Life in Chippendale linked to this inventory of pollutants in our neighborhood. Very interesting. The biggest sources are cars (we don’t have one), lawn mowing (we don’t have a lawn either), domestic/commercial solvents/aerosols (we’re dirty pigs), and… “beverage and malt manufacturing.” SNOOKUMS!!!
No, really, it’s not him. There’s a big-ass brewery up the road (that will be closing soon). Besides, he hasn’t brewed in ages. It’s too hot!
Wow. Those sure are some purty mittens! (…No! Must finish Easter Show entries!) Link courtesy of Moment to Moment.
My Nintendo evidently has Kathleen’s soul inside. HA! Best chuckle I’ve had all day.
What the hell. I did it. I just put in my entry for the 2007 Royal Easter Show knitting competition. (Americans: Think State Fair.) I entered the Cabled Jacket of Doom into the “Aran Knitting” category in the hopes that I’d be inspired to get off my butt and finally finish the darn thing. (I’ve actually finished both sleeves, but when I went to sew them in I realized I need to frog back the tops and redo the shoulder depth. And so I got disheartened and put it on a shelf, as I am wont to to.) It doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning though, seeing as how the judging criteria is “that of authenticity.” Somehow I don’t think rainbow-striped Noro is very authentically “Aran.” It might be interesting enough to get exhibited though. I also entered my Argyle Cardigan in black and pink Superbaby Alpaca… which I’ve been planning to knit for about two years now. I guess I’d better get on that! I always work much better when I have a deadline.
I decided earlier this week to try out a few recipes from the blogosphere: Staci’s “Peanut Butter Balls” and that New York Times “No-Knead Bread” everybody’s been talking about. Getting the bread started was easy; I just dumped everything in the bowl and mixed it together. I was worried that my dough wasn’t “wet” enough though, so I dumped in some more water. (Mistake.) After I had that covered and fermenting away, I went to work on the peanut butter balls. They’re basically the same as my Buckeyeballs, but with Rice Krispies mixed in. As usual though, I had difficulty getting the mixture stiff enough to roll into balls. I wonder if this is because I’m usually making these when it’s hot here, whereas in the Northern Hemisphere it’d be colder. I dunno. Anyway, those went into the freezer to set…
On Wednesday night, my dough looked suitably bubbly so I turned it out onto the floured counter and did the “fold and rest” thing. Then I gave it two hours for a secondary rise. Unfortunately… it didn’t. It was just way too wet and floppy. We decided to bake it anyway, and the result is the first loaf above. The crust was great but the inside was too dense and chewy. It just didn’t rise (and possibly bake) long enough. The peanut butter balls waited in the freezer til Friday night, when I dipped half of them using the leftover white chocolate from Halloween. I did the rest of them with milk chocolate on Saturday night. They’re not as pretty as Staci’s, but man they’re good! I’ve eaten about seventeen. Ugh. Saturday night we also started a second batch of the bread, this time obeying the recipe weights exactly. We put it in the office to rise (since the abundance of computers makes it warm in here). Today we turned it out… and again, the second rise was underwhelming. It’s supposed to double in size, and it just didn’t! This batch was much less wet though, and the resulting loaf was much less dense. The crust is incredibly crunchy though. Maybe I gave it too long with the lid off? I have a feeling we’re going to be playing with this process a bit.
We finally saw Casino Royale Saturday morning. (The Snook doesn’t like to watch movies when there are, you know, other people in the theater.) He was watching it with the eyes of someone who’s read all the Bond novels and seen all the films, and he seemed to enjoy it a lot. He giggled for thirty seconds after the “‘How was your lamb?’ ‘Skewered. One sympathizes.’” exchange. He was also glad that the nut-whacking scene was transferred intact from the book. Me, I mostly just thought the movie was entertaining. I was bouncing around in my seat during the first fight scene in the bathroom. And the whole construction scene chase? Was AMAZING.* The middle section was rather boring for me, especially as I got a little confused about the timeline of the poker game. (I didn’t realize it was happening over several days.) Then I had a mega-misunderstanding with the character of Felix Leiter. Somehow when I read the advance press touting Jeffrey Wright as Felix, I mixed it up in my head with Jeffrey Tambor from Arrested Development. So I spent the whole movie waiting for George Bluth to turn up. (I even vowed to send in a complaint to Hoyt’s after the movie ended, because “they’d obviously missed a reel” and that bit had been left out. A quick trip to the IMdB left me feeling sheepish.) Anyway, yeah, it was good. Except that we went so early in the morning that I didn’t bother to put my contacts in, and the strain of watching a movie in my glasses gave me a migraine and I spent the rest of the day sleeping on the couch. That wasn’t so good.
* The Snook leaned over during a lull in the chase to whisper that what the black guy was doing was an actual sport. I’m like, “HUH?” So I looked it up when I got home. Turns out that the character was played by the inventor of free running, a “physical discipline, in which participants… attempt to pass all obstacles in their path in a smooth and fluid way.” Neat!
Sometimes I’m just readin’ along on MetaFilter when I see a headline that makes my jaw drop. Today it was the fact that the incidence of the most common form of breast cancer dropped 15% over the course of one year. Holy crap! What was the reason? Scientists are attributing it to the fact that millions of menopausal women stopped taking hormone replacement therapy. It’s so weird to think that we can send people to the moon and clone sheep, but we’re still pretty clueless about the way our own bodies work.
Where’s Sam Jackson when you need him?
Y’all will probably chuckle at this story of a seven-foot python being pulled out of some Australian’s lady’s toilet. It’s your basic quirky “Believe it or not” type of fluff journalism. EXCEPT THIS STUFF REALLY HAPPENS. I remember not long after we moved out here, Ma Snook brought down some photos she’d taken at the Snook family residence. (It’s about five hours up the coast from Sydney.) There’s the garden, there’s the garage… and there are two seven-foot pythons MATING IN THE FRONT YARD. I nearly fainted. (For the curious, they were literally standing up on their tails and twisting around each other. It was so weird.) Oh, and then there’s also the time that little Kurt, Rodd’s nephew, went out to the rabbit pen and then reported to his incredulous grandmother that “there was a snake in there.” Nobody believed him until they went out to investigate. A massive python had squeezed through the chicken wire and proceeded to eat all the baby bunnies. They could clearly see the lumps along his body. Of course, he was then too fat to squeeze out again so he was just hanging out in there, digesting. I would just like to reiterate that these events happened at the same house where my beloved Snookums grew up, and were I personally have spent the night on several occasions. Sometimes I forget that once you get outside Sydney, AUSTRALIA IS FREAKING SCARY.
“Knitting for Adults Only.” Bah. Like San Francisco knitters are somehow more cool and edgy than the rest of us? Knitty did their Sex & the Knitty issue two years ago!
Even though I find the concept horrifying, I’m pretty sure my Dad would feel like the Hunter of the Millennium if he shot a seven-legged hermaphroditic deer. *shudder* More pictures here. I always knew Wisconsin was weird.
