Bread and Varmints!

Adventures in bread making, part two and meet the varmint.

I am remaking the quinoa honey bread using a different recipe that requires more rising and 5 minutes less kneading.  RB really liked the taste of the last loaf, and so I thought I might try it again.  In case you don't already know, I bitched in my last post about a lovely-looking loaf with an oozy centre - ick!  RB makes pancakes for the kids every weekend and he has been known to produce a gooey pancake once in a while.  I think he feels for me.    

I just finished mixing up the yeast, letting it proof and I now have a "homogeneous mass" or "sponge" that needs to rest for two hours.  After 30 minutes of sitting, I felt the sponge through the plastic wrap and it's quite warm, almost hot really.  I love the chemical reaction - it makes me feel like a scientist!

I am about to take the Nathanimal to speech therapy and the dough should be finished rising when I return.

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Two hours later... damn, damn, DAMN!  I have another problem.  The dough looks almost the same as it did when I left, despite the heat under the saran.

Stupid me.  I boiled the water for the yeast instead of using warm tap water.  I thought that this might speed up the activation of the yeast; however, I just read that hot water damages the yeast.  Lesson learned:  hot water should not be used to proof yeast.  I decided to bake it as I am a sucker for punishment.

before baking - see that pancakey loaf at the top?

Post-baking.  They don't really look much different, just a little shinier due to the egg glaze.  

Stupid bread; stupid me.  Why didn't I just follow the recipe?  The bread was heavy and dull.  No sparkle in these loaves.

I was so peeved that I had to make some more bread PRONTO.  The recipe is from Alexandra's Kitchen and is touted as the "best easiest bread you will ever make".

Here's my yeast and water mixture in WARM (I've learned something!), not hot water.

foam and bubbles equal success!

I baked the bread for the required 40 minutes and guess what... it turned out!  RB says it's his favourite (not hard - thus far I've produced raw, overcooked, and unleavened - not a great track record).

The bread was edible and tasty... but I was not impressed.  This is what you get from a "quick" no-knead recipe.  I am returning to the basics in a few days - meaning that I will be kneading.

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On to new bread today, the 20th of April.  It snowed last night and I am not happy with Mother Nature.  My tulips need sun and heat, not frost!  Brouwer is brewing up some beer and so I thought it seemed like a good day for baking.  Here's my recipe:

My friend, Katherine, lent me her bread-making bible:  Great Bread Every Time by Marilyn Barbe.  I made two substitutions:   I used melted butter instead of shortening and honey instead of molasses.  Not really the best idea for me as I am a novice baker but what the hell.

Here it is right before I whisked it into the oven:

It is currently baking...  30 mins. at 400 degrees... we'll see what I end up with.

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The moment of truth.  Here's the bread!!!

We slathered it in butter and indulged.  The bread was DELICIOUS!!!!  I will definitely be making this again.

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And the moment you've all been waiting for... meet the newest member of our family - Zoomy.  Zoomy was found by my husband in our basement last night, after his mater was annihilated by two of our traps (the mother was a real trooper - she got caught in one trap and must have dragged it over to the second trap for another snack).  RB showed Gwen the baby mouse and she couldn't resist him so we have "adopted" him.  He likes red licorice, cashews, raisins, milk and homemade bread (hee hee).

Zoomy and Gwen

I'm not sure why he's called Zoomy as he's the slowest mouse I've ever seen.  I told the kids that they should spell his name Zumi, to lend themselves and him some cred, but they didn't buy it.

Gwen carries him around constantly; I told her that she's going to love him to death*.  Z's home is a big plastic bin with a small plastic toy dog, some food and drink and shredded newspaper.  Oh and Z has a fur bed.

Seems like good living to me - the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese**.



*postscript - Z died two days after I took the picture. Poor little mouse.  The children were devastated.  We had a proper mouse funeral:  nine guests, kind words, a quiet burial, flowers on the mound, tea and cookies post-service.  Z was laid to rest in a purple silk lined blackberry box.  RIP Zoomy.

**quote attributed to Willie Nelson

Les Souris - Eeek!

I couldn't remember the French word for mouse and had to ask my son, who goes to FI.  I love that my son's French vocabulary is now more extensive than my own.  Well, I love it and I hate it.  No one likes a smartass kid!

Here is a picture of my office (with said smartass in the foreground).  Please do not ask me what is in his mouth because I do not know or care.

I know, this is not a very exciting picture; however, if you look to the top right, above the door, you will see a hole.  Here's a close-up:

That hole was made by a RODENT!  On Friday night, the kids and I were watching Freaky Friday (2003.  Jamie Lee Curtis, Mark Harmon and sober Lindsay Lohan; I give it 3.75 stars; it's cute and funny).  I packed the kiddies off to bed, went into the office and SHRIEKED! RB and Nathaniel bolted into the room and I pointed at the hole.

See?  There really was an animal scratching in my walls, and I was NOT exaggerating about the horrendous scratching in my previous post.

While we were examining the hole, the rodent actually had the gall to stick its nose out of the hole and begin scratching again in earnest.  It was awful.  We saw its schnoz and fur and such at the hole and I was FREAKING out! I may as well have been in the fetal position.  I deplore rodents.  I have no problems with snakes, spiders, bees or other insects but I cannot abide rodents (not a fan of the lowly maggot or silverfish either).  There is a scene in the disturbing novel The Painted Bird (Jerzy Kozinsky) and it involves a farmer being eaten alive by a pit of writhing rodents. To this day, I cannot get that image out of my head.  Read The Painted Bird only if you are a masochist and are interested in the violence, and sexual and social deviance that characterizes wartime.  I should not have listened to the individual who recommended this book to me when I was a tree-planter.

Back to the rodent.  On Thursday, when I first heard the terrible clawing, and before I knew that I would have a freaking hole in my ceiling the following evening, I was smacking at the wall with a book (Bicycle Repair Manual for those who are curious), which I thought might scare the creature away. Maybe I should have pounded harder.

I went to my local hardware store and bought some mousetraps from the incompetent but friendly  employee.  He seemed to know a fair bit about mouse-catching and we debated the merits of poison over traps and decided to go with traps.  Because I am a jokester and the employee seemed like a fellow with a sense of humour, I started to call him Mousekiller.  Exempli gratia:  "Hey, Mousekiller, what do you think about rat poison?" He seemed to like the moniker.

In the mousetrap aisle, I asked MK to demonstrate how to set the trap, because I'd never set one before, but MK was clueless. I mean, completely clueless.   Eventually, I figured it out on my own, while he was fiddling with the thing, and MK congratulated me and told me to go on Youtube for backup.  He seemed embarrassed by his ineptitude but I thought it was funny.  I told him that he was not living up to his reputation and that I would have to stop calling him MK.  He thanked me for coming in and told me that I made his day.  Awww....

Anyhow, RB set the traps with gobs of peanut butter and we caught four mice on Friday night.  We haven't caught anything since then (today is Monday) and I am hoping that the evil rodent that ate our wall is one of the deceased.

Here is what greeted me in my office on Saturday morning:

Drywall dust and bits of fur / lint / insulation all over my Henry Napartuk!

And this mess:

The hole also became quite a bit larger. It doesn't look so bad in this picture, but trust me, it's ugly and disconcerting!

I am hoping that the creature that did this either:
a) escaped and had its tiny brains pulverized in the trap or
b) died in the wall.

If it's the latter, it means that there will be a god-awful smell in the office sometime soon.  Something to look forward to.

I meant to write about the pinworms (which we do NOT have) in this post and also a mini-review of another graphic novel, and lastly how I received a senior discount on a receipt (horror!!!!!!) on the weekend, but that will have to wait.

Cheers.

Pinworms, Lice and Mice, Oh my! Pinworms, lice and mice...

Okay before some of you who see me on a regular basis (Hi, Mom) start freaking out and thinking that we have lice AGAIN (we've only had it once, dammit), I want to reassure you that we are not infected. I repeat, we are not infected.  More on the pinworms shortly.  :-)

I'm pretty sure that many individuals in the blogosphere have written about pinworms, lice and mice but not all at once, in the same blog.  I couldn't resist it.  The phrase just sounds so catchy!

Pinworms, lice and mice, OH MY!  Pinworms, lice and mice.

And I'm quite certain that this trio has not appeared together in a blog as of yet.  So consider yourself very lucky to be reading the only incidence of these four words together.  I should know; I googled it!

Last week, I was trying to locate a comb / brush, which are in short supply in this house, so I could attempt to "style" the children's hair before leaving the house and shocking the public with our untamed tresses.  RB never combs his hair, ever.  If he does, it becomes a bush that you can hide small animals in (like mice, nyuk, nyuk).  He has let Gwen comb his "glory" several times, but that is just for the humour factor, and we love him for that.  But I prattle on; back to the real story here.  Just to remind you, I was looking for a comb.  Of course, I couldn't find anything and so my Mom rummaged around in her purse and found a brush.  She combed the children's hair, while they shrieked in mock horror, and then she made a comment like:  "You'd better not have lice!"  We laughed. ha ha ha.  Remember when?  ha ha ha.  We were so cavalier.

"Ha, ha",  I said.  "We don't have lice."

I looked her firmly in the eye.  When you are denying something, even if you're not lying (notice how I didn't say "telling the truth" - that was intentional), you MUST make eye contact, especially if you're denying something as disgusting as having lice.

Not a minute later, I was getting something out of Nathaniel's school bag, and I saw a loose sheet of paper.  I read the words "There has been an incidence of lice in your child's classroom..." and I began to laugh uproariously.  Perfect timing!  I handed the sheet to my Mom, who read it wordlessly.  She did not laugh: "I'm disinfecting my brush".

I then proceeded to check behind Nathaniel's ears and at the nape of the neck, which is where the lice like to frolic.  Clean, clean, clean, hallelujah!  Thank you, Jesus.  I am not going to regale you with the sordid details of my entire family's battle with lice over a two-week period during which there was a LOT of swearing, combing, crying, television-viewing (the only way we could get the kids to sit still) and being treated like a social pariah. I am not going to tell you what it was like to arrive in Calgary and greet RB's cousin, whom I had NEVER met, and how I said:  "Pleased to meet you, too.  I feel kind of awkward saying this, but Gwen has lice and uh..."  cringe

AWKWARD Silence, forced laughter.  Who were we? Kin of Randy Quaid, in NL's Christmas Vacation?

Here is a picture of the only item that rid our house and hair of lice:

The LiceMeister!

It was worth every penny of the $26.95 that I paid for it at Shoppers D.  It and a cheap bottle of conditioner were our saviours.

I am taking Mr. Nathaniel for his summer 'do today - a crew cut. Not my favourite look for my boy, but it kind of suits him, mischief-wise.

I am going to end abruptly here, because I am freaking, I repeat FREAKING out right now as there is some sort of animal scratching in the walls / ceiling to my immediate right and I can't take it. I'm not kidding. It's fucking awful.  While in the middle of writing this blog, not five minutes ago, I made a repair man whom I barely know come in to my office to listen to the horrid scratching and he was laughing at me.  Holy shit.  I am done with those "humane" mouse traps and treating the mice like royalty.  I'm going to Tuckey's RIGHT NOW to get a snapper trap. You know those little wooden ones that snap the poor mouse in half. I am getting sick just thinking about it.  Stay tuned for the pinworms and mouse saga.  I meant to write it all in one installment, but I gotta go!  now!