Parsley Baguette & Cilantro Pesto

Here are the recipes I promised in my last post. I'll be paraphrasing the directions so they aren't so long and tedious. Try it out! Baking bread isn't nearly as difficult as it sounds. If you don't have a large food processor with a hole to pour in wet ingredients while it runs, I suggest mixing and kneading the dough by hand (more on that later)

Parsley Baguette

Bread Flour - about 4 cups
Chopped Parsley - .5 cups
Salt - 1 tsp
Instant yeast - 1 tsp
Water - 1.25 cups

1. Put all ingredients but water in the food processor
2. With the processor running, add all but a few tablespoons of the water and process for 20 seconds. If the dough is still dry and crumbly, add the remaining water. The dough should form a ball. Continue processing for 25 more seconds.
3. Put dough ball in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit for about 1.5 hours. The dough may rise and increase in volume while resting.
4. Dump dough ball from bowl onto a lightly floured surface (e.g. large cutting board, countertop) and cut the ball into 3 equal pieces with a sharp knife. Shape the dough into balls and cover again with plastic wrap. Let sit for 20 minutes.
5. While the dough is resting, lay a clean canvas grocery bag on a separate work surface and lightly flour. We'll get back to the canvas soon. If you don't have a canvas bag, just wing it. I'll explain later.
6. Place dough balls on lightly floured surface and pat down to flat rectangles about 4"x5"x1". Fold top half down about 2/3 of the way and press gently with the heel of you hand to seal dough. Flip it around 180 degrees and repeat. Fold in half lengthwise and press to seal. Repeat for all dough balls.
7. Roll the dough into a snakes (like Play-doh) being careful not to stretch the dough. Just let them gently lengthen to about 14 inches.
8. Now place one dough snake onto the canvas. If you can find the seam made from all the folding, place the snake seam side up. Place another a few inches beside it and bring the canvas between the two snakes up to create a wall between them. Repeat with the last snake. The snakes should be nearly touching with some canvas squished between. Set a book or something on each side to hold them in place and cover loosely with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel. Let sit for about 30 minutes or until the snakes are 50% larger. (This setup will ensure that the dough rises up and not out. If you need to ghetto-rig something I'd suggest spraying some aluminum foil or wax paper with non-stick cooking spray and trying that. I've never tried it but it seems like it would work. My time in the kitchen is always an adventure.)
9. Preheat oven to 475 degrees with rack on the second shelf from the bottom. Put a small pan on the oven floor. It will hold water later.
10. Uncover snakes and make a few diagonal slashes on the top with a razor blade or very sharp knife.
11. Carefully pour 1 cup of water in the pan on the oven floor. Place the baguettes on the oven rack and reduce heat to 450 degrees. Bake for 2 minutes and then quickly and carefully add another cup of water to the pan. Bake for another 20 minutes or until golden brown. Tap the bottom of the loaves. If it sounds hollow, they're done. Remove and cool.

Cilantro Pesto

Parsley - .5 cup packed
Cilantro - 1.5 cups loosely packed
Spinach leaves - 1 cup packed
Pine nuts - 2 tbsp
Garlic - 2 cloves
extra virgin olive oil - .25 cup
Parmesan cheese - 2 tbsp

1. Blend all but oil and cheese in food processor until finely chopped.
2. With processor running, slowly add oil. Process until well blended
3. Stir in cheese

I wanted to add more oil to the finished pesto but didn't. It wasn't what I was expecting compared to store-bought pesto. Much thicker and bright green. Maybe next time I'll add more nuts or oil. But it was good and I was too excited about my bread to worry about the pesto!

Feelin' Fancy

I grew up loving Martha Stewart and I'm certain that a decent portion of my domestic knowledge and inclination could be attributed to her. Something about her old-fashioned, cut-no-corners way turns me on. And as I look back at my adult life, I realize that right about this time every year I get a hankering to make foods from scratch. I suppose the extra time and effort involved in making things the proper way (or at least the way people made them before TV) makes me feel accomplished and a little bit perfect.

My inspiration this year was the purchase of my very first food processor (which I have already outgrown). My partner has already made some wonderful bean dips and guacamoles! Not to be outdone, I set out to find the perfect food processor recipe. I quickly found a Cilantro Pesto recipe that sounded delicious. But would Martha serve homemade pesto on some store bought crackers? Hell no! So I found a food processor recipe for 'The Best Bread Ever' dough. Seriously, that's what it was called. I started with the bread so that I could make the pesto while the dough was rising.

My hopeful joy quickly turned to disappointment when I couldn't figure out how to use my food processor without making a giant mess. So I measured the ingredients for the bread again and then learned that my food processor doesn't like making bread dough. But after all that measuring and grinding (it called for fine sea salt and all I have is coarse so I actually used my cute little mortar and pestle) I wasn't about to throw in the towel just yet. I'd made bread before in a bread maker so I wasn't too afraid of just winging it. The dough was only half mixed so I just had to finish that part and follow the directions in the book from there. I was pretty nervous as I transferred the raw loaves onto the oven rack. The dough didn't really rise that much and I was afraid it wouldn't cook right. As you can see, the bread turned out great!

While my artisan bread was baking I began making the pesto. This was easy enough. Lots of parsley, spinach, and cilantro combined with some pine nuts and olive oil in the food processor until it's relatively smooth. But this pesto didn't look much like any pesto I'd ever seen before. It was bright green and nowhere near as oily as the store bought stuff. It tasted pretty good. But the piping hot crusty baguette that I made with my own two hands transformed the pesto into something magnificent! I know that sounds a little exaggerated but it feels so good to eat bread that you've made yourself. Try it yourself. The recipes are in the next post.

WTF?

Get this. I'm sitting at my computer waiting for some videos to load. "Hey, some music might be nice," I think to myself. "My *particularly relaxing iTunes playlist on shuffle sounds like a great idea." Halfway through Frank Sinatra's It Happened in Monterey I notice something that didn't sound quite right but I couldn't place it. Then I heard it again. It sounded like someone had added talking to another track of the song like a subliminal message. After adjusting the volume, only Franky faded away and the talking I had heard was replaced with a very psychedelic sounding song. Great song but where the fuck is it coming from??

another tab open playing something? Nope.
CD in the drive? Nope
Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Task Manager, Applications. Nothing

By this point I'm starting to freak out a little. "At least it'll give me something to listen to while I blog about," I say to myself. I title it and bring my little flashing cursor to the box.

And then the music just stops. It just stops. Seriously? WTF is going on? It's like my mystical muse fairy just resigned mid-shift. Was I mistaken? Did my brain just make that entire sequence up? I should really go to bed. I've had a long day and this all is just too much.

As I'm closing windows and tabs and folders I find one that I had somehow completely missed. Ooops!

http://www.dumpalink.com/videos/Magic_milk-l74c.html

Positivity Update

Hmm....so let me get something out of the way first:

I clicked the "New Post" button with the intention of solely updating Spreading Fast on my enlightening experience with the audiobook Positivity. So I went to Dr. Barbara Fredrickson's website (www.PositivityRatio.com) and took my first Positivity Ration Test. For some reason, I feel the need to capitalize the name of that test. But another part of me doesn't feel that it's necessary. Whatever. Dr. Fredrickson writes that a PR above 3:1 indicates someone that is 'flourishing'. My score was 1:1. That makes me sad.

But the whole reason my floundering Positivity Ration score is not now the focus of this entry is that I got distracted by something. No, it wasn't shiny or sparkly. It was actually a pretty plain website (http://www.panix.com/~tehom/), as far as websites go. Before I start delving into the topics mentioned by Tom Breton, a serious computer-...I-would-say-nerd-but-I-want-to-be-nice-because-he's-got-an-interesting-site-and-an-awkward-sense-of-humor, I would like to...to...wow, I forgot what I was going to say. Either way, Tommy boy has some interesting topics on his page: a link to a page concerning Men's Rights, one for links to every possible website associated with the show Married with Children (even a broken link to a website dedicated to the fictitious porno mag often featured on the show, Big 'Uns...here's a good link http://www.tvacres.com/magazines_big.htm), and another outlining his personal opposition to the letters g and h being used together in words such as tough or plough. Needless to say, it's pretty interesting. Definately more interesting than a below-average Positivity Ratio.

My Commute

It takes me about 20 minutes to get to work which is short as far as 'commutes' go but I don't live in a bustling metropolis. Without all the stop-and-go traffic and very few lights, it can actually be a relaxing drive. Awhile back, someone suggested I read A Stroke of Insight by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. It was written by a neuroanatomist that had experienced and recovered from a stroke. The book relays her fascination with the mental processes she experienced during the stroke and her personal experience with neuroplasticity during the arduous recovery. While searching my local library for a copy I discovered that they had an audiobook available. I'm not much of a reader anyways so I was overjoyed when I finished the book after just a few days. I love taking in new information and learning that I could consciously affect my neural circuitry thus changing what I think, how I feel, and how I react to circumstances was just what I needed to hear. My peaceful commute had suddenly been transformed into one that was also productive and uplifting!



I'm now an avid listener and have complete quite a few inspirational and informative books. I borrowed and completed all of the books by Eckhart Tolle that were available through my library. I highly recommend his books. I also listened to a few books by medical intuitive Caroline Myss. None of them focused on 'medical intuition' so I don't really know exactly what it is that she does as a medical intuitive (I believe she's like those dogs that can sense cancer). The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley detailed his experiences with mescaline and was more entertaining and thought provoking than anything else. Currently, I am on the last disc of Positivity by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson. I was hoping for something a little more DIY but her research into the effects of positive emotions has been enlightening.