It finally happened

I finally injured myself at judo.

This is my lovely boot. So far it allows me to stand if I'm careful and don't put too much weight on my right foot. But soon it will let me walk! Which is awesome, because I am some seriously terrible at crutches.

We were doing speed/form exercises - all forward throws have a part where you crouch down in front of the other person and spring up. We were using that motion to propel us into a short sprint, return, and fling ourselves back into the crouch. On my last one, my foot missed the turn, I tried to walk to the tops of my toes, and my ankle went sideways.

I called N and we had a nice little trip to urgent care (where the doctor told me she was considering taking judo back up, but that I was really hurting judo's case in this argument) got some x-rays, decided my ankle wasn't broken (but that she thought she saw something a little weird in my x-rays), got my lovely boot and went home. Painwise I'm doing great - she gave me a script for Vicodin if I need it, but so far I'm doing great on ibuprofen. I'm not even doing the thing where you keep close track of when you're allowed to have your next dose.

Next day, I call our normal doctor, who starts out all "if it seems to be doing fine, you don't need to come in" then hears the "maybe something weird in the x-rays" and changes tunes to "please go see the nice podiatrist lady." So I do. More x-rays, including ones of my other foot for comparison. My bones have all their little corners, but the shin bones on my injured leg are a smidge further apart than the ones on my left - so she's worried that the ligament holding them together also ruptured. She thinks I'm going to be at least 4 weeks in the boot, then physical therapy (no timeline) before back to normal. And by normal she means wear a supportive brace whenever I'm active for at least a year. Worst case is that I do need minor surgery either for the shinbones ligament or if the outer sprain ones refuse to heal nicely. But won't be able to tell til after physical therapy.

I'm terrified of what all this will cost. Also what my stress levels and metabolism are gonna do without regular exercise. Not much I can do about any of it right now.

BUT - Vlad is MUCH better, and it looks like we don't have to take him to the vet for about two months - as opposed to every two weeks. So I guess my ankle is getting all the money we're saving on vet bills :(

My Current Sourdough Recipe

This is based strongly on the Extra-Tangy Sourdough Bread from King Arthur Flour, but I wanted to include some whole wheat and I needed to enlarge the recipe to make loaves big enough for sandwiches.

morning: Take starter out of fridge
noonish: Use 8.5 oz of the starter to make pizza crust, feed starter
afternoon: start this bread

In a large bowl with a lid, mix:
8.5 oz starter
2 c whole wheat flour
2 c all purpose flour
2 c water

Put lid on. Let sit out for about 4 hours.
Stick in fridge overnight.

morning: take it out of the fridge, let sit about 2 hours so it's not so incredibly cold.
Add
2 3/4 tsp salt
1 Tblsp sugar
all purpose flour as needed - (I'm trying to get a measurement on this instead of just throwing in handfuls til I can knead it. I added 1 1/2 c last week, and that was too much. Which seems really weird looking at the original recipe..)

Knead about 6 minutes.

Let rise about 5 hours.

Shape into 2 loaves.

Let rise 2-3 more hours.

Slash tops deeply.

Bake at 425 degrees (I actually preheat for this one because it relies so much on oven spring) for 30 minutes.

Red Dawn Watching Party

I totally made red velvet cupcakes and piped hammer and sickle designs (after dying the cream cheese frosting yellow) on them.

For those who don't know: Red Dawn is a movie about a bunch of high schoolers in Colorado who form a group of partisans when the Soviets invade. Also, N is pretty active in a survivalist group here. There were members of that group that had not yet seen Red Dawn.

So we fixed that. If nothing else, we had to do it before they release the remake! (I hadn't seen it either. But then, I don't claim that I am prepared to go live in the mountains for a few months if I had to. I just bake the cupcakes.)

Then we watched Zombieland. Everyone was happy and it was a very late night.

Sourdough Pizza Crust

adapted from King Arthur Flour's recipe

• 8.5 oz unfed starter
• 1/2 c hot tap water
• 2 c flour
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp yeast

Knead 5 minutes
Rise til doubled, 2-4 hours
Divide dough in half, shape roughly into 6 inch discs
Let rest at least 15 minutes
Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Shape to final pizza size, poke interior with fork to prevent bubbling
Bake crust 5 minutes
Add sauce and toppings
Bake an additional 10 minutes (if you may need to rotate the pizzas if they are on different racks halfway through this.)

It is really, really good. It still gets pretty thin, and it is nice and crispy and holds up to the sauce well. The crust is chewy. It doesn't brown prettily like you'd expect - sourdough is weird about browning.

The real joy is that it uses unfed starter - that's the stuff you can't use in most recipes because it's not very active. Instead of throwing it out when I feed the starter from the fridge I can make this - I expect that will happen a lot. May also try making the dough and freezing it - either for future pizzas or for a big batch of breadsticks.

brothers

Sourdough bakeoff! KAF recipe using Stinky. Stinky bread is on the left, Arthur is on the right.
They both had huge ovenspring.
But Stinky's bread only rose right in the center. Flavor is fine, maybe even a bit better because Stinky eats only whole wheat flour. But for bread rising purposes, Arthur is the better starter. I haven't quite brought myself to throw out Stinky yet. Theoretically, I could grow a new wild starter anytime I have a week to spare. But Stinky is my first! Still since I can barely use enough starter to keep one going, I'd just be throwing out a lot of it to keep two alive.


(The invalid and his brother, Mister Shoveybutt.)
Vlad is off steroids! Hopefully that will go well and we can stay off of them. Now he should: be less thirsty, be less hungry, and grow his fur back better. The first two will hopefully mean he will start letting us sleep through the whole night. I can't wait.

I just happened to catch this bird enjoying our hanging planter while I was taking the other pictures.

Other news:
N has his darling car back.
I learned how to start the patent process at work, which involved commuting for a workday and talking to people.
New recipe: Frenchified Beef Stew - great with fresh sourdough, awesome the next day. We used stew meat instead of short ribs, parsley instead of chevril, and discovered our shared love for pearl onions.

Sourdough bakeoff!

The starter from King Arthur Flour arrived, and I made my first batch of bread from it. (To henceforth be known as Arthur.) I made the accompanying recipe, which makes annoyingly small loaves. (I think they mean for them to be freeform, but we like making sandwiches out of everything, so use loaf pans.) It never rose all that much, but I gave in and stuck it in the oven 2 hours past the suggested rise time. HUGE oven spring that made it almost a respectable size loaf. Fantastic texture: seems almost professional. Stinky's bread comes out like english muffins, but Arthur's was much more like bakery bread. Much, much softer.

Experiments to still be done:

1. Try the KAF recipe with Stinky
2. Modify the KAF recipe to include whole wheat flour
3. Modify the KAF recipe to produce larger loaves.

Other things:

The insurance company is going to fix N's car (they scared us and threatened to total it: would have been a huge pain in the neck mostly because we have never dealt with such a thing before.) He's got a rental Accord in the meantime, which is ginormous compared to our cars.

Today is my 9th anniversary with IBM. All as a co-op. I wish I knew who to ask to find out if that's a record!

I got a new computer for the first time in almost 5 years, a Mac Mini. As soon as I get the proper video adapter for my antique monitor (hey, at least it's LCD) I will get to be properly excited.

Last weekend we finally went to a thrift store near a nice part of town (it's not IN a nice part of town, but it is right next to a bunch of antique shops) Our theory paid off - the store itself was small and dingy, but the selection had a lot of great quality stuff. We'll have to go back sometime before I need an interview suit.
Sadly, someone rearended our parked car almost as soon as we got there. We saw it happen (from half a block away) and got the guy's insurance info. The insurance company will take care of it next week - the poor little miata needs a new rear light assembly and maybe some love to get the trunk lid to sit just right again. :(

I tried letting sourdough rise until I would normally put it in the oven. Then I re-kneaded one of the loaves and let it have a second rise. It took FOREVER, and came out super sour. I'm not sure I can coax a well-rounded loaf out of Stinky, so I gave in and ordered a starter from King Arthur Flour.

Judo started back again this week. It was great fun but I hope that next week it does not make me quite so sore.

Today I went to school and signed up for thesis hours for the semester. 7 this semester leaves 3 more before I graduate. Wow.

Vlad continues to improve, and is taking another step down on his steroid intake.