Boules, Boys, and Basements

Well, Tuesday of this week, it happened. Seymour, my sourdough starter, bloomed into the man I knew he could become. I will be making a boule, or sourdough loaf sometime this weekend. I need to head to the store to get a couple of things, but it will be an interesting adventure. 

Seymour is doubling in size, has bubbles galore throughout his doughy body and smells like the fermentation process of flour and water is supposed to smell or a little like a teenage boy's bedroom before laundry day to give you a better description. He is my baby. I have coddled him throughout this past month with the utmost of care. The only thing I have not had to do is to change diapers on my little guy. I have burped him, fed him, and even flung a couple of "I love you" sentiments his way after nightly feedings. We will see if he is ready to leave the nest this weekend when I bake my first boule to see his power in the rise he provides or the unfortunate lack thereof. If he droops like support hose on a skinny leg, we know he needs to grow some more before using him. 

On to other things. Togo had his first vet visit afternoon. He is a healthy, happy boy! No shots had to be given. Nothing had to be put up his rear to make him unhappy or uncomfortable. He is perfect. I even found out that Togo has been taught hand signals along with his voice commands. So "sit" and "down" and "stay" are all done with hands and no voice is needed. When my daughter was visiting, she found this to be true on the beautiful boy. This means whoever owned him before us spent quite some time with this guy before surrendering him. Unbelievable. It had to have been difficult to give him up or maybe they are people who just don't get that upset over having to say goodbye to family members they have had for five years. Odd to me, but as they say, it is what it is. 

So today is Thursday. I'm prepping my sourdough to bake this weekend. This consists of feeding a small amount and getting it prepared to use in a dough. After feeding, it takes a few hours to allow for the rise of the dough before it is added to the rest of the ingredients in the loaf. I am looking forward to seeing how he comes out. I'm also on the lookout this weekend for a proofing bowl to give my bread loaves the lines you see in many homemade loaves. My husband tells me, "You're such a girl." Can't help it. I could be accused of being much worse than being a girl! 

No plans for today besides searching for a bookshelf if we can find one. I have worked all morning, and the time has come to give myself a bit of a break to begin cleaning, cooking, and getting off this laptop for a while. I always feel naked without my fingers on a keyboard. Strange at what we become accustomed to. 

Hubby Mac and I did find a five-tier bookshelf unit. Now we have to put it together. Well, there goes the marriage. Nothing last forever though, right? It's always such a frustrating event to put things together. The curse words that are invented and the crying and the entire horrible experience for a man is difficult. I may end up putting the furniture together and then putting the hubby in the basement with Harry. But who knows? Hubby Mac is a sweet man. Maybe the tense, nerve wracking, furniture breaking experience will go well for him. Hey, it's a thought. I can dream. Don't judge. 

While I'm waiting for the harrowing bookshelf ordeal to start on Saturday, I have my Seymour, work, and the unfortunate breakdown I'm about to go through. My house, because of my rib hurting, work, and all the other things going on, is about to be dubbed as uninhabitable. It's filthy. It's an older home, with the nice thick baseboards, which I love, but man, can they collect dirt, hair, and God knows what else on them.  The vacuuming, the laundry, the dishes, scrubbing out the fridge, you know, the regular pain in the derriere duties that have to be done on a weekly basis. The bathroom should have been condemned last week. I swear I saw something move in that toilet. If I am reported to have died in my bathroom, it sure wasn't from natural causes. Look for big hairy germs that have taken over. I'm sure they're mutating into large, creepy beings as I speak. 

After a simple spaghetti dinner last night, I threw together a blueberry cheesecake. Cooking the blueberries, I added a touch of sugar, then poured them all over the top of the dessert. It was so good!

Fresh cooked blueberries were poured over the cheesecake. We sat in silence, dedicated to the dessert we were memorializing. Still have a bunch to finish off tonight as well. Wow, that's a horrible job, but somebody has to do it. 😁😉😏

Okay. It's Friday morning! My starter has been mixed with flour and water and the process took place overnight. Now I mix it together and get a bulk fermentation going before the bake. Today I will put the ingredients together, let it rise, fold it several times, then the seven-to-10-hour bulk fermentation is ready to roll. It takes patience, grasshopper. Patience. Let the Force be with you and guide you. 

The tiny bit of starter in this cup was mixed with regular all-purpose flour and water. Only 1/4 cup of starter to get a boule. This is a test bake, as I'm not sure how it's going to work. Sometimes the newer starters aren't strong enough to bake yet, but we'll see what Seymour can handle. I'm booting him out of the nest today to see how high he flies. Or how hard he crashes, flour first. 

He was mixed with the other ingredients to create the bread and now we wait. I pulled each side into the center, twice, after one hour rise time. Now it's the bulk fermentation process for the seven to 10 hours. Since this portion of the sourdough bake process will take me a long time and I don't want to sit up all night to babysit Seymour (I know. I'm a bad mom), I will let the dough rise for a few hours and then refrigerate it until the morning. I will finish the rise, then the shaping of the boule, the scoring and the final stage, the bake. 

I have finished work for the day too and just found out that Terry's human child, Mallory, is coming by tomorrow. We always enjoy her company. She has been sick for a weekend, so the time we have spent together has been so little. 

Terry and I sat munching our bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches, accompanied by a bowl of split pea soup and watched a film together called Rollerball. Very odd film starring James Caan. Terry had seen it years ago and wanted to watch it again. I watched the pattern in my floor quite a bit, uncertain if there would be brutal bashings of bodies and there were several. Not a lot of blood, but enough that I counted the lines in the wood floor. 

My hubby suggested I pre-warn Mallory that we would be watching a "boring" Oregon Ducks game tomorrow, just so she knew what she was walking into. I let her know, giving the girl ample opportunity to change her mind about the visit. She informed me that she would be changing her arrival until Sunday instead. That's perfectly fine, as I would be cleaning my house and removing the remnants of flour and dough lodged on the walls, the face of cabinets, and even the floor. I do believe I pet a pup or two on the way in to wash my hands. 

Saturday morning!

Saturday is here in all its glory! I love Saturdays. We have plans of cleaning the house, rising, shaping, scoring and baking Seymour's offering to us, and hanging photos. In between, I'm writing this post. My way of being the procrastinator that I was born to be. I finished getting the boule ready to score and bake after two hours of having a nice final rise. It's looking great! 

See those gorgeous air bubbles poking through? That's a great message telling me that Seymour has done his job and has done it well. 

I was shaping the dough and the air bubbles rose to the occasion, letting me know that everything was happening the way it should. I'm very excited to score and bake my first attempt at sourdough of this decade, after the rise is complete. The last time I made sourdough bread was when my children were two and four years of age. Now the girls are into the upper 40's. It's been a while. 

While I sleep, I play Gilmore Girls on my phone. I know this show so well that it's basically background noise. Hubby Mac is not disturbed at all since he has his cochlear out and his hearing aid out of the other ear. I can get up, throw a party, dance, sing, and party with 80 people and he wouldn't hear a thing. Not that I would, but just saying. So, my show continues to blast through the room, creating sound through the darkness. I sleep right on through the night with the background noise, waking in the morning to another episode. It's nice to get back into my routine again, as I let the Netflix account lapse, believing I don't really use it that often. Hubby Mac and I stream so many other shows and movies from other platforms. I found I was missing what I was used to, so once again, I have Netflix. It's difficult to remove the old habits from your life and besides, now I can recite the entire Gilmore Girls program, from Season one on through. I'm special that way. 

Jumping out of bed, I went straight into the kitchen to get the bread dough rising again. I pulled it from the fridge, took off the lid, and found the beautiful blob of dough laying there all shiny, firm, and absolutely gorgeous! Yes, I'm a little obsessed. After babying Seymour throughout the month, I'm so excited to see the results come to fruition. Seymour's offspring has now made his way into the oven for the bake I've been waiting for. We'll see how it goes. 

I walk from the office into the living room to check on the bread in the oven and look over to see this. Kit looks completely bored today. He's laying on the top of the cat tree, overlooking what he believes to be his kingdom. 

I check the bread, all is well. Walk back into the living room and then there's this:

Lovely. This is why we can't have nice things. The testosterone in this house is crazy. Male cat, two male dogs and of course, my hubby Mac. Bella and I have to fend it off on a daily basis. The men rule the roost. 

Having to take the lid off after 20 minutes of baking gave me a sneak preview of Seymour's offspring. It smells so good! I can't wait to slather butter all over it and go to town! The boule is rather small which does happen quite often with a new starter. Seymour will become older and stronger in lift as I keep feeding and he keeps fermenting. Eventually he will pump out excellent, big boules and other baked goods. 

3:30 rolled around eventually and guess what? It's Duck time!

Munchies are at the ready ...

Plenty of crackers, French onion dip, ginger snap cookies, Oreos, variety pack of candy bars (miniatures), smoked gouda cheese with fig spread, corn chips, and Lay's potato chips. All in all, we did pretty well. No veggies this time though. No fruit. Overkill on the carbs and sweets, but once in a while, you've just got to say, "What the hell?" 

Oh, and one other game time treat. My boule had finished baking and spent two hours cooling. Then I sliced into the heavenly scented mound of goodness. 

The "lift" was off a bit. It looks like it was under proofed by a small amount of time, and the scoring should have been done deeper into the flesh of the ball when it was shaped. But all in all, it was delicious. The crumb and texture were nice, and the flavor was great. I'm impressed at the bread Seymour gave us. I will be creating much more in the kitchen with sourdough, that's for sure! My next project is another boule, but at the same time, some pizza dough! Marina has set me up with a great recipe for the dough. She loves it and so does her family. 

Sweet man and I munched on a couple of pieces of the bread. I'm in love. 

This has now become my new hobby. The art of baking has always been fun to me and now I'm adding the sourdough projects. I used to love making and decorating cakes. 

Of course, this cake was not complete here, but my ex-son-in-law had just graduated from plumbing school. I figured why not a toilet cake with Oregon colors? A hand holding a diploma, reaching out of the toilet bowl to add to the idea. Yes, that's a Baby Ruth candy bar in the center. Yes, I know. I'm a very sick individual. But hey, somebody has to take on the job. 

My granddaughter, Jess went through a zebra print phase. This was her birthday cake. I actually found some marshmallows that were zebra striped to go with the cake. 

Kaylie Rose, Marina's oldest daughter, chose Nightmare Before Christmas as a theme for a birthday. Grandma got busy, with some help from Brandy. 

Another granddaughter, big Maddy as she is known, wanted a zebra pattern cake too, but she wanted red added to hers. Marina helped me out with this cake. 

I have always enjoyed messing around with various cakes, cupcakes, cookies, breads, and all the goodies that can be made. Homemade doughnuts are the bomb! Anyway, today I made this and next weekend it will be homemade pizza. Tonight? Tonight's dinner is going to be a French bread pizza because it takes a day and a half to two days to prep the sourdough starter for pizza. Next weekend's project. 

On with the game! The Ducks were playing on Stanford's turf this week. Terry and I were concerned as I typically worry each time we play against Stanford. It's always anybody's game with them. They beat us two years ago in their stadium. Last year, in Autzen stadium, we beat them. But here we are, back on their field. Can we pull this off? 

We started off slow, that's for sure. Stanford scored two field goals and we were still at zero for a score. Now the anxiety moves in. Once the Ducks settled down and got their bearings, they beat the Cardinals with a 42 to 6 final score, leaving the Ducks at a standing of 5-0 for the first time in 10 years. Awesome game, fantastic job the Ducks did! Congratulations to the boys in green and yellow!

Now, I have talked about Harry several times during our blog postings. For those of you who follow the blog, you probably know who "he" is. We nicknamed him Harry, well, just because we could. Each time I walk through my kitchen and head to the laundry room, I look under the door leading to the basement. Twice this week the light has been on in the basement. 

Marina believes that Terry is either playing a game with me or that we have something electrical happening. An electrical issue would not surprise me except that the switch is physically moved into the "on" position when this happens. An electrical problem would not create enough movement to flip that switch unless it was followed maybe by a fire or quite possibly an explosion of some sort. She was also wondering if I'm not going downstairs and forgetting to shut of the light and seeing it later, creating the illusion of a spirit of some kind in the basement. But that's not the case either. I have not been into the basement for weeks. In fact, about a month and a half. I moved jewelry items and some items from the office into the basement at the time. That was it. 

Walking past the door on Tuesday, I found the light shining from beneath the door. As usual, I opened the door and flipped the switch off again. Two days later I was doing laundry and boom! There's a beam of light coming from under the door. This all happened while Terry was at work. Hubby Mac cannot walk down the stairs, so I know he's not going down there for any reason. Not once have I heard the basement door open unless I have opened it. It has a distinct sound when moved. 

I have walked into the basement several times since our move here but have felt nothing. No creepy feelings. Nothing moving down there that I see or hear. It's actually a clean basement that is solidly built. The narrow staircase is a real neck-breaker, but other than that, there is nothing off about this basement. 

Anyway, no creepy feelings. No strange sounds. But we have had a flower vase shoot off the top of the refrigerator and slam into the kitchen floor in front of Terry. I picked up the vase, put it back on top of the fridge, but in a very sturdy spot, surrounded by other items hoping to brace it. Once again, two nights later, the vase flew toward him again, missing him by inches. The vase now resides on top of a kitchen cabinet with a large "lip" at the top to help hold it in. 

We are not afraid of the home. It feels very relaxing, calm, and serene in the house itself. Never a scary sound or feeling anywhere, including in our basement. I have no idea what is happening, but it seems to be picking up the pace again. Maybe the light is coming on again because Harry knows Halloween is around the corner. 

In the laundry room there is an entry to the attic. I mentioned to Mallory once that maybe on Halloween we should climb up into the attic to see what lies above us. Who knows? We might meet Harry. Stay tuned for that fun. 

For now, I'm off to make some French bread pizza and spend time with my sweet man. Nothing is better than sitting next to him, watching shows, petting the fur babies, and laughing together. So, until tomorrow, I bid you adieu. 

Sunday morning and I jump out of bed into the chill of the room. Not just our room, but the entire house. Fall is definitely here and it's turning much colder. The nights and mornings chill the air enough to keep you cold and shivering for a few hours at least. I climbed into a nice hot bath when my hubby went outside to enjoy his cigars and his book. It warmed my toes again so I could feel them. 

Cleaning the house gave me a chance to not only warm up but to give me something to do until I heard from Mallory. She had planned to come over after being sick for a week or so. She shot her dad a text after noon to say they were heading over. Hayden and Mallory appeared about 20 minutes later. It was great to see them again! 

Sitting outside felt great, yet each time the wind blew underneath that carport cover, we were shivering. Fall is here and it is cracking down on all of us. Mallory and I brought Togo out with us since he has a lot of fur. The chill always feels good to him, as a natural way for a husky to live. 

We chatted for a while and enjoyed each other's company. Terry wanted to go have some yogurt, so we jumped in the car and went to Level Up! for a quick cup of fro yo. Brain freeze done, we climbed into the car and drove toward home again. Mallory received a few texts from John, her new man. We invited him over too to round it off. It was a nice visit and a good foursome. John's daughter, Melody, and Hayden sat in the house watching TV and playing on the virtual reality headset. We could hear giggling and chatting between them and that made me smile. It's nice to know those two get along since Mallory and John are just getting to know each other. 

Another weekend has come and gone. While we did nothing out of the ordinary for the past four days except enjoy each other's company and the company of our family. We do hope your weekends are thoroughly enjoyed by you and your family and friends. Life moves too quickly to not have that time together. Love a lot. Laugh until your sides hurt. Live until you're exhausted. Hug your family and friends like there's no tomorrow because there may not be. 

Once again readers, love yourselves and each other. Enjoy life. Count your blessings! Until next week, hugs, light, and love to you all! Join us next week for a trip to the Octoberfest in Roseburg!