No more bread for me

I stopped baking bread, sometime back in November. What can I say? Shit got ahead of me, and then I just decided it was taking more time than I had to give. On the whole, it was a positive decision. I make bread occasionally - made some this weekend - and had forgotten how different homemade bread is from the kind you buy at Market Basket.


But I'd rather have that time. I experimented with making the dough in a food processor this weekend and ... as with my previous experiment using technology - it saved muscle but not time. Probably practice would mean I could do it quicker but who cares; it was one more thing to wash up. I think for now, it's going to be best just to stick with a big bowl and a wooden spoon. For the infrequent occasions when I do bake bread.


It was a busy fall; shortly after Vince died, my future-ex-husband told me that he was moving from New Zealand to Australia and that he would no longer be able to take care of Inty, the cat we'd shared. He asked if I could take her, and offered to help pay. I said of course, never mind the fact that Zoe (Maine coon on right of picture) was turning into a fabulously sunny kitty by dint of all the attention focused soley on her.

Long story short, I imported Inty (the wee black one on the left) from New Zealand at great trouble and expense (ex helped neither with arrangements nor with payment.) And while there's no love lost between Inty and Zoe, they do trade off who gets to be Alpha for the week. Right now it's Zoe; last week it was Inty, which is funny to see, since Inty weighs about 4.5 lbs and Zoe-bo weighs about 12. You can sort of see their size differential in the picture. I guess being top cat is all about attitude.

Also this fall, I carved an elaborate pumpkin a full week before Halloween (oops) and despite applications of WD-40 to try to prevent premature rotting, rot it did. Somewhat stankily. I won't go into the bugs. Luckily it was a warm fall so we could keep the windows in the hallway open to air it out after we'd finally dumped it. Luckily, also, our upstairs neighbors are pretty tolerant. But see how cool it is? It's a big one, with fangs, and it's eating a little one! I called the big one "Bitey".

I had big craft-y plans for making christmas stockings decorated with mistletoe leaves and berries. Except the berries wouldn't be berries, they'd be little skulls. But then we ended up having to go to Buffalo for Christmas (the less said about that trip, the better) and the stockings kind of got derailed. Maybe for next year ... We did come bearing gifts (all homemade, because I am BROKE) of sponge candy (Dave's contribution) and homemade nectarine or cherry liquer, plus homemade nectarine-sauternes jam. And we bought crap for the kids, of course. There always has to be boughten crap for the kids.

And that's Q4,2006,my life, in brief. I'm contemplating using my lunch hours to blog. It's kind of fun, and might make regular blogging more do-able for me.