Pan de Muerto

I got myself into a baking streak. I'm not sure what brings these spells on but I was under one the past two days. I guess the cooler weather blowing in might have prompted my urging to warm the house by putting baked goods into the oven.

It started simply enough. I made some basic pineapple turnovers. I made a regular pie crust dough. Rolled it out, cut into circles and filled with some pineapple tidbits that I thickened with a little corn starch and a sprinkle of sugar. They came out better than expected.

 Then came the larger project. I found a great recipe for Pan de Muerto. This time I had already found the illusive ingredient of Orange Blossom Water. I knew I could get it online but I finally snatched it up when I saw it at a store and kept it waiting until I was ready. Now I was ready.

I made a simple starter. It worked beautifully so I went along and added it to the six eggs, flour, butter, sugar, anise, salt and a teaspoon of the orange water. It already smelled delicious but needed two hours to rise and double. It did and then I formed it and let it rise another two hours. Baking took an additional 40 minutes and cooling on a rack another hour. It's quite the process but, for me, worth every waiting period in between.

For a first attempt it came out very well. Brown and crisp on the outside and soft and flavorful on the inside. It was the original tastes of the traditional Mexican pastry breads and that's what I wanted to achieve. It worked. It was right. Taste the tradition.

I hope you enjoy the short video. It was more fun than posting picture after picture of what I made and it keeps me busy and my mind off of eating all the baked goods!

TT

Nice weather

It's a little brisk this morning. Cooler than it's been in a long while. It also seems darker than usual for this time of the morning but I might have that mixed up. I haven't been paying all that much attention to clocks so to make a comparison with time involved might be incorrect. I don't really remember how light or dark it's been at any given early morning hour. It just seems darker, I guess.

I have a dental appointment at 11am so I will have a run this afternoon. No rushing around. Take my time but still get it done. The weather will wait for me today.
TT

Bag of Ties

What started as a quiet, easy morning produced a finished product I have been working on for a while.

I had a bag of my Dad's ties stuck away in my attic. It was a month ago I went searching for them and retrieved them from their forgotten storage. There were twelve ties, Dad's ties, and what was I going to do with them?

I took a chance and scribbled an idea on a blank notepad.

I took a brave step and washed all the ties. They all turned out fine and I went about deconstructing them. I took them all apart one by one, removing seams and linings and tags. I had to see how much material I had to work with.

Then I decided on other materials I would use to fill in where there wasn't enough to cover each square I was attempting. I found some good colors. I found some material that looked vintage enough to possibly be another of his ties. I matched them up and sorted them out. I cut, I stitched, I ripped out what I did wrong and did it again. It was becoming big and bulky and harder to work. I kept thinking I shouldn't be trying to do this on my second attempt at this sort of thing. I should wait on this precious project until I have more experience doing this. I thought that for moments throughout my working but it seemed I also heard my Dad quietly and easily saying if not now, when?

I kept at it. I pinned and bound and snipped stray threads until I had it all completed. I finished my second quilt and it's large enough to cover a full/queen size bed. It's unique and colorful and doesn't live in a bag in the attic any longer. It's different from any other bag of ties.

I even remembered to use the tags from the inside of the ties. It seemed they needed their place on the quilt, too.

So my second attempt at quilting was more than a satisfying journey for me. Dad came along to give me a few pointers when I was in doubt the way he always did. Love 'ya, Dad. Always will.
TT

Easy morning

It's starting out to be a lazy morning. That isn't the right word. Not lazy but laid-back, easy, quietly calm would be a better description. I'm having a cup of coffee or two and getting down to some things that are easy breezy. The time clicks and I don't notice.

Well spent.
TT

No Lists

What to do?

I've made plans and lists and goals. I found a list I wrote at the beginning of 2017. It was concise with well thought out elements. It was quick, easy to read and understand covering the areas of interest. It was a good example of all the things I should do in order to get myself going and accomplish everything I thought I needed to get done. I didn't get any of it done.

It wasn't the lists fault. It wasn't too far out of my range. I could have done everything on the list. I didn't make wild and crazy goals. So why didn't it work?

It isn't that it didn't work. I had real life going on to stick with any list. There were other priorities that needed immediate attention. I put the list away and did the things that happened each day. Some of the things I did included portions of what was on the list but to go back now and say I did what I wrote down wouldn't be accurate.

It's a good list. It's a good reminder of where my thoughts were back at the beginning of the year. I can still use elements of what it contained but to think it's all going to get done in any decided amount of time would be unrealistic. And it isn't really needed. I've done plenty without following a list at all.

So what do I want to do today?
TT

Making Order

Written.

No. I haven't. Not a paragraph, sentence, phrase. Not a word.

It's okay. It's still all in my head. There are revisions and edits and some new ideas that are barely beginning to bump around in my mind. It gets past over for all the other major changes that have crept up and managed to use all my time. There have been so many this year. Changes.

This could be some of the biggest shifts I can ever think of happening. Well, I guess there could always be more and larger adjustments but it sure seems as if there were so many this year. There were enough to throw me off, shake me up, and use the majority of my time figuring out.

It's not all figured out completely but at least at this point it's all good. It was from the start but I had to feel like everything was at least in some type of order before it felt like it was all good. It's there. It sure took a long time or at least much longer than I would have predicted.

And the writing.

Let's begin.
TT