Day the 137th - Day 9 of 30 Days Of Truth

I baked bread last night, campers. Yes, I did.

Sorta worrying that I am going off the rails, but I wanted to bake bread. It has been forever and a month since I baked any, and it was time to baptize the new domicile in the perfume that is baking bread. Thank GOODNESS Tasha the Housemate (who is wonderful, by the way...) had a bread pan because my last ones were on their last little bread-making legs when I moved, and I gave them away...to the local scavengers.

These last 2 weeks have been a time of spend, spend, spend--and not in the "Whoa, look at the sweaters and shoes I bought" sorta way. Spend as in the paying-for-moving-stuff and paying-for-final-bills and paying-for-replacing-stuff kinda way...So, girlfriend here hasn't had a great deal of the ready $ for fun and games...or for replacing cooking staples...they cost, I was out, and you know the rest.

So...the first bump in the road to Bread Wonder (see what I did there? Sometimes I just crack me up...) was that I could not find my favorite bread cookbook...have a feeling it is packed away in the storage unit, not to surface for...a while. So...not wanting to use my Union County White Bread recipe (my favorite, but it requires 2 pans...) in My Mother's Southern Kitchen, I pulled out another bread cookbook and finally found a recipe that I could...adapt. Substituted yogurt + water for milk (and added some demerara sugar to sweeten it up a bit) and cut the salt in half because many recipes seem to have WAY too much salt in them.

It rose beautifully. Tasha lent me a loaf pan (happily, and it was so gracious of her). I split the loaf down the middle with a sharp knife. Dusted the surface with flour. Put it in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, lowered it to 400 degrees and cooked another 20 minutes--all according to the recipe. And went in my room to unpack boxes and boxes of books. And made myself tired and sore...again.

And came out to the smell of...scorched bread.

All right, it wasn't horrible--I mean, it wasn't some blackened husk with a liquid interior. It was just...very very brown.

And a crust that would rival the steel-plated deck of a battleship...

But when I [finally] cut through the crust, a lovely bread. Again, not my favorite and needs some more sweetener (girlfriend here must experiment...), but a very nice, finely textured white bread. And hot. I had two [one very large] pieces hot out of the oven, slathered with real butter for dinner.

And left the rest--with a note explaining Crust Of Steel--for Tasha and her boys.

And this morning, I managed to crunch my last pair of reading glasses so it was off to WalMart for a set of new ones and then to Old School for a comforting bagel sandwich and a Blackberry-Jasmine iced tea...

Lunch today is yogurt. Probably dinner, too. Or maybe lunch is salad bar...nah, I want yogurt. Faster, and I need the protein because I had major leg and foot cramps last night...yes, I hurt. Hot bath with soothing stuff in it tonight, I think...

And now, Day 9 of 30 Days Of Truth. And the prompt is:

Something you wish you had done in your life.

All right, if I wanted to be a little snake, I would post that I wish I had indeed taken my Junior year in Madrid, and leave it at that. You read yesterday's post (you did, didn't you??) and you know I posted that what I wish I hadn't done was to turn down the chance to study in Madrid my Junior year.

But I'm not gonna do that because it's cheating...so...

I wish I had traveled more when I was younger.

I mean, I'm going to travel more as the $$$ becomes available, but I wish when I was young, I had gone more places. I am extremely proud of myself for my 3 weeks in England in summer 2005 (2 weeks at Oxbridge, the C. S. Lewis Foundation conference; one week at Oxford and the other at my great love, Cambridge...)

And now, here is where I would like to have gone if money and time and need to work or be in school were not an issue.

1. Defo do as much of the UK as possible. I love England, I am Scottish and Irish and Welsh, and I want to see as much as I can, particularly little villages and hamlets. Yes, I have seen way too many "heritage film" movies, and I cherish an image of England that probably doesn't exist. "Jerusalem" is playing in the background of my mind as I type this...


2. France--thank you, Aunt Helen, for instilling a love for France and the French and thank you Bill the Presence for reinforcing it. I must go there. I must walk along the Champs d'Elysee...and see the Arc de Triomphe...and the rest.


3. Italy--Thanks to Dr. Echols, my college Art History prof, I fell in love with All Things Italian long ago, and must, must, must see Brunelleschi's Dome and Gates of Paradise and the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace and the Vatican, oh dear God I have a feeling that when I walk into the nave and see TU ES PETRUS, I will fall on my knees in total overwhelm and just think I have died and gone to Art Heaven...


4. Egypt--I have to see the antiquities in their home nation, as much of the Tut treasures as I can (after seeing them in 1976 at the National...be still my heart...), and of course, ride a camel and go see the pyramids and the Sphinx. Why not?


5. Morocco--I don't care if I have to wear a chador or a burka with only my eyes showing, I will walk the streets of Marrakesch and visit the local souk. And buy "stiped jelabahs we can wear at home...let me hear ya now..." And ride the Marrakesch Express...


6. And visit all the standing camps from the Holocaust and stand with bowed head and heart before the memory of the 6 million...


7. Russia and Ukraine--because I have to. Because this totally non-Slavic girl has a Slavic heart...

I wish I had done those things when I was younger.

But it's not too late.

PS--Peppermint Tea is the BOMB for upset tums...it works. It does.

Independently,

Weltha