Low 70s (71 at 5pm) and drizzly.   Odd weather for late December in Tamarindo.  But darn pleasant!  I briefly considered putting on a sweatshirt (but then realized it was still above 70).

Interesting week included getting two "A"s in my Law classes (I'm pleased), a home invasion without any apparent theft (also pleased, but also frightened and angry), a rainy December day (pleasant, but weird), and bread that wouldn't rise (nothing good about it).

Maybe those 2012 wackos are wrong... perhaps it is all coming to a skidding halt *this* year.


But I really doubt it.

Labels: bread, weather

I had a very nice birthday party last night.  Thanks to all who attended.
For whatever reason, I got into my head that it would be a delicious appetizer spread.  Jocelyn and I spent a few hours prepping on Wednesday, then some more hours baking Thursday morning, then finishing on Thursday night.    It was a blast.  I don't plan to make so many apps any time soon.
The menu included:

• Pan Seared Oven Roasted Pork Loin with an onion/soy glaze, sliced thin and served on lettuce leaves with red bell pepper, jalapeno pepper, and some shredded white onion.
• Basil leaves topped with sardine and a guava reduction
• Turrialba cheese with red bell pepper and basil, drizzled with balsamic reduction, on picks
• Fried Chicken Wings plated on celery leaves
  
• Basil, Oregano, Parsley & Garlic bread topped with a black olive and sour cream tapenade garnished with parsley and red bell pepper
• French bread with same tapenade, etc.
• Whole wheat baguette with same tapenade, etc.
• Turrialba cheese cubes, plated with chopped parsley
• Six fresh-baked loaves, sliced, with olive oil for drizzling
• Carrot stick
• Celery slices/sticks

There may have been something else, I don't recall exactly.
Some friends (Judd and Jacqueline) were nice enough to bring over two whole additional platters of appetizers- including some puff pastry, fried zucchini, ham-wrapped plantains (yum!), and more.

Many brought wine or other libations, one of the standouts is a Costa Rican produced passion-fruit wine that is a "demi-sec" and very interesting.  I'd like to try it ice-cold on a hot afternoon.  I think it would also make for an excellent mimosa-style beverage, or a dessert wine.   But sipping it mostly-cold after eating a lot of spicy/salty food was not the best pairing.

Of course, the people present are what really makes any party, and I always enjoy the company of good friends.  We are very lucky in that regard.

We finished off the evening with some chocolate cupcakes smothered in spicy chocolate frosting.  Yummy!

A nice change from a 'normal' party for us was that we made everything finger-edible, so instead of doing a bunch of dishes and silver, we just threw some napkins in the washing machine, and had glasses and serving plates to clean.  More prepping, but less cleaning.  Prepping is more fun.

Labels: birthday, bread, food, photo, tamarindo

Another hot one yesterday. I spent the day finishing phase II of my gate project while catching the cellphone every so often*. I am feeling proud of the difference- note the old wood on the main portion of the gate vs. the newly refinished wood on the smaller gate. Yes, I know it has imperfections. Now that phase II is done, it doesn't look like as much work as it felt like while I was doing it! I'm sure that the heat played a role. Also stopping to catch the phone takes its toll on productivity. Occasional play breaks with the pooches didn't make it go any faster either.

This project has been a good reminder of the efficiency of specialized work. Once I figured out the best way to do a particular aspect of the job, and assembled the correct tools, it went much more smoothly. Of course, by the time I got all of that figured out, I was also done ;P One of the hazards of doing it yourself.

*Sometimes I like to take a second to enjoy technological advances. While I did have several very important business phone calls to handle, I was able to do so while doing some much-needed home maintenance. It was awfully convenient to be untethered from my desk!

In contrast to the gate project, I think I've pretty much got basic bread making down to a simple, efficient system. For those that aren't interested in a lot of time invested but do enjoy homemade bread, I think you'll have a hard time getting more streamlined than the following:

1. Grab flour container, yeast, and salt from wherever you store them. (this requires pre-planning in that I keep my flours in rubbermaid plastic bins that are large enough to dip a measuring cup, makes it easier to get the flour later and keeps it fresh).
2. Put ingredients on counter with 1C liquid measuring cup, 1 1/2 C dry measure cup, 1 teaspoon, 1 mixing spoon, 1 medium mixing bowl.
3. Put 2 tsp of dry yeast into 1 C liquid measuring cup, fill with hot tap water, set aside.
4. Put 2 tsp of salt into bowl
5. Put 3 Cups of flour(s) into bowl.
6. Go do something else that takes at least 5 minutes.
7. Add yeasty water to flour, mix well. If too dry, add a very very little bit more water. For me, it is usually a near-perfect wetness if I do it as above.
8. Cover with a towel, let sit for an hour, put in fridge.
9. Get up in the morning, pull dough out of fridge, pour a cup of coffee and go do something that takes 15-30 minutes (so the dough can warm up a little).
10. Remove dough, fold it two or three times, put it onto a cookie sheet or pie tin with some olive oil rubbed onto dough and pan, sprinkle a pinch of salt on top.
11. Set a timer for 45 minutes. Go do something else.
12. When timer rings, turn on oven to 475 degrees. If your oven chimes when it hits temp (mine does), then go do something else.
13. When oven is hot, slice some lines on top of the bread, add to oven, spritz oven with some water to increase humidity for a nicer crust (alternately, throw a handful of icecubes on the bottom of the oven, no bowl needed).
14. Set cooking time to 27 minutes (cooking time may vary). Go do something else.
15. Done. If you want a darker crust, let it sit in the cooling oven for a little while- you can basically toast the loaf like in this photo.

That's it. The actual "work" part is probably less than 15 minutes. You just have to start it the night before and also be around to do the little parts in the morning. Fresh bread is worth it.

Labels: bread, dog, food, house, weather

For the last few weeks we've been noticing dry, wilted plants on the roadside, covered by dust. The same dust has been blasting pedestrians and coating various items in our lives. We expect that in March, but not in August. Well... the last few days seem to have corrected the unusual weather- we've had gentle to not-so-gentle storms nearly every afternoon since Sunday. Never a big fan of rainy days, even I can see that we needed the precipitation.


I've got bread in the oven and a book awaiting my attention. It isn't so bad.

Last night's storm made for a particularly ominous-looking sunset. The sort of thing that makes you enjoy having a dry place to get out of the weather.

Labels: bread, house, photo, sunset, tamarindo, weather

The 2nd loaf came out excellent! I'm so happy.
Need to lower the rack in the oven or back off from 500 degrees- the top got a little overcooked, looks more like toast than bread. The flavor is still excellent, and the interior is fine.

I like the mouthfeel of white bread better, but a little whole wheat in there makes me think that it is a tad healthier.

While baking, we also saw a new-to-us bird in the tree out front. Turns out it is a Masked Tityra (Tityra semifasciata). White feathers, black mask, red bill/eyes. Pretty interesting looking bird that reminds me of a penguin. (image linked from RioRvPark.com).

Feeling good about the morning so far.

Labels: bird, bread, food, garden, tamarindo

Back in a previous life, I got into the habit of occasionally making bread in our breadmaker. My favorite thing to do was to load up the 'maker with all sorts of fancy flours and grains with malts and honey and whatnot- start a batch right at bedtime and let it rise for a few hours so that it would finish baking just an hour or so before I needed to wake up. Waking to the smell of fresh baked bread is a good thing. Eating thick, warm, grainy bread with a hot cup of joe ... Yum!

Fast forward 10 years, and I've started making bread again.

This time I don't have a breadmaker and my access to 'fancy' flours are limited, so I hunted around online a bit and found some simple recipes for simple bread. The recipe from which I borrowed most heavily is here on www.instructables.com. I also found a great recipe on YouTube. "Easy Bread".

It turned out delicious! Thick, crunchy crust, soft fluffy inside with nice crumb. The crust has an ever-so-slight sourdough flavor that we loved. The whole batch was devoured by us for dinner- leaving just 3 slices for toast this morning. I didn't snap any photos, but I did record my recipe:

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• a little less than 1/2 Tbl of dry yeast
• about 1 Tbl of salt
• 1.5 cups of very warm water

Note re: the yeast & salt: I just used a regular spoon, and eyeballed it to about half-full. This will surely come back to haunt me later when I can't get the exact same results as my first attempt, but that's what I did.

I put the yeast in the water and let it do whatever dry yeast does for about 5 minutes, in the mean time I mixed the salt and flour and did some dishes.

Then I poured nearly all the water into the flour mixture, which, it turns out, was too wet. You want "shaggy", apparently. I had "gooey". So I added more flour and mixed it up a bit more. Then more floor, more mixing. About 4 times. Mental note: next time add 1 Cup water and see if I need more. I suppose that all that fiddling is almost a little like kneading. Maybe.

Finally satisfied that the texture was acceptable, I covered the bowl with a kitchen towel and left it for about 5 hours (I was aiming for 4, but got distracted).

I broke the dough into 2 chunks, then did the stretch/fold thing from the video on each chunk. I did this in a baking sheet to which I had added olive oil to keep things from sticking (like the instructable). I let the second rise go for about an hour. After the second rise I sliced a line down the center and sprinkled some salt on top (very little).

I then cranked the oven to 500 degrees and added an empty pan near the bottom (for ice, later). I got impatient around 450 and threw the loaves in, as well as a hand-full of ice in th empty pan. I planned to cook 'em for 10 minutes but at around minute 8 I noticed that they were getting a little singed on top so I backed the oven temp to 450 and reset the timer for 10 minutes. At 10, I set the timer to 10 again and reduced the temp to 350, and added some more ice to the pan.

The ice-pan thing is purported to help form a crunchy crust.

Somewhere around minute 4 I pulled the round, small loaf out of its pan and put it right on the rack, to brown the bottom a little extra. The rectangular loaf wouldn't come out of its pan, so I left it alone. Note to self: add a little extra olive oil on pan sides, or try flour, to reduce sticking.

After the final buzzer went off, I pulled one loaf and thumped the bottom with my thumb- it didn't sound quite hollow, so I put everything back into the hot oven for another 3 minutes.

Pulled it out and let it sit for... 1 minute? To "cool". Couldn't wait any longer and cut it open.

Now, there are good smells, then there is the smell of fresh-baked bread from your own oven. I highly recommend it.

The crust was firm and a little salty, surprisingly thick and very dark.

After devouring the first loaf with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, or with butter on it, we were giddy with pleasure.

It comes as very little surprise to me that the foundation of most European cooking is bread. I am still a little surprised that this couldn't-be-simpler recipe produced such a lovely treat.

And on that note: I'm off to bake my second attempt. This time I added a cup of whole wheat flour instead of 1 cup of all-purpose flour, and used a little less water to begin with instead of adding extra flour to firm stuff up. I also let it rise the first time overnight (because I was sleeping). I'll be sure to post up results.

Labels: bread