Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there, with open arms, and open eyes...

I am really very good at baking bread. I learned when I was a little girl - I had to kneel on a kitchen chair to reach the table top to knead the dough. My mother and my aunt, both excellent bakers, taught me. And as I became an adult, I read a lot of books on breadmaking, and watched videos, and tried out various techniques.

But recently I made a batch of rolls that tasted better than any other bread I have made, or any other bread I've tasted. I made myself a sandwich with some extremely ordinary supermarket cold-cuts, and it was utterly delicious. The good-tasting bread elevated the entire sandwich to a different level of flavor.

In a large mixing bowl (if you're lucky enough to own a Kitchen Aid mixer) combine 4 cups of King Arthur all-purpose white flour. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1 teaspoon of Vital Wheat Gluten, as well as 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons of instant yeast (not the stuff sold in little paper packets as "active dry yeast"). Whisk this all together so the ingredients are evenly combined. Add 1 1/2 cups of lukewarm water (baby's-bath temperature) and start the mixer. Let it mix the dough until you have a "shaggy mass" in the bowl. Let this stand in the bowl for 10 minutes - this is called "autolyse", which is French for "dissolves itself" and gives the flour a chance to absorb the water, which improves the texture of the bread. Once the ten minutes have passed, start to mix the dough again on a medium speed, using the dough hook. Add more flour or more water as needed to adjust the consistency of the dough. Mix and knead for 8 to 10 minutes, until the dough is stretchy.

Scrape all the dough into the middle of the bottom of the bowl. Spray it or otherwise coat it with oil or shortening. Cover it with plastic wrap, pressing the plastic against the oiled dough in order to keep the surface from drying out. Cover the bowl tightly with more plastic wrap. Place bowl in refrigerator and let it stay there overnight, or for at least 24 to 36 hours (The longer a yeast dough rises, the more the enzymes in the yeast coax flavorful molecules out of the starch in the flour. This may be the real magic secret of why these came out so good.)

When the dough has risen, scrape it onto a floured surface. Get a large cookie sheet and grease it thoroughly with oil, shortening, or even butter. Sprinkle this with cornmeal, shaking and tapping the pan in order to distribute the cornmeal in an even layer (which makes the bottoms nice and crunchy). Cut the dough into eight equal-sized pieces, and shape each into a round or oval roll. Place the rolls on the prepared cookie sheet. With a sharp blade, make one slash lenthwise on the top of each roll (This allows it to expand symmetrically when it's baked.) Fill a "mist" sprayer with cold water, and spray the tops of the rolls. Set them in a warm place until they have risen to double their original size. Preheat your oven to 350°F. When the oven is hot, bake the rolls until they are browned to your taste.

Remove them to a cooling rack and allow them to cool to room temperature. Seal each roll into a small zipper-lock bag, and use a straw to suck the air out of the bag. The rolls can be frozen when they're stored like this. Reheat one roll in the microwave until it's warm in the center. Then heat it in a 350° oven to make the crust crisp. Your sandwiches and burgers will please everyone who tastes them.

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""Golden Sachertorte' />
This is for a couple who have been married for nearly fifty years - 48, to be exact. It's sort of a practice run for their golden anniversary cake The cake itself is a Sacher torte, a classic Viennese dessert invented by a teenage apprentice chef (the head chef was ill) at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, when Prince Metternich dined at the Sacher. It consists of two layers of a dense, intensely chocolatey cake, with raspberry jam betwen, the whole thing coated lavishly with an even more intense chocolate glaze. I dusted the glaze with edible gold glitter powder, and likwise gilded the marzipan roses. The plastic sign says "Always and Forever". Like most Viennese pastries, Sacher torte is served with a generous dollop of whipped cream on each serving. I did get to taste it, and it's delicious, as well as being luxurious and somewhat decadent. And I have two more years to improve the design :-) This entry was also posted at https://acelightning.dreamwidth.or…. Reply wherever you read it.

Back on May 4th, I had an operation called a pyeloplasty. It repaired a congenital problem with one of my kidneys (one that's fairly common); the opening that lets the urine flow out of the kidney to the bladder was narrower than it ought to have been, and that meant that kidney stones could get trapped there. Part of the surgery involved inserting a stent to keep the opening open while it heals. Well, I had a kidney stent put in back in 2018, and it almost killed me - it cause me so much internal distress that I couldn't keep down more than one sip of water or one nibble of food at a time, and I lost 60 pounds in five weeks. Only a savvy friend of my son's pointed out that medical cannabis would reverse this. It did, I was able to eat and drink after a while, and here I am This past Monday, I had a minor procedure to remove the stent. I barely even felt it. The tiny abdominal incisions from the laparoscopic surgery still hurt a little bit, but barely enough to notice. And I seem to be perfectly fine now. I'm also wearing another heart monitor, which is damned awkward because adhering the contacts to my chest interfered a bit with the incisions, and the adhesive gives me a nasty, itchy, bleeding rash. But I'm done with the monitor this coming Thursday, and when it's off I'm going to take a long hot shower, reapply my hair dye, and put cortisone cream on the rash. I have regained a whole lot more everyday health since the cardiac ablation re-established a normal heart rhythm for me. I'm hoping I get even healthier now that my kidney problem has been corrected. In August I have to have another radioactive-tracer kidney scan to determine how my flow has changed. But right now I just wish we weren't having hot weather; excessive heat always makes my body misbehave in annoying ways. Cold makes me happy and strong. This entry was also posted at https://acelightning.dreamwidth.or…. Reply wherever you read it.

I had the kidney surgery on Tuesday. I now have several holes in my belly (laparoscopic surgery), some of which hurt. So I have some pain pills for that, and some antibiotics (routine for most kinds of surgery) Apparently everything went the way it was supposed to.They have to check a few details next week, but I'll find out the details soon enough. I lived through it This entry was also posted at https://acelightning.dreamwidth.or…. Reply wherever you read it.

Rabbit rabbit rabbit.. Regarding the habits of rabbits

Hooray, hooray, it's the first of May,
But everybody's still six feet away :-( This entry was also posted at https://acelightning.dreamwidth.or…. Reply wherever you read it.

It has nothing to do with Covid, but on Tuesday, May 4, I'm going to be in NYULangone Hospital in New York City for kidney surgery. I will be having a laparoscopic pyeloplasty, to correct a constriction in the tube from one of my kidneys to my bladder, to enable that kidney to do its job more effectively. I was born with one kidney smaller than the other, which is fairly common, but between my heart problems, a recent kidney stone, and a recent urinary tract infection (possibly related to the stone), the underdeveloped one isn't doing its share of the work - and that's affecting my heart. The human body is complicated. I may be in the hospital for several days, and they can't predict how many. I need to go book shopping before I'm admitted, and I won't have any way to read or send email, read or post to this journal, or otherwise communicate with the world. (I don't own a smartphone, a laptop, or a tablet.) But whatever healing energy anybody feels like sending me will be most welcome! Of course, Babs Bunny (from my previous medical misadventures) will accompany me through this whole process. See you guys later! This entry was also posted at https://acelightning.dreamwidth.or…. Reply wherever you read it.

Panera Bread also allows its managers to discriminate blatantly agains employees who do not participate in mainstream Abrahamic religions - especially self-identified Pagans. "Your hours are cut until you find God"- This entry was also posted at https://acelightning.dreamwidth.or…. Reply wherever you read it.

[to the tune of Dolly Parton's "Jolene"}

Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine,
Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine!
They've given both injections to me;
Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine,
Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine!
I've done my bit for herd immunity!
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I got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine yesterday. My arm still hurt a lot when they injected me, but I'm not as overwhelmed by the effects today. But I did sleep a lot. I was looking online to buy a T-shit that said "Vaccinated!", but they're too expensive. I could go to JoAnn, buy a "Gildan" brand t=shirt and some fabric paint, and make one, but the plain t-shirts for "crafting" (e.g., tie-dyeing) and the paint might add up to almost that much. And I don't have the spoons to go traipsing around JoAnn tomorrow. Maybe I'll just make myself a button... This entry was also posted at https://acelightning.dreamwidth.or…. Reply wherever you read it.

Dance is about creating beauty from the ways the human body can move. Human bodies come in a fantastic range of beautiful skin colors! And their shoes (and costumes and makeup) need to contribute to the beauty of the performance. This entry was also posted at https://acelightning.dreamwidth.or…. Reply wherever you read it.