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Ok, I have to join the rest of the baker-blogger world and share my experience w/ No Knead Bread. The rage was started when Mark Bittman wrote an article for the NYT about Jim Lahey’s method.

The recipe Bittman put into print varies somewhat from the recipe in the associated video (same link), but the basic ideas are the same. Mix flour, yeast, salt and water in roughly defined proportions. Get really sticky dough, kind of like biscuit dough. Cover and let it rise for 12-18 hours at room temp. The yeast does its magic, helping to align and develop the gluten in the flour. Eventually you get a big poofy, sticky, bubbly blob. If you tilt the bowl, it pulls away from the sides very slowly w/ lots of long strands. Turn the dough out of the bowl onto a VERY floured surface. Pat it down, fold it on itself like a letter, sprinkle it with wheat bran or flour, and turn it over onto a dish towel (not terrycloth - it’ll stick more). Sprinkle the other side w/ bran, wrap the towel over to cover it loosely, and let it rise another couple of hours. Put a heavy ovensafe pot with lid (like a dutch oven) in the oven and preheat it to 450 or so for at least half an hour. You want a really hot pot, got it? Toss the dough seam-side up (seam from the folds you made earlier) into the pot, cover it, and let it bake for 30 minutes. Take the cover off, let it bake for as long as it takes for the crust to brown properly and the inside to reach 210F (use an instant read thermometer). Probably 10 or 15 more minutes.

Let it cool on a wire rack, and resist the temptation to cut it open before it cools completely.

Voila!

With the advent of Google Calendar, I now have zero reason to maintain ties to Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora, or any other mail/calendar/contacts organizational software. Drag and drop GUI, a horde of public calendars already containing any event I might care about, easy one-click filters to show or hide as much as I choose, and 24/7 access from any computer, be it PC or Mac, with a web browser and internet connection. And for anybody who says “what if you lose your internet connection?”, I’ll answer “good thing they make it so easy to print out.”

Google has left the world of corporate domination and moved into the realm of religion. They have the ability to gain intimate knowledge of millions of people’s lives (gmail, calendar, desktop search), filter what information those same people access (google, scholar), and their followers respect and love them. Users might not physically go door to door to spread the word of Google, but they certainly do blog, IM, and gmail about how much happier they are since letting Google into their lives.

We signed the lease yesterday, and Dan cut Helen the Landlady a check for a hefty chunk of the security deposit. The girl living in the apartment now is leaving at the end of the month, so we’re planning to go back sometime in May to measure rooms and take pictures of the interior. (See my last post for shots of the outside).

…but unless we find something better (pretty damn hard in this town), I think we’re living here come August. We get the 1st floor (it’s a duplex), one bay of the garage, as well as a ton of storage and our own washer/dryer in the basement. I don’t have any pics of the inside yet, but it’s really bright and airy, with wood floors covered by off-white area rugs, a fireplace, a black and white tiled bathroom, and a recently remodeled kitchen complete with almost-new dishwasher, oven and microwave. The fenced backyard is small, but it’s really private, paved with stones, and has lots of little flowers growing here there and everywhere; it’ll be a great spot to sit outside and read.

My room smells better than yours.

I dubbed him the Beer Man. He showed up after I started to shovel off the balcony and thought, “there’s so much snow here I could build a snowman or something…”

A recipe for slush:

My iPod, orderd last Friday night, arrived early Tuesday morning from China. Crazy fast work on the parts of Apple and FedEx. It’s super pretty - pics will be coming soon.

In other news, school has pretty much been more of the same. Biochem class and lab are driving me nuts, and what time I’ve had left to devote to research has pretty much been spent planning the experiments I want to start in January. I wish biochem wasn’t sapping so much of my motivation…

Now, here’s the part where some of you will laugh, and others will say good for you. A month or two ago I joined eHarmony on a total whim, with thoughts in the back of my mind like “what the hell”, “can’t hurt to be proactive”, and “probaby better luck than the bar scene”. They’ve matched me with more guys than I could ever keep track of (>80 at last count). After going through Eharmony’s communication system with a number of them, I’ve talked to a handful of guys through AIM, met a couple in person, and generally enjoyed the experience. Is eHarmony the way to find my “soul mate”? Eh, no way to know - I’m not going to rule the possibility out, nor do I have any expectations. Is signing up worth it? I’m meeting new people and having fun, so at this point I’m not too concerned about that issue. Wish me luck, I guess.

Edit: It shipped!! <12hrs after I put my order in. Insane - in a good way.

Happy Birthday to me, thanks in large part to a generous birthday check from my parents. Yay 30 gig video Ipod!!

I can’t wait!!!

I aboslutely ripped through this book in the last few days. Chiyo’s story begs for you to listen; I found myself completely wrapped up in it, at times forgetting it was fiction and not a true memoir. Sad but beautiful, it emphasizes the role of hope in helping us all survive our struggles. I hope the movie coming out soon isn’t disappointing…