utenzi

The other day I was looking up the phrase "bread and water" plus "punishment" on Google. I seemed to recall once reading that the reason the British Royal Navy used that particular sentence was not simply depriving their sailors of food, rather that diet caused horrible constipation. The bowel disorder was the real punishment. In any case, while searching for that I came across a funny page, Dark Roasted Blend , that made fun of people's preoccupation with environmental dangers. The following is their take on bread : 1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users. 2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests. 3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nat

I still don't have any heat and it's a mite cold in here but since it's 10 degrees warmer outside tonight, it's not as bad inside either. As you can see here, the repair fellow did make a visit to see me. He checked out the underbelly of the house first since that's where the periodic ills of my HVAC system are usually found. While he was there he dropped the fan speed of the unit. The thing had been set so high it was like a gale was blowing through the house everytime the heat or A/C went on. And the noise! However despite careful and studious examination of the system, no problems were to be found. Thereupon the examination made its way to the outside unit. Yep, that's the inside of the outside unit. That makes for a rather confusing sentence, y'know? Most of the unit is empty space but the outer rim is lined with heat exchange coils like the radiator of a car. But it was the tubing in the middle that contained our errant part. The repairman told me it wa

It's damn cold in here. My heat isn't working. AGAIN! I was at my girlfriend's place for the weekend and when I came back home it was 55f in here and the heat was on but no hot air was coming out. This has been happening every now and then for several weeks but it's difficult to get it repaired when it's not consistently not working. Up to now it's just been the electric coils that would sometimes not work but this time the heat pump isn't doing its thing either. That's why the title on this post. I turned off the heat a few times tonight since sometimes that's all it needs to get going again--but not this time--so it's staying off for the entire night and I'll see what happens in the morning. It's 53f in here now and since it's hovering at the freezing point outside, it'll be around 48f in here by the time I wake up. Getting out of bed in the morning will be quite the challenge! I've owned this place for 3.5 years and the HVA

Yes, I'm probably the last person who bakes on the planet that's not tried the no knead bread recipe yet. I've been teased about this by a fellow baking hobbyist who I work with so I'm breaking down and trying the recipe this week. I'll post pics in a few days when I've done the baking. One reason I've resisted is that I don't think baking bread from scratch is that much work. Of course I use a stand mixer so the real amount of kneading I do when working from scratch is minimal. Actually the work is brief and consists more of punching the bread down to redistribute the CO2--which is easy work compared to kneading bread dough. That pic to the left is a loaf of bread I made using the old fashioned kneading method--albeit with the kneading done with my mixer over there. In the meantime, for those out there that aren't familiar with the no knead concept it's based on a recipe published in the New York Times on November 8th, 2006 in the Dining Section