Meal Choices: Things that Work ... and Don't Work ... and Amish Friendship Bread recipe

Meal-planning on Wednesday nights don't always work out well for me. For something I spend a good hour or two cooking on Sunday and 14 meals a week eating, I don't really spend all that much time trying to figure out what I want. But, recently, I found that I don't really need complicated meals or really need as much as I previously thought I do.

Sometimes my best meals come from not planning at all but working with what I have in the freezer. Last week, I used a package of ground turkey. So, after perusing the fruits and vegetables in the store, I found a green bell pepper, a red onion, a tomato, and a fennel bulb to go with it. I diced each item and fried them, and I added the already-cooked ground turkey to that. Served on a bed of rice, the dish tasted wonderful. A smaller meal like this worked very well for me for dinners, but I do need something more substantial if I were to drink wine with it.

The other kick I've been on is the meat/vegetable-fruit mode for lunches. I'll portion some chunk of meat for five days and have either a vegetable or fruit with it. This week, I'm having tri-tip with butternut squash. Last week was pork tenderloin with an orange (of some sort; not a navel orange). Simple. Relatively quick to prepare and get ready for work.

My Amish Friendship Bread run as come to an end. I tossed the rest of the starter in the freezer for later use, whenever that may be. I did develop my own recipe for a plain bread that one can make from said starter. The recipe and variations are below.


Amish Friendship Bread plain "sourdough" bread

2c Bread Flour (regular flour is ok)
3/4t salt
1t baking powder
1/2t baking soda
1.5c Amish Friendship Bread starter
1T water (at most)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Either oil a baking sheet or cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add starter and mix well. If consistency of the dough is too dry, add the water gradually until the dough sticks together without being tacky. If dough is too tacky, coat hands with flour, sprinkle some flour on dough, and knead dough until dough is no longer tacky but smooth. Roll dough into a ball and place ball on prepared baking sheet. Flatten the ball into a thin disc and cut an "X" into the top with a sharp knife. Bake in oven for 40 minutes or until outside is a dark brown and bread sounds hollow when thumped on the bottom.

Modifications: There are several possibilities with this recipe, but I have tried only the following combinations so far. When adding these ingredients, add them to the dry ingredients and mix well before adding the starter.

- candied orange peel and currants/raisins: add 1/2c to 1c each of candied orange peel and either currants or raisins.

- rosemary and kalamata olives: add about 1c kalamata olives and 1/3c rosemary leaves. Cut kalamata olives in quarters before adding to dry ingredients.

Reflections of: A Fractured Fan Base

Concerts, and the music that generates them, help make me whole. Nothing can replace the awe and amazement when you can hear thousands of fellow fans singing together in unison to a favorite song. The energy and implied comraderie cannot be topped. Venues would fill to capacity the whole night long. And yet, sadly, outside of major concerts, you just don't see a lot of this. Most people seem to stick to the one band they want to support and show up for that band's set only.

Now, granted, the more specialized a scene gets, the more scattered the fanbase can be. There are hundreds of bands in the "metal" genre, ranging from heavy metal, death metal, doom metal, "speed" metal, thrash, and many others. You can have one person who loves In Flames but not At The Gates, and another that's vice-versa. But both of them may love Metallica.

When the band is smaller in popularity, that divide seems so huge that, if the bands share a card at a venue, you may have people show up for only one band and not the other. Not only does such specialized fandom hurt the other bands' chances of gaining a larger fanbase, it also hurts the scene.

I can't say that any particular scene is different from this. I've seen this in the punk, metal, post-punk, and even easier-listening genres. It's like people have become fans of bands rather than genres.

Scattered Thoughts

- Miraculously, I'm making headway through the various mounds of crap in my apartment. Some of it materialized as a part of my attempt to be organized. The file cabinet helps. However, I'm fighting almost thirty years of disorganization. I don't think I put things away in any sort of order except for "it fits there". As you can imagine, that can make it rather difficult to find things.

- Facebook scares me, but I think it does it in some sort of good way. Just by looking through people's "friends", I found profiles for people I went to school with in grade school and middle school. Some of these people I haven't seen since fifth grade.

My only reason, at first, to check it out was to see if it'd be a suitable replacement of my personal web site. Sadly, it isn't. I decided to have fun with it anyway.

- How cool it had to have been to be one of the milita people in Public Enemy's entourage. Long Live Chuck D! (Un)Fortunately, we won't see anything like Metallica teaming with E-40 on a track.

Local Sightings of Note

My cell phone has become a rather desirable emergency camera. I've had a few instances where I used it when my regular camera was absent. Granted, my current main camera recently came back from the dead (queue "Coming Out of the Dark") and shall be replaced with something that has more than 1MP and can store more than 16 pictures.



The first one I'll present came from a sign next to a local church (see image at left). Sadly, I did not attend said service to see what arguments would be presented. Would I get a different answer if I attended the "classic" service as opposed to the "modern" service? I'm curious as to what kind of doctor they had as a presenter. Sociologist, maybe? I am rather impressed, though: Fremont has this and many other sermons on their web site with audio and possibly video. It's a rather appropriate sermon for Father's Day.



For those who missed it, someone by the name of Michael Jackson died recently. Of course, I taped the memorial service and shall watch it when I can hijack someone's VHS player. My sad little mini-shrine of my "Thriller" and "Dangerous" cassettes sit on top of my entertainment center. I think if I didn't avoid the general media, I would have gotten sick of the coverage like most other people.



While Pam drove around town, she saw a minor tribute drawn on the back of a bus stop (see image at right). I'm sure it'll take time for a group of taggers to create a giant multi-color image of MJ somewhere in America, but I'm happy (for lack of a better word) that someone in town did something here. Pam felt that the erroneously used apostrophe gave the memorial some street cred. I think one could stretch the wording to have all sorts of interpretations. A good placement in a semi-urban setting, the memorial just seemed perfect. I think it appeared not too long after his death, so its urgency bleeds out. The person had good penmanship, too.

I was going to set up a slideshow of the various pictures of booze bottles I have uploaded, but it didn't seem to work for me. If I feel it's warranted or worth the real estate, I'll give it a shot. Otherwise, you can click on the link on the left side of the page. I label each image with what it is and try to leave notes about how I felt about the particular beverage. With some, I may not remember specifics, but I can give a general idea.

Michael Jackson - A Reflection

As a child who grew up in the 1980s, many things marked what it meant to be an '80s kid. Star Wars and its numerous toys. Cartoons like the Transformers. And, of course, Michael Jackson.

I'm not sure when or how Michael crept into my life. My parents listened to oldies stations as I grew up, and I know that station, KHYL 101.1 FM, played (and still plays) Jackson 5 songs. I remember ABC being played. At my grade school, we had school jackets. In 1983, I got one, and it came with a Michael Jackson poster (see image at left). I still have that poster somewhere here. Even though I hadn't started developing my own musical taste back then, I already knew who Michael Jackson was.

By the time middle school came along, FM102 and MTV became the music gods. The latter showcased tons of MJ, and the "Thriller" video was the top video of all time whenever they did "all-time greatest videos" lists. I ended up buying "Dangerous" and "Thriller" on cassette. Sadly, I didn't get much farther, since rock n' roll cemented itself in my love of music. Somewhere, I may have a VHS tape with the original "Black or White" video on it. I think that video was the first sign that something just wasn't right with poor MJ.

My musical tastes have traveled to several realms over the years. Recently, I got into KHYL again, though it's now an R&B and soul station. I won't read anything into me coming full circle with music and suddenly having MJ die, but I do find the timing rather uncanny. In looking over his whole life, I can't help but feel sorrow for him. In many ways, he seemed to live a great life of fame, fortune, and fun. However, I have to wonder what all that really cost him in a lost childhood and a possible reclamation of it in his later life. From what he endured in his youth to the cruel irony of the accusations, hopefully, in time, the truth will come out and can help illuminate us all.

Rest in peace, Michael.

Amish Friendship Bread - A Blessing and A Curse

A fellow co-worker offered up some Amish Friendship Bread starter a couple of months ago. Being ignorant of what it entailed, I agreed to take some on and have fun with it. I didn't realize just how much stuff goes into the base recipe, and I felt sad that I wasn't really a bread but more like a cake. With good cooking self-confidence in hand, I set out to create a true bread with this starter and see where I could go.

Initially, I started by stripping everything away from the recipe and start with the starter, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and flour. I wasn't sure what proportions to use, so I sought out a reputable sourdough recipe (much what I wanted to begin with) and started there. Using that recipe as-is didn't work so well. The bread had good flavor, but it didn't rise at all. Given that Emeril's starter contains active dry yeast and my starter possibly doesn't, I needed to add some sort of leavening agent.

On my next attempt, I added baking soda and baking powder. I added less water than before since my first attempt seemed too wet. This one rose beautifully ... almost too much. Or maybe just the right amount? It tasted wonderful, though.

I've made one or two more attempts with this, and I'm getting closer to an ideal recipe. The bread has very good flavor, but getting the desirable rising has been a problem. I checked my baking powder, and it's still ok despite its age. So, I think I just need to increase the powder/soda in some sort of combination. Added water didn't help, so I'm going to abandon that. If I ever get to a point where the recipe I come up with seems optimal, I'll post it here.

Swinging The Night Away

"A Live Wire
Barely a Beginner
But Just Watch That Lady Go.
She's On Fire
'Cause Dancing Gets Her Higher
Than Anything Else She Knows."

- "Dance the Night Away" by Van Halen


I used to be an officer of a ballroom dance club many years ago. Though I probably didn't become as such under the best of scenarios, I took a shot at it and dedicated myself the best I could. We held car wash fundraisers. I made several different fliers to try to advertise. I took over the web site duties and completely redid the club's web site. I attended various dance venues in the area, including The Ballroom and Spotlight Dance And Fitness. I enjoyed a lot of the dances and especially liked the bolero, I think. Due to various factors, I left the school that housed said club and eventually left the scene as a whole. Ballroom became something I could whip out at weddings to semi-impress and never returned to a formal venue. That is, I never returned until last Friday.

One of my old high school friends dates the manager of Midtown Stomp, a swing group who offers lessons and a venue, the Eastern Star Temple, to dance the night away. Right off the bat, the Temple's ballroom looked perfect: good, solid floor; stage that felt like a high school gym; and an architecture that screams 1930s with its seemingly purposely faded and textured paint. Even the men's and women's restroom portals looked perfect for the occasion. I half-expected an Auburn to roll up with someone in a 'coon coat walking up the steps.

Pam and I watched the lesson and practiced a bit. Something I retained over the years is that any dance usually has its basic step, and anything else you add to that just depends on how you execute it. So, once I saw and recalled the basic step, I began to remember other moves as well. Later in the night, I got schooled that we were doing East Coast Swing, not West Coast. Apparently I had forgotten more than I realized, but knowing what I was learning helps me to recall it better.

As the lesson wound down, Jordan and the rest of the gang poured in. We chatted a bit, watched others dance (especially the competition-level dancers), and danced a bit ourselves. For a bit, they played recorded music, but the highlight was the Jive Aces playing live. A rather cool band from England, the Jive Aces, all dressed in yellow zuit-suit type suits, played all sorts of swing and other related music. They didn't restrict themselves to just east coast swing tunes, though; at one point, Pam and I danced a fox trot. Their varied repetoir allowed for all sorts of swing and period dances, and we got to see quite a few of them.

I had fun. I had many concerns going in and left with none. A rather huge crowd attended with a varying range of ages attending. Jordan mentioned that, because of the Jive Aces, it'd be the biggest draw. It's good to see dancing of any sort still alive and doing well these days.