There must be a trick
I have a pizza peel. I have a stone. But for the life of me, I can’t get the pizza to slide from peel to stone.
I floured the peel and sprinkled corn meal on it, then checked to see that my dough would slip around okay. It did. I skimped on the tomato sauce, since I can recall problems with a damp, doughy crust when I’ve used too much sauce, and I didn’t want to make the whole thing too heavy (sliding problem, once again). I didn’t particularly care for the idea of adding sauce, cheese, and meat once the dough was already in the oven, since inevitably I give myself a hell of a burn reaching into the oven. So I loaded up my pizza and then tried to slide it off the peel.
No go.
I used a large spatula to loosen the pizza from the peel, working circumferentially to lift every last bit from the wood. It still wouldn’t slide.
Fortunately, I could fold the pizza over and make a calzone, which for some bizarre reason slid very nicely onto the stone. Still, I’d rather have had a pizza. The meat inside a calzone never gets crispy the way pizza meat does.
I’ve become quite good at pizza and focaccia doughs. I start the dough at around noon, first making a sponge of 1 cup of unbleached flour, 1 cup of water, and a packet of yeast. I whisk it up along with a half teaspoon of salt and about a teaspoon of honey. Wait for it to get frothy — about an hour or so at room temperature — then whisk in another teaspoon of honey, half teaspoon of salt, another cup of flour, and a good bit of olive oil, maybe 2 tablespoons. The dough may be a little wet, but that’s okay. You still have another rise to go through. After that, you can turn it out onto a floured wooden board, and as you knead the dough, you can work more flour into it to make something that looks like pizza dough.
If you’re making focaccia, don’t bother kneading or working in extra flour. Turn the moist dough onto parchment paper and use a large plastic spatula to push and pull the dough into the right shape. Add your toppings, then bake at 450 F until done.
Now, if I could get the damn thing to slide off the peel, I’d be in business.
D.
What the Aughts wrought
The decade is winding down, so I thought I’d do a quick summary of what the Aughts meant to me and my family.
1. In 2000, if I remember correctly, we bought our beach house in Oregon, a fixer-upper that’s still being fixed up and will probably never be fully fixed up. We still own it. Would like to have sold it but the bottom fell out of the market, and it’s too precious a property to sell low.
2. Also in 2000, I had a year-long gig writing as an agony aunt for iVillage. My articles are still posted and folks still read them.
3. When that job ran its course, I had nothing left to write. This coincided (more or less) with my 40th birthday. Mildly dissatisfied with my job, I decided I would spend the next 20 years or so reinventing myself as a writer. I wrote that super-long SF novel (or trilogy, or whatever it was) and the romance, and maybe a dozen or more short stories, a few of which were published in minor zines.
4. I started this blog in 2005. Met lots of great folks here.
5. Jake was only four at the beginning of this decade. Wow! Put it that way, and ten years seems like a very long time indeed. So in all that time, he grew up, went to school, outgrew school, had his brush with the medical system (chronic headaches in 2005, which scared the hell out of us because at the time, a few kids with headaches had shown up in my office — with less than favorable outcomes, shall we say), got homeschooled, and ended up in, of all the unlikely places, Catholic school. And a fine young man he’s becoming, too.
6. Bad decade for Karen . . . her dad died (in 2004, I think), and her medical problems took a turn starting with a bad fall. Her already challenging life became a lot more challenging.
7. After ten years in North Coast country, we left for better things. Took a while to find better things, but eventually we did. And now we’re in El Bako, where in the summer you can fry an egg on your forehead, and year round the air smells variously of garbage, poultry farms, or cow manure. And we’re loving it.
I’m sure I’ll think of more. What did the Aughts bring for you?
D.
Obama loses the progressive left
He lost Karen and me months ago, soon after we realized he was caving on his campaign promises and selling America out to the banks, Wall Street, etc. But for a very long time, a very vocal majority shrinking majority minority on Daily Kos continued to beat the drum for Dear Leader. Trust Obama! He’s smart, just because you don’t understand his maneuvering doesn’t mean he lacks a brilliant plan! At times, it’s been hostile for Obama’s critics. You know, those of us who wanted to see the previous administration’s criminals brought to justice, the black sites scotched, the Iraq War brought to a close, true health care reform brought to fruition, an aggressive gay rights agenda (drop Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell for starters) etc., etc. . . .
But now he’s lost the left — over health care reform. In case you’re apolitical, the health care reform package now needs to be called the health care “reform” package, i.e., it’s been neutered to the point where it is now a blessing to the insurance industry and a curse upon the rest of us. (Well. Except for me. I suspect the current bill would be very good for my employers*.) Howard Dean called them on it, spoke the truth about a crappy bill, and now the President and all of those Democrats who were eager to sign a bill and declare victory (no matter what was in the bill) are savaging Dean.
If the Daily Kos crowd loves anyone more than Obama, it’s Howard Dean. Big time. You don’t go after Dean and retain the Progressives’ love.
Proof: in a matchup against the fictitious amphibian Hypnotoad, the President currently takes only 13% of the votes. He’s losing Keith Olbermann, too: Olbermann brought up the prospect of Obama getting primaried in 2012.
Let’s hope the Teabaggers aren’t the most organized political movement in ’12. President Palin, anyone?
D.
*And if I make partner, I WILL BE PART OF THE EVIL CABAL!
Nope. Don’t believe it. Not one bit.
Kudos to Dr. Karen Weatherby, who has proven that staring at cleavage can add five years to a man’s life.
And now some funky formatting wherein the blockquote falls below the photo. Okay . . .
Weatherby explained the concept stating, “Sexual excitement gets the heart pumping and improves blood circulation. There’s no question: Gazing at breasts makes men healthy.
“Our study indicates that engaging in this activity a few minutes daily cuts the risk of stroke and heart attack in half. We believe that by doing so consistently, the average man can extend his life four to five years.”
In addition, she also recommended that men over 40 should gaze at larger breasts daily for 10 minutes.
SO, let me get this straight: next time I get caught doing this, I can claim it’s for my health?
D.
I miss PaintShopPro
I have it on my old computer, the virus-infected one. Can’t turn that one on — the monitor swivels 360 degrees, it rubs itself with old floppy disks, and it says unseemly things about my dead grandmother. I don’t know what possessed it! (Sorry, sorry. That’s for my son, who (A) loves puns and (B) claims, correctly, that I’m not funny anymore.)
I’m installing PaintShopPro Photo X2, which is photo massage software I bought a couple of years ago thinking I was buying an update for PaintShopPro. Fat chance. I got the first PSP when it was shareware, and if I want to stick with it I’ll have to pony up the real dough. Still cheaper than Photoshop by a factor of two. Anyway, Photo X2 is all well and good for photos, but sometimes a guy really wants to do some truly narsty photoshopping. Well, okay, here we are, the bad boy is installed . . .
Hmm. Not bad.
Photos below the cut.
The surprising thing is that it never happened before.
I think I’ve pointed out previously that my subconscious hates me. Just the other night, I dreamed I was at a party where not one but two women offered to take me home with them, with promise of better things to come. I had made my choice and was about to leave with the cuter of the two when my subconscious executed a very sloppy edit and put me into a soup kitchen ladling out food for the poor. Oh, the unfairness of it all.
I’ve dreamed of atomic bomb explosions in the past, but always at a distance. I see the flash reflected off the buildings around me, I see the mushroom clouds, I wonder if I’m far enough away to escape the shock wave. Can I find my car fast enough to escape the blast, to dodge the fallout? “No” would be the answer in real life, but in the dream, there’s always a chance. The world will never be the same but maybe I’ll live to see the other side of the changes.
This morning, though, I was at ground zero. With my wife.
The setting was the usual phantasmagoric admixture of military installation, my home, and my elementary school. Karen and I were watching an assault on this base. Behind a cordon lay a crate beneath a canvas shroud. Men with rifles stood guard. We watched the action as if it were a movie. The opposing force advanced, there were flashes and gunfire, and suddenly the canvas-covered crate began making noise.
Somehow, we knew this was a Bad Thing. Karen ran for a short distance and then I picked her up and ran with her across a field to some concrete-sided buildings that looked like they might provide some cover. Still, we would be less than quarter mile from the bomb. Oh, and we were in our underwear (don’t you just love dreams?), so I found myself wondering: if we survive the explosion, will we die from exposure come morning?
We made it to the building and found clothes. I pulled on some jeans that were way too long for me and too big in the waist. We were still barefoot but there wasn’t anything to be done for that. Before we could continue our flight, we heard the explosion.
Of course, it’s a good question how much time (if any) one would have between hearing the explosion and getting hit with the shock wave, since I suspect these are one and the same. But in the dream we had time to hit the deck and hold hands. I told her that I loved her. (My subconscious digs Hollywood endings, apparently.) Then the blast rolled in and it was like hot air from an open oven: unpleasant but not intolerable; and I had time to think, “Oh, great, we’ve survived the blast only to die in a day or two from the radiation.” But then I noticed that all of Karen’s hair was gone, and I woke up, so I guess we didn’t survive after all.
So my question to my subconscious is: WTF, man?
D.
Force of ritual
It’s the first night of Hanukkah and I have no candles. Or rather, I have candles, but they are packed away God only knows where, and in any case I have too few to last all eight nights (and I can scarcely hope for my own Hanukkah miracle now, can I?) And so I took a patient’s advice this evening and stopped off at the Temple on the way home.
They were open, naturally, and quite crowded. Two Hadassah babushkas were in the kitchen preparing latkes. The smell pulled me out of my Friday funk (long day. Loooong day) and I resisted the urge to offer my services. Back up north, when I participated in our Temple’s Hanukkah party, they always put me in charge of latkes. No one does a better latke. But even though these might be my landsmen, they don’t know me, and they looked the type to stone a man for entering their kitchen.
Quite a crowd in there. Hanukkah ropes ’em in like no other holiday. Yes, we’re supposed to all show up for the High Holy Days services, but it’s the fun holiday that folks come for in droves. I was dressed for it, too, still in my doctory clothes. Would have been oh so natural to grab a cheapie black yarmulkeh and sit my ass down in the shul.
But family called, and it was late already, and I still had a grocery store run to make. The Temple gift shop was closed, bizarrely enough, so I figured I would check the kosher section of the grocery store. Yet I couldn’t find a kosher section, not in the store I chose tonight, and so I came home, said my prayer way too late (sundown, dontcha know) and lit a Shabbat candle. Better than nothing.
We didn’t have too many rituals as kids, but we did celebrate Hanukkah. We did light the candles every year. We did and still do exchange gifts.
Latkes, they’re a year-round treat, but they still make me think of Hanukkah.
Happy Hanukkah.
D.
Say what?
Jake and I made a buy-toys-for-the-underprivileged run to Toys R Us tonight. We bought some really neat building blocks as a boy present and a Chimera Barbie doll for a girl present. Really had to resist the urge to buy the blocks for BOTH the boy and the girl, since I think it’s terribly unfair that girls get all the boring dolls while boys get presents they can DO stuff with, but it’s not like we know these kids. And, face it, most five-year-old girls would look at wooden blocks (no matter how cool) and say, Blocks?
We were rung up by a young woman who looked about seventeen, and while she was helping us, a young man of similar age leaned over and said something to her. She said, “I’m sorry, but I have a boyfriend!” He said “No,” repeated himself, and she said, “Oh, they can help you with that at customer service.”
I’m wondering what he asked her. Maybe, “Do you have something real flashy that’s fun to play with?”
Oh, but it was murder on the road today. We now live in an area where folks don’t know how to drive in the rain. The freeway was gridlocked (which rarely happens here, even in rush hour) so we took surface streets home, and that was almost as bad.
When’s someone gonna come up with a teleporter?
D.
The hots
Beyond my comprehension: the nerve of People magazine declaring someone, anyone, the sexiest man alive. Maybe it’s just the paradox that one woman’s hottie is another woman’s slime bucket. To wit,
Um.
No, really, I overheard some women at work talking about it, and words like “greasy” and “slimy” were tossed around with abandon. And People just picked Depp for SMA back in 2003. Look at this list, does this make any sense at all?
1985 – Mel Gibson, 29 – First person chosen
1986 – Mark Harmon, 34
1987 – Harry Hamlin, 35
1988 – John F. Kennedy Jr., 27 – longest gap between selections (eighteen months); only winner now deceased; youngest winner. Only non actor to win.
1989 – Sean Connery, 59 – oldest winner
1990 – Tom Cruise, 28
1991 – Patrick Swayze, 39
1992 – Nick Nolte, 51
1993 – Richard Gere, 44 & Cindy Crawford, 27 – People took a one-year hiatus from Sexiest Man and instead awarded Sexiest Couple
1995 – Brad Pitt, 31 – first of two awards
1996 – Denzel Washington, 41 – first and only African American winner
1997 – George Clooney, 36
1998 – Harrison Ford, 56
1999 – Richard Gere, 50 – first two-time winner (previous win was shared)
2000 – Brad Pitt, 36 – first solo two-time winner
2001 – Pierce Brosnan, 48
2002 – Ben Affleck, 30
2003 – Johnny Depp, 40
2004 – Jude Law, 31 – youngest British winner
2005 – Matthew McConaughey, 36
2006 – George Clooney, 45
2007 – Matt Damon, 37
Crazy people are overrepresented (Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson). And some of these are just plain sad. Harry Hamlin? Nick Nolte?
Dude!
So maybe it’s not a physical thing. Like Tracy was saying in her comment to the Tiger Woods post, maybe it’s all about fame. I mean there must be some reason why groupies find people like Steven Tyler irresistible.
Erm.
Looks like the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills had his way with the man.
Sex appeal is so much easier to understand with women than with men.
D.
What Tiger proves
I say Tiger Woods proves that if a guy can get any woman he wants to sleep with him, he will.
Karen says that the women who slept with him were skanks who were only interested in his money.
Discuss.
D.