taking care of baby

I didn't make the starter until last night, because I had to go into town to grab a sizable bag of whole wheat flour -- something of a rare commodity here. I'm gonna get it kicking on whole wheat and then feed it white afterward. Girl on a budget, you know.

I stupidly realized, after whipping it up, that I'll be gone to Yokohama for five days from Saturday. With a starter, you have to feed it daily or even twice-daily until it really gets going. This can take up to a week, but after that you can slow it down in the refrigerator and feed it as little as once a month. If it isn't miraculously frothing and puffing by Friday night, I may have to find a starter-babysitter...or take it with me to Yokohama.

(Instead of flour-sack babies, they should really have jr. high school students take care of starters for a week. And then they can bake delicious bread with the result! In their big, American ovens...ahhh...)

Anyway, optimal temperature for a burgeoning starter seems to be 70-85F. Since the usual temperature in my apartment is below 50F, I kept it under my kotatsu last night (under heat for an hour and then shut off) and I brought it with me to school today. As long it survives the snowy walks to and from the bus stop, it can enjoy the ~70F heated bus and staff room for the rest of the day.

It's hidden in a paper bag so that people don't ask my why I have a tupperware of ecru paste on my desk. Gambatte, tiny yeasts!

If you're interested in making your own or wondering what in the hell I'm doing, here are the links I'm using:
Sourdough Baking, The Basics
Sourdough and Sourdough Starter (site down from excessive traffic, using Google's cache)
Sourdough Home: Starting a Starter, Mike's Way

New pet!

I'm getting a pet. I'm hoping it will help alleviate both homesickness and general ennui. It will be perfect for my tiny apartment. I will give it lots of love, and it will return my love in its own warm and delicious way. Can you guess what kind of pet it will be? Some hints:

In actuality, it's quite tiny, but to be fair I'll be getting more than one.
It's a bit smelly.
It enjoys sugar.
It reminds me of San Francisco.
I'd feed it once a week...but it would survive a few weeks without me.
It will help me with my kitchen endeavors.

Got it?

I'm making a sourdough starter! So really, I'll have a happy, bubbly colony of yeast...living out of my refrigerator, and occasionally martyring its citizens to puff up my bread. Now all I need to figure out is what I should name it.

the sun sets for a music snob

Recently I've lost interest in music.

It worries me a little, because I think I've climbed up and over a once-in-a-lifetime musical zeitgeist, and now I face the slow descent into squareness. I'm resigned to a fate of combing through my dearly-beloved CDs (yes, CDs) of the late 90s/early 2000s, and thinking over and over that Alice in Chains were maybe the best band ever?

But seriously, if you look at your parents, they probably went through their own period of musical discovery from their teen to college years (i.e., the 60s and 70s, boy music was really good back then, wasn't it?). And all the music that's come out since then has been, well...crap (what the hell do kids see in this soldier boy whatsihoosit?). Save for a few exceptions, of course: some new music is palatable (oh, who didn't like Coldplay) and some older folks continue to be receptive to new music (Dad, I don't want you to come to the concert!).

So, documented on this blog for the first time, a cold, hard look at the ups and downs of my musical heyday - that is, All The Music That Ever Really Mattered, And Will Ever Really Matter, To Me.

• 1995 - 5th grade - Obsessed with the angry, yet slumpy-shouldered and flannel-bedecked world of alternative and grunge. Remember the Violent Femmes? And Bush? And Stone Temple Pilots? And... (yes, yes, Nirvana. Whatever.)
  
• *1997 - Jr. High - Brought back to mainstream hip-hop by that indomitable trio Biggy, Puff Daddy and Ma$e, and their persistent attack on school dances.
• *1999 - High school freshman - For some reason got really into electronic music here. Trip-hop, trance, drum and bass, whatever, you name it. Maybe the allure of the rave scene? Or those really big pants that looked so comfortable?
• *2001 - Jr/Sr in High school - Forced to get into local music and some heavier rock/metal outfits by the highly elitist band guitarist boyfriend of that time. I still cannot let go of A Perfect Circle and the Deftones even though...what the hell have they done since then?
  
• 2003 - College - No longer under the thumb of a band-boyfriend, needed something to fill the elitist void. Took college-indie influence from my roommates and got really into finding new indie rock, underground hip hop, and electro(clash?). Thank you, internet. Got very into full-album downloads.
• 2005 and on - Quite listless. Have resorted to downloading the year-end best album lists from pitchfork and the like. The last albums I really liked were from The Knife and Spank Rock, sigh.

* periods that I'm not real proud of.

Anyway, it looks like my personal Golden Era of music was '95 - '05. I'm hoping that by writing this I'll inspire myself to stay open, but honestly all the new music I'm listening to this year is falling on deaf ears. Then again, I've been listening to pretty obscure stuff...maybe the pendulum is just swinging back to the mainstream? I mean, I can't get enough of that fucking umbrella song!

You know, if I became a legitimate cognitive researcher, I could run fun side experiments on trivial issues like these. Or, if I actually wanted to make some money, I could ask: does this decade-long zeitgeist (that I think a lot of people share) coincide with some kind of cortical developmental period? Hmm.