griffins and kefir and bread, oh my!

well, it's been a busy few weeks for me, but before i get to that, i'll update on the bread starter experiment: it was a resounding success!

the bread turned out beautifully and had a nice taste that was halfway between sourdough and regular bread (though the first loaf was very salty because i hadn't gotten the proportions right). it was tough and flavorful and the closest thing that i've had to the bread i tried in france. jake loved it....but, because it takes so long to make, and we weren't eating a whole loaf each day, i've gone back to making bread the normal way: with a bread machine and loaf pan.

in other news, i've been needle felting more recently. jake got some raw wool for me at the ginko gallery in oberlin and the result of that is that there's a nice griffin on my etsy page (http://www.etsy.com/listing/91189045/felt-griffin-gryphon-doll-with-hand-dyed) that i absolutely love. i hand dyed the wool using coffee. very, very strong coffee that, for some reason, i couldn't convince jake to try...but that ginger, our corgi mix, loved.

also, yesterday i received something that i've been waiting for for awhile now: kefir grains! kefir is a probiotic drink made using milk and the helpful bacteria in the "grains" (which aren't really grains). i'm excited to see how the first batch turns out!

aaaaaand, my parents found some savings bonds that my grandma gave me when i was 5, 6, 7, and 8. that means we finally have money to buy the supplies to make an aquaponics (well, barrelponics: http://www.aces.edu/dept/fisheries/education/documents/barrel-ponics.pdf) system!!!

in other news, last week, we went to a city council meeting for the very first time (jake and i have wanted to do that since we got married) and tonight i'm going to be going to my very first neighborhood watch meeting. yes, community involvement.

at the city council meeting, i met a woman who has a gardening program in the city and i hope that i'll be able to work with her in the future. also, one of the other volunteers at love inc. has connected me with a christy sams, a human trafficking advocate in my area who i'm so excited to meet with!

wow, this has been a rather informational blog post; hasnt it?

there's a monster on my counter

it's really very scary. it's gooey and bubbly and it sits there all day...staring at me. yes.
and the crazy thing is: I CREATED IT!

ok. maybe it's not a monster. i suppose it's actually a pretty friendly beast. in fact, it's very helpful.

what i have in a bowl on my counter is a large dollop of living flour (a.k.a. a wild yeast bread starter). it sits there and fizzes, waiting for it's daily feeding of more flour and water. every day, i take our roughly half of the starter and add precisely 100 grams each of flour and water to the mix that remains. the roughly half that is removed can either be used to bake with (a long but surprisingly simple process) or composted.

maybe it's time for a little bit of backstory on my new pet?

well, it all started when jakeb bought me a subscription to urbanfarm magazine for christmas. in this particular issue, there was an article on making bread without yeast and with kneading. so...i gave it a shot.

it turns out that the bread that i'm currently making (the first loaf is in the "first fermentation" phase right now) only requires three ingredients: flour, water, and salt. it's simple enough, the most complicated part is caring for the starter every day, which isn't really that hard at all (so far...i haven't actually gotten all the way through making a loaf of bread yet. it takes 11 hours o_O)

the starter is the yeast of the bread recipe. i recently discovered that there is yeast that lives in flour, any flour, and you can cultivate it by fermenting (i think) the flour. that's what the starter really is; it's a yeast farm!

the yeast from the yeast farm then goes into my bread, hopefully making it amazing.

we'll see how this first loaf turns out. wish me luck!