Where I've been and what I've learned along the way…
And now for something completely different… sailing my canoe! I bought a kit which arrived yesterday. It adds a mast, lateen sail, stabilizers, side-boards, and a steering oar.
The rig was very responsive in light airs; made forward progress with almost undetectable wind. Got a few 3mph “gusts”, which were enough to heel the boat. Overall, a very good first impression!
Inspired by the New York Times recipe for “No Knead” Bread, I did some experiments with my bread machine. While the original recipe required no kneading, it was still fairly complex and messy. The key is to use much more water resulting in a soupy dough. The loaf pictured here was moist, chewy and delicious! Here’s the recipe…
No Knead Bread for Machines
2.25 cups of water
4 cups of flour (I like mostly whole wheat)
1 to 1.5 tsp. salt (to taste)
0.25 tsp. dry yeast
- Add the ingredients to your machine in the order listed above.
- Start the machine and let it mix for 5-10 minutes, then turn it off. Use a spatula to consolidate flour sticking to the sides as needed. The dough should be the consistency of a thick soup.
- Let the mixture sit in the machine at room temperature for 12-24 hours. It should increase in size by about 50% and have bubbles on the surface.
- Select the “Bake Only” cycle on the machine and press “Start”.
- Remove from the machine and let it cool for about 10 minutes.
Enjoy!
I like to listen to audiobooks on my iPod. I have a subscription to Audible.com and buy one or two books a month. In the beginning things were fine, but about two years ago iTunes stopped remembering my Audible password. I get around this by double-clicking on any Audible file and put in my password when it asks. This fixes the problem long enough to sync. But if I quit iTunes, I start over. If I forget, iTunes automatically deletes the files from my iPod. Needless to say this is a major pain in the butt!
This got me thinking about Digital Rights Management (DRM) and how wrong it is. The cartoonist xkcd sums this up nicely. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t! I stopped buying DRM’d music from the iTunes Store in favor of DRM-free tunes from Amazon.com. As far as I know I don’t have that option for books. Why not?! [The irony here is Audible is now owned by Amazon.]
Thanks to xkcd.com!
June 2009 Update: The iTunes Store has gone DRM-free for music! How about it Audible?