Bread Baker

Posted on February 9, 2007 by Pamela

Sourdough Starter
Wednesday night I did my bread baking class, which I expected to be awesome and I loved way more than I expected. It was the advanced class which means that we worked with sourdough for our leavening instead of yeast.

I took lots of notes and would tell you more except I am so tired right now I can barely keep my eyes open. A couple of details that I will mention are that the first thing they did when I walked through the door for class was take my coat and hand me a glass of wine: then I was certain it was going to be great. While there I bought a kitchen scale which will hopefully help me troubleshoot my perpetual baking problems, and a big new shiny chef’s knife, pictures of my gouged fingers will surely follow. The people in the class and the teacher who is the head baker at Pearl Bakery were TOTALLY into it. We learned a lot in a few hours. Then we made sandwiches with our bread and asked more questions and visited while we were eating.

The teacher is doing a pie making class in Spring and I plan to be the first one enrolled.

Meanwhile, I fed my starter a few hours ago for weekend baking and I think I already screwed up but we’ll see. I always panic during new cooking/baking adventures.

Downtown Portland
I got home at 10pm on baking night and took awhile to wind down and get to sleep. Then off to the office the next morning and then we went to Arts & Lectures last night.

The speaker was Suzan-Lori Parks who was fantastic – very funny and very real. She didn’t seem to take herself too seriously. Told great stories. I’ve never read anything by her but she read a little bit at the lecture and now I’d like to track down some of her stuff.

But again, we got home late and I was wired and couldn’t fall asleep right away so I’m a little drag-ey ass today. I’m going to go try napping and see if I can perk up a little for the rest of the afternoon/evening.

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Baby’s On Fire

Posted on February 6, 2007 by Pamela

When I was in high school, one of my favorite albums was Sammy Hagar, Standing Hampton. I made a tape for my car and listened to it at least a 10 times a day when I wasn’t listening to Journey or Styx (please click on the Styx link and look at the band photo. Ooooh. I can’t stop laughing.) or Triumph or some other awesome guitar rock.

I saw Sammy live my senior year, at the Fabulous Forum with rockin’ opening band Night Ranger. Was there ever a better time to be a teenager than the early 80’s?

With all the recent Van Halen whoo-ha in the news I heard Sammy Hagar on the radio and I tried to remember the last time I heard Standing Hampton. It’s probably been 20 years and I’ve been yearning to hear it again. But I don’t want to buy it. I already did. I just don’t know where it is although I’m sure it got the boot during a move. Lugging records around was always such a pain. I want to see if it sounds good now even though I couldn’t have even told you the name of one song on that album. Until last night.

Last night as I shuffled out of my yoga class there was a old but shiny Honda Accord with the windows rolled down cranking “Baby’s on Fire” in the parking lot. Right in front of the yoga studio. Do you love it? I need to get my hands on that album.

Meanwhile, that song brought back another long and deeply repressed memory of going skiing with my lame high school boyfriend (“bf”) and his family. Sometimes memories of my own person lameness startle me. It’s making me shudder to even type this story. You know when you’re out doing something and there’s a group of people who are so stupid and clueless that even years later you’re still talking about it? That was us on this ski trip. I’m probably going to have to turn out the light and sit back with a washcloth on my forehead when I’m finished with this.

I’d never been skiing and bf had been once. His parents got a cabin in Big Bear and I was invited to join them for a ski-tacular weekend. We rented our gear in the Valley somewhere and I got whatever they recommend for beginners. I didn’t know what I was doing.

Since the bf had already been skiing once, he advised that I didn’t need to take a class. I could just learn from him. I had no ski clothes, so I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. No hat. No gloves. I put on my skis in the parking lot and scraped along until someone noticed the stupidest and most clueless person alive and advised that perhaps that wasn’t the greatest idea and I should take the skis off immediately, aim the pointed ends to my chest, then fall on them.

I never did catch on to the idea of getting off the lift so I went straight from the chair to a full frontal face plant. Every single time. I spent the entire day falling down. My jeans were soaked. I was cold. Why do people like this? I wondered. I exaggerate little when I say I hated every single second of it. I did manage a very basic snow plow down the bunny hill and then to stop: face plant. I never did figure out where the enjoyment was.

Back at the cabin, the bf decided to light the fireplace. WHOOSH went the gas. I can’t get this lit. Can you get this lit? How the hell do I get this lit? He sticks his head into the fireplace with a lit match and WHOOSH. The fireplace is lit. So is he. He was not hurt but his eyelashes, eyebrows and top of his head were singed to a stinky crisp. Thus: Baby’s on Fire.

The second day no one skied and his mom and dad were mad because we wasted such a great opportunity for so much fun. Then we sat in traffic getting out of there. Why do people do this again? For our final act of stupidness we didn’t have a ski rack so, I kid you not, we had the windows opened a crack and the skis stuck through perpendicular to the car and sticking out the windows on either side. At one point a police officer followed us and yelled at us over his PA. It wasn’t worth stopping us. He probably hoped natural selection would finish us off.

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Rock of Ages

Posted on February 4, 2007 by Pamela


(Grandma and Grandpa — probably around 1935 — just a guess.)
I am 43 years old and can count on one hand how many people close to me have died.

And of the people on that list, most died when I was young, or were far away in Germany, or played a part in my life when I was young but I rarely saw before they died.

I can remember attending three funeral/memorial services. Two of those were for my husband’s relatives.

My Grandma, who died on Tuesday, is the first person that I had regular lifetime contact with, that I’ve lost.

How can that even be possible?

I’m amazed and don’t get me wrong, completely grateful, although it’s not hard to fear that the second of half of my life is going to make up for it.

I didn’t have a spectacular relationship with my Grandma and I wondered how I was going to feel when this finally happened and I felt a lot shittier than I expected. And also angry. And I know all about the 5 stages of Grief but I wasn’t mad at her – she was 94! She had a good long life. And I wasn’t mad at God. She was 94! (And why have I decided that shittier has two “T”s? Maybe it should be shitier. But that doesn’t look right. Who gets to make the rule on that?)

I was just mad. About everything: coffee stirrers, red trucks, clouds. It made no sense.

I told Mom I wanted to help with the obituary and I wanted to submit something to the tribal newsletter. Being Indian was not Grandma’s thing, but she was an elder and our culture respects elders. And I want a nice story in the newsletter about my Grandma like all the elders get.

She was the last one standing (or, whatever) out of 17 children. There should be a medal for that.

So all afternoon I looked at what Mom had sent me about Grandma and I tried to figure out how to expand it and make it bigger and make sure that we didn’t miss out on anything she accomplished. What would she want to be remembered for? I didn’t want anything to be missed.

The part of me that was so mad at her for [redacted] remained silent. It’s not denial. It just realized all those things don’t matter any longer.

You read all these obituaries and everyone was well loved and brilliant and did amazing things and you wonder, what about all the assholes?

I’m not one who shies away from discussion of death and I’m always telling my husband what to do if I die young and tragically: “The password to my secret bank account is [redacted]” “No teddy bears at the side of the road” and “Don’t let them say I was so nice and great when I was really cranky and drank too much and had trouble finishing things.”

But unless you do something really dreadful (see Hitler, Stalin, Hussein) everyone gets a “bye” when they die.

Even Darth Vader was redeemed before he died. It’s a relief. I only want to remember the good things.

There’s a particular story about making apple sauce which I’m not going to tell here except to say it was not good. But this summer I canned my own apple sauce and as I was doing it I was thinking: my Grandma taught me how to do this.

Tomorrow is my no technology day. We’re going to celebrate Priscilla’s birthday with a day of football. (Bob said I could bring a book.)

Next week I have major events including my baking class on Wednesday and Arts & Lectures on Thursday. Not sure how much you will see me here but I will try.

As always: I appreciate all the comments and I’m visiting your blogs and photo streams but don’t always leave a note.

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Listen to the Plogic

Posted on February 3, 2007 by Pamela


Last night I was sitting in my room doing my computer thing and I hear my husband laughing hysterically in the kitchen. The laughter goes on long enough and with enough force that I know this is about me. Something I did is funny.

I wander in there with my “now what did I do?” face on and he’s holding this bag of chips and wiping tears from his eyes and telling me how funny I am.

The chips are almost gone and I clipped the top half of the bag off so I wouldn’t have to get half my arm greasy reaching into the bottom of the bag to get my chips. I can’t see the hilarity in this. Seems perfectly plogical to me.

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Anything Anything

Posted on February 1, 2007 by Pamela

Last weekend during my day of cooking I broke out the vinyl again and listened to Dramarama Cinéma Vérité which I listened to once last year and still think sounds great.

The album includes a hit called “Anything Anything (I’ll Give You)” which at least three different times in my life was discovered by a radio station I listened to frequently and played to death and then some. I loved the song the first time I heard it and I love it still but I can recall the feeling of “enough enough (already)” if I hear it more than once in one day.

[Huge aside: Bob has got me hooked on The Tube a music TV station that plays actual music videos and a huge mix of fun stuff including Led Zepplin and lots of the 80’s dawn-of-an-era stuff like Duran Duran and INXS. The other night I saw a U2 video where Bono is sporting the mother of all mullets. I’ve found myself glued to the The Tube a couple of times with that old, “just one more to see who’s next” and the only thing to save me from being there still would be Phil Collins or a simliar horror such that I fled the TV. More than once I’ve complained about too much Billy Idol but last night they had a video of his ballady song called Sweet Sixteen, which I had completely forgot about and sounded fabulous.]

Back to Dramarama: when I graduated from college and lived in L.A. I wrote live show reviews for a free music newspaper. I could swear I’ve written about that before but my feverish searching hasn’t come up with a previous post. I’ll have to dig up some of my reviews.

Before I wrote for the newspaper I wrote reviews for myself in a notebook because it was my dream to be a writer for a music magazine or something in the music business and this was how I prepared.

I saw Dramarama headline a show at the Country Club in Reseda. The date says March 6, 1981 which can’t possibly be right since (a) according to Wikipedia the band didn’t form until 1982 (although I always was ahead of the curve … ha!) and (b) I was in high school in 1981 and was probably not even allowed to drive to The Valley to see a show.

The date we’re going with is March 6, 1987. The show featured one of my favorite local bands at the time Love/Hate which is a topic for another post. I remember nothing about third band on the bill: MIA.

Much as I loved the music, I was not impressed with the band as illustrated by my unfinished review.

It seems to be a rule of blogging that you always need about 20 more minutes than you have on any given post. My allotted time is up. But here’s my masterpiece, typed up from the orginal, carefully printed in pencil on white notebook paper:


DRAMARAMA, MIA, LOVE/HATE
MARCH 6, 1987

It's not that Dramarama isn't a cool band. They sport some pretty sharp compositions, and perform clean and tight pumping and grinding motion-thrills stuff. They looked pretty cool onstage, 6 guys and 5 TV screens showing clips and an obtuse selection of random-yet-not-random clips of this and that. And the audience got to hear all the best tunes from their New Rose release - so what was the problem?

Call it a petty witch hunt or what have you but there is something just slightly offensive about watching a swaggering, preening lead singer looking not unlike some USC frat boy strutting arrogantly around stage hiding behind his Ray-Bans and cigarettes and under the pretense of audience participation passes out cookies to the clamoring KROQ teenyboppers. The show was great so what with the attitude?

MIA suffered if only from a lackluster response from the Drama-Audience.

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Bye Grandma

Posted on January 31, 2007 by Pamela


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Posted on January 29, 2007 by Pamela

Toga Party
In the most current issue of Sunset magazine there is an insane full page ad with George Hamilton. I thought about scanning it but the scanner was put away and it seemed like a lot of trouble. I was sure I could find it online. So far no luck. However, I can describe it to you.

George is standing there in a bright white toga with giant sleeves trimmed with gold ribbon that looks like it was put together by a costumer in 5 minutes using glue and safety pins. George’s head is crowned with what I guess is an olive wreath? And he’s holding the new product: Pita Thin Toasted Chips and the quote is “Golden toasted with impeccable taste. Just like me.”

I don’t even know where to start.

So I guess the idea is ancient Greece=pita? This seems like a stretch to me. And why George Hamilton? Maybe he fits with the Sunset demographic which is no doubt women my age and older.

While I was searching for the ad so you could enjoy a chuckle with me, I had the fun of finding the Nabisco® website. You can sign up for a logon and password. Why would you possibly want to do that? Special subscriber content? Member only Oreo contests?

The Pita Thin stuff which is in the “no fry zone” shows George either standing in his white terrycloth bathroom eating pita thins OR in snappy golf togs in the middle of a sand trap with his packet of chips. You can ask his magic golf ball a question.

My question was, “George, why the toga?”

The answer: “I can’t tell you now. The paparazzi are listening.”

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Posted on January 29, 2007 by Pamela


Erin, Cover Your Eyes
The mango splitter is awesome. It’s a sturdy plastic-titanium circle with rigid eye. (These are my words, not official product propaganda.) You set the mango on its end and center the splitter on the mango. A firm but not forceful press down and: ta da. Two mango halves separate from the pit. I’d like to buy a case of mangos and split them all. Also, I like to nibble the extra mango bits from the pit just like chewing the meat off a bone.

We had mangos, yogurt and muesli for breakfast. Bob had oatmeal.

Excellent weekend. I made a pie and yesterday made spinach pasta by hand. Kenman helped me roll it out. Bob did an arty from-outside-the-dirty-window shot. Too bad we didn’t move the coffee apparatus. I made a walnut-herb béchamel sauce and it had goat cheese and parmesan and turned out spectacular. We all hoovered big plate-loads. I expect to play around with this recipe more very soon.

I worked on some Photoshop lessons today and learned several features that would have saved me tremendous time had I learned them a long time ago. It’s amazing how often I use a particular type of software and then one day maybe I’m looking over someone’s shoulder at a document and they go click-clack and fix something with a keystroke that I was doing as some sort of neanderthal hack in a text editor with cutting and pasting and I’m thinking, “Oh, you can do that?”

I had other items I wanted to talk about but neglected to take notes so my mind is basically two brain cells floating free, hoping and praying to bump into each other.

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Posted on January 27, 2007 by Pamela

Mt. Hood At Sunrise
A larger version here.

The other morning the sunrise was heart-stopping. The photo doesn’t do it justice. It was hard to resist the impulse to keep taking pictures and just stand back and enjoy the view.

Last night we stopped by Priscilla’s to drop a few things off and I noticed at least 4 snow patches in the front yard. If I would have had my camera with me I would have taken photos because who doesn’t love photos of lingering patches of snow?

This morning I had an early morning appointment to get my brakes done. The idea behind the early appointment is that I’m up and on my way at the start of the day and then can run errands and so forth ushering in a day of hugely gratifying productivity. I apparently haven’t learned my lesson from last time where I made an early appointment and it just meant I got to sit in the waiting room all morning instead of all afternoon after a leisurely morning of sleeping in and hot cocoa.

I didn’t go to Toyota for the brakes, I went to Les Schwab and let me state again publicly that I love Hazel Dell Les Schwab. They had a problem with a part and had to get it replaced and they were very good about communicating what the problem was so I wasn’t stewing at my long wait amongst the giant tires and shiny custom wheels.

I had another appointment nearby that I didn’t want to miss so they drove me over there and by the time I got back, the car was almost finished. I still didn’t get home until after 12:30 so the morning was shot. But at least I have new brakes and a kick ass haircut.

I think tomorrow is going to be the technology free day since I have a cooking and baking project to keep me occupied. However, Kenman is going to be here and I bought two mangoes to go with my new mango splitter so stay tuned for a mango splitting demonstration on Sunday.

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Posted on January 25, 2007 by Pamela


Who’s Tired of the Snow Patch?
It was sunny today but much colder. I ran out to grab a burrito and almost didn’t take my coat and I’m glad I did because I was hopping around at the burrito cart.

When I got home I jumped out of the car to see if any trace of the snow patch remained and found this little teeny blob left. I almost wanted to scrap it in a bowl and put it in the freezer.

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