Last nights pizza and pitiful loaf of bread

Last night was pizza and margarita night; and this morning I baked this pitiful looking loaf of no knead, dried cherries and pecan bread. It didn't rise overnight using the sourdough starter, so I added some instant yeast to it with a bit of water, which of course made the dough too wet even with a bit of extra flour added; but I decided to bake it anyway for the taste, knowing the texture is going to be off. It flopped badly when I put it in the hot pot, resulting in this homely looking loaf; but the taste it good, so the recipe is a keeper.

After 5 futile days of trying to bring old sourdough starters back to life, and wasting a lot of flour in the process, I dumped two of the jars yesterday and am still giving the other one a few more feedings for another couple of days while I wait for some fresh and some dried San Francisco sourdough starter I ordered yesterday. The fresh one will only need two day of feeding before it's ready, so I should be able to try some new recipes in another week or so.

There hasn't been time for the studio with a day used for food shopping and other chores, plus all that wasted time on the sourdough starter as well; but I'll get a good half day in there today.

Almost totally useless day yesterday

I don't know why I try to do anything during Mercury retrograde! The day started with good intent to photograph pots with the Nikon D100, which seems to be something of a dinosaur after only 6 years. After spending some time with the manual to refresh my memory, I reset the camera to it's original settings and started to view and delete some photos; but almost immediately, the battery needed recharging, so that job had to wait. Recharging seemed to take forever. So while I waited I ordered another battery, did a lot of computer filing, got the current email read, and then after checking the Nikon site to check for any current changes on memory cards that might be compatible with this Nikon, spent hours trying to find a higher capacity memory card. What a futile, frustrating few hours that was. Messages like "no longer available", and "this item has been discontinued", etc. kept coming up. I finally had to settle on a Scandisk 256MB capacity that I found on Amazon, when I was hoping to find the Lexar 1 gig. The only other one I was able to find that was compatible with this Nikon D100, and available, was an IBM 2GB one in the $200 range and I didn't want such a high capacity.

Jim had better luck with his early car shopping. He came home very excited with the Subaru brochures. Seems we both like the Forrester better than the Outback which means less money, better mileage and best yet, I don't have to dismantle and rebuild my whole kiln since the Forester is shorter than our current Highlander.We even agree on the color!

Getting the Forrester, means that my kiln won't have to be totally rebuilt. I'll just have to buy some new, more powerful burners and Shane will tweek the burner ports and bag wall.

After a comforting and easy linguine and clam sauce dinner, I faded fast and never made it to the lunar eclipse. Tonight is pizza and margaritas and if this camera battery can hold a charge, I'll try to re-take some of those pottery pictures after breakfast, start my pizza dough after that and do some kitchen cupboard reorganization this afternoon.

Some spice and Indian food orders arrived this week and there's no room in the cupboard I use for my international foods and spices. Some of the least used items will have to be moved down to the basement pantry.

My aim this week is to complete these little household projects and get the rest of the studio items ordered before the New Year and before I start another throwing cycle.