How to Make 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

Good Evening,

Making bread at home is an immensely rewarding hobby. Like most types of cooking, bread baking is relaxing, and the fermenting/baking/cooling bread makes your home smell wonderful. Moreover, fresh bread tastes much better than bread you can buy in the store.

I, unfortunately, suffer from a love of whole wheat. Whole wheat is much more difficult to mold into a loaf, because it has a much lower proportion of gluten than white flour. Gluten is what allows a ball of wheat dough to hold its form and trap the air and alcohol that give bread its fluffiness and flavor, respectively, during the fermentation process. So, to make good whole wheat bread, you have to get creative.

Making sandwich bread, with its thin crust and relatively dense interior, is another matter in addition. So, where's a home baker who wants to eat his peanut butter on home made bread to turn? I'll tell you...

Now, dear reader, behold! The making of whole wheat sandwich bread.

Nutritional Information (from www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/calculator)
Creates two loaves. Gross nutritional information:
Calories: 3,794
Carbs: 674 g
Fat: 88 g
Protein: 111 g
Sodium: 3,416 mg
Sugar: 123 g

Assuming 40 slices total, per slice nutritional information:
Calories: 95
Carbs: 17 g
Fat: 2 g
Protein: 3 g
Sodium: 85 mg
Sugar: 3 mg

Ingredients
-6 cups whole wheat flour (2 cups reserved)
-1.75 cups lukewarm water (1/4 cup reserved)
-1/2 cup whole milk
-1 packet active dry yeast
-1 pinch sugar
- ~1/3 cup olive oil
- ~1/3 cup honey
-1.5 teaspoons sea salt
-4 tablespoons vital wheat gluten

Directions

-Combine ¼ cup lukewarm water, yeast, and pinch of sugar. Stir until it enters suspension. Let sit until it develops a bubbly appearance, about 5 minutes.

-Combine 2 cups flour, ½ cup milk, 1.5 cups lukewarm water, and yeast mixture in a mixing bowl until well combined. Let sit for about 20 minutes to form a “sponge”

Image 1: The Sponge (this is after I added the olive oil in the next step)

-Add 1/3 cup oil, then 1/3 cup honey to the sponge and stir well. Add salt and vital wheat gluten and stir well.

-Begin adding the 4 cups of additional flour, starting 1 cup at a time. After adding each dose of flour, stir until the new flour is fully integrated into the forming dough. After adding sufficient flour, stirring will become impossible, so switch to mixing by hand. You will be able to tell when you have reached the right balance of flour to liquid when the dough begins cleaning flour off the sides of the mixing bowl and stops sticking in gobs to your fingers.

Image 2: Adding flour to the dough

Image 3: This is what your proto-dough will look like when each new cup is fully mixed

-When the dough stops sticking to everything it touches, dust your counter with flour and turn the dough out on the countertop.

Image 4: A BALL OF DOUGH!

-You will now knead the dough for ten minutes. The purpose of kneading is to mash the different gluten fibers together so that they will form a complex lattice that will trap air and alcohol that the yeast produces during the rise. Kneading should feel like you compressing the dough, never pulling it apart. Mash the dough down into a flat rectangle, then turn it, fold it over onto itself, and compress it again. At the end of 10 minutes, it will be difficult to fully compress it, and this is how you know you have kneaded enough.

Image 5: I want you to want me (flatten the dough with the heels of your palms)

Image 6: I need you to knead me! (rotate the dough 90 degrees then fold, then flatten again)

-Roll the dough into a ball and place it, smooth side up, in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover the bowl, and go do what you want for no less than an hour, and no more than 2 hours, until the dough ball has approximately doubled in size.

Image 7: Dough Ball

Image 8: It Is Risen

-Take the now much larger ball of dough and turn it out on your re-floured counter. Gently flatten it, then cut it in half. Roll the dough up and shape each half into a cylinder about as long as your loaf pans (a loaf pan is a tall, thin pan that you use specifically for baking loaves of bread). Do the same with the other half. Make sure the bottom of each dough loaf is clean by pinching the final seam you create when rolling the dough.

Image 9: Smack that Loaf

Image 10: Loaf Mitosis

-Lightly oil your loaf pans and place a loaf in each. Cover with a towel, and wander off for at least an hour, until the loaves have approximately doubled in size.

Image 11: Form the Loaf, Make It Pretty. Or Not.

Image 12: It Is Risen, Indeed!

-10 to 20 minutes before baking, prepare the oven. Preheat to 350 degrees farenheit and place an extra pan on the bottom rack.

-When the loaves have risen indeed and the oven reached 350 degrees, throw three ice cubes on the pan in the bottom of the oven, then place your loaves in the oven. Bake your loaves for 10 minutes, tossing 3 ice cubes on the bottom rack every 3-4 minutes during the first 10 minutes.

-After the first 10 minutes of baking, turn the loaf pans around, and tent some aluminum foil above them (no need to make it snug). Stop throwing ice in the oven and let the bread bake for 30 minutes.

-Take the bread out of the oven and turn out into a wire rack to cool. Rub a stick of butter all over the crust (this will make the crust extra wonderful). Once the bread is fully cooled, cut off an end and enjoy wheaty wonder!


Image 13: Cool, Buttered Loaves


Image 14: The End Is Nigh!

And that, my friends, is how you make a loaf of 100% whole wheat sandwich bread.

Chana Masala a la Ape

Chana Masala is a vegetarian (potentially vegan-friendly) dish usually served over basmati rice. Traditionally, it consists of chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans, and referred to by me as chimpanzo keans) and tomatoes in a moderately spiced sauce. The combination of chimpanzo keans with rice (or barley, or other grain) provides a complete protein.* Never the traditionalist, and somewhat obsessed with nutrition, I decided to make it with a lot of extra vegetable matter, and approximately 8 times more of all of the spices and much more oil than usual. Feel free to experiment with other vegetables (peas, lentils, and carrots would probably all be great) and discuss your experiences in the comment section.

Ingredient List
-1/4 cup olive oil
-Half cup peanut oil
-1 onion, chopped
-4 cloves garlic, minced
-One yukon gold potato, chopped
-Handful of green beans, chopped
-One green bell pepper, chopped
-Two habanero peppers, minced
-1 cup basmati rice
-1 cup water
-Whole lot of additional water for part 1
-2 tablespoons ground coriander
-2 tablespoons paprika
-1 Big finger of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
-1 big length of fresh turmeric root, peeled and chopped
-2 tablespoons cayenne pepper
-2 tablespoons ground black pepper
-1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
-1.5 cups of dry chickpeas/garbanzo beans/chimpanzo keans. Do not use canned beans!
-1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes in juice (or, you can juice and dice your own tomatoes)
-2 large bay leaves
-1 16 ounce can of coconut milk
-Lots of salt

Directions
1. Your adventure with chana masala will begin much like every adventure anyone has ever had with any type of dry bean. Grab your chimpanzo keans, and put them in a pot of water (usually, there's some specific amount of water you're supposed to use, but just make sure the water covers the beans by a lot). Put the pot on the stove and bring the water to a boil. Once the water is boiling, turn the stove off and ignore the beans for at least 8 hours. Even if it seems like they're doing something interesting, ignore the beans for at least 8 hours. Then, drain the water and dump the beans in a slow cooker and fill that with water and cook on low heat for another 4-6 hours. Alternatively, you may put the beans back in the pot, add water, bring the water to a boil on the stove, then let the beans simmer for 1-1.5 hours. I prefer the slow cooker method, so I can take my dog to the park. Do periodic "bite tests" to see if your beans have reached the right level of tenderness.

2. Once your chimpanzo keans are prepared, you can begin the real cooking process. First, cook the rice. If you do not know how to cook the rice, learn to cook rice. You use the same cooking process to cook virtually every grain (barley, quinoa, etc.),  Heat olive oil in a large heavy pot over medium heat; add the onion and saute until it becomes translucent (about 5-10 minutes); add garlic, potato, green beans, bell pepper, habanero pepper, and peanut oil, and saute/fry (at this point, there's probably too much oil to really call it a light sauteing) until everything is reasonably soft (about 10 minutes); add 1/4 cup of water along with all remaining spices except salt (coriander, paprika, ginger, turmeric, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and cinnamon), then cook and stir until fragrant. This should take another 3-5 minutes.

3. Add chickpeas, tomatoes in juice, remaining 3/4 cups of water, and bay leaf into the mixture; bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer until all flavors have blended (about 10-15 minutes). Stir in the coconut milk and simmer for 2-3 more minutes. Salt to your heart's content.

4. Dump it on some rice and eat it. The sweetness of the rice should provide a pleasant counterbalance to the spiciness of the food.

*Note: "complete protein" is an inverted reference to the fact that there are 9 "essential amino acids" that human beings need to eat because our bodies can't synthesize them. Advocates of meat consumption claim people have to eat meat at every meal because no single plant provides a "complete" protein. First, people do not need to eat a complete protein at every meal; you'd do fine if you ate, e.g., histidine only in the morning, lysine only at lunch, phenylalanine only at dinner, and tryptophan only right before bed, then subbed in the other 5 essential amino acids the next day. Second, this is not true. Any combination of grain (e.g. wheat, rice, barley) plus legume (e.g., peanut, kidney beans, chickpeas, soy) provides all 9 essential amino acids, and quinoa by itself provides all 9 essential amino acids. The human body does not take in protein and use it directly; every protein is broken down into amino acids, and then the body uses the amino acids to synthesize human proteins, so the source is irrelevant. As long as you're getting all of the essential amino acids in sufficient quantity, you'll do fine. A more accurate critique of vegetarianism/veganism is that you have to eat a much larger volume of plant matter to get the calories and macronutrients meat provides. In a society where your chances of obesity by far exceed your chances of starvation, this critique begs the question: "so?"

Snowmageddon 2012

Icey Twigs

All of the trees must bow before the whim of Snowmageddon!

ALL OF THE TREES

Frosted roots.

Poem: I Want

I Want...

To wish the world away 

to shroud my sight in darkness 

listen to the silence 

and breathe the empty air. 

Touch an absent hardness 

lose all my defiance 

and taste the nothing there. 

Then dream the world aware 

from art to God to science 

filled with love and kindness. 

Wake mind fully bare, 

complete, with no reliance 

sight restored from blindness 

and live my dreams each day.

Movie Review: ParaNorman

ParaNorman is a very good movie. It is animated in the style that made The Nightmare Before Christmas so charming. It is dark, and imparts what I consider to be good values without being wishy washy and heavy handed in imparting them.

Story: a boy can see and talk to ghosts. This leads to a lot of hurtful actions from his fellow students, grown-ups, and his parents. He lives in a town once cursed by a witch, who was an 18th century female version of himself. Because of the time period she grew up in, the consequence of her being weird was her execution by hanging, rather than the incessant grind of bullying and "why can't you just be normal?"s. Norman is tasked with sating the spirit of this witch and subduing the curse year after year, but he ultimately ends the curse and frees the witch's soul to paradise (or at least oblivion) with some pretty skillful psychology.

The movie is about abnormal people who are generally castigated or ignored by their peers, the people who should care about them most, and society in general. It shows that we are useful people. I think my favorite line from the movie is the ghost of the boy's grandmother saying "it's okay to be afraid...as long as you don't let it change who you are." Learning to be yourself and everything you want to be in the face of fear--whether justified or not--that you will be rejected or disliked is a very difficult lesson to learn in any sort of meaningful sense (i.e. I'm still learning it).

Generally, the animation is not what you would describe as "attractive" so much as cool. However, the visual beauty of the animation builds up to the climax, which is just about the most amazing animation I've ever seen. The final scenes are beautiful to watch.

Movie Review--Bloodworth

Bloodworth is a movie about two people: a man from the Tennessee hill country who abandoned his family 40 years before the movie starts, and his grandson. The grandson ultimately walks away from his entire insane hillbilly family. It ends with "the one who gets out" setting fire to his family's country cabin and walking way, a la What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

This movie was quite good. There are parts that are a bit overdone, but I liked it! The basic tension in the plot is between the importance of family, and the importance of walking away from the people you're bound to if they hold you down and back.

I've come to accept the fact that I like virtually all movies, and no one who ever reads my movie reviews is likely to ever see a negative movie review out of me.

Movie Reviews Catching Up

I'm not very consistent about blogging. I'm generally pretty busy all the time. Here are quick reviews of other movies I have seen.

The Dark Knight Rises
This was a good movie.

My Summer of Love
My Summer of Love was generally a pretty good movie. One problem with the version of it I saw is that the spoken lines did not match up at all with the video. This was very frustrating. I initially thought that it was because it was originally shot in a foreign language, but after carefully studying the main characters' mouths during some dialogue, I concluded that this was incorrect.

The basic plot is that a poor girl meets a wealthy girl. They fall in love and engage in a youthful romance over the course of the summer. The poor girl's brother is hyper-religious, sort of the born again variety. She, herself, is very passionate, almost to the point of insanity. The wealthy girl is a masterful manipulator and deceiver who ultimately breaks her heart and goes back to school.

I would recommend this to most folks.

The Darwin Awards
This movie was hilarious. The plot is: a detective gets fired after he allows a serial killer to escape under comical circumstances (relating to his fear of blood). He then goes to work for an insurance company. There's a big plot hole here; he is trying to sell what seems to be an aggregate analysis system to help insurance companies properly underwrite life insurance policies by injecting a "probability of dying as a result of extreme stupidity" element into the underwriting algorithms. But, what he actually ends up doing is post-claims auditing to deny insurance claims filed by people who do extremely stupid things. So, I don't see how his original premise matches up with the assignment he is ultimately given.

That point aside, the movie was hilarious and touches on the humanity of people who die under circumstances that are so stupid as to be kind of comical.

Donnie Darko
This was a great movie. Based on the fact that everyone who knows me has said that I would love this movie, I will assume that everyone who knows me has seen this movie. It is weird, it is quirky, it is enjoyable. Watch it.

Little known fact: a young Seth Rogen appears scattered throughout Donnie Darko. By that, I don't mean to say that he was chopped up and his body parts were scattered in various sets in the movie (which would make sense), but that he appears in numerous scenes throughout.

Weird Science
The main lesson I learned from Weird Science was that the 80s were a dark and frightening time, and I'm glad I had only very limited consciousness of my existence throughout them. The story is that two high school geeks use their computer to create a living woman out of a toy doll. She has more or less magical powers (I'm sure the creators intended her to just have super-physics powers but, hey, what's the difference?). She embarks on a quest to not only make them cool by being their hot older woman friend, but to also make them actually cool, mature young men who stand up for themselves and the people they care about, and stand up to bullies and dickish older brothers. She is successful in this quest.

I would definitely recommend this movie to most folks. It's kind of geeky, but funny, so people should see it.

Malice in Wonderland
The trouble with Malice in Wonderland was that I was drunk when I watched it, and it was kind of a spacey interpretation of parts of Alice in Wonderland, which I haven't read in a long long time. I remember liking it quite a bit and feeling that the reviews were unduly harsh. The plot is that a girl suffering from amnesia gets run over by a cab driver in London. The cab driver is a drug dealer who's late for a party at a criminal kingpin's house. The kingpin is about to set up a bank robbery, and it is believed that he will divvy up jobs for the robbery (and, hence, its profits) to whosoever should bring him the best gift. The amnesiatic girl is the daughter of some high power, criminal-type businessman. Anyway, there were lots of little adventures that were fun to watch, and I'd recommend people seeing this.

The only line I remember from the movie was the riddle "what has no conditions but one condition" (the obvious answer being "love"). I remember this because I thought it was oh-so-insightful in my drunken stupor.

TiMER
This was a fun movie! The premise is that a company has developed an implant that can read a person's internal signals and calculate the precise moment when they will meet their soulmate. This resonates with a theory my father has espoused for most of my life--that people marry the people they marry not for who they are but because they happen to be ready to settle down and get married at the time they're dating them. Another way I've heard this theory stated is: "don't think that you're going to be the one who can convince another person to settle down. They'll be ready to settle down when they're ready to settle down and if you happen to get them when they're not ready, you're fucked." I happen to think about that topic an awful lot--whether perhaps I've met the right person but just wasn't ready to be with the right person or the right person wasn't quite ready to be with their right (see graph below for a representation of this thinking)...anyway, I digress.

The movie has its funny moments, and the un-timer-ed romance in the midst of it is sweet. The male object of that romance was possibly the prettiest man I've ever seen in a movie. It's weird being a guy and seeing a guy and thinking "wow, I could really agree that he's pleasant to look at" is a weird experience. I digress again. In the end, the various romantic developments turn two sisters against each other, and the protagonist ends up meeting the man of her dreams one morning while out on a jog.

Ultimately, this movie could have been a lot better than it was. It didn't utilize the dramatic tension well enough, and it could have been funnier. But it's a good way to enjoy an evening at home alone or with someone else if you're both in the mood for some goodhearted fun.

12 Monkeys
12 Monkeys is pretty widely known, so I'll be brief. The plot is that a man from the future keeps getting booted back into time to discover and/or stop the source of an outbreak of plague that more than decimates the human population and drives the remainder underground. He repeatedly runs into the same psychiatrist (who initially treated him as a paranoid schizophrenic on his first trip back in time), and ends up kidnapping her and convincing her of the veracity of his claims. In the end, he almost stops the release of the plague and dies in front of his childhood self in the past. It is pretty well-acted, and the effects are silly enough to be enjoyable.

Ruby Sparks
This movie tells the story of a washed out, high school drop-out author of a wildly successful book at the age of 19 who has writer's block at 29. As part of an assignment from his psychiatrist, he creates a character named Ruby Sparks, the girl of his dreams. Then she steps out of the page and into his life. This theme has been done a few times before, and this telling of it was charming. The best, most insightful scenes are at the home of the protagonist's parents, where you see that the protagonist really is not very comfortable in his own skin around other people who are comfortable in theirs. He is rude, ungrateful, and withdrawn, largely because his mother does not fit into the mold that he believes his mother should fit into. This behavior drives Ruby away before he decides to manipulate her by writing new facts about her into his story, which forces her to do whatever he's written. Ultimately, he releases her and wipes her memory, and turns the whole story into a novel that sells very well.

The movie is, at heart, about the folly of forcing people into the boxes of our expectations for them. The lead character is driven by his view of the way people should be, and when he encounters a divergence from his pre-set vision he (1) ignores it so thoroughly that he doesn't notice it, (2) runs from it and hates the person who diverges from his image of them, or (3) tries to force a change to make the person align with how he thinks they should be. Freud once defined love as "the overestimation of its object" (this is actually a misconstruction of what Freud said; he was only talking about sex). In my opinion, you can't truly love a person until you accept them as they are and love all aspects of them. A quote I came up with when I was 17 (i.e. this isn't a new theory for me): "perfection makes us beautiful, our imperfections make us lovable."

I think that's all the movies I've watched in the last three weeks or so.

Movie Review--Trainspotting

I'm told that most people are pretty familiar with the movie Trainspotting. However, I saw it for the first time on Netflix last night. It was excellent.

Ewan McGregor, or someone who looks suspiciously like a young Ewan McGregor with his hair shaved off, plays a young (looks to be 25-27) junkie who decides to give up smack. This goes well for a while, prior to a relapse, and final period of cold turkey rehab. The story focuses on the addiction, the effects of withdrawal, and the lengths addicts will go to in order to support their habit. Finally, it includes a last redemption in which the protagonist leaves the people who hold him down and repeatedly drag him back into the mire of addiction and failure.

The film is mostly plot- and style-driven, with a bit of character development. By that, I mean that it has a mildly quirky style that it plays up to good effect, and it focuses on events more than the people experiencing them. Some of the dialogue is entirely incomprehensible, because it's spoken in Scots slang. Much like English slang, Scots slang is very difficult to understand for folks who speak standard English.

I would strongly recommend this movie to anyone.

It's a Big Stage After All!

I don't often write poems, but here's one I came up with just now.

Gone to the mountain, the uppermost peak.
Triumphed, lived joyous, then found myself weak.
Drank from the fountain, learned pleasure and love,
felt pain destroy it, then raise it above.

Often I wonder wherefore am I here.
Some offer answers and speak most sincere.
Oh what a blunder, claiming to know,
when just a dancer, here in the same show.

What is the mystery you want me to see,
when clouds filter water from the deep sea?
Why suspect trickery when ill befalls life,
and fall off kilter from toil and strife?

There may be a reason guiding our rhyme,
not one you'll learn now, life frozen in time.
Live in your season and love what you find,
don't trouble on how your soul came alive.

Whatever the cause, purpose or meaning,
figure it out right after this screening.

Launch of Movie Reviewing Fun

Last Friday, July 13, 2012, I set up an account with Netflix. Say what you will about the propriety of setting upon a new task on Friday the 13th, I am very much enjoying my new Netflix membership. It allows me to see all sorts of very interesting movies that I wouldn't even have heard of, let alone seen, if not for Netflix. Here are the movies I have watched so far:

Bubba Ho-Tep
Raising Arizona
Broken Flowers
Repo! The Genetic Opera
Submarine
The Babysitters
My Left Foot
The Shape of Things
Dog Day Afternoon

I will endeavor to write a brief review of each of these, and keep a running commentary on additional movies I see.

Bubba Ho-Tep


This was a movie along the lines of The Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. In fact, it stars the same actor who played the protagonist in The Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. It was very funny, though it purported to be a horror movie. The basic plot is that Elvis switched places with an Elvis impersonator, and the impersonator had a drug problem, leading to Elvis's believed death. Also, John F. Kennedy, though shot in the head, did not die, but was dyed black to live the rest of his days as an African American. He then winds up in a nursing home, where an ancient, and recently escaped, animated mummy has been keeping alive by sucking the souls of the elderly from their rectii. The movie utilizes laughably simplistic effects to depict the mummy, its activities, and Elvis's & JFK's battle to defeat the mummy. Although kind of silly, this movie was highly enjoyable. I strongly recommend enjoying this film with a glass of your favorite intoxicating liquor, wine, or beer.

Raising Arizona

Another goofy classic, Raising Arizona tells the story of a couple in what is becoming a dead end marriage who decide to circumvent their infertility by taking one of 5 quintuplets born to one of the wealthiest families in the Great State of Arizona. Much of my favorite humor in the movie occurs in the opening scenes in which Nicholas Cage repeatedly lands himself in prison for not-armed robbery (robbing convenience stations with unloaded weapons), and parlaying the booking process into a cutesy romance with the booking officer. He finally proposes by entering the booking room as a free man (instead of shortly after an arrest) and asking her to marry him. Once they get married and steal the baby, John Goodman and a fellow escaped inmate arrive to badger Mr. Cage into joining them on some further criminal shenanigans, namely robbing a bank. Mr. Cage's boss and these escaped convicts, as well as a bounty hunter, all decide they want the baby, though none of them to return it to its rightful parents. It all ends up in a hilarious clusterf*ck of a climax that ends with Mr. Cage and his wife more or less deciding to break off their marriage. Or do they?

Broken Flowers


I don't have much to say about Broken Flowers. It is a film about Bill Murray discovering that he impregnated one of his many girlfriends 18 years ago. So, he sets out to find out which of his girlfriends he impregnated. There is some humor here, but it is mostly the sort of humor where you think "this situation is so awkward and strange that it is funny." Ultimately, I don't think the film is designed to entertain or to make you laugh so much as to give a little insight about life. It succeeds at that, but that doesn't leave me with anything fun or entertaining to say about the movie.

Repo! The Genetic Opera


This was a truly fascinating movie, and one of the few musicals I've watched and really enjoyed. It is the source material for a movie that came out a few years ago called "Repo Men" or something like that. It is set in the none-too-distant future at a time when one company has gained a monopoly on the production and distribution of synthetic human organs. Most of these organs are paid for on finance plans in which the company takes, essentially, a purchase money lien against the organ. Oh, and they also got Congress to pass a bill that allows the company to repossess their property in the event that the consumer fails to make their loan payments on time. The company also developed a highly addictive pain killer that can stay in a person's brain long after they've died, leading to a black market for the drug run by grave robbers who take the drug directly from dead addicts' brains. It is dark, it is fierce, it inspires a good deal of thought. The grave robbers' songs were particularly interesting to me. I'll leave out further plot points because, for me, the themes and songs stand out much more clearly in my memory than the plot. But the story is also compelling.

Submarine


Submarine is about a school-aged boy living in Wales. His parents' marriage is not working very well due to a lack of sexual intimacy. He launches on a quest to get his parents back together and lose his own virginity. Unfortunately, the initial object of his affections is a girl whom he bullies. He winds up being responsible for her falling into a pond in Wales in the autumn. Hardly a pleasant experience for her. However, this attracts the attentions of another girl. Anyway, long story short, he succeeds in both of his goals, although his mother cheats on his father with an old flame of her's who happens to be their neighbor, and the protagonist ends up getting dumped for another boy. One take away message might be that life's winding roads and convoluted paths may let you get what you set out to get every now and then, but achieving your goals doesn't always make you happy in the end.

The Babysitters


Well, this movie was...interesting. It is about a 16 year old girl who starts an illicit affair with an older, married father. She babysits his kids. When he gives her extra money for babysitting after their first kiss and initial forays into a sexual relationship, she decides that what she has with this man is more-or-less a prostitute's relationship with her clients, so she loses her childish notions of romance. And starts a prostitution ring of other high school girls operating under the guise of being enterprising babysitters. The movie shows the impact these actions have on the girls' lives. I will tentatively say that this was a good movie, although the subject matter made me a bit squeamish.

My Left Foot


One of Daniel Day Lewis's earlier film roles, he stars as an Irish artist who grew up with and lives with almost completely crippling cerebral palsy. The only part of his body that he can use is his left foot. Hence the title. He uses this appendage to paint haunting masterpieces that bring him a certain amount of success. Much of the story focuses on his extreme difficulty in finding love from women, who view him as an object of pity, rather than as an object of love. This is a touching and inspiring movie about a man with a perfectly functioning mind and an almost entirely non-functioning body. He struggles and overcomes these insurmountable hurtles, and picks up his own share of personal flaws. In other words, it humanizes, rather than lionizes, a man who overcomes adversity.

The Shape of Things


I liked this movie quite a bit, even if it was, ultimately, a bit depressing. Paul Rudd meets a woman played by Rachel Weisz. They end up dating. She changes him in a number of ways that make him generally much more desirable to women. Then she...well, I'll leave it at "she dumps him." The particular way she dumps him is highly memorable. It is a story about the ways women can manipulate men to mold them into things they would otherwise oppose becoming. Although, as I'm sure most women would tell you, their capacity to change a man is pretty limited.

Dog Day Afternoon


Al Pacino plays a young gay man living in New York who robs a bank to get money to pay for his wife's sex change operation. The movie was made in 1975 and is set in 1972. The fact that they even made this movie at that time is surprising. The movie was excellent. You get to see what appears to be the best meaning, though most poorly planned bank robbery ever caught on camera. It is, at times, very funny, and I would recommend anyone seeing it. It is based on true events.

Semen Foeniculi Pellit Spiracula Culi

A text-o-graphic odyssey, by your humble and rarely blogging blogger narrator person.

"Sing to me! Tell me the tale of Malaysian Mint Curry." Thus speaketh every one of the two people who occasionally stumble upon this blog! Verily will I oblige!

But first, I must make an effort to admonish, to warn, to ward off your attempts to follow me down the lonely road of curry! Venture not down the path of creation lest thou be brave, lest thou art determined, lest you be possessed of great patience! For mine is a tale, not only of triumph, but also of tribulation. Not only of love, but the onerous burdens its maintenance rests upon your foolish, feeble shoulders.

On Sunday, July 15, 2012, I set out to make a mint curry dish I found on allrecipes.com. The recipe can be found here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/azalinas-mint-curry/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=mint%20curry&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page

Our tale of want, woe, success, and joy begins at 5:45 p.m.

I arrived home. I went forthwith to my counter of many spices.

I begin by boiling a half cup of water. While it reaches a boil, I slice open 10 crushed red chilis and remove the seeds. These, I place in the boiling water, there to soak in hellish temperatures for 30 minutes.

While the chilis soak, I prepare all of my other ingredients. I grate coconut. I set out pre-powdered coriander and cumin. I measure out fennel seeds. I cut lemon grass, crush garlic, chop shallots! I peel and chop fresh ginger and turmeric roots. I measure out star anise pods, cardamom pods, cloves, salt, and set two cinnamon sticks on my cutting board. I chop up a half cup of fresh mint leaves, which, incidentally, I had to go to three grocery stores to obtain.

Around this time, I decided to photographically document my efforts. Here, my narrative will become much more clipped for, as all know, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Toast the coconut!

Toast the coriander, cumin, and fennel seeds.

Puree the coconut, fennel, coriander, and cumin with chili oil.

Blend shallots, chilis, lemongrass, garlic, ginger, and tumeric into a curry paste, using water as necessary.

Heat some oil, and add the anise, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and mint stems in it. Remove spices. Cook the curry paste.

Add chicken.

Add coconut milk. Bring the curry to a boil. Reduce heat. Allow to simmer for 1 hour.

Allow to simmer for one hour?

ONE HOUR?!?

Wash dishes.

Put away unused spices.

Juice a lime.

Juice two limes.

Juice all the limes you want! You're stuck here for an hour! Heheheghahaha!

Recover from lime madness. Slip into mint depression. Wonder "when will I get to add this mint I spent three hours finding over the last two days?"

Fuck it. Have a scotch. 

Add the mint and some water, stir, and serve or store.

Wake up the following morning. Take a shower. Repeatedly wash your hands. Fail to cleanse the yellow stained nails of the damned!

Serve over mixed rice. Eat. Remember why you love curry. This dish is truly magnificent.

 Such is the life of a curry making fiend.

"Semen foeniculi pellit spiracula culi" (the title) is a Latin saying that means "the fennel seeds make blow the arsehole."

A Return to the Blog

After an extended departure following a very short-lived spurt of blogging when I started this blog, I have decided to write once more. I have very little to write about, because I am exceedingly busy with work.

Today, I attended a working-lunch with my boss and some other attorneys. We went to the Dixie Cafe. I wanted to write briefly to address the sham that is Dixie Cafe's shepherd's pie. Shepherd's pie, for those of you who didn't grow up with an Irish woman who cooked it once every two weeks, is meant to be a stew of red meat and vegetables covered with a thick and insulating layer of mashed potatoes. Dixie Cafe's shepherd's pie, however, is nothing of the sort. It is a hunk of meatloaf topped with a scoop of mashed potatoes. I will, however, say that Dixie Cafe's "shepherd's pie" is tasty, if not in any way, shape, or form an actual shepherd's pie.

I resumed jogging several months ago and have maintained a fairly regular schedule of jogging. I switched from jogging 5 miles every now and then to 2.5-2.7 mile jogs much more frequently. For a while, I was doing 2.5 miles 6 days a week. Now, I'm lucky to get in 2.7 miles 3 times a week. But, it's still better than nothing.

Interesting thing about spending all your time at work: if you work all day every day, you don't have interesting experiences that you feel are worth sharing with the world via blog. I guess I could talk about work, but that would amount to: today I spent 9 hours reading through a thousand pages of documents, and then I spent three hours writing a legal brief. It's just not...exciting.

Shreveport

I have arrived in Shreveport! In the morning, I will go to the Stoner Boat Launch...or Stoner Boat Ramp, I forget what it's called...and participate in the 23rd annual Turkey Trot! For some reason, I really like the phrase "Turkey Trot." Couldn't tell you why except that I always say it in a hyper-enthusiastic childish voice in my head.

Although the Turkey Trot is only a 5K, I would like to try and make a streak out of my five mile run on Monday, so I'm going to aim to run 5 miles then walk a bit more. Not sure it's possible since my legs still feel pretty beat up.

I'm very happy to be out of Arkansas, even if it's just going to be fora few hours! Not that there's anything wrong with Arkansas; I just like to leave regularly.

It's Like Finding a Mailbox in a City!

People like to talk about how difficult it is to find needles in haystacks. Well, lemme tell yuh, I have found needles in hay stacks before, but I have almost never found one of those durn blue post office drop boxes if I didn't know where it was when I started looking for it. As part of filing some documents for a case, I had to mail copies to opposing counsel. I drove around for 10 minutes, stopped and asked a pedestrian for help, stopped at a restaurant and asked a waitress for directions, then FINALLY just went to the nearest post office. That was a hassle.

In other news, I am about to leave Little Rock for the lovely city of Shreveport, where I will "Kick Some Bird" and participate in their 23rd annual Turkey Trot! I'm very excited about this opportunity to kick off my "Joggin' 'round the World" program down in Louisiana! Unfortunately, the forecast for Shreveport and Little Rock is absolutely awful. I'm going to be running in thunderstorms, then driving through thunderstorms, then celebrating my Thanksgiving in, literally, freezing weather in Little Rock.

At least it will be eventful. In the past, Thanksgivings have been kind of boring for me.

Also, on Saturday, my sister is hosting a party to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks play the LSU Tigers. Seeing as how I'm somewhat of a Louisianaphile, I can't 100% root for the Hogs, but I'll be there. Folks reading this who know me and my sister should totally cancel whatever other plans they may have and come. I'm told that if any other teetotalers show up, I will be allowed to play at least one game of Diet Coke pong on my brother-in-law's beer pong table. The invitation and Diet Coke-inducement are not directed at anyone in particular. <whistles all innocent-like>

Quick Update

Today:
5 miles, no stopping
Exactly 1 hour
Average pace: 5 mph/12 minute mile
Boo-yah

Yesterday:
Starbucks Gold Member
Boo-yah-kah-mo-fo'in-shah

Nicotine Free Since 1983!

OK, not actually since 1983, but I think I'm finally getting back to normal after two weeks of struggling through nicotine withdraw. Today is the 2 week mark since the last time I had nicotine from any source. Oh, and it's the 6 week mark since the last time I had any alcohol.

-Desire to blabber incessantly about my feelings and accomplishments for outside validation/praise: diminishing
-Ravenous hunger for anything and everything fattening and sugary: leveling out
-Sanity, to the extent ever possessed: returning
-Insane, irrational, impossible-to-quell self-confidence: you know it
-Ability to wake up after less than 8 hours and still be functional: yep yep yep
-Writing skills: on the rebound

I'm back, baby!

Yea Though I Walk

Good evening!

Those of you who know me know that it is not often that I am given pause to consider scripture. However, this evening, I was taking a walk and I think I finally understood the imagery in Psalm 23. The full text of the Psalm is:

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

This psalm is particularly important to me emotionally because my mother once embroidered a bit of...I don't know, it was like a miniature blanket or something that she then framed and gave to my grandmother, her mother as a gift. My mother embroidered this psalm on some cloth once and reading it at my grandparents' was my first exposure to Christianity. 

As the title of this post suggests, I am focused primarily with the meaning of the line "yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death."

While I was walking today, I was walking beneath a hill that blocks the sun at sunset. This made me think of walking in the valley of the shadow of death. It used to be that I thought that line meant "the valley of death," that in life we walked along a ridge and if we stumbled, we'd fall to the bottom of the valley and probably snap our neck on the way down. However, thinking about it logically, if you were walking in the valley of the shadow of death, assuming a translation error allowing for "in the valley in the shadow of death" then we are actually walking at the very bottom of the valley, and death is casting a shadow over us. In fact, death is such a daunting, fearful mountain that dominates our consciousness so completely that it casts a shadow that blinds us to the path that leads us safely through the valley. The only light we can see walking through the valley in the shadow of death is the light of "life everlasting" promised to us at the end. 

I think one way to interpret the psalmist's imagery is to say that death casts such a dark, impenetrable shadow that we can't see our feet or the ground we're stepping on. Whether we are walking on the right path or not, every step we take toward the light promising everlasting peace at the end of the valley is an act of faith. Faith that God will lift the path up to meet us (stole that metaphor from an Irish "have a nice day" saying).

I guess what I'm saying is "our knowledge of our own mortality and fear of our own death constricts our view so much that we can't see the right path forward without faith." From there, you can say "if you confront and accept death, its shadow decreases and you can see the way forward" or just stick with "you've gotta have faith." 

Whichever way you choose, you'll probably get where you're heading.

P.S. The way I said this all in my head on my walk was WAY better than what I wrote here.

1/40 of the Way to 1000 Miles!

Today marks the end of the second week of my quest to become a Runatic (running fanatic...DUH!), and I finished it up with a great run. I jogged 4.5 miles in a row, then ran an extra 200+ yards toward the end of the walk back to the office, just to keep my heart guessing. I still jog barely faster than I walk (at least for the first half of the run), but I'm getting to where I can speed up a bit and do some interval training to increase my overall capacity. Also, finishing a full 4.5 mile jog means that I increased my total to 25 miles for the last two weeks! For those of you who have never gone 4 years without running at all to starting up a running program at random one day, that's pretty good.

So, in two weeks, I went 25 miles. So, if I see absolutely no improvement in the future, that means I should get to my goal, 1000 miles, in 79 weeks (about 1.5 years). I'm pretty confident that I'll start getting faster and increasing the length and frequency of my jogs, so I think I'll be hitting the 1000 mile mark before next Thanksgiving.

Now that I've proven to myself that I can run, I want to set some goals.
By January 1, 2011:
-Consistent 10 minute mile (6 miles per hour); I'm currently doing about a 14 minute mile (estimate)
-Weight down to 240 pounds (currently back up to 255 from a low of 250)
-Able to run 6 miles in a stretch
-Run 6 miles at least 4 times per week
-Buy sweatpants and sweatshirts, because it is going to get COLD after Thanksgiving!

How to Tell When Someone Isn't Listening to You

Earlier today I was sitting outside of Starbucks enjoying a cup of coffee and an unseasonably beautiful day here in Little Rock. A woman walked into Starbucks, leaving her dog outside. The dog was, itself, kind of interesting. It was the breed of dog that looks like a greyhound but with really long fur. The woman left the dog untied while she went inside, and it did an admirable job of behaving itself like a well-behaved dog should. A few minutes later, a couple of young women--not sure how old they were but probably early college-aged--walked by and immediately starting gushing about how "pretty he is." After recovering from the shock of two girls were calling me "pretty" I realized they were actually talking about the dog. They had both gone over, about ten feet away from me, and were leaning over the dog and fawning. A woman who works at that Starbucks--Joley or Jolene or Jo Lee or something like that--was just arriving for her shift and stopped to give a lecture to the girls about how dangerous it is lean over a dog they don't know. According to her, at least, dogs will jump up and bite people if they feel crowded, so it's actually pretty dangerous to do that if you don't know the dog very well. Throughout this lecture, the girls continued to say how pretty they thought the dog was. The end of the conversation, which lasted well over 50 seconds, concluded with

Jo Lee/Jolie/etc: Just be careful and don't lean over dogs you don't know in the future.
Girl #1: He really is pretty.
Girl #2: Yeah, real pretty.

This made me think a little bit about listening. I don't know how J however her name is spelled felt about her interaction with these two young women, but my impression was that those two little punks didn't listen to a word she said. Anyway, ultimately, my point here is to say that if you have a conversation with a person and they're still saying absolutely nothing other than what they were saying at the start of the conversation, chances are that they weren't listening to a single freakin word you just said to them.

This is important because I have occasionally fallen victim to bad listeners and more often been a bad listener in the past. It's something to work on; being a good listener is something I've prided myself on and is definitely the best skill a man can have.

Luckily, since this is a blog, I probably don't need to feel bad about doing a terrible job of making a point here. But I will try to think of something inspirational to say just cause...hmmm...

"To end a sentence with a preposition, that is a thing up with which I shall not put!"
-Supposedly said by Winston Churchill, but there are a lot of variations on this one and no one knows when he may have said it, so it's probably just a made up line.

It's Hard to Hold a Candle in the Cold November Rain, but it's a great time for holding a mug!

Hello!

November is the best month for hot chocolate.

Now that I have your attention, I should probably back up that bold assertion.

Most people think that winter is the time for hot chocolate. The chocolate fills your tummy up--which feels especially great in the winter--and the hot makes you warm all over, which contrasts magnificently with the cold of the season. While I certainly agree with these sentiments and think that hot chocolate is great during the winter, the simple fact of the matter is that the flavor, consistency, warmth, and radiant good-feeling you get from drinking hot chocolate is a perfect match and complement for the colors, smells, activities, and general mood of late autumn. A golden/orange/red season like late autumn deserves a rich and robust drink like hot chocolate! Autumn conjures up recollections of a year well-lived, or sadness overcome, or warm and pleasant times gone by, or just a satisfied reminiscence of finality to the year before the hectic holidays befall us, or one last pleasant day before bundling up and away for the wintry end of the year. In short, the feeling you get from late autumn is just like the feeling you get from drinking a cup of hot chocolate before you go home for the night to end your day and go to bed. With marshmallows!

Unfortunately, I have not actually had a cup of hot chocolate at all in the last year. I think I may have to remedy that tonight.