Tsundoku

People, there's a word for me. Unexpectedly, it's in Japanese.

Tsundoku.

(I do actually read quite a lot of 'em. And I did leave a lifetime's worth behind me in the UK, so I have to start again. But, yeah...)

New Amsterdam: it's become much too much

My rather awesome wife is having a busy week, interviewing hither and yon with three different companies. In pursuit of which, we spent yesterday up in the city. We went to her favourite salad bar for lunch (and I would dearly like to know how they make their dino kale so tender; mine tastes fine, but its mouthfeel is kinda like eating paper), and then she disappeared into an office block up between Kearny and Grant, just exactly where the financial district rubs up against Chinatown. So of course I went down to the Ferry Building (heirloom beans, good cheddar and black garlic) and then up into Chinatown to mooch around the Wok Shop and the tea merchants. I could spend much, of both money and time; but I'm still being good with the one, and trying to be better with the other.

And then we caught the train home, and were held up in Palo Alto by a fatality on the tracks ahead; but Jeannie drove down to rescue us, and we came home to discover that Katherine elves had cleaned our house for us while we were gone, and now it was full of people and wine. And they were good enough to eat leftovers and not complain even when we ran out even of leftovers, and Cathyn brought dessert and an unexpected wife, and all was lovely.

And speaking of the unexpectedness of wives, I learn that the lyric that I have spent thirty years singing "as I lose the possession of everything she touches" is actually "till I have the possession of everything she touches" - which seems to be (in my experience) a definition of marriage. If it says also something about my mean and narrow psyche as measured against her open-handed generosity, well. I do spend a lot of time counting out my blessings, bead by bead on the abacus of my heart.

Timing(s)

Baking a sourdough loaf really isn't as hard as people think (especially my method, which barely calls for any kneading at any point; my shoulders love me as much as my idleness does), but there is one tremendously significant judgement call. There's a sweet spot, the moment that you decide the dough's ready for the oven - which isn't when it's fully risen, because then it's gone too far and you're going to lose a lot of that. While the yeast/sugar interface still has some zing to it, some energy in potential, to give it the oven spring that opens it out along the cuts you make in the crust: that's when you want to slide it in.

That's not the judgement call, though. The judgement call comes an hour earlier, when you need to fire up the oven. "It's not ready now, but in an hour's time it will be" - when all the dough's development is dependent on ambient temperature and moisture and when you fed the starter and and and, and it's different every time. Baking sourdough is like playing jazz, you're always improvising.

*goes to turn on oven*

And in other time-related news? The BBC Genome Project will tell you what was on radio & TV the day you were born. Should you be interested in such things.