hobbies

Food Therapy

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A good friend posted this recipe for her focaccia bread. — A few of you asked for my Focaccia bread recipe. Here you go: 

In a large bowl combine 4 cups of flour, plus 2 teaspoons each salt and yeast. Stir until dough comes together. Drizzle with a good olive oil and gather it into a rough ball. It will be quite moist. Cover the bowl and place in the refrigerator for 8 to 24 hours. When you remove the bowl, gently punch down the dough, drizzle with a little more oil and gather into another ball.  Take an 11 by 13 inch pan, spread olive oil all over the bottom and sides of the pan. Press the dough to the edges of the pan.  Let sit for 30-60 minutes (some recipes suggest 2-4 hours).  Sprinkle fresh rosemary leaves on top. Drizzle more olive oil on the surface. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Using all ten fingers dimple the dough until it has small depressions all over it.  Drizzle a little more olive oil and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from pan to a cooling rack. Cut into shapes of your choosing. Serve with butter or olive oil and herbs. Enjoy. See my post from earlier today to see photos.

Always up for a good challenge I noticed that Robyn didn’t mention any liquid other than oil. Her ingredients will need about 16 ounces to get a dough. Many years of making my own bread tells me this. I made it last night before I went to bed,  oiled my bowl put the dough ball in after kneading for a few minutes. I drizzled more oil on top, covered with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator overnight.

Robyn sprinkled it with olive oil and fresh rosemary. Alas I was out of fresh rosemary leaves, so I adjusted.

I cut the dough in half after letting it warm up to room temperature for about an hour or so. One half I put in the freezer for a couple of days later.  Dough freezes well. It will keep a couple of weeks.

The other half I rolled out a little  and pulled it into a 10 by 14 roasting sheet that I use a lot. I previously spread olive oil on the pan and after helping the dough into the corners, I covered it with oil and wax paper and let it sit about 2 hours. During the last 30 minutes I chiffonaded some spinach, diced an onion and a green pepper, found my jar of minced garlic. I spread more olive oil on top and decorated the surface.

After decorating the dough…it is ready for cheeses.

Alas again I am out of fresh Romano. Another adjustment to my normal pizza activity. I forgot to mention that I intended to use Robyn’s recipe for focaccia and make a white pizza. I sprinkled the veggies with a combination of mozzarella, Colby-jack and parmesan.

Into the  450 degree oven for 10 – 12 minutes.

Good pizza is made in a very hot oven. My oven only goes to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. 10 – 12 minutes at 450 works pretty good.

Out of the oven after 12 minutes.

I let it rest long enough for me to touch the pan to cut it.

Leftovers. Nice.

I cut the remaining into four pieces and put them into a ziploc bag in the fridge. I think that they will reheat okay. The dough soaked up a fair amount of the olive oil. Letting it rest overnight coupled with the two teaspoons of salt gives the dough a sourdough taste and chew to it.

Overall an excellent choice for homemade pizza or focaccia.

Robyn’s product.

Thanks Robyn.

Carpe Diem.

A Perfect Day for Biking

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It is 73 degrees Fahrenheit. Blue sky sunny. Relative humidity 40 percent. What kind of day is it? Perfect. In Ohio, it is San Diego nice. Sweet! A perfect day to ride the bike a bit. Get some exercise.

And then there is Parkinson’s to consider.

How are you doing , dear? Feel okay enough for me to leave you for a couple hours? It is up to you. You were doing okay earlier before I went to the grocery but you seem like you are struggling a bit now. Should I stay?

… I feel like I need to lay down. I would like it better if you stayed.

Shit. No bike ride today.

Parkinson’s is a stickler for time management.

But the peach fruit pocket coffee cake made last evening with fresh peaches was good. This caregiver has three or four hobbies. Bike riding which I started back up a couple years ago. As a kid I enjoyed riding all over. As an old man I am afraid of other drivers so I stay on the bike paths were the cars do not go.

Baking came along in the late 1980’s as I became interested in bread making and trying to recreate a childhood taste memory of some of the bakery bread I enjoyed as a child. A bakery near us made absolutely the BEST seeded caraway rye bread. Alas that bakery has been closed for several decades. the site became a bank. It is now condominiums as every square inch of my childhood neighborhood is occupied by a new generation with their kids. All the neighborhood bakeries are gone. Lately I have been working on the Virginia Bakery cookbook. I have sort of stalled on the fruit pockets page.

As I became comfortable with making pastry dough, I started experimenting with various fruit fillings and making them. Plain old canned fruit pie filling works just swell except that the can contains about twice what is needed. Take any fresh fruit that you desire; strawberries, apples; black berries, cherries, blueberries, peaches, apricots, about a cup or so and add a half cup of water and a half cup of sugar (brown sugar and cinnamon if you are using apples) to a small sauce pan. Bring it to a boil and then simmer with the lid on for about 20 minutes. Crush some of the fruit while it is simmering. Let it cool to lukewarm. (Who was luke?) Add two teaspoons of tapioca to thicken it. Tapioca can be used directly from the box but it actually works better if it is ground. I use a cheap coffee bean grinder which is really a small blender. Set it aside for use later.

I have gotten way off into the weeds here.

A hobby that developed over the summer between my junior and senior years in high school is a love of computers and coding. In the summer of 1966, my math teacher taught a FORTRAN class (there is an old language) that sparked my interest in computers and control systems but more narrowly in computer languages and coding techniques. To me it is a hobby. I have never narrowed focus onto any specific language over the sixty or so years of this interest. FORTRAN, COBOL, APL, C, C++, C^, Java, Pascal, Python, yada, yada and yada. It is interesting to me as to how many different programming languages there are and how similar they are in construction and structure. Like engineering designs, there is always a better one coming. It is better, different and the same concurrently. Like human language there is another one spoken over there across the river. One that can relate the same content and emotions but will always have a slight problem with translation that will prevent the non-speaker from completely understanding the speaker.

More weeds. Philosophy crept into the picture.

And this blog. I have visited journalling off and on throughout my life. I am not good at it but it is a kind of therapy for the soul. An outlet to complain and whine about my lot in life. It is a place to tell stories and relate nuances of daily living. So here I am. No bike ride today but I am journalling instead. Perhaps I can ride tomorrow. (smiley face)

Even though PD has invaded every waking aspect of our lives, something can be learned from adversity. As I wrote that line I realized that not everything is bad or adverse. Just as not everything is good or favorable. Somethings are meaningless and unimportant and simultaneously neither bad nor good. An example might be politics and political speech.

Well being and mindfulness are examples of important things.

The weather tomorrow is predicted to be even better than today. It will be Monday. There may be fewer bike riders out on my favorite bike path. And suddenly adversity is turning into favorability and anticipation for a pleasant ride.

Parkinson’s strikes again.