Dragonflight pins.  (I should probably pull the art books out sometime and put them on the bookshelf, too.)

The gryphon rider, like Ragnaros before him, comes with some assembly required, but while Rags was just a couple pieces, the gryphon rider is six.  The tail boops out kind of easily, so if you have cats, be aware.

I need to rearrange the shelves over the piano to get this pair next to Ragnaros still and make it slightly less cat accessible. I can get behind the piano to retrieve the tail if needed, but it is a pain.

The lack of a soundtrack in both this and the Dragonflight CE is disappointing; that was my favorite thing in all the previous boxed sets.  I'm still not sure if I feel this was worth $180 (and while it was in shipping limbo I was debating if I would even bother repurchasing it), but compared to the digital epic edition, you're basically paying $90 for the statue, art book, and pin, so it doesn't seem too out of line.

Hello, Blaugust!

So I signed up for Blaugust this year.  This is a new-to-me event; I already have a bunch of unfinished drafts I wanted to finish, so it seemed serendipitous that I saw the event mentioned on Bluesky around when I was trying to decide when/how frequently I wanted to get them done.

I have no grand plans for the month - I just want to work through the backlog of unfinished posts and briefly review some of the books I have read thus far this year. Maybe I will post some garden updates (spoiler: crabgrass) and other hobby-related stuff, as well.