Over the weekend I came across a posting for a very easy to follow recipe and technique on “how to make the best bread ever” and it inspired me once again to give it a shot. I used a combination of Eirik’s method of folding over the dough while still in the original bowl and the information that he linked to at the NY Times, and indeed, the bread turned out quite good.

Here’s what I did:

I combined 3 cups of flour, 1/4 teaspoon yeast, 1 & 1/4 teaspoon salt, and a pinch of cornmeal in a large bowl. I added about 1 5/8 cups of water. After spending about two minutes or so mixing it all up with a spoon, you end up with a sticky mess in the bowl. I covered that with plastic wrap and set it out on the counter overnight. I let it sit for 16 hours in total before touching it again. After the 16 hours I unwrapped the bowl and used a wide spatula to fold the dough over itself (while still in the bowl). I did this for a few minutes working my way around the bowl. I may try it again, using the original method explained in the NYTimes article but this sufficed. I let the dough sit another two hours with a kitchen towel covering the bowl, again just left sitting out on the counter. At this point I turned the oven on at 450. We have a set of ceramic Corningware pots with lids so I used a large, round 2.5 Liter one and placed it in the oven as suggested. When it reached 450, I took the hot pot out, dusted the bottom of the pot with flour, dusted the top of the dough with flour and cornmeal, and flipped the dough into the pot. Place the lid back on and then into the oven with it all for half an hour. After the 30 minutes, take the lid off, and I let it bake for another 15 minutes before taking it out and placing it on a cooling rack.

We had some tonight with dinner, dipping it on olive oil, and it was quite delicious!

So I’ve just come in from the rain. While struggling to hold an umbrella and having a flash light tucked under my arm, I collected an additional 40 gallons of water just in the past 15 minutes or so.

Collecting rain water has become this summer’s hobby (more like, obsession) of mine. It all started when I built the rain barrel a few months back. Since then I’ve created three more: two at the inlaws and an additional one here at home just today.

I have 1 1/4″ flex drain pipe used for the overflow and it just so happens to fit perfectly into the mouth of 5 gal water cooler jugs. I’ve converted five of them that my Pops gave me initially for making wine, into water storage containers in my shed – used specifically for watering the 1 yr. old trees that we have around our yard this season.

When it rains hard I take that flex drain pipe and route it into those jugs and few other buckets I have to collect some extra water. It’s amazing how much you can harvest in a single rain fall – so much so that I feel like I need more containers!!

The rain barrel I added this afternoon came from a workshop I attended two weeks ago hosted by the Lehigh Valley Water Authority. It was co-sponsored by Coca-Cola (who donated the supplies). At the workshop they gave out a 65 gallon drum along with the necessary supplies to build your own rain barrel. I took what they gave us, made some adjustments to their design, and hooked it into the already existing barrel we had.

So now I’m harvesting slightly less than 130 gallons of water.  All of it mostly goes to watering our vegetable garden.

I’ve come to realize there’s something primordial about harvesting your own rain water. We’re obviously not reliant on it in any way shape or form, but the act of doing it sticks with me for some reason. Knowing that I’ve personally engineered and built something that harvests what otherwise would just be wasted, is really cool.

These appeared after a storm we had this evening. I think they’re considered Cumulonimbus mammatus clouds that form in sinking air.

I’m not really good at shooting this thing yet, but here’s a video of how I spent a small portion of my holiday weekend:

I think my stance is all wrong. I’m pretty sure I have to lean into it more, so the angle of my body absorbs the kickback a bit better. The inside of my shoulder took a pounding too.

That’s right… it says “Play Date”. You didn’t know that dogs have play dates? Well neither did I. It was pretty funny watching them together.

I like this shot:

We’ve joined the ranks of dog ownership. Meet Ruby…

Today I read a review over on Lifehacker of a site that will convert your handwriting into a usable True Type font. Yourfonts.com has a free service that will do this within a matter of minutes. Go there… print out a template… write out the characters in your own handwriting… scan it… upload it… and bam!… your very own handwriting font.

I was going on almost 8 months without upgrading the Wordpress platform and today I finally got around to doing so. I’m glad I waited too… 2.7 seems to be very well thought out and complete overhaul of the dashboard.

Take a look at what they have to say over at Wordpress here: http://wordpress.org/development/2008/12/coltrane/ 

I’m also very interested in seeing how the automatic upgrade process works with this system. I’ve installed a number of different instances of the platform manually over the past year, so having that process automated will be really nice.

We now have Goldfish. Picked them up a couple weeks ago for the girls. They named them Rusty and Turner. Of course, not knowing a single thing about these things, I’ve probably blinded them forever with my camera’s flash.