Category: Life

Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 208

We watched last night’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert this afternoon so we could see the interview with the cast of The West Wing, which created a “not a reunion” show on HBO Max starting Thursday. We’re looking forward to it, even though we haven’t seen all of The West Wing (I’m not sure we’ve seen the episode they’re re-enacting, Hartsfield’s Landing, but we plan to fix that before Thursday).

I wanted to make sure our HBO Max subscription was properly set up, so I did the “authorize through Xfinity” dance and watched the trailer for Thursday’s episode. I was curious what else might be available, and scrolled down until I saw “Looney Tunes”, which made me think of some of my favorite cartoons, including What’s Opera, Doc?, so I clicked through and took a look.

I wanted to watch the cartoon with “pronoun trouble”, but I couldn’t quite remember its name, so I went to Wikipedia and searched there. It reminded me that the title was Rabbit Seasoning, but the article also mentioned that it was the second cartoon in a trilogy. The others are Rabbit Fire and Duck! Rabbit! Duck!, neither of which I’d seen.

So I went back to HBO Max and watched Rabbit Fire and Rabbit Seasoning and enjoyed them immensely – but Duck! Rabbit! Duck! was nowhere to be found.

Off to IMDB, which pointed me at the Amazon listing for Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, which could be mine for the low, low price of $25.96, or the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2 for a mere $9.96 (note: affiliate links, in case you’re feeling generous).

I wanted to see the third cartoon, but not ten bucks’ worth of wanting. Instead, I looked at the Los Gatos Library’s catalog, and they have the Golden Collection on hand. The library isn’t actually open, but they fill holds on a daily basis, so I expect to pick up the DVDs next week.

Hope it’s worth watching!

Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 207

A couple of weeks ago, the Mercury News ran a recipe from King Arthur Flour for German-style Pretzels. It looked good. And when I found King Arthur Flour and instant dry yeast at Lunardi’s a couple of weeks ago, I decided to buy it and make the pretzels. But I delayed until the time was right – this morning, I decided the time was right, and followed the simple recipe.

Step 0: Discard old flour that was probably well past its peak.

Step 1: Find the mixer. We have a Sunbeam. I decided to use the dough hooks rather than the beaters.

Step 2: Measure the ingredients into the mixing bowl. Everything was easy except the flour, which was still in the bag. I dipped my half-cup measure right into the bag of flour – ten times in total. This may have been a mistake.

Step 3: Mix. The mixer complained, and not much seemed to happen. After the first three minutes, I noticed that a LOT of flour was still sitting, dry, at the bottom of the bowl; I kept mixing.

Step 4: Increase the speed of the mixer. Still a lot of flour sitting around.

Step 5: Call King Arthur’s help line. The agent suggested adding water, slowly, until the dough started to come together. She also suggested weighing the ingredients next time – the original recipe at King Arthur calls for 612 grams of flour, but I’d put in about 740 grams.

Step 6: Add water and mix, add water and mix, add water and mix. Eventually, we decided it looked like dough.

Dough, right?

Step 7: Let it rest for 45 minutes.

Step 8: Fold (per the recipe).

Step 9: Let it rest for 45 minutes (make and eat lunch during that time).

Step 10: Look at it and decide it hasn’t risen enough. Give it another 20 minutes and it looks like this:

I guess it rose

Step 11: Give it another 15 minutes, then continue.

Step 12: Try to deflate the dough – nothing seems to happen. The dough is incredibly sticky, but Diane suggests putting flour on my hands and the mat and I manage to get it divided into 100-gram pieces (I get 12, versus the 10 I should have according to the recipe) and shape them into “rough logs”.

Rough Logs

Step 13: Roll the logs into 18-to-22-inch ropes and shape into pretzels. Use lots of flour to keep things from sticking, but eventually, I have proto-pretzels:

Proto-Pretzels

Step 14: Put the proto-pretzels in the refrigerator for an hour. Go to Target and pick up a new electric toothbrush.

Step 15: Prepare a water bath with baking soda; boil the pretzels, two at a time, for a minute each, and put them onto parchment-paper-covered baking sheets. Sprinkle with salt.

Boiled Proto-Pretzels

Step 16: Bake the pretzels (finally!) for 14-16 minutes at 450°F. Put on a rack to cool. Make dinner.

Pretzels Cooling on the Rack

Step 17: Use the pretzels as the bread for Kiddush!

Pretzels on the Plate

Step 18: Freeze the other 10 pretzels for later.

Lessons Learned

  • Weigh ingredients rather than measuring by volume
  • Go to the source for the recipe rather than relying on the newspaper’s version
  • Don’t despair, ask for help
  • Stickiness can be overcome
  • Patience is a virtue

Questions for Experienced Bakers

  • Should the dough have risen visibly?
  • Should I have used the mixing blades instead of the dough hooks?
  • What should I make next with the three-plus pounds of flour I have left?