Inspired by my recent visit with Randy, I’ve revived my sourdough starter. I used to cook with it a lot, back when Randy and I shared an apartment in Socorro (his name was on the lease with me for at least a year, but I don’t think he stayed one night in the place), but I haven’t in years. When I returned from Wisconsin, I immediately began a new culture. It was ready to use this weekend, and use it I did. I started Saturday with sourdough pancakes, just to be sure the culture was good. When those turned out quite tasty, I spent most of Sunday making several dozen sourdough english muffins. These are so fun to make because they’re unlike most other bread products. The dough is much softer than regular bread, and they’re baked on the stovetop, in a griddle or frying pan. Here’s the recipe so you can try them yourself. If you don’t have a sourdough starter, they’re easy to make. The link above is a good resource.

Sourdough English Muffins

1 cup soughdough starter| 2 tbs sugar
2 cups milk| 1 tsp salt
4 1/2 cups flour – I use an unbleached light whole-grain flour, but you can use all-purpose flour
cornmeal
In a large mixing bowl, combine starter, milk, and 4 cups of flour. Mix well, cover loosely, and let stand overnight. Mix together remaining flour, sugar, salt, and soda. Sprinkle over dough and mix in. Knead dough on a floured board until no longer sticky (this takes an extra cup or so of flour). Roll out dough to 3/4 inch thick. Cut into 3 inch rounds. I use a tuna can with both ends cut out. Place one inch apart on cookie sheet or board sprinkled with cornmeal. Sprinkle more cornmeal on top. Cover and let rise until doubled. Bake on griddle or skillet at 275 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes on a side, turning once. If you are not using a non-stick cooking surface, you may need to lightly grease it. When done, I let cool to room temp, fork split (go all around edges with a fork, being careful not to fully split the muffins), and freeze together in a plastic bag. When you want to use them, they thaw quickly (10 minutes or less), split easily, and can be toasted to get that just-baked flavor. Makes 24 - 30 muffins.

I’ve been following a relaxed version of John Walker’s The Hacker’s Diet for almost a month now. Relaxed because he makes a very strong case for menu planning and calorie counting that I have chosen to ignore, instead relying upon my intuition and experience to improvise all my meals. Of course, he says that’s the worst mistake one can make, but in the three+ weeks I’ve been doing this I’m down 15 pounds and feeling great. I’d like to drop another 50 pounds this year. People who know me may gasp and say that there’s no way I have anywhere near 50 pounds to lose, but they wouldn’t guess by looking that I’m at 255 pounds right now, either. It’s in there, somewhere near the middle, packed in like lead bricks. And it’s coming out.

When I was in Wisconsin, I went to The Gobbler. This is my story.

Yet another IFC movie sucked me in last night. This time it was Exotica, directed by Atom Egoyan. This one is a thinker, with a set of dark not-so-likable characters with intertwined stories. Most of the action takes place in and around a Toronto high-class strip club (even still, there’s less sex and nudity than Sirens). As the movie progresses, presonalities and actions are put into context a bit at a time until the last fifteen minutes where everything fell into place and the power of the movie hit me full force. It appeared that the movie was going to be about porn or sex, and indeed, if you were to watch any random five minutes of the film you would think that was true, but Atom masterfully uses that setting to tell an entirely different type of story. Following Exotica was the David Lynch film Nadja, a modern dracula movie that looked like it has promise. Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) has finally killed Dracula in modern-day New York and now Dracula’s daughter, Nadja, can escape from his shadow and be her own self. A great line at the beginning as Van Helsing is describing Dracula: “He was like Elvis in the end. Careless. Drugged. Surrounded by zombies. The magic was gone.” But, it was late, and I went to bed.

I find out tomorrow whether or not I get to direct Waiting for Godot this Spring. The project has plenty of support from the powers-that-be, but the scuttlebut is that there’s so much support that it’ll get passed over for a Second Stage slot for a probable slot for next season’s Main Stage. Second Stage shows are low budget shows that run for one weekend. Main Stage shows have a much larger budget and run for two weeks. I’ll be happy with either one. Second Stage lets me hand-pick my cast, Main Stage requires open auditions. Anyway, I’ll know tomorrow night.

The local PBS affilliate is now broadcasting 24 hours a day, and so at 1:30 in the morning I’m watching the new series of Nature, Inside the animal mind. Episode one, Are Animals Intelligent? , is wonderful. Of course there’s the footage of dolphins and chimps doing smart-lookng things, but there’s also the learning behavior of birds. Pigeons were shown a Picasso painting and a Monet painting. Pecking on Picasso gave food, Monet did not. When they had that down, other paintings from the two artists were shown. The birds could recognize who painted paintings they had not seen before, and whether they’d get food or not. Then Matisse was introduced, and the birds confused Picasso and Matisse at about the same rate that art students did.

Today (Saturday) is Elvis’ birthday. His 65th. I like holidays as much as the next fellow, but it sure would be better if they took some of these winter holidays and put them where they’re really needed, like August. I celebrated tonight by going to the Fabulous 40 Watt, where they had Elvis Karaoke, free peanut butter & banana sandwiches and moon pies. Of course, that could only go on for so long, so I had to follow up with a pint of guinness at the Manhattan (from the outside, this place looks like the worst hole-in-the-wall in town – shlitz sign and all – but inside, ooh la la!) and wrapped up with a sausage from JB’s The Polish Sausage Man (with Comeback Sauce!). It was a nice way to celebrate the holiday, but I’ve decided that going out downtown by myself just isn’t what it used to be.

It was quite the day today. I was under the gun from the minute I walked into the office until the minute I left this evening. I’ll unwind tonight by watching a high school production of The Canterbury Tales , followed up by beer and some great Athens music. That’ll be just the ticket, I think.

Randy’s Epilogue is starting to get noticed. I see that Himself over at The Other Side (the counterpart to Whim & Vinegar) has included it in his daily reads. I’ve always admired Randy’s writing style, and when I bring it up with him, he just says “Aw, shucks.” Or the equivilant, anyway.

If today’s my lucky day, I’ll be told this evening that I’m going to New York City this weekend to possibly appear on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Last night, for the first time, I got through the phone line and answered all the questions correctly. Usually, the last question is very hard ("Put the following four Southeast Asian cities in geographical order from north to south… “), but last night they asked me something I knew ("Put the following four major events in the US banking industry in chronological order… “). So, if the computers pull my name out of their electronic hat, I’ll be called this afternoon and given instructions on how to play another round this evening. And if I’m in the top 25% this evening, then they’ll tell me how to pick up my plane tickets. Or, if the computers don’t select me, then I’ll try again from the beginning ("Put the following four Bangledeshi cricket players in order based on the number of lifetime runs scored from greatest to least… “).