English muffin recipe

I make this recipe with my stand mixer. You can also mix the ingredients by hand, or with a bread machine on the dough setting.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups milk
2 cups white bread flour
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 tsp sugar
1.5 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter, softened
1.5 tsp active dry yeast

Warm the milk gently and dissolve the yeast in it. Add the butter. Mix in some flour and allow it to sit for a few minutes, then add the salt, sugar, and the rest of the flour. When you have a good dough (it will take some practice to learn when that happens), cover the bowl and allow it to rise in a warm place for one to two hours, until it has doubled in size.

After it has finished rising, roll it out on a floured surface. Using a cutter (or a cup or bowl) cut out your muffins. Shape the trimmings into more muffins. Dust with cornmeal, semolina, rice flour, or wheat flour, cover, and allow to rise 20 minutes.

Lightly oil a griddle or frying pan. Cook the muffins very slowly, 7 minutes on each side, until they are lightly browned and are almost doubled in size. Viola! Fresh English muffins...

On food and packaging

So I’ve been doing some thinking on how to reduce waste, especially packaging waste, and also how to eat more healthfully. I want to stop eating margarine and eat butter instead. I’m considering buying the giant stick of butter from the co-op that’s just wrapped in one piece of paper. I think it’s a pound of butter. But I’d need an easy way to 1) bring some to work to keep in the fridge, and 2) use it at home without hacking off a piece of the huge block every time. I’m thinking I can reuse the glass jars that certain things come in, such as bread yeast or the new boullion that comes as a paste. I can refill the jar from the big block that I keep at home. I would probably buy the individually wrapped sticks of unsalted butter for cooking and baking, because they’re much easier to measure than the huge blocks.

I also hate how much packaging my English muffins come in. Every week, I have the little cardboard box and plastic bag to deal with. English muffins are relatively easy to make, but they don’t keep long, so I think I will make several weeks worth at one time and then freeze the majority of them in individual bags. I can then put them in packs of 5 and each Sunday place a pack of 5 in the fridge to use for the week. I may try it out this weekend and see what happens.

I’m also having a hard time with my diet. I tend to either eat too much or nowhere near enough. It’s been very difficult for me to find that happy middle ground, and I would sure like to. I would love to know exactly how much to eat, to know when to stop eating because I really am full (and not feel guilty if my plate isn’t clean). I would like to look at a normal portion and not think “that’s all I get to eat?”. I find that when I put what I think is an appropriate amount of food on a plate, it generally turns out to be too much, but because I was raised to eat everything on my plate, I eat it all anyway.

So those are some goals to work on: less food, less packaging, and definitely less soda.

Speaking of breakfast and book clubs and “In Defense of Food”, I’ve decided to switch from margarine to butter. For most of my life I didn’t even think it was necessary to differentiate between butter and margarine. After doing some reading about manufactured foods and health and whatnot, I’ve come to the conclusion that even if margarine is non-hydrogenated, and filled with good stuff like flax oil, it probably isn’t the best idea for me, and almost certainly bad for the environment. Therefore, I’m planning to make more informed choices – I’ll buy local butter from the co-op, or make my own as necessary.

On that note, I’ve also decided to start making my own mayonnaise and keeping it in a jar in the fridge. Mayonnaise is incredibly easy to make, and when I make it myself I can decide exactly what goes into it and what consistency to make it. Homemade mayonnaise also uses far less packaging and tastes far better, although I feel obliged to point out that it may not last as long as store-bought (no preservatives) and there's always the risk of salmonella when eating uncooked eggs.

I’ve also decided not to make as much bread. I can’t eat too much at once, and it’s pretty energy intensive to only make one loaf at a time. I also have no space to freeze bread, which is a great way to store extra. So I’ll only be making bread when I have a reason to make several loaves at once, or if I’ll be baking something else at the same time. Otherwise, I will buy bread from the village bakery in Davis.

Monday morning procrastination

I don't really feel like figuring out what to wear to work today just yet. Usually, I'm lucky if I look somewhat presentable and I match, but sometime even that is a huge chore. Sometimes I wish someone would nominate me for "What Not To Wear" but I don't think I look quite that bad.

Last night was my book club meeting, and we had such a fabulous potluck while we discussed "In Defense of Food". Before I read that book, I thought I had decent eating habits. Now I know better. While I still think I make better choices than the vast majority of Americans, I still have a long way to go.

Attempting to lose some weight does make things more difficult, though. For lunch this week, I will be eating roasted brussels sprouts with garlic, with a break on Wednesday for some Chipotle (not my choice, but it's my friend's favorite, so I told her I'd give it another chance). Dinners will consist of boiled purple potatoes with cottage cheese. For breakfast I'll have my usual multi-grain english muffin with flax seed, along with some honey dew melon, and I have apples for an afternoon snack. I haven't made it to the gym in a while, so I'll likely go tonight, and see how I'm progressing in my weight loss plan.

On a random side note, I'm feeling like my hair is getting out of control. After I cut it short, I stopped blow-drying it, and it often dried decently, with a nice amount of curl, but now it's getting longer and that technique isn't working so well, so I've been blow-drying it to keep it under control. Unfortunately, that makes the horrible layers that my last hairdresser added rather pronounced, so I may have to go for my yearly haircut a bit early (and to someone else). And I was really hoping to grow it out and donate it again. Sigh.

Weekend update

Since my sister has linked to me from her blog, I guess I should probably start updating a bit more regularly.

My life has decided to become busy again (although I probably had something to do with that). Why are there never enough hours in the day? This weekend, I did my taxes (hellooooo refund!), went to a hockey game in Stockton, went to the farmer's market in Davis, and spent some time working. I need to spend even more time working, so I should make this a quick post. I also recently signed up for an interior design course at the local community college, and I'm considering pursuing an AA there. I'll be making an appointment to talk to a counselor soon about how many classes I would have to take and how long this whole process might take. I also signed up to take the LEED exam (again) in March, and I organized a study group at work to ensure that I'll actually pass this time.

I also bought plane tickets to go on a lovely little vacation to Italy, starting in Rome, and ending in Vinadio. I didn't even realize it, but I'll be in Italy for Carnival and Mardi Gras, so hopefully that will be fun. Either way, I should see some cool stuff, visit i miei amici italiani, and go skiing and snowboarding in the Alps. All in all, not a bad trip if I do say so myself.

I had a very long list of things to do today, most of which involved cleaning and/or organizing my house. So far, I've accomplished almost nothing, although I am happy to have taxes out of the way. My training for the marathon is going slow, but steadier than expected - I ran approximately 2 miles on Friday evening and felt pretty good afterwards. I may run a bit later this afternoon as well if I can get my act together and get to work. Which I think I'll do right now.

The last two days have been a mixed bag for accomplishing what I want to accomplish. I didn't make it to the gym yesterday, but I did manage to get my house pretty well cleaned up, which is always nice, and I cooked up enough food to last me the week. So far this evening, I've run 2.5 miles, and I'm getting ready to do laundry and finish some organizing around the house. I might even have time to watch a movie, which would be great.

Of course, the biggest event of my day was the inauguration! My coworker set it up so that we could watch a streaming broadcast in our large conference room, and by the beginning of Obama's speech, everyone was in there watching and clapping. I haven't felt this proud to be an American in such a long time. I finally feel like there's hope for our future.

On difficult cats with picky eating habits

My older cat is almost 12 years old and lately has been suffering from what I refer to as "digestive troubles" as evidenced by the little presents she leaves scattered around my apartment. After several expensive vet visits and several even more expensive (and inconclusive) tests, the doctor admitted he didn't know what was wrong, but it was most likely IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) or lymphoma, a type of cancer common in older cats. Not having the money for chemotherapy, or even for the test to determine if it is cancer for sure, I'm opting to treat her as if she has IBD, which means medication twice daily for the time being.

For those of you who have cats, you know that there are two types - the ever-so-common cat who is EXTREMELY picky, and turns her nose up at just about everything, and sometimes will eat something for a day or two but then decides it's just not good enough, and the extremely rare cat who will eat anything and everything. Akaya, my sick kitty, is the first type, and Max, my other kitty, the second type. So I'm not only having difficulty finding something to mix with Akaya's medicine that she will eat, I'm having a hard time keeping Max from eating everything I try give Akaya. I'd separate them, but my apartment is relatively small and doesn't really have useful doors. I think I've finally hit on a solution - Kaya gets high-priced, quality fish catfood, pureed to a mush (the better to hide the meds), while Max gets whatever I can find to keep him occupied while Kaya eats. I'm not sure I'll ever get another cat after all of this.

Tipping the scales

On the topic of healthy living and weight control, I’d like to start out by saying that I’m not really fat. I’m in the normal weight range for my height and I have a healthy BMI, although I’m closer to obese in both of those categories than I would like. While my friends like to tell me that I’m skinny (even though most of them are even skinnier), when I can barely squeeze into my “fat jeans” and when I have a nice roll of stomach fat appear whenever I sit down, I know it’s time to do something about the condition I’m in. I’m not a huge person, but it’s possible to by skinny and fat at the same time, and I’m heading in that direction very rapidly. My goal now is to lose up to 10 pounds in the next four weeks while getting in better shape on my 10K training program that I am currently (and shamelessly) ignoring.

So this week I intend to eat bulgur-lentil soup for lunch every day and Brussels sprouts with a bit of homemade mayo for dinner. My breakfast consists of a multi-grain english muffin with flax, topped with a bit of non-hyrogenated margarine (although I'll be switching to butter soon - more about that in a later post), plus some calcium chews, a few small pieces of fruit throughout the day, and a cup of low-sodium V8 and some peanut butter for an afternoon snack.

For exercise, I’ll rock-climb tonight, run tomorrow, and hopefully fit some exercise in on Wednesday and Thursday, which may not happen because of classes. On Friday I’ll go rock-climbing and/or running depending on what I get done the rest of the week. That’s my plan for now. Next week, it will be bean soup for lunch and purple potatoes with cottage cheese for dinner. Yum!

Stuff, stuff everywhere, and not a drop to...

So one of the constants in my life recently is an overabundance of not-quite-useful objects that I just can't bring myself to get rid of for whatever reason. I remember the day when I moved to Hawaii without even one piece of furniture to my name, and everything fit into two suitcases, or when I moved to Oregon and everything fit into two sedans. These days, I'm lucky if I can squeeze everything into a medium-sized moving truck. My one-bedroom apartment is bursting at the seams. Where did all this stuff come from? And why can't I get rid of it?

I have to admit that I'm a bit of a gear junkie, a book-lover, and a pack-rat, and those don't always go well together in terms of making space. I also have only one closet in my entire apartment, which means my clothes and shoes are stored together with my christmas tree, climbing gear, camping and backpacking gear, snowboarding and snowshoeing gear, craft supplies, sewing supplies, tools, extra bathroom and desk supplies, biking gear, old mementos, musical instruments, random sports equipment, ice skates (!), and other assorted accoutrements of daily living.

It can be noted at this point that I often have more than one of any given thing - two tents, two internal frame backpacks, three pairs of snowboarding boots, myriad backpacks, and far too many shoes to actually wear. If I was actually setting out to acquire all of this stuff, I would never buy so much of it, but alas, it has somehow made its way into my home, and pack-rat that I am, it's difficult to dislodge it. I mean, what if someday I wanted to go ice skating? I would kick myself for getting rid of those ice skates that I haven't used in 8 years.

So where am I going with all of this? I'm trying to create incentive to actually sort through and get rid of stuff, in as earth-friendly a way as possible. It's silly to throw away perfectly good, useful items, but it's also silly to keep them around to clutter up my house when someone else could be getting some use out of them. But I really need to get some motivation and some tips in how to actually sort and organize so much random stuff. Sigh. And I need to convince the people in my life to stop buying me random things, especially if they happen to be purple.

Controlled Chaos

I'm starting this blog because my life thus far has been a menangerie of barely controlled chaos. I'm hoping that by writing about daily activities, thoughts, and ideas, I can not only keep track of what the heck I'm doing (since a personal assistant doesn't seem to be forthcoming), but I can also try to keep the chaos to a bare minimum. I haven't decided what issues I'm going to write about, but I'm choosing from among the following: being single, being an architect, attempting to get into shape and/or lose weight, outdoor activities, adventures, gardening, organizing my space and time, decluttering, and living a simple and more natural life. Perhaps I'll write about all of them. I guess I'll see as time goes on. At the moment, I have to admit that writing a blog about how I waste time seems a bit contrary, but it's an experiment of sorts...