A Goose

Cotton and silk blend, sport weight yarn. This cord will be used to wear my MP3 player around my neck.

Last night, the wife was craving Thanksgiving-dinner-themed foods and asked me if I'd them for her today. She was imagining I'd pick up a lot of stuff pre-made, but I was overly-ambitious and instead spent four hours making roast turkey breast and thighs, stuffing, mac salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie from scratch. On the upside, we have meals for the next week.

I also made bread and I'm still making bread (from the leftover pie filling, this time).

I learned how to make bread two months ago and have been a little fixated on it since.

My loaves still fall heavily under the category of "rustic charm", but they taste good and have a pleasant bread texture, so I'm not too far off the mark.

I started out just using a largely no-knead recipe that I found here. The result is a dense, nutty, lightly sweet bread that works best for breakfast foods. I made it to-the-letter once, then later switched out the almonds and pumpkin seeds for walnuts. The wife and I are both big walnut fans.

After experimenting with different add-ins on that recipe, I investigated recipes with actual, pre-rise kneading required. The ONLY problem is that most were meant for two loaves, which is way more than my little two person family needs, especially since the bread only stays fresh for four or five days. Instead, I used the measurements from the muesli bread recipe, and just adjusted from there with different techniques - like letting some of my flour and yeast sit for an hour or so to add some sourness, or adding honey in the water with the yeast (this turned out my favorite loaf so far. Mainly because I'm a huge sucker for honey).

The loaf on the far right up there is the one made from left-over pie filling and I braided the dough for shits and giggles. It's an interesting look. I brunt the crust a bit, sadly, but it still turned out soft and moist inside. The pumpkin pie flavors are subtle in the center and strongest in said charred crust. It's awesome with butter, would probably go well with cream cheese too.

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Lastly, about those questions...

I signed up for an Ask.fm account, a service which allows and encourages the denizens of the internet to ask you questions in 300 characters or less.

I got it just because a few of my friends had it and it seemed like an appealing way to interact socially with other human beings, but I forgot that I'm surrounded by trolls and smartasses who proceeded to fill up my account with various forms of gibberish and raving in-coherency. Honestly, I couldn't have asked for anything better.

Ask.fm allows you to answer questions with a video and that's what I've been doing and it's probably the most fun I've had with social media in a while.

So if you get a chance, visit my account, send me questions, comments, or random finger bashing, I will appreciate it!

In my never ending quest to give my parrots living accommodation that are better than mine, I bought a pair of new cages to update my current set up.

Before, I had Azula the Senegal Parrot and the two cockatiels (Yoshi and Vanilla), in a 40" by 21" cage divided by a sheet of clear acrylic, resulting ins 'two' 20" by 21" cages. It's a powder-coated cage I got for cheap and hasn't weathered the intervening three years very well. I've replaced it with a pair of 25" by 20" aluminum cages that are simply beautiful, more spacious, and better constructed.

This is only cool and interesting to me, but I've uploaded pictures for anyone who shares my interest in... well, birds and the cages they go in.

( Pictures, pictures, and at least one terribly cute thing. )