Joyful Unwinds

Day 15: My Adeniums were getting too leggy, so it was with great trepidation that I decided to prune one back in the hopes that it would sprout a new "head." Typically, the showy, large-flowered Adeniums sold by nurseries are grafted plants, hybrid stems grafted onto sturdier rootstock, much like what is done with fruit trees. I was careful not to take it back as far as the graft (pretty obvious, really), and then sat back to see if my experiment was going to be successful before jumping in to prune all the plants. I covered the cut with candle wax to ensure against rot or disease, and was heartened when six months later, a tiny leaf bud appeared just below the waxed tip. Leaves developed over the next several months, and then when the plant's blooming time arrived, it put out a few buds. Emboldened by my success, I pruned the other two plants, one "head" at a time over the seasons. Now all my Adeniums are under a foot tall, and each stem has its "Tina Turner" hairdo of leaves at the top of otherwise bare sticks, and all have bloomed again. "Joyful" is unwinding its pink minaret even as I write.

Sheeting Rain

Day 14: That's the view from here. Western Washington is swimming in its first atmospheric river of the season, with something close to an inch having fallen in the last 24 hours at my house. I suppose I should be thankful I don't live in Jamaica, because they're expected to get 30-50 inches of rain over the next two or three days, courtesy of Hurricane Melissa. Melissa is exhibiting behaviours not seen in a hurricane for at least a century, according to one source, and it is guaranteed to bring catastrophic flooding and landslides to the island. On this end, though, I'm dealing with the "first-world problem" of not having adequate heat, and I'm getting no action from any of the companies I've contacted with respect to getting hard copies of estimates to submit to the PUD in the hopes of qualifying for a low-income grant. In fact, I have not even received the application forms from the PUD, and it's been almost a week since I requested them. Meanwhile, I'm using a wall heater which is barely up to the task of keeping the living room warm. But unlike the unfortunate residents of Jamaica, I can put on another layer of fleece, grab and blanket and a cat, and a cup of hot tea. At least I still have power (she says, knocking firmly on wood).

Birdseed Loaf

Day 13: By its very nature, my "Birdseed Bread" is more dense than sourdough or white bread, being comprised partly of millet flour. It has a lightly nutty flavour which I sometimes enhance with the addition of golden flaxseed meal and/or flaxseeds. Experimenting with the formula to create a Dutch-oven version, I substituted 50 grams of millet flour for bread flour in a no-knead, 70% hydration recipe which called for 500 grams total, and added 8 grams of gluten because millet flour has none. Baked in my new loaf-shaped, lidded cast-iron bread pan, it came out perfectly, cancelling any plans I had for increasing the amount of millet flour in the future. Slathered with real butter, this bread is almost a meal in itself. It also makes excellent French toast.

Although I used parchment paper here, I invested a whopping six dollars in a pair of silicone bread pan liners to help me get rather wet and oozy doughs into the pan. I'll try them out in my next experiment, but that may be a ways down the road because I now have three loaves of bread in my freezer, and I have got to make space for a Thanksgiving turkey.

Backed, Batted and Pinned

Day 12: With only two "units" left to make and sew into the "Ring Cycles" quilt, I decided it was time to address one which has been in the queue for some time. I only recently re-discovered it sitting lone and lorn in the bottom of a box of fabrics, still in unjoined blocks, so I sewed them together, made an epic journey to Ben Franklin to get backing, and the parts have been sitting on top of the dryer ever since. Y'see, I have way more Help than I need, so I had to find time when Merry had to be confined in the bathroom so that I could spread it out on the living room floor. The heat pump issue provided the opportunity, what with a repairman coming and going (but not fixing). I stretched the backing fabric, weighting the corners with dictionaries and field guides, then spread the batting out over it and made sure everything was smooth and square. Then I laid the quilt on top of that and set to pinning the layers together. It didn't take as long as I'd expected (I'm using a new type of batting which is more cooperative), and now the "Autumn Quilt" (aka the "Orange Quilt") is ready to go on the frame. Time to get this one done, done, done! Some of the fabrics in it were purchased forty years ago!

Beware: Mad Scientist

Day 11: The flask are filled, the beakers bubbling, the retorts rumbling, and the Grand Experiment is under way. Can I successfully adapt my "birdseed bread" recipe to make a high-hydration Dutch oven loaf? If there are 12-24 grams of gluten in every 100 grams of bread flour and I want to substitute 50 grams of millet flour for the same amount of bread flour, I will need to add 6-8 grams of gluten, i.e., in my 500-gram loaf, I will want to use 450 grams of bread flour, 50 grams of millet flour and 6-8 grams of gluten (close enough for gov'mint work). That's where I'll begin. If the bread rises properly, I will try increasing the millet flour next time. Dough goes down for 18 hours. If it's nice and bubbly in the morning, I should have an update for you by 9 AM.

By Any Other Name

Day 10: Puttering around on YouTube, I kept seeing references to "slow stitching," and found myself wondering what the heck it meant. Well, you know what they say about roses and "any other name." Turns out it's nothing more than HAND-SEWING, for pity's sake, but there is a twist on it called "stitch meditation" which appealed to me. Basically, that means doing whatever you want with whatever you have, and having fun while doing it. Odd bits get sewn together...that last tiny little piece of quilt fabric you wish you'd bought more of, tails of embroidery floss long enough to make five French knots, a three-inch piece of bias tape or leftover bandweaving...put 'em together and what have you got? A slow-stitching meditation piece which can be scrolled around an old spool, a dowel, a stick, a dolly clothespin, and then unrolled when you feel like you need a walk down Memory Lane. One variation on the "meditation" particularly appealed to me: the names of all the wildflowers the artist had seen in an area where she was vacationing. I said to self, "All the plants I've photographed for the Burke Herbarium! Yes!" In the end, it will be wound around a vintage narrow-waisted wooden sewing thread spool I've been hanging onto for at least forty years. The fabric is a 32-count cotton, dyed (by me) with tea and a few bits of Lobster fungus to warm the tone. Y'see, I'm coming to the end of the Ring Cycles quilt. Okay, I still have to quilt it, but I needed something to work on in my lap, not sitting up board-rigid at the quilting frame. With each flower name I stitch in, I'm remembering where I saw it, who I was with, what the weather was like, and in many cases, the excitement of finding an oddity, a rarity, even a previously unrecorded weed.

Any Excuse

Day 9: I really never need an excuse to make bread, but since the recipe which came with my new "Dutch oven" style loaf pan suggested an 80% hydration dough, my scientific curiosity pushed me forward in an experiment. My regular sourdough is roughly 60% hydration (560g flour to 330g water, counting the poolish), so I realized this white bread was going to be a much wetter mix and harder to get in the pan. How would it turn out? Well, there was only one way to find out. The recipe starts yesterday. Combine 450g bread flour with 360ml water, 1/2 tsp. dry yeast and 1.5 tsp salt into a wet, shaggy dough (I use my bagel-twizzling stick to stir mine...wooden spoon handle works well, too). Cover it and let it proof in a warm place for 12-18 hours until it's nice and bubbly. Pour it out onto a floured surface, try to shape it into something remotely resembling a loaf (I did tell you it's a very wet dough), cover and let rise for an hour. Halfway into that hour, start preheating the pan and lid in an oven set to 450 degrees. When the full hour is up, make a slit down the center of the loaf to release steam, coerce it into the pan (I lined my pan with parchment), put the lid on and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid, bake for an additional 15 minutes. And this is what you get: a lovely high loaf with a crisp thin crust and a light, airy texture perfect for sandwiches or toast.