It’s a mixed bag today. Jujubees, peanuts, and that weird orange dried fruit you always leave until the end.
I managed to shatter two baking stones while making bread this weekend. Evidently super-heated iron skillet plus cheap baking stone plus spattering water into skillet = bad. About ten minutes into baking my first loaf, a big thud told me something went wrong. When I looked in I saw that wrong meant the pieces of the stone had spread to far corners of the stove leaving my partially-baked bread spread-eagled over the cracks like a cat over a washbasin.
Did I learn? Second loaf with much more accurate water pour into skillet = bad. So now I have two stones in multiple pieces. Luckily the bread turned out fine. And I learned that making a sponge (yeast, water, flour) one day in advance or two days in advance makes no difference to taste. I was expecting a yeasty taste explosion on the 2-day sponge, but ended up with an exploding stone. And I hope to never utter the words ‘yeasty taste explosion’ ever again.
Inside time in the rain with Baby Harbat over the President’s Day holiday turned out to be less cozy and more exhausting than we thought. There’s nothing like chasing a toddler and being HAPPY and EXUBERANT all morning, then spending an hour prepping for nap time, and ending up on all fours scrubbing sweet potato out of the pockmarks in the kitchen floor.
Okay, truthfully during BH’s nap yesterday, my wife struggled to hang on the wall a German clothes-drying rack and I tried to drown out the cursing by playing a computer game and jamming my earphones in just…a little bit…further. I’ll admit a little schadenfreude as she predrilled holes for this rack in the wrong place, drilled other holes, mashed drywall anchors into larva shapes, and finally threw up her hands. Yes…good! [cackle cackle] Welcome to the world of home improvement projects. If the instructions have ten steps, you will be forced to improvise and jury-rig by step three. Here’s the math: if there are four mounting screws, two will go in perfectly, one will be a Wagnerian epic ending in hot tears and shame, and one will not be spoken of. And said item will hang precariously on two screws while everyone around is urged Not To Touch or Even Look At said item or it will collapse.
And that’s what I did this weekend. Can I have a gold star?
Writer, architect, father, husband.
Ahhh–the cat over the washbasin trick and the joy in picking out pieces of sweet potato out of the tile. Don't think for a minute that Lumpkins doesn't premeditate all those tricks. And the reason you didn't have that drill in your hand punching holes in the wall was?…. sounds like a fun weekend but now you have lots of green outside?