Pig and farm report

 

15° when I woke this morning after a night spent dreaming about Tom Cruise an oddball fascination of mine that apparently has never stopped even though I don’t think about him now in awake hours  

quiet in body and mind the delicious ease of morning    vegetable soup on the hob thick soft naan I made yesterday wrapped in a tea towel   lingering excitement of yesterday’s first brief snowfall   

before the house wakes I am 18 or 19 I am living on the mountain getting up to milk the goats standing still as a cloud settles down until it reaches my feet and hide them   it feels like floating 

None of this is writing writing it’s old person rambling I catch myself doing it every once in a while but I don’t care this thing that happens when I am flooded with memory   washed over a baptism every time a soft feminine fever   with bready angel wings yeast in the font   

now I am collecting bees in a jar at four my brother convincing me to crawl into the neighbor’s window to thieve whatever might interest four year old and five year children   now at 50 having a panic attack right before being slid into the terrifying hole of the mri birdcage snapped firmly over my head   now at 29 I’m camping on Camano Island with my toddler son building a fire in the morning thinking how lovely it would be to live here some day   now again at 19 on the mountain baking bread for 12 people on a frozen morning a cloud still floating in my body   now remembering in my seventh decade   now at 26 getting married but in love with someone else  

I understand Alice’s changing deeper than ever  here this morning with a cat on my lap and one at my feet in front of a propane fire and I know this is good and pure and right

Dear Tom Cruise’s Weird Teeth,

TomCruiseTomCatTommyTommy if you told me to put my hands down get in the car I would even if I just watched you kill a man I’d keep breathing if you asked me to be your pretty girl stickgirl with pattycake breasts gaze into your starey INTENSE HAZEL EYES do what you asked in spite of you being a level above CLEAR I’d be your stickgirl hide Klonopin and Lithium in gluten free vita-muffins that I’d bake from scratch with dairy free frosting to cure you from your twitchy needs all your polars and I’d never Blow I’d let you stick an E-meter in my head while I chanted TOMTOMTOM and waited for you to get level med-compliant you’d give me a Liberty Boat a Prada bag and a snowmobile I’d be your tall bendy stickgirl we’d become Universal Unitarians or Methodists no one would take our photos unless we asked your hair would find its gray I’d get thinner and thinner I’d stop eating for your love my Thetan to your Xenu no leaks your billion year contract stickgirl in magazines and interviews at every movie you make with popcorn extra grease in the middle and Twizzlers in Aspen your brand new stickgirl brand new religion bang bang hard rolling hips slap hands and fire you’ll love me like a sticky sugar-tit horse I’ll even do my own stunts except for those that involve crawling inside anything then we’ll go to Hollywood the Holyland and sail the boat on weekends.

Love,

Becky

Your Stickybun Stick Thetan Girl Princess

Pig and farm report king tides & A High Wind In Jamaica edition

I'm typing as fast as I can because the winds are at 30 mph currently and picking up which means power can blink out in a hot second. Sometimes I get tiny fierce headaches in the place where I cracked my head wide open. Today is one of those days but my headache may be caused by anxiety or rather ANXIETY the little death to those of us who suffer. Currently I have anxiety about my blood pressure which is too high even though I am doing my best not to add flakey maldon salt to my freshly buttered bread and when I test my blood pressure with the expensive wrist sphygmomanometer I’m pretty sure my blood pressure shoots up I because I'm so anxious about how high it will be. 

My other anxiety concerns my beautiful house. I've never owned a house before and I never believed I would because I was working three jobs just trying to make ends meet when I lived in Seattle. Then my horrible mother died and left me a pile of money bog knows why we hadn't spoken in 50 years guilt maybe but I bought this beautiful house I paid cash for it so she will never be able to unhouse me again. 

Sometimes I hear the new to me house creak and whistle and groan and I freak out and my son tells me I was traumatized from our old apartments and rentals and slumlords. I know this is true. King tides and high winds make me anxious because I live in a forest and trees are not permanent on this earth. I've seen trees dance and literally walk during earthquakes and I've seen my trees here bend and sway and do-si-do like nobody's business then lash and fling themselves against my windows. Two years ago a huge tree collapsed through my neighbor’s roof and she just left it there for months. I have enough science knowledge to know that the king tides do not cause the whipping wind storms but it sure looks that way sometimes.

I am cold even though the heat is turned up. Anxiety runs up and down my bones like Wiley Coyote with piano keys tinkling. Maybe I'm going blind. Maybe I have typhoon. Or dropsy. Or the gallons. I'm reading this huge biography of Beethoven. All his physicians with their weird and deadly cures. It makes me sad. Along with being deaf Beethoven was a drunk and most likely a drug addict (removed 80 empty medicine bottles from his room at his death) and he suffered terrible acne and sciatica and he was retaining water so his physicians drilled a hole in his stomach and stuck a hose in there and let his insides drain out into a bowl under his bed and they froze good german wine into ice cubes for him. He had pneumonia but it is certain he died from physicians not knowing what the hell they were doing. Just typing that makes me want to cry and so I will. 

I have had gut issues all my life stemming I believe from being punched regularly in the stomach by my sibling. When I was at the hospital bleeding all over the place from my head I told my assigned doctor that the reason I fainted was because of gut issues. I told the attending physician that all my physical problems stemmed from gut issues and the attending physician said Oh I believe you and then nothing more was said proving to me that he did not believe me.

I am a tumble down mess red in tooth and claw like the tumbling tumbleweed of yore my body a ghost town with dust and saloon doors flapping open and closed and my neck feels funny and I need to drink more water don't we all just need to drink more and more and more water until they have to cut a hole in our guts to let it stream out at our ends. But I am PRESENT I am inside my body. I am notating Jerusalem it is lovely inside my face a red sky sloop down weepweepweepweep stained beyond anything that might occur in the bathroom.

Jupiter sits on my chest and begs me to stay I will stay because she is the Magiker sleek and black the high priestess of this house and we are dizzy with mustard pricks. When my phone rings I drop it out of my hand. My throat is a yellow eyeglass. My lungs are wasps but in spite of all this I baked a goddamn gorgeous cake feral in its chocolately ganachey truffle goodness.

Thank you Darklings for reading this far. Love, Rebecca

Pig and farm report sourdough bread edition

 

I have always found it odd that people hide recipes or charge for them. But that’s just me. This is sharp cheddar and dill sourdough bread. I am giving you my recipe and I tried to add my method with times included and there are probably a few mistakes in there because it’s early and I am typing in bed on my iPad which is generally haphazard for me. The recipe and method are in a different font sorry about that. This bread is delicious and my personal favorite. Remember that yeast is a living thing and all times are subject to change because of temperatures and the baker’s experience and also the baker’s temperament. I tend to be impatient and learning how to bake sourdough bread has definitely helped me with that. When you start this loaf make sure you have a day to relax and get into it. You don’t want to be rushing. Read through the recipe a few times before you start. I suggest keeping a sheet of scrap paper to check where you are in the recipe. Especially beginning and end times. (Hmmm…did I start this bread at noon or at nine? You don’t think you will forget but it’s easy to get lost in the process. These days I have a  notebook dedicated to writing down each recipe and each bake). Ps. One of my lines got wonky as I was revising and. I don’t know how to fix it without going into the original document. Sorry about that. Let me know if you have any questions.

500 g flour 

300 g water

50 g dill pickle juice from the pickle jar

150 g chopped sharp cheddar

8 g chopped fresh dill

150 sourdough starter

11 kosher salt

25 grams olive oil

1. 12 PM. Roughly combine the flour water pickle juice and starter. Cover and put it in a warm place for one hour. You don’t want to knead it at this point or mix it a lot. This is called fermentolyse. It is just to let the flour absorb as much moisture as it can before forming gluten. Don’t put the salt in yet!

2. 1 PM. wet your hands and then add the salt by pinching it in, then scoop up the dough and slap it a few times on your work surface, rolling the the back of the dough over on front of the dough. This is called a French slap or a slap and fold. You can see the dough come together quickly when you use this method. What is happening is the gluten strands are breaking apart then quickly combining again and gaining strength. If you want to do the stretch and fold method here, of course you can. Cover the dough and put it in a warm place for another hour.

3. 2 PM. Sprinkle or spray your work surface with a little bit of water. Don’t add any more flour at this point. Take the dough out of the bowl with wet hands and spread it out as flat as you can get it on your work surface in a rectangle shape taking care not to tear the dough. You kind of have to gently pull and coax it. Spread the chopped dill with wet fingers all over that surface, then put the chopped cheddar on top of it (just like you would butter and sugar when making cinnamon rolls) then carefully fold it up like a thick burrito. Put it back in the bowl. Cover it for 30 minutes or until the dough sort of relaxes out of its burrito shape. This is called laminating.

4. 2:30 PM. At this point 2 1/2 hours have passed. I do coil folds 3 or 4 times with 30 minutes in between each one until there is enough gas and air in the dough to resist. Usually by four hours the dough is ready to shape.

5. 4 PM. Time to pre-shape the dough. Sparsely flour your work surface, carefully dump the dough out, making sure you don’t rip it then gently pull the dough out into a small rectangle. Pull the sides together and pull the bottoms together and roll it into a ball. Cover it for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes you’re going to make that ball tighter by pushing it to the left and pulling it down toward the right while forming a ball then pushing it up and pulling it back. What you’re doing is creating surface tension so the loaf holds its shape when you bake it. This takes a little bit of practice but it’s easy once you get used to it. Now it’s time to place that ball seam side up into a banneton or tea towel lined colander or bowl.

6. 4:30. Finish bulk proofing for 1&½ or 2 more hours, depending on how warm your house is. This is the bulk fermentation stage. Remember that this stage actually starts as soon as you mix your starter in with your flour so it starts at the beginning using this method. In my house bulk fermentation takes about 6 hours in the summer and 6 1/2 to 7 hours in the winter all together.

7. 6PM-ish. Cover the dough and put it in your refrigerator overnight.

8. 7AM. The next morning place an empty Dutch oven in your oven and preheat the oven and pot to 500°. Let the cooking vessel stay in the oven heating up for 30 minutes. This will give your loaf the desired spring up.

9. Gently tip your dough right side up on a piece of parchment paper. Using a lame, razor blade or very sharp knife and gently but quickly slash the top of the loaf. 

10. Very carefully remove the Dutch oven, remove the lid and place your dough into the pot, using the parchment paper as a sling. Please wear heat proof gloves doing this. I like to spray the dough with a little spray bottle at this point to help the spring.

11. Bake at 500° for 20 minutes with the lid on for oven spring, then lower the heat to 450° and bake for another 20 minutes for color.

12. Let the bread rest for two hours before you cut into it. If you can bear it.

Notes: I use a scale to measure everything. Weights are much more accurate than volumes. I add olive oil to make the crust softer. If you want a crispier crust don’t add it. I roughly chop the cheese up then put it in the freezer for 20 minutes before I add it to the dough. This keeps the cheese from completely disappearing into the dough. There are videos all over YouTube showing the methods I wrote about here. Use this valuable resource! 

Remember fail better and all sourdough fails taste amazing.

Let me know if you have any questions. I’ll answer them in the comments!