1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
I started going to Friday morning @ SELMA, which is one of those guerilla restaurant things....highlight of my week!
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't know what New Year's resolutions I made last year, but I make some every year. This year will be no different.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No - I am at the age where the birthing is done, but the grand babies aren't here yet. Birthing seems so far away from me now.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Not this year, thankfully. But I expect 2010 to be different. Many good people sick right now.
5. What countries did you visit?
I don't even think I went to Canada this year. USA only! Maybe next year I will travel more.
6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
World peace. Yes, I know I am asking a lot.
7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
The month of January - many good colleagues I worked with are no longer.
July 22 - my best friend's divorce date. A good 5 years too late, but she gave it her all!
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I still have a job, while many don't!
9. What was your biggest failure?
Still want to learn how to play musical instruments better.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I try not to focus on my illnesses or injuries.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Many glasses of wine with good friends.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Anyone that made it through the tough times this year without whining.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
People that live their lives for their own self gratification first, other people's feeling come second.
14. Where did most of your money go?
I try not to spend money on one thing - I am thrifty!
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Music
16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Not many good songs in 2009, so that's hard to come by!
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
b) thinner or fatter?
c) richer or poorer?
happier, same and richer emotionally!
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Made more music
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Not putting exercise higher on my list of things to do
20. How will you be spending New Year?
Best way ever - with family at home. New Years Eve is for chumps!
21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
I am continually falling in love with my man at the strangest times....wonder how I got so lucky! Good pickin', I guess!
22. How many one-night stands?
I am still on the same one night stand from many years ago. Neither one of us left in the morning.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
I don't watch TV
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Hate's a strong word, but I've come to be irritated by some new folks!
25. What was the best book you read?
In 2009? I really liked many. Hard to say...
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
It's a rediscovery - I think Cake rules!
27. What did you want and get?
To keep my job.
28. What did you want and not get?
I never give up, so I am not saying I didn't get anything I wanted yet!
29. What was your favorite film of this year?
No Country for Old Men
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I don't remember, but I turned 45.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More music making!
32. What political issue stirred you the most?
Feeding the hungry
33. Who did you miss?
I miss seeing Ann every day, although we still talk on the phone most every day,
34. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
"God Only Knows"
35. I wish you all a happy satisfying healthy loving 2010. Have a good celebration and a fun start of the new year. All best wishes to you all!!!!!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Not rocket science: making pizza at home
I've always wanted to make pizza at home that had crust as good as they do at a take out place, but have never been able to do it. I figured it was because I didn't have a pizza oven that got up to 800 F, but I thought I'd give it my best shot. So, I asked around on chowhound and on the AnnArborFood group to see what I'd find out. What I did find out is that there is a lot of macho talk out there about how to make good pizza. Probably the most entertaining is this guy's blog about all the techniques he's tried to perfect a NY style pizza since he moved to Atlanta. Locally, I appreciated reading John Wilkin's blog, which is all about library science and making pizza at home. Great reads, both of them!
Getting past the Pizza Doublespeak
Given that I am an engineer, I think I understand men better than most women, because I work in their native habitat and get to observe them on a day to day basis. Think of me as your "Jane Goodall" of male behavior. Some day I will write a book about it, but for now, let's focus on pizza. For some reason, men have been attracted to making good pizza at home more frequently than women, I have noticed. Just look at the forum discussion on pizzamaking.com. (it's a veritable "sausage fest", if you will pardon my pun). The fact is, men are given to using fancy terminology to impress others, and it seems they have applied this to pizza making as well. Double speak is one of men's charms, but at best, it can get in the way of sharing information and at worst, it can be used as a shield as defense for what they don't know. So, to combat this, I have this Mark Twain quote framed on my desk:
which I am prone to gesturing at when I catch my fellow engineers in an argument when they are bluffing by using lots of doublespeak. (some day, I will write a blog post about the "Columbo" questioning techniques that helps get to the bottom of such discussions) Not that women are immune to this kind of talk - look at cosmetic advertisements, for heaven's sake! What the heck does "clarifying shampoo" supposed to mean? How about paying extra for foundation that contains a "patented blend of hexapeptides and botanicals"? But in the pizza making world, there is all kinds of fancy talk like autolysing, proper hydration, and Lehmann pizza dough calculator. Here's the rocket science demystified....
How did my first shot at pizza making go? I have to say it went pretty well. After reading through a million pizza dough recipes, I had to lay down some ground rules. First, I was not going to mail order any ingredients. That meant buying only flour I could buy locally, no sourdough starter, etc. Also, I was going to stick to kitchen gadgets I have in my house already. Against my better judgement, I had purchased a pizza peel last year. I didn't want to do it because a) I knew it would be a pain to store and b) it's a unitasker. But there really is no substitute for one, so I bit the bullet and bought one at the Kitchen Port going out of business sale last year. It's short handled, so I was able to store it with the cookie sheets. It still is a unitasker though - I guess it could be used as a spanking paddle, if you are into that! I also have a couple pizza stones that I have gotten over the years at Pampered Chef parties. But I wasn't going to buy a brick pizza oven or cut the lock off my oven so I could use the oven self cleaning temps. My max oven temperature was going to have to be 550 F. Some people recommend grilling, but my grill is propane fired and I wasn't sure if I could get much higher than that, given it is winter here in the Mitten State, and the outside temps were about 20 F and it was snowing to beat the band as I type this. The grill is out for winter pizza making for me.
There's much talk about proper hydration and weighing your ingredients online. I am not sure that's totally required - I weighed mine because I have a scale, but I have to think that measuring would work fine if a measuring cup is all you have. I wanted to try real pizza flour (tipo 00) and was able to find it at Busch's, so I went for it. I put my stone on the floor of my oven, but it made the kitchen really smoky when the flour I used burnt off. I think next time I might try putting the stone on a rack and using parchment paper instead on the peel. Online, there's lots of talk of "autolysing", which is a French breadmaking term that just means to mix your water and flour first, and then let it sit for 20 minutes. Why not?
Here's how I made my pizza:
500 g Napoli CaputoTipo 00 flour
325 g water
10 g kosher salt
3 g bread machine yeast
Using a stand mixer with a dough hook, add about 3/4 of the flour and the water and mix it. Let the mixture sit for 20 minutes. Add salt and yeast and mix for a couple minutes, and then start gradually adding the remaining flour. Keep mixing until the dough forms a nice blob - about 5 minutes more. Let it rise for 1 1/2 hours. Punch it down and divide dough into 4 blobs, I used my bench scraper but a sharp knife ouwld work. Roll it into a sphere and pinch the seams to the bottom. Place the 4 blobs pinch side down on a cookie sheet and cover with Saran wrap. Let rest for 1 hour. (from reading, I understand that at this point, you could put the 4 blobs in an oiled covered Tupperware container in the fridge for future use - they can be kept up to a week there). While the dough is resting, heat up the oven to the max temp you can go with the pizza stone on the floor of the oven or on the lowest rack. On my oven, that's 550 F. It takes almost an hour for my oven to preheat to that temp.
To roll out the dough blobs, put some parchment or flour on the peel and flip the blob over, pinch side up. Press it into a flat disk, picking it up and let gravity help make it flat. There's no need to leave a fat lip on the outer rim. Wherever the topping stops, the lip will form naturally. My pizzas got to be about 12 inches in diameter. I made them as thin as I could without making a hole in them. Place them on the peel and top them as you see fit. Use less pizza sauce and cheese than you think you should: you should be able to see doughy spots through the topped pizza. Add pepperoni if you like, drizzle with a little bit of olive oil. My favorite topped pizza was with olive oil, a minced clove of garlic, mozzarella cheese and some rosemary leaves. Put pizza on hot stone, and bake it until the bottom is charred nicely - mine took 4 minutes. Use the peel to take the pizza out - I used a metal spatula to help get it on the peel. Put the pizza on a cookie sheet to cut and start making another pizza.
I could see how having another pizza peel would be nice, but I don't think I want to buy another unitasker! It's bad enough that I have one already. The pizza came out great! I could see making the dough on the weekend and putting it in the fridge for weekday use. I am looking forward to making pizza again, and this time trying the parchment. It's more work than calling Classic Pizza (my favorite nearby pizza joint) but it came out really well.
Getting past the Pizza Doublespeak
Given that I am an engineer, I think I understand men better than most women, because I work in their native habitat and get to observe them on a day to day basis. Think of me as your "Jane Goodall" of male behavior. Some day I will write a book about it, but for now, let's focus on pizza. For some reason, men have been attracted to making good pizza at home more frequently than women, I have noticed. Just look at the forum discussion on pizzamaking.com. (it's a veritable "sausage fest", if you will pardon my pun). The fact is, men are given to using fancy terminology to impress others, and it seems they have applied this to pizza making as well. Double speak is one of men's charms, but at best, it can get in the way of sharing information and at worst, it can be used as a shield as defense for what they don't know. So, to combat this, I have this Mark Twain quote framed on my desk:
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please"
which I am prone to gesturing at when I catch my fellow engineers in an argument when they are bluffing by using lots of doublespeak. (some day, I will write a blog post about the "Columbo" questioning techniques that helps get to the bottom of such discussions) Not that women are immune to this kind of talk - look at cosmetic advertisements, for heaven's sake! What the heck does "clarifying shampoo" supposed to mean? How about paying extra for foundation that contains a "patented blend of hexapeptides and botanicals"? But in the pizza making world, there is all kinds of fancy talk like autolysing, proper hydration, and Lehmann pizza dough calculator. Here's the rocket science demystified....
How did my first shot at pizza making go? I have to say it went pretty well. After reading through a million pizza dough recipes, I had to lay down some ground rules. First, I was not going to mail order any ingredients. That meant buying only flour I could buy locally, no sourdough starter, etc. Also, I was going to stick to kitchen gadgets I have in my house already. Against my better judgement, I had purchased a pizza peel last year. I didn't want to do it because a) I knew it would be a pain to store and b) it's a unitasker. But there really is no substitute for one, so I bit the bullet and bought one at the Kitchen Port going out of business sale last year. It's short handled, so I was able to store it with the cookie sheets. It still is a unitasker though - I guess it could be used as a spanking paddle, if you are into that! I also have a couple pizza stones that I have gotten over the years at Pampered Chef parties. But I wasn't going to buy a brick pizza oven or cut the lock off my oven so I could use the oven self cleaning temps. My max oven temperature was going to have to be 550 F. Some people recommend grilling, but my grill is propane fired and I wasn't sure if I could get much higher than that, given it is winter here in the Mitten State, and the outside temps were about 20 F and it was snowing to beat the band as I type this. The grill is out for winter pizza making for me.
There's much talk about proper hydration and weighing your ingredients online. I am not sure that's totally required - I weighed mine because I have a scale, but I have to think that measuring would work fine if a measuring cup is all you have. I wanted to try real pizza flour (tipo 00) and was able to find it at Busch's, so I went for it. I put my stone on the floor of my oven, but it made the kitchen really smoky when the flour I used burnt off. I think next time I might try putting the stone on a rack and using parchment paper instead on the peel. Online, there's lots of talk of "autolysing", which is a French breadmaking term that just means to mix your water and flour first, and then let it sit for 20 minutes. Why not?
Here's how I made my pizza:
500 g Napoli CaputoTipo 00 flour
325 g water
10 g kosher salt
3 g bread machine yeast
Using a stand mixer with a dough hook, add about 3/4 of the flour and the water and mix it. Let the mixture sit for 20 minutes. Add salt and yeast and mix for a couple minutes, and then start gradually adding the remaining flour. Keep mixing until the dough forms a nice blob - about 5 minutes more. Let it rise for 1 1/2 hours. Punch it down and divide dough into 4 blobs, I used my bench scraper but a sharp knife ouwld work. Roll it into a sphere and pinch the seams to the bottom. Place the 4 blobs pinch side down on a cookie sheet and cover with Saran wrap. Let rest for 1 hour. (from reading, I understand that at this point, you could put the 4 blobs in an oiled covered Tupperware container in the fridge for future use - they can be kept up to a week there). While the dough is resting, heat up the oven to the max temp you can go with the pizza stone on the floor of the oven or on the lowest rack. On my oven, that's 550 F. It takes almost an hour for my oven to preheat to that temp.
To roll out the dough blobs, put some parchment or flour on the peel and flip the blob over, pinch side up. Press it into a flat disk, picking it up and let gravity help make it flat. There's no need to leave a fat lip on the outer rim. Wherever the topping stops, the lip will form naturally. My pizzas got to be about 12 inches in diameter. I made them as thin as I could without making a hole in them. Place them on the peel and top them as you see fit. Use less pizza sauce and cheese than you think you should: you should be able to see doughy spots through the topped pizza. Add pepperoni if you like, drizzle with a little bit of olive oil. My favorite topped pizza was with olive oil, a minced clove of garlic, mozzarella cheese and some rosemary leaves. Put pizza on hot stone, and bake it until the bottom is charred nicely - mine took 4 minutes. Use the peel to take the pizza out - I used a metal spatula to help get it on the peel. Put the pizza on a cookie sheet to cut and start making another pizza.
I could see how having another pizza peel would be nice, but I don't think I want to buy another unitasker! It's bad enough that I have one already. The pizza came out great! I could see making the dough on the weekend and putting it in the fridge for weekday use. I am looking forward to making pizza again, and this time trying the parchment. It's more work than calling Classic Pizza (my favorite nearby pizza joint) but it came out really well.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Holiday meme
1.. What is your favorite holiday show/animated show?
I loved a show called "A House Without a Christmas Tree" when I was a kid. It was a movie stat starred Jason Robards and it was about a young girl growing up in the forties. It's never played on TV anymore, but I look for it every year.
2. Which holiday character do you think you’re most like?
Ralphie from "The Christmas Story"
3. Which holiday character does your spouse think you’re most like?
The Heat Miser
4. Favorite Christmas/holiday song?
"The Holly and the Ivy" or "Lo, How a Rose 'Er Blooming"
5. Most hated Christmas/holiday song?
"O Holy Night" as performed by Celine Dion
6. If you have an all-holiday music radio station, when do you start listening to it?
Right when it first comes out....I love holiday music.
7. If you have an all-holiday music radio station, do you love it or hate it?
I hate it when they start playing too much of #5, which they invariably do.
8. Have you ever wrapped yourself as a Christmas present?
Yes, when I was a kid. It was my job to wrap everyones
9. Who is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’s father?
I think it was the one that was the football coach like character, that wouldn't allow Rudolph to join in any reindeer games. I think his name was "Dasher"
10. Do you drive your neighborhood or one near you at night to look at other people’s holiday decorations?
Yes
11. When you see a heavily decorated house do you think, “Oh that’s lovely”? Or do you think, “Oh criminy, that looks like Christmas threw up all over their lawn”?
The more decorations, the better.
12. Do you count the days to Christmas with excited anticipation or dread?
I count the days to Xmas vacation!
13. When was the last time you had your photo taken with Santa? Did you sit on his lap?
I never have taken a photo with Santa, because it just wasn't done when I was a kid. We always went to the Santa at Tech Plaza, a strip mall on 12 Mile at Van Dyke across from the GM Tech Center. Santa was in a trailer in the parking lot. He gave out Christmas nougat candy (the one with the tree in the middle) that I still love to this day. I remember one year, he had on black framed glasses and I thought that wasn't right.
14. Do you make a Christmas list for your spouse or significant other, or do you rely on them to pick your gift(s) without a clue from you?
He always asked for what I want, and then I say I don't know, and then he gets me jewelry, which is nice.
15. When do you put up your tree?
First weekend in Dec. this year, which is late for me. We usually do it Thanksgiving weekend
16. Real or fake?
Real
17. When do you take your tree down?
New Years Day, even though good Catholics are supposed to keep it up until Twelfth Night/Epiphany. I can't wait to get it put away that late, because I am back at work by then usually and I don't want to deal with it then.
18. Do you shop the day after Christmas sales? What do you shop for?
Yes, Christmas decorations
19. Did your work/office have a holiday party this year? Did you attend?
Yes, we went out to lunch and I always go.
20. Do you have your New Year’s Eve Plans set yet?
I plan to cook! I'll either make posole or hoppin' john
I loved a show called "A House Without a Christmas Tree" when I was a kid. It was a movie stat starred Jason Robards and it was about a young girl growing up in the forties. It's never played on TV anymore, but I look for it every year.
2. Which holiday character do you think you’re most like?
Ralphie from "The Christmas Story"
3. Which holiday character does your spouse think you’re most like?
The Heat Miser
4. Favorite Christmas/holiday song?
"The Holly and the Ivy" or "Lo, How a Rose 'Er Blooming"
5. Most hated Christmas/holiday song?
"O Holy Night" as performed by Celine Dion
6. If you have an all-holiday music radio station, when do you start listening to it?
Right when it first comes out....I love holiday music.
7. If you have an all-holiday music radio station, do you love it or hate it?
I hate it when they start playing too much of #5, which they invariably do.
8. Have you ever wrapped yourself as a Christmas present?
Yes, when I was a kid. It was my job to wrap everyones
9. Who is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’s father?
I think it was the one that was the football coach like character, that wouldn't allow Rudolph to join in any reindeer games. I think his name was "Dasher"
10. Do you drive your neighborhood or one near you at night to look at other people’s holiday decorations?
Yes
11. When you see a heavily decorated house do you think, “Oh that’s lovely”? Or do you think, “Oh criminy, that looks like Christmas threw up all over their lawn”?
The more decorations, the better.
12. Do you count the days to Christmas with excited anticipation or dread?
I count the days to Xmas vacation!
13. When was the last time you had your photo taken with Santa? Did you sit on his lap?
I never have taken a photo with Santa, because it just wasn't done when I was a kid. We always went to the Santa at Tech Plaza, a strip mall on 12 Mile at Van Dyke across from the GM Tech Center. Santa was in a trailer in the parking lot. He gave out Christmas nougat candy (the one with the tree in the middle) that I still love to this day. I remember one year, he had on black framed glasses and I thought that wasn't right.
14. Do you make a Christmas list for your spouse or significant other, or do you rely on them to pick your gift(s) without a clue from you?
He always asked for what I want, and then I say I don't know, and then he gets me jewelry, which is nice.
15. When do you put up your tree?
First weekend in Dec. this year, which is late for me. We usually do it Thanksgiving weekend
16. Real or fake?
Real
17. When do you take your tree down?
New Years Day, even though good Catholics are supposed to keep it up until Twelfth Night/Epiphany. I can't wait to get it put away that late, because I am back at work by then usually and I don't want to deal with it then.
18. Do you shop the day after Christmas sales? What do you shop for?
Yes, Christmas decorations
19. Did your work/office have a holiday party this year? Did you attend?
Yes, we went out to lunch and I always go.
20. Do you have your New Year’s Eve Plans set yet?
I plan to cook! I'll either make posole or hoppin' john
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