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Our Well-Loved Cookbooks: Flour Water Salt Yeast

So . . . I ordered yet another cookbook yesterday.

I’ve recently been watching a cooking channel on YouTube (perhaps one you have heard of, unlikely one you figured I’d watch) and the host released a cookbook last year, so I splurged. Until a make a few recipes from the book itself, I don’t feel that I’m in a solid or fair position to offer a review or opinion. Hopefully in about a month or so (after I spin up a few of the recipes and get a sense of the style) you’ll see such a post here. Until then…

My lacking of an opinion is not the case with Ken Forkish’s Flour Water Salt Yeast.

I remember when my newly kindled interest in sourdough bread-making started to really heat up. I’d begun culturing a starter and then I went scouring the internet for advice. A lot of people recommended this particular tome. I added it to my collection and spent a few solid days reading the details, pondering the techniques and anticipating my next loaf… mostly because that first starter was still pretty new and not ready to use.

I could write a lot about this cookbook.

I could tell you that the tone has always struck me in the same way as I felt when I worked my way through university and had this one lab-rat job for a boss who had a PhD in molecular biology and couldn’t believe he had to explain this stuff to me and fine, but pay attention and do you mind if I crank up the radio and we’re all going out for beers after work, you in? Pleasantly mentoring? Friendly condescending? Lovable know-it-all-ish?

Or, I could tell you that within the words contained on these pages there is as much elaborate history and detail about bread theory as there is actual recipes, and if this was online everyone would complain that they need to scroll for five minutes to get to the ingredients list but since this is a book it’s as much a beautiful read about bread (and pizza crusts) as it is anything else. Be prepared to read as much as you cook.

I could even tell you that if you read this book, no if you seriously read it and understand it, you’ll change the way you cook and you’ll go out tomorrow and buy a digital kitchen scale and understand that the math and French you learned in high school could serve more than an abstract purpose in your life as you start to refer to bread as having desired hydration levels and calculate flour percentages in your dreams. Shush! My sixty-percent levain is resting!

Basically I could just tell you that if you want to make good bread, I haven’t found a better volume. This is a great cookbook and one that will endure in my personal collection for a long time.

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Gone Fishin’ (Part Zero)

A lot of my story-posts begin with “back when I was a kid” because back when I was a kid we did a lot of things that were low-cost, time-burning ways to entertain kids in the local wilderness, a lifestyle that appeals more and more to me as I get a bit older.

So it should be no surprise to say that back when I was kid we frequently went fishing…

… and I’ve been thinking about that lately.

As an adult I’ve let this once-hobby lapse a little bit.

Well, a lot, to be honest.

In fact, it’s been three years since I bought myself a sports fishing license, a permit to drop a hook for non-protected fish species within the provincial rivers and lakes (excluding National Parks!) I haven’t made it a priority.

Also, as my wife reminded me when I told her that I was planning on putting a little more time and effort into fishing this upcoming season, the last time I went out I broke the tip off my fishing rod. So, technically, I’ve had no license nor a functional fishing rod.

This morning I changed that narrative and dropped some money on my fishing plans making it all official.

First, fishing Licenses for the 21/22 season went on sale at 9am, and I’m now legal to fish in the province of Alberta, from pulling a pike from the mud-hued river that is a thirty minute walk from my front door to snagging a rainbow trout from any deep lake in the foothills of the rocky mountains.

Second, a fishing rod repair kit should be arriving via Amazon Prime delivery by Saturday afternoon and I can spend a few minutes (or maybe hours) making sure my old equipment is closer to prime condition for some spring and summer angling.

More camping. More outdoors. More rivers and lakes. Less computer screens. As much as I’ve enjoyed this past winter, spring can’t come soon enough.

Now if I manage to catch anything, I suppose the biggest question will be what’s the best cast iron pan for frying up some fresh fish, huh?

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Holy Molar!

I didn’t get much chance to focus on writing anything better than a short personal update for today.

Anyone who has been reading my posts regularly might know that blogging, cooking, and enjoying the outdoors is a stress-relief valve for me…. though apparently not enough of one.

According to my dentist I’ve been grinding my teeth.

“Are you stressed about anything?” she asked.

Hmm. Let me think… while I adjust this facemask and re-sanitize my hands for the sixth time today nearly a full year into a global pandemic.

It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but all that stress grinding meant that I cracked a filling and needed two hours of emergency dental work yesterday morning after an ivory chunk clinked into the sink basin Sunday evening.

I slept a lot yesterday and went to bed early. My face hurts. My newly capped tooth and my morning coffee did not get along at all. Zing!

I think a nature walk is in order.

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What counts as a “visit” when traveling?

I have a rule about traveling.

Specifically, I have a rule about how I talk about traveling.

When someone asks have you ever visited a place then my response is often… well… technically, that depends… sorta… kinda… here let me explain…

So, here. Let me explain.

I’ve been poking through a lot of travel blogs lately. Thanks to the Twitter algorithm and the types of things I post I get recommended so many accounts that are hashtag-travel, and (I assume) vice versa, because that’s a good fraction of the folks who follow me first. Those blogs tend to fall into two categories:

a) bloggers for money, who are (or who are trying to be) social media influencers, posting lots of gorgeous photos and extensive articles on very specific vacations, and

b) bloggers for passion, who are (often) folks or couples in their 20s living their best life and writing about it while having this goal of “visiting 10 new countries every year” or “visiting 100 countries before I turn 30!”

This second group tends to make me think about my own definition of what constitutes a visit.

To clarify, an example: about five years ago the family and I spent 10 days travelling through Iceland, stopping at numerous small towns and moving on the next morning, eating, drinking, spending, taking lots of photos. Two years ago we had a layover at the airport in Iceland, ate some breakfast at the restaurant there, bought some snacks, and left a few hours later. In my mind, we’ve only visited Iceland once. I don’t count an airport layover as a visit.

Another example: In 2006 or so we did a bus tour of Eastern Europe, one of those Contiki party trips where they shuttle you from city to city, hotel to hotel, bar to bar, and you take lots of pictures, drink yourself silly, and remember the blur twenty years later. Between a hotel in Budapest and a hotel in Krakow, the bus stopped for lunch in a small city in Slovakia. Can I tell people I’ve visited Slovakia? I had a delicious pizza lunch in an old town patio that I still don’t know how we successfully ordered from the waitress who spoke almost no English, but I honestly don’t claim that I’ve “visited” Slovakia. I don’t tend to count it on my list of visited countries.

So this brings me back to my rule about how I talk about traveling.

What counts as a visit for me?

Personally, it’s a basic rule: an overnight, a meal, and time on feet in the street.

If I count a place visited it means I’ve slept there, eaten, and wandered about. None of this “I drove through and stopped for coffee” or “I had a layover at the airport there once” stuff.

What do you count as a visit?