Still Lovin' No-Knead Bread!

It's been two months since I last posted and I'm still loving Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

I've settled on a favorite dough recipe for everyday use--the light wheat. Instead of 6.5 cups of white flour, one of those cups is whole wheat. Just enough to give it a tan glow.

In addition to bread, I've continued to enjoy making way-better-than-Thomas' English muffins. Pita and dinner rolls have both turned out well, though I'll improve each with another batch or two. And, twice I've been able to make fabulous pizza on the spur of the moment because I had dough in the fridge waiting for inspiration.

I've also gotten pretty good at making bagels, though they seem to "deflate" as they cool. Still experimenting with that...

A recent blog post on their website discusses making naan (actually, it's paratha), and I'm looking forward to trying it.

I don't eat a lot of bread in general. But I'm really enjoying that the bread products I make are easy, fun, fast, fresh, and have few ingredients.

Thanks, Jeff and Zoë!

Who Knew Homemade Could Be So Easy?

Yesterday I realized that I am becoming quite the "Susie Homemaker."

It's been slowly emerging since last year when I finished hiking (see my hiking blog) and became the work-from-home, self-employed member of the household. My flexible schedule allowed me to take on the role of primary cook.

I had to brush up on my cooking skills, expanding my repertoire beyond the one-pot, rehydration meals I ate on trail. Early on, I discovered the crock-pot and have been trying different recipes once or twice a week since then. (Thanks for the crock-pot cookbook, Mom!)

Through the hiking group on Yahoo, I learned of the preserving-food group, also on Yahoo. (The two are related, as we hikers eat better on trail when we dehydrate meals cooked at home.)

On the preserving-food group, I learned about Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and, even before the book arrived, I bought a baking stone and successfully made bread, pizza crust, and English muffins from their boule dough (their online video showed me how). No kidding, it's super easy and fast! That's because it breaks from the traditional expectations for making fresh bread at home--no more kneading, rising, punching, and incantations. You make a batch of dough one day, and take from the batch as needed. It keeps in the refrigerated for up to 14 days. The English muffins were so delightful that I won't be buying the $2.99 Thomas' any time soon!

On the preserving-food group I also saw the 5-minute chocolate cake recipe that I'd seen somewhere before on the internet. This time, I tried it. OMG, a fabulous cake! And, just the right size to share with a friend and leave no guilt-ridden leftovers. Even better, members of the group suggested varying the recipe to make muffins and cornbread. I tried the cornbread today--it will take some trial-and-error to perfect, but it was pretty darned good!

As I made this week's grocery list, I included taco seasoning. Then I had the idea to Google "homemade taco seasoning," and sure enough there were two recipes for homemade taco seasoning, each requiring ~8 ingredients that are already in my spice cupboard. Awesome!

I can't really claim to be Susie Homemaker, based on the infrequency with which I use my vacuuming skills. But, I am having so much fun, feeling empowered and saving money by making quality, tasty food at home. I had no idea it was so easy!

Go Steelers!

My favorite team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, will be playing in Super Bowl XLIII this Sunday. Like millions of other people, I will spend the evening watching the Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals battle it out to determine this season's champion. I would love for the Steelers to win their 6th Super Bowl!

As big a Steeler fan as I am, I sometimes wonder why we as a society are willing to spend so much time, energy, and money on something as apparently meaningless as football.

We fans watch games, participate in fantasy leagues, buy team paraphernalia, and engage in friendly rivalries with other teams' fans. Corporations sponsor luxury boxes, buy commercial time, and employ football players in advertising their products. Teams' hometowns contribute stadiums and infrastructure. On the whole, the amount of time, energy, and money spent on football is mind-boggling.

What is it about football that encourages us to make expenditure on such a scale?

Is it escapism? Football is entertainment that is available on television from the comfort of our recliners. We get to relax for a few hours, focusing on a game and clearing our minds of stress and worry.

Is it equality? Football builds bridges, such as across generational and socioeconomic divides. All of a team's fans are equal in fervor when the game goes especially well or especially poorly.

Maybe it's connection? Any two people in a team's hometown can find common ground by starting a conversation with, "How about that game?" Even more so, away from the team's hometown, otherwise strangers may smile or comment when they see each other wearing their team's emblem.

Or, perhaps, it is belonging. As a fan, I belong to a huge club that meets most Sundays for five months of the year. It's an amorphous and largely anonymous group, but it's a group nonetheless. And I belong.

The reasons we invest so much in football may include all of these, as well as others I haven't named.

Of course, I know that professional football is a business, that it wouldn't exist if it weren't profitable to the business owners and stakeholders. But we consumers pay for the "product" because it serves us in some way(s). The benefits we gain must be worth more to us than the time, energy, and money we spend on it, or we wouldn't make that investment.

On Sunday, I am not likely to think about these things as I cheer the Steelers on. But my curiosity is likely to persist as this game becomes just a memory: why do we invest so much in football, and what it would take to garner such interest in other endeavors, such as making the world a better place?

BMI Is Overrated

Dear Doctor,

What do I have to do to convince you that the Body Mass Index (BMI) doesn't apply to me?

The BMI says that I'm obese. Sure, I am overweight. And, I am on a journey to lose weight, especially since the sleep doctor said it's my best chance for curing the sleep apnea. But, obese? No way--I wear a size 14, after all. (It's no wonder that girls and women have warped self images!)

I have set an aggressive target to lose 25 pounds over the next 1-2 years. That will take me to the weight of my 20s, and my weight in 2000 after hiking 750 miles of the Appalachian Trail in 3 months while eating too few calories. (I said it was an aggressive target, didn't I?)

At the end of that hike, 22 pounds lighter than I am now, I looked and felt slim and healthy. But, even at that weight, the BMI will still call me "overweight." To squeak into that elusive "normal range," I have to lose 34 pounds. That's just to get to the highest end of the range. I suppose I should lose 40 pounds to get into the range with a little room to spare.

Doc, that ain't happenin'.

The BMI might be a fine tool to assess the population as a whole, but stop using it on me as an individual.

It's not that I'm not interested in being healthy. If you want to talk about my percentage of body fat, cholesterol, or blood pressure, let's get down to business. Just put that dadgum BMI chart away.

Thanks,
Em

Brother Cats, Still Hunting at 19

Meet my two cats. This is Mikasi:
and this is Maori:

Littermates, they had their 19th birthday in August. That makes them 83 in cat years.

They are showing their age in some ways. They weigh less than half of what they once weighed, with the angles of their bones easily felt beneath the skin. And, their kidney disease started almost two years ago, so they get subcutaneous fluids twice a week; the bag of fluid a permanent fixture in the diningroom.

But, let them out into the sunshine on a warm afternoon, and they rediscover their virile youth.

One has taken to chasing the squirrels from under the bird feeder. One day he stood his ground at the base of a tree beneath a chattering squirrel perched about six feet above him. I don't know how it would have ended if I hadn't intervened.

The other one usually spends his outdoors time taking a bath in the sunshine. But yesterday I caught him in hot pursuit of a small lizard that was scooting across the brick wall. If only he had front claws, he might have snagged its tail--darn!

Back indoors they return to their sedate, napping selves. Dreaming of their hunting adventures and looking forward to their next outing into the sunshine...

Sleep... Shouldn't it be the easiest thing one does?

Actually, sleep does come easily to me. Most nights I don't notice that my head has hit the pillow because I'm asleep by then. And, if I wake up in the night for one reason or another, I go right back to sleep just as immediately. And, I sleep until the alarm goes off. So, what's the problem?

Nothing except that even with all that sleep, I've been exhausted for the past 4-5 years. I wake up tired in the morning, and spend the day tired. For a while I thought it was just stress, but if that were the cause, then I would have had great rest while hiking, especially after my house sold. But, no, I woke up tired on trail, too. So, finally, this fall I decided to do a sleep study, something I'd been talking about for a couple of years.

Sure enough, I have a moderate case of sleep apnea. On the night of the study, I was asleep for 7.5 hours, and stopped breathing 10 times, almost stopping (called hypopnea) 107 times. That's something like once every four minutes. I was relieved to find a reason for waking up tired--I really am not getting enough quality sleep.

With that diagnosis, the next step was to choose an intervention. The least invasive option is to use a CPAP machine at night. Essentially, it puts a pocket of air in my airway, splinting it open so I can't stop breathing.

I've now been using the machine for 34 nights. I'm still in the getting-used-to process. I'd have thought that I would just need to get used to sleeping with a mask on my face, but that's the easy part. I've tried two different types of masks and had issues with both. But I haven't given up yet. Even though there have been very few nights when I've managed to wear it all night long, the hours I have been able to sleep well have helped me to feel more awake, with more energy than I've had for a long time.

So, I'm still working with it, trying different things each night, in the hope of finding a combination of factors that will work well. Because it will be SO worth it, when I am able to get 6-8 hours of quality sleep every night. I am looking forward to having more energy than I'll know what to do with!

Back to Blogging

My last post was in the middle of summer, and here it is almost winter. Since then I've been settling in to life in Atlanta. I have also been through the sleep study process, which I'll share more about in another post.

Before it becomes en vogue to make resolutions, I'm making one to keep my blogs more current... Stay tuned to see how well I do with that!