Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Creating without (many) pictures

I think I am a creative person. I like making things. The things I make may not be gorgeous but I always enjoy the process and seeing results, whatever they may be. Lately I've been branching out a bit.... the county fair is a good starting point, I entered the Potato Pirate contest and the Marshmallow monster contest.
My potato is the big ship on the blue (so stable that they leaned a less sucessful entry on it!) I called my pirate "Yukon Goldbeard" and my marshmallow monster is Cuthulu in green on the far right with the blue base. Both won 1st place.

I also spent some time throwing pots at our school arts day a couple weeks ago. I nearly got a minor in pottery in college but hadn't thrown in years. Lots of fun, I won't have pictures of my creations until next fall (they didn't manage to glaze them before summer!) .

And... I'm making sourdough bread! How cool is that! I even started my own starter (Thanks to the naked chef...). I'm going on week 3 with it and it keeps improving. The hardest part is letting it rise then getting it in the oven without deflating it. It requires a 10-14 hour rise time (natural yeasts are much slower than the store bought kind) so it has to be protected. It also rises better if its moister. So I'm rising the current batch in a little glass pan that I can transfer directly to the oven and I have it in a big ziplock with toothpicks tenting it to keep it from touching (read: deflating) the dough. I'm glad I'm doing mini-batches because this stuff produces bread every couple days and we can only eat so much (especially since I haven't been getting the best results yet...) Pictures to come on the bread.

1 more day of school!

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