Midwestern Weekend

I'm kind of compulsive, and sometimes this is good and sometimes it is bad. I always wish that I could put my need to stick to a schedule to good use, for instance, by ritualizing exercise so that I have to go for a five-mile run every Monday at 8 a.m., but this rarely works. Instead these rituals only seem to develop for activities which, though pleasant, are inconvenient when they cease to be optional. For instance, whether I need anything or not, I have to walk half a mile and back to the grocery store on Saturday morning, and when House comes back on next week I will have to go to the Student Union and hope I can commandeer one of the TVs near the Burger King. (There's never more than one person there at that time in the evening, and there are two TVs, so this should be do-able, but it irritates me that I don't have a choice in this matter. I actually bought a television exclusively to watch House and schlepped it all the way out here to the Midwest, but was, when it came to the point, too cheap to spring for cable, so it doesn't get any channels. It just sits in the living room and makes the place look lowbrow.)

For better or for worse, I have also developed a ritual of getting up early on Sundays and baking bread. This is a good thing, because I love having fresh bread, and store bought bread is either really expensive or not very good. And it's such fun to choose a different recipe each week and purchase small quantities of various flours at the Sahara Mart, and the kneading, and the thrill of watching it rise, and the pleasant, homey scent of baking bread. (This last only applies when I am not also scheduled to set the apartment on fire.)

This week's bread is a high-protein whole wheat loaf, made with soy flour. Since K and I eat so little meat (though we do drink more milk than you'd expect of 20something grad students), I felt the extra protein would not go amiss. I had a slice today for lunch, along with a bowl of Laurie Colwin's black bean soup, and it was quite good - nice crumb, good crust, and a pleasant wheaty flavor. But what I am really craving is sourdough: a daunting prospect.

Laurie Colwin has this to say about sourdough starters: "What with stirring them or using them once a week and taking them out for an airing and keeping them in the right place in the fridge... who needs a sourdough starter? You might as well get a dog." She gives a recipe in Home Cooking but states that the results were mixed and no one really liked it. (I love this about Home Cooking, that it includes recipes that don't really work and encourages the reader to have a bash anyway, but in this case it's not very helpful.) K's copy of The Joy of Cooking recommends undertaking a starter if you are "adventurous, persistent, and leisurely." I am not accustomed to having a recipe make demands on my character like this.

Anyway the only kind of sandwich K and I ever have is peanut butter and jelly, which would be rather nasty on sourdough bread, although I have an ongoing desire to roast a chicken. A cold chicken sandwich on sourdough would be very nice. I need a roasting rack and possibly a baster before this can happen, however.

In the meantime, I am enjoying polenta with black bean and corn salsa. Learning to cook is fun.