Wheat berries and pasta Bill finally took the plunge and decided which grain mill to get - it's called a Nutrimill. Works great - a bit loud but it grinds quickly so the noise isn't really a problem. Of course as soon as we got the mill we ground wheat (which Bill had already bought), soybeans, rice, and pretty much whatever we could find around the house :)

The wheat's great for breadmaking - we use a bread machine for mixing, kneading, and baking. (We use fingers and mouth for eating:) But I've been wanting to try pasta, so last weekend we mixed/kneaded some flour, water, and salt in the bread machine and then rolled it out with a rolling pin and cut it with a knife. Primitive, but effective. We even cooked it on the woodstove!

So I've been lusting after a pasta roller/cutter and found a nice one on Craig's List locally for a good price. I tried it out tonight, using a dough made with flour, eggs, water, and a bit of salt and olive oil (apparently the oil is superfluous, from my subsequent reading) - and the pasta was -terrific-. I can't wait to play with rice noodles and bean noodles and different ingredients in the wheat pastas.

Pasta (noodle-making, more generally) is a great sort of life-lesson: I think it's one of those skills that's easy to learn but difficult to master. But it's nice to learn with constant rewards (meals) along the way.  ¶ 12:24 AM 2 Comments Links to this post

  Why I think pyramids should be blown to bits


Because they (along with similar massive structures like the one this article describes) are almost certainly all simply monuments to slavery.

January 22, 2007

On the heavily forested eastern slopes of the Andes, Peruvian farmers have discovered a massive ruin whose unusual size and shape promise to shed new light on the relationship between the Chachapoyas and the Inca warriors who destroyed their civilization.

The rectangular, block-like structure — nicknamed Huaca La Penitenciaria, or Penitentiary Ruins — is reminiscent of Incan architectural style, but a large frieze across its front is the signature of the Chachapoyas — the so-called Cloud People of ancient Peru.

The unusual conjunction of traits, as well as its location at a lower elevation and much further east than the Chachapoya empire was previously known to sprawl, hint that it might have been built by forced Chachapoya labor under the direction of Inca rulers, said Keith Muscutt, a Chachapoya expert who described the find this month at a meeting in San Francisco of the Institute for Andean Studies.

  ¶ 12:06 PM 5 Comments Links to this post

  Breakfast of activists Peeps and coffee. Mmmm. That was my breakfast before a recent meeting of the LPNC's executive committee. You have to love a friend who leaves a basket of peeps on your bedside table!!!



And while my hostess wants me to tell people that no peeps were hurt in the -filming- of this breakfast, the raw truth is that the swimming peep was consumed (headfirst, of course, as that is the decent way to eat peeps) shortly after the picture was taken.

Dunk'n Peeps. I can see the new chain of breakfast shops now :)  ¶ 11:24 AM 0 Comments Links to this post