The Great Sourdough Experiment!

So, I have another hair-brained scheme.  I know, I know...  I said I was going to quit, but this just sounded so cool!  You ready for it?  Homemade Sourdough bread!  Yep, bread made from scratch, not requiring yeast, so it fits into my survivalist scrapbook, too.  I found a recipe for a starter (think Amish Friendship Bread - cause I KNOW you have all had your turn with an Amish Friendship Bread starter).  My buddy Chris wanted one, too, so I decided I would whip up a couple over the long weekend.

Well....make that 4....


Because it took on a life of its own once I got started.  Not that those of you who know me would EVER believe that I could get carried away with something, and over do or anything.  Right?  :~)

Anyway, I decided that this was just such a cool experiment that it needed chronicling.  So, I've been taking pictures and will now be the source of a running commentary on exactly how (or perhaps how NOT) to make Homemade Sourdough Bread.  Yes yes yes....you're welcome.  It's what I'm here for.

The Starter Recipe:

Mix one cup of warm water with one cup of flour.

Got it?  Well, I mean I could complicate it for you, by discussing the pros and cons of white flour versus whole wheat, bleached versus unbleached, all-purpose versus bread, but you get the general gist, right?  A cup of flour and a cup of warm water.  Ta da!

Now put your little creation, your little sourdough baby, into a plastic or glass container with a well fitting lid.  No metal, please.  And make sure you have some room for Sourdough Sam to grow.  You're going to be feeding Sam daily, and just like any other newborn, he's going to grow quickly.  Give him a nice evenly warm home (say, the 78degree kitchen counter?) and let him sleep until his next feeding.  Every day for 3-7 days, you will take out 1/2 cup and pour it down the drain.  Wasteful, I know, but necessary.  Now feed Sam a new 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of warm water.  That's it!  After a few days, Sam will start to develop a bubbly personality! 

I got so excited after creating Sam 1 and Sam 2 with all purpose flour (one for me and one for my friend, remember?) that I decided to create Wheaton with whole wheat flour.  Then I realized I had forgotten to warm the water when I made Sam 1 and 2.  Crap.  Would that make a difference?  Would the Sams not grow?  So, I made Sally with warm water, just in case.

I was still worried about Sam 1 and Sam 2 with their cold water, though.  So I popped Sam 1 in the microwave, and let him take a little carousel whirl for 10 seconds.  But what about Sam 2?  What if I added just a teeny little bit of yeast to make sure Sam 2 grew, what with his cold water impediment, you know?  Just like 12 tiny granules.  I can hear you harrumphing, you sourdough purist snobs.  I know that "real" sourdough doesn't have yeast and that's the point, but still...this IS an experiment, remember?  So Sourdough Sam 2 became Noah (heehee, get it? NOah, as in NO I'm not real sourdough? Geesh, tough crowd.)

I faithfully stirred and fed Sam 1, Sally, Wheaton and NOah (I'm still giggling at that...) for the next couple of days.  I took 1/2 cup out, and added 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of (this time) WARM water.  On the third day I was looking back over the directions and realized that it was not "remove 1/2 CUP" it was "remove ONE HALF".  Great.  I'd screwed up again!  But it just didn't make sense, which is probably why my brain read 1/2 cup in the first place.  How were you going to increase the volume of the starter if you took out the same amount you put in? 

And I hated pouring it down the drain...so just for giggles on the 3rd day I decided to keep my 1/2 cup from one of the white flour starters and the wheat starter.  Enter Sally 2 and Wheaton 2:

Speaking of Wheaton, he was REALLY doing well!  He actually blew the lid off his Tupperware on the 3rd day!  Made me wonder just what all is done to bleached white flour...you know?  What good parts of the natural flour do they kill with that bleach?  But anyway, all of the starters (what are we up to now, 6?) were doing well, even if not quite as bubbly as Wheaton.  The others usually developed "hooch" (no, I'm not making that up - check with the purist Sourdough snobs.  It is a real term.)  It was just a brownish liquid that collected on top as the solids settled, but which mixed back in easily when I added flour.  I did learn that the flour blended much better when I mixed it in BEFORE mixing in the WARM water. 

All My Children were developing this lovely beery smell though, so I knew that they were doing their 'thang'.  They had all grown up into such lively personalities that I decided it was time to hand Sally 2 off to my buddy, and let her continue her care and feeding.  And what the heck, I took her Wheaton 2 also, just 'cause I love her. Whew, that brought my nursery back to a more manageable size of 4 - Sam the Original, Sally, Noah and Wheaton the Original.  All were doing great, and I figured it was time to try baking!

I removed 1/2 cup (yep, I decided to stay with my original screw up, and it turns out it works great!) and I fed Sally, Noah and Wheaton but not Sam.  It was Sam's day to shine.  So I poured Sam into a ceramic mixing bowl and fed him 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of warm water.  I covered him with plastic wrap and left him to hang out on my front porch where it was sunny and warm.  (Not in direct sun, though.)  Within 2 hours Sam had grown into a bubbly and happy "sponge".  (Let's do use the correct terms, since we've already pissed off the purist Sourdough snobs.)  I brought Sam back in the house and got ready to make my dough.

I measured out 2 1/2 cups of sponge into a glass bowl. (Remember, no metal bowls or utensils - they can make your baby act up, I mean REact.)  That left me roughly 1/2 cup of sponge.  I poured what was left of Sam the Sponge into his freshly washed container and fed him 1/2 cup of flour and a 1/2 cup of warm water.  (HA! I'm never going to forget that WARM part again!)  Then I put him in the fridge with his friends Noah, Sally and Wheaton, to rest for a week until I feed them again or bake again.  Once they move into the fridge and off of your kitchen counter, their development slows.  Kind of like a teenager who hits that 16-17 year old wall.  They'll just sort of hang around the fridge eating occasionally, but not really growing a lot anymore.  But you can get them to liven back up anytime by letting them come to room temperature.  Like when you turn off your teenager's Xbox.

I added 2 1/2 TBL of olive oil, 5 tsp of sugar, and 1 1/2 tsp of sea salt.  I mixed that into the sponge really well with my handy dandy wooden spoon.   Then I started to knead in the flour.  Yes, with my hands.  But I washed them first!  I kneaded in 3 cups of flour until I had a nice lightly sticky solid ball of sourdough.  I turned my oven on for just a few minutes to get it nice and warm inside (but not HOT!), then I turned it off.  I covered my bowl with a kitchen towel and put it in my now warm oven.  And waited with baited breath for 2 hours....  Ok, I didn't really.  I went to Walmart and picked up the boys from school, then ran some other errands.  But I DID think about my bread the whole time I was gone!  When I got home 2 hours later, this is what my beautiful Sam had turned into:

Sam was huge!  He had easily doubled in size.  Like a teenager over summer break!  So I punched him down, you know, also like a teenager LOL, kneaded him again, and shaped him into a loaf.  Then I did the same little trick with my oven, and left him to puff up again.  Like a teenager.  Or have I beaten that particular euphimism to death?  Anyway, this is what he looked like before he rose again:

So into my toasty 350 degree oven he went!  And came out 30 minutes later as a fantabulous crispy golden colored thump worthy loaf of Sourdough Bread!!!  Ta da!  See, I told ya it was easy! ;~)

Apparently, I am NOT Talking To Myself....Whodathunkit?!?

For those of you who have been following my blog (yes, all TWO of you! Chris and Ann, you precious little things, you! ;-)  ) I have been called out.  My prissy little blog here, the one I write for my own benefit and for absolutely no one else's, has been called into question.  Chastised, even.  Actually, to be quite honest, it's been strung up like Jesus on the Cross, but then so has my Christianity and my Republicanism, which too were called into question as being....well, let's just say that SOME people apparently don't "approve of" my beliefs.  My knee-jerk reaction was to delete their incredibly hateful and uneducated commentary, but I found after I returned and tried to undo that delete, that they had erased their own comments.  Go figure?


So yesterday, after SEVERAL very long days of being harassed and demeaned and spoken of in very ugly terms (which were relayed to me via quite reliable sources, I might add) I decided that I had had quite enough.  Moving, and the perils that lie therein (see my previous blog), as well as the land-stalker (also, previous blog, and now that I think about it, probably the next blog, too) piled all on top of people whom I felt had taken extreme advantage of me, as well as trash-talked me to other members of my family, and welllllll.....hell....you know that kind of thing can just pile up on you! 


Speaking of piling up, you know guilt has a way of piling up on you, as well.  Guilt is a very volatile thing.  Guilt can make you very defensive.  Guilt can make you feel...well....guilty.  Guilt is defined by Wikipedia as, "...the fact of being responsible for the commission of an offense.^[1] It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation." 


Nothing will bring forth the moral indignation that guilt does, either!  Think about it...when you were a kid, and got caught doing something wrong, didn't you get WAY more angry and defensive when you KNEW you were wrong, than when you were inaccurately accused?  Admit it - your face got all inflamed, and you started to stutter and shake, and then you went to ANY LENGTHS necessary to PROVE that you were not wrong, even though you knew damn good and well you were.


Yep, guilt is a strong emotion.  When you know that you've said things about someone that you should never have said, guilt can be an incredibly strong motivator for denying that you said those things.  Or maybe, you admit you said those things, but hey...you were provoked.  Right?  Or those things you said were true, right?  Well, maybe not QUITE true, but that's your story and you're sticking to it.  And your daddy is, too! 


I don't know....the way that I was raised, nobody ever said ANYTHING about your family.  THAT was immediate grounds for friend dismissal.  I could say anything I wanted about how my sister was that, or my mother did this, but hey...nobody else ever BETTER say a WORD about my sister or mother!  But maybe that's just me, and the way I was raised, and the way I tried to raise my children.  Family loyalty to ME is everything. 


I have to admit that I also find it quite interesting, (and I think Freud would agree), that people's names don't even have to be mentioned in order to draw this visceral guilt reaction.  Just relay a story of someone doing something that is less than humanitarian, and document them saying things that moral people would be embarrassed to say in public (or at least GET CAUGHT saying in public),  even without using ANY NAMES and VOILA'!  You will most assuredly have found moral indignation!  Better known as GUILT!  And or, guilty conscience!


Thank heavens that I will be able to sleep well tonight, knowing that I for one do not have a guilty conscience.  I have not said anything, nor quoted anyONE's commentary, that was not true - that was not said about me, or to me, or perhaps even emailed or texted to me just this very day.  I simply relayed what happened to me, and was thus crucified by those who DID have a guilty conscience. 

"Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself."  ~  Simone de Beauvoir

The Misery of Moving (And The Perils of Pack Rats)

We have lived in San Antonio since 2006.  Well, not technically San Antonio.  To be more precise, we lived in Converse, which is a little known suburb of San Antonio.  Converse is a suburb for the not-so-rich folks, who cannot afford to live in the richer, more well known suburbs of San Antonio.  How did we end up living in Converse, you ask?  Well, that my love is a blog for another time! LOL  For now you will have to suffer through the story of how we came NOT to live in Converse.


My husband, being the licensed journeyman electrician that he is, works for a company that has offices in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston.  Unfortunately, the idget who runs the San Antonio office has expertly run the business directly into the ground.  He has even gone so far as to get the company blacklisted with most San Antonio contractors.  Needless to say, that has made work in San Antonio for my husband well, a little scarce.  So he's spent quite a lot of the last couple of years driving to job sites in Austin.  That's an hour from San Antonio, IF you don't include traffic time.  I work for Seton, which is also based in Austin.  I work in the Seton clinic in Lockhart, TX - about an hour from Converse.  And if I lived closer, I could pick up hours at some of the other Seton facilites in the Austin area.  So after watching the gas prices climb higher and higher and higher, as well as languishing under our landlord's constant emails and drive-bys and phone calls and walk throughs, we began to entertain the idea that perhaps, just maybe, we should consider moving OUT of San Antonio.  We had talked about living in the country for years, so we decided that buying some land somewhere south of Austin would be a totally fantastic idea!


Well, we ALL know how well my fantastic ideas usually turn out!


I started searching for property for us to buy.  Then I checked our credit.  We've fought and fought for years to fix our credit. We've paid off stuff, gotten rid of our credit cards, made payment arrangements on my defaulted student loans....in other words we've jumped through our proverbial butts to try and reach that golden score that proclaims "YOU HAVE GOOD CREDIT" *insert bugling here*


Well, guess what folks? We bit ourselves in that proverbial butt. Apparently, by paying off everything and getting rid of our credit cards we did NOT clean up our credit. We just dismissed it. After all these years and all that hard work, our credit score is actually LOWER than it used to be. According to the mortgage broker that I talked to, by not having any credit cards we have shown "that we can't pay back credit." WHAT?!?!? And here I thought we were showing that we were responsible by paying our debts and not taking on additional credit...my bad! Turns out we should've borrowed our faces blue!


We've scrimped and saved and just when we thought we could finally get a loan, we get blown out of the water. We found a fantastic place that we wanted SO BADLY!!!  22 acres all to ourselves!!!  But after packing and shopping and working our asses off to buy this place, turns out we STILL can't get a mortgage!  We've spent the last 15 years paying someone else's mortgage, in the way of rent, but we supposedly can't "afford" a mortgage - at least according to the bank!

So I had my house all packed up and nowhere to go. Turns out, we didn't have a place to move TO.  We couldn't buy, and we had not even looked for a rental because we were so sure we WOULD be able to buy the 22 acres we'd found.  But our lease was up, and we had already given notice to our rotten land-stalker. I mean, land-LORD sorry. Then, right in the middle of my panicked break-down, my girlfriend's husband tells us about a (mostly) reputable double-wide *woo hoo - a mobile home - how WILL I contain my excitement?* Ok, so I drove out to see it. It wasn't like I had a ton of options, you know? But I won't regale you with details of the double-wide here. That's for a whole 'nother blog, trust me! Suffice it to say, the price was right and the landlady was a sweet little old lady who didn't even want a lease. Done. But then the REAL problems began...



Nothing can ever be easy, can it? In the midst of this nasty little summer heatwave cum drought, our electric bill had skyrocketed to over $300. They also would not give me a letter of credit for the new electric company. So, add another $275 for a deposit and turn-on fee (yes, they really did charge me a $25 "turn on fee".) The new house has propane, which was a lesson in itself, since I've never had a house with propane. Did you know that propane sells for almost as much as gasoline?!? Neither did I!!! It's $2.99 PER GALLON. And apparently, no company wants to drive their big ol' tanker truck out to fill up my little propane tank unless I buy a MINIMUM of 100 gallons. There goes another $300 out the window.  You want TV?   In the COUNTRY?  HA!  Ok, we can get you TV, but it's gonna cost you!  You want internet you say? Now you're just being all big city uppity, aren't ya?  You're gonna have to go satellite if you want them big city amenities!   And those were just the costs of moving INTO the NEW PLACE!  Now let's talk about the cost of moving OUT OF the OLD PLACE!

The carpet cleaners (who HAD to be professionals, per my lease with the land-stalker) charged me $316 to come clean the carpets in a completely empty house. Yeah, never EVER use Green Tree Steamers (www.greentreesteamers.com) if you live in San Antonio! I purchased one of those local internet deals from them - 5 rooms for $49.  Ok, well we had 5 rooms upstairs, so that only left 3 more downstairs to pay extra for.  I had already pre-treated the "pet stains" (stupid little boy Maltese!) with this very expensive but very good enzymatic cleaner.  Now I don't know what kind of math skills you have, but my math skills did NOT add $16 each for 3 extra rooms, plus $49 for the original deal, to come up with a bill of OVER THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS!  And to think, they didn't even kiss me!

Now let's talk about Pack Rat.  I thought, hey....only $128 a month for a 16 foot connex is a deal!  They quoted about a $50 charge for delivery and set-up, and then only about $50-60 for picking up the unit and taking it to my new residence.  Have you folks priced UHaul type trucks lately?  I have!  And man, are those suckers EXPENSIVE!  And they run on diesel, which is presently going for the bargain basement price of only $4 dollars A GALLON!  At 10 MILES TO THE GALLON!  So I thought the Pack Rat connex was a brilliant idea!  *Here's where I tell you once again - we ALL know how well my fantastic ideas usually turn out!*

Well, I packed the crap out of that Pack Rat!  I dared anyone to fit so much as a matchbook into that sucker!  Then, two weeks before the end of the month (and the end of our lease) I called Pack Rat and said, "Okay guys!  Come get my unit!"  *yes, that's me standing there in my driveway, hands on hips, looking quite proud of myself, and dare I say maybe even a bit smug?*

Sure thing ma'am.  *insert scary music here*  We'll be happy to schedule that for you!  Someone from the San Antonio office will be calling you to firm up the time and day.  Oh, and that will cost you $258.39 for us to pick the unit up and deliver it out to your new residence in Lockhart, and then only another $243.57 to return for it once you've emptied it.  *I warned you it was going to get scary.*  Once my sons revived me, and got me up off the floor, we waited for the local office to call us.  And we waited.....

And waited.....

And waited....

And waited.....

(You getting the idea, here?)  I called back and called back and called back.  I waited, and called back, and then waited some more.  Finally, two days before the end of the month (and so two days before the end of my lease) the idiot at the 1-800-Pack-Rat number says, "Well it looks here like it's been scheduled to be picked it.  Yep, they'll be out there first thing the morning of the twelfth."  *Here come my sons with the defibrillator again.*  THE TWELFTH?!?!?!?!?!?  Have I not mentioned REPEATEDLY that my lease expires on the THIRTY-FIRST?!?!?!?  Are you telling me that it takes ONE MONTH for you people to get your shit together and pick up a unit that it took you only two days notice to DELIVER?!?!?!?   



Apparently, YES.  Since my nifty little Pack Rat connex continued to sit in the driveway in Converse on the 30th...and the 31st....and the 1st....and the 2nd....   At which point, the land-stalker was having absolute conniption fits!  And CHARGING ME!  For every blasted damn day that the stupid Pack Rat connex continued to live in the driveway, the over-bearing hateful ass land-stalker was charging me RENT!  FOR THE DRIVEWAY!  Never mind that I left his house in better shape than it was when he rented it to me.  Never mind that I tore down old, moldy wallpaper and applied fresh plaster and paint.  Never mind that I put a decorative paint finish on the walls.  Never mind that I left custom made shelving in TWO different bathrooms because it went with the afore-mentioned Venetian plaster and custom finishes!  Never mind that I paid over THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS so that his carpets were spotless!  NEVER MIND THAT HIS FOUNDATION ROTTING HOUSE WAS IN PRISTINE CONDITION READY AND WAITING FOR THE NEW TENANTS WITH NO DOWN TIME! 

That's when my tantrums started.  I wrote ALL OVER Pack Rat's FaceBook wall with disparaging comments about how it takes a MONTH to get a unit picked up, and how it will cost you almost a thousand dollars to rent and then relocate a unit.  And I left a nasty little message on their voicemail about how I would be arriving at their San Antonio office first thing the next morning with the local news crew to document my shoddy experience.  Lo and behold, my unit got picked up!  Of course, it's STILL not at my new house, but at least it's not RENTING OUT THE DRIVEWAY at my old house either!  But they are damn sure sticking to that date of the 12th for the delivery.  Oh, and the amount to be charged!  They refuse to adjust my bill, even though they cost me 3 days rent! 

So after all of that, what do you think the lesson learned here is?  Actually, I learned several lessons.  Allow me to list them for you:

#1)  NEVER EVER EVER rent a Pack Rat unit!
#2)  NEVER EVER EVER use Green Tree Steamers for your carpet cleaning needs!
#3)  NEVER EVER EVER rent from Ed Houser of Lighthouse Realty in San Antonio, TX!
#4)  NEVER EVER EVER pay off all of your credit cards in some misguided attempt to "clean up" your credit score!

And last but not least, #5)  NEVER EVER EVER listen to one of my fantastic ideas!

Sneaky Scoutmaster - Snotty Remarks Are For Assholes

Sometime around Thanksgiving....

Mr. Scoutmaster: "Folks, I've been with this Troop for years, but my son is aging out and it's time for me to step down. Effective in May, I'll be stepping back from the duties of Scoutmaster. Someone needs to volunteer to take over."

Fast forward MONTHS LATER to Feb....

Me: "You know, I have 10 years experience as a Scout Leader. I've worn just about every hat possible between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. I've been to BSA's National Camp School and run camps for Council. I love working with the boys, and now that I'm working for myself I have the time to devote, so how about I take over as Scoutmaster? I mean, the boys are ok with the idea, and none of the MALE Assistant Scoutmasters have stepped up."

Whoa there, Little Lady! You are opening up a great big can of Good Ol' Boy Bullshit that I just don't think you're prepared for. *hiking Scoutmaster pants up over belly* You see, the 50-something year old man who's been running the Troop for years, along with the 70-something year old man who's been running the Committee for even MORE years, don't exactly like the idea of a *gasp* WOMAN taking over! I mean, how could a WOMAN possibly run an appropriate program for BOYS? *insert eye roll here* How could a WOMAN function without the weight of a great big ol' set of balls controlling her every whim?

Obviously a WOMAN will have to rely on the men to control everything she does, right? I mean good gravy, without a penis she's definitely going to have WAAAYYYY TOO MUCH blood flowing to her head. Who knows how that extra blood will affect her reasoning? Her ability to make decisions? She might actually use common sense to lead the Troop, and well.....that would be DISASTROUS!

We'll only be able to spoon feed her tiny bits of information at a time, because no doubt all that extra blood filling her brain will not allow her to process all the policies and rules that we Good Ol' Boys use to make this Troop run like a well oiled machine. *whispering to each other* Did you plan the program for this week? No, I thought you were going to do it... What are we gonna do? I dunno, fake it? We can blame it on the gal! Ahem, anyway... We can't let her email and talk to the other parents, either. If she starts rallying the other biddies we'll be in SERIOUS trouble!

How dare she even contemplate the hard-core masculine role of Scoutmaster, anyway? Boobs don't fit in the uniform, do they? We don't have a make-up mirror hanging in the Scoutmaster's office. And what in hell will she do if she starts that female crap out camping? She could draw wild animals! The boys would be in danger! We'd better just nip this silly female's idea in the bud. Maybe if we tear down every idea she has, and only give her partial information for the jobs we give her so she can't possibly do the jobs right, she'll just start crying and go home. Yeah, yeah! That's the ticket! Hike up your testicles men and let's run this split-tail off! No way can she stand up to us Good Ol' Boys if we stick together! Right?!?

WRONG! Move those testicles outta my way! The Pink Diva is taking over your Troop! Sit Down, Shut Up and HOLD ON! Or if you Good Ol' Boys can't stand the Estrogen, feel free to HAUL ASS!

See ya BUH-BYE!