¡sour power!

you guys....!!!!

I MADE HOME MADE SOURDOUGH!!!

(and it's delicious! and i followed the recipe almost kinda most of the way!)

and it wasn't even that hard! ok, well actually it was a little bit hard on the outside because i didn't have a spritzer bottle and used a baster-brush instead, so the crust got a bit crusty, but by Grapes it is sour and delicious! Tastes like home! just the way my... Bay... used to make! (mommas, have you baked a loaf of bread, ever? I'm not sure Rum counts.)

and it all wouldn't have happened if it weren't for my appendix.

literally the day i would later be inducted by the emergency ward i wasn't feeling that hot, so i decided to stay home and just "take it easy". i really didn't have the energy, or stamina to do anything, especially when things like sitting upright hurt. a lot. so i spent a good chunk of time lying with my belly over ice and tinkering away on these very keys researching... sourdough!

not completely out of nowhere (boredom), but greatly influenced by 1 part homesickness, 2 parts fed-up-sickness with "sourdough" i buy and isn't hardly worth the name at all, with a dash of inner-prairie-woman who makes her own yoghurt and winces at the thought of bouillon cubes... and VOILA! I'm in the kitchen mixing up white goo and thinking how FUN that in two weeks time I'll get to see if this works.

of course spending 56 hours in the hospital wasn't exactly part of the recipe... you're suppose to "feed it" every 48 hours. so you can bet the first thing i did when i got home was to feed those yeasties. silvino had to lift the bowl for me, and reach for the flour. and help me re-clean the bowl and set it back up on the shelf and... just about everything else that day.

2 weeks hence i've finally got the strength back i knead... i'm not doing somersaults just yet, but i can scoot around without looking so pathetic and lift marginally sized objects - and the kicker is i can reach my hands up - before there was too much stretch on my wounded abdomen and its 3 little scars.

so an afternoon of kneading, a night of rising, a morning of shaping and just like jesus (the original yeastie boy) with an afternoon rise again... and a pre-bed bake! BAM!

warm crusty sourdough with butter for a pre-snooze snack!

flower tower

tower

taken by a young chinese father. not a place for meditation, the sydney tower was full of loud, wriggling families and bustling nikon lenses.

it's hard to tell from the picture, but well below us lies sydney. we perused the gift shop and i made some audible annoyance about knick-knack crap and then lo-and behold i saw a wine aerator... for $13 - not the $40 as i've been eying in couture cookery shops.

so now i have a sydney tower signature series memory to help my wine breathe.

flower

taken by a a teenage skater boy who couldn't hold the camera still because his friend kept making fun of him, they were probably high. this was the least blurry of the trio. it was in a pop-up art gallery, a white tent at Circular Quay, part of the city's "art and about" event. we were waiting for the ferry back to Manly (our little township on the north shore) and after a long day of walking/hobbling around the city i needed to sit down and there, magically, were white leather sofas, a bit of art and early teen angst.

this was one of the paintings.

(in the garden of quay-den!)