County Views.48
Knowing I needed things to keep me busy after the election, I had put up a few sourdough sponges on Tuesday morning, which yesterday became eight of the twelve loaves you see above. Somehow, the demands of my little colony of wild yeast, the need to knead the dough and encourage the yeasties to go forth and multiply in the new flour I’d fed them, was a good antidote to obsessively watching vote-count updates. Furthermore, it’s clear we Americans around the nation need to try to find a few things that we can actually agree on. To the classics of apple pie and baseball, might I suggest adding bread and beauty (beauty = yesterday’s post)? (With apologies to any readers with celiac disease or gluten intolerance…if you’re just anti-carb, well, try one of the round zucchini loaves & let me know…) The little yellow tea loaves are semolina-cranberry quick breads; the rounded zucchini loaves are sourdough base with a commercial-yeast boost, and the multi-grain are the first of my sourdough loaves that pleasantly surprised me with their robust rise, even before the oven boost. Arise, wild yeast, and teach us Americans a thing or two about making the best of mucky circumstances… 🙂 I began this little colony of yeast (also known as a sourdough starter) shortly after returning from Bangladesh – before then, I’d been baking since at least the Ford presidency, but always with commercial yeast and their fairly-straightforward kneading & rising realities. Learning the needs of my colony of wild yeast is a welcome combination of biology experiment, lesson in patience, and introduction to new mysteries. May we all find fruitful and healthy distractions when needed. 🙂
County Views — Election Special #3
Sunday I got out for a wonderful long bike ride, and saw the sign above in one of our local retirement-village neighborhoods. In that ride (25 miles), Biden-Harris signs outnumbered Trump Signs by about 25 to 1. But there were a few Trump signs. I took all the photos in the gallery below this afternoon, near the square in downtown Santa Rosa which has become a place of free speech. While I was there I saw several people on foot holding the signs you see and displaying them for the many cars driving past, some which were trucks with both Trump flags and national flags flying. Raised middle fingers and hot words were exchanged, and motors revved loudly by those in vehicles on occasion, but I observed nothing more than the exercise of free speech and an occasional excessively loud engine, happily. I’m putting these up now, as polls have begun to close on the east coast and we’re all settling in for however long we need to wait to find out who will occupy the oval office, and who will control the senate, come January. Fingers crossed that peace and respectful rule-of-law democratic process will prevail…
County Views.41
For those who’ve wanted more updates, a few photos from my biking excursions on a favorite road at then northern edge of our beloved local state park, which apparently became the fire line when the Glass Fire got closest to my home earlier this month. As I write this, we still haven’t had rain but seem to have made it intact through another week of high winds. I will not invite into the universe the words of the thing that high winds make us fear: use your imagination, please. And then, imagine rain and a world where scientific evidence drives public policy to build a future that our own future generations inhabit healthfully, in fruitful coexistence with all of world’s mysteries and species. These shots were all taken in a short stretch along Channel Drive on the north side of Annadel, where some private homes abut park land. The hills in the background, in the shot with the horses, are in the Mayacamas range, previously featured in the “twice burned” post. That particular property is less than 1/2-mile from where the bottle and burned brush are. Clearly, that house and all others in the area fell under emergency evacuation order the night the fire grew so fast.
(so much world, so little time....) 