my bread

I have often maintained that the best poet is the baker who does the majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colours and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship.

- Pablo Neruda
Chilean poet and 1971 Nobel Laureate in Literature (1904-1973)

no need to knead

I have this problem. Whenever I approach something new and for the first time, it takes me a really long time to psych myself into it.

I've been wanting to bake my own bread for a while. Ever since I met HJ and heard that she always baked her own bread, I thought - this I must learn! But I have a fear of yeast. As a friendly nudge, HJ gave me a jar of yeast for Christmas. I'm almost certain that jar is still sitting in my parent's fridge in Temecula. I'm sorry! I was just too afraid.

Well, this past Sunday, in a bout of frustration due to being holed up in my apartment working when I would rather be shopping, reading the sunday paper, or running in the glorious cold, I decided, goshdarnit! I'm going to bake me some bread!

I turned to Mark Bittman, otherwise known as the Minimalist. I love all of his recipes and videos in the NYtimes Web site. A few years ago, he posted an article and recipe about "No Knead Bread," the simplest bread recipe ever! It uses a combination of flour, yeast, salt, and water along with a very long rising time (18 hours) to produce delicious homemade bread.

I gave it a shot--mixed the ingredients, let them sit in a covered bowl overnight, and placed the dough in the oven last night after work. In the middle of the baking time, I went to the oven to check it out and voila! It was working! The bread was rising into a perfect, beautiful loaf. My roomie and I were squealing and jumping up and down, "It's working, it's working!" After letting the loaf cool, we took our first bites into the perfectly crisp crust and soft chewy innards. Friends, please get thee to a grocery, pick up some whole wheat bread flour, yeast, and salt, and work this magic in your own kitchen. You will never go back to store bought bread again, I assure you!

Recipe: No-Knead Bread

(Photographs by Ruby Washington/The New York Times; above, Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times)

From top: 1. When dough is bubbly, it is ready to be worked. 2. Fold dough once or twice; do not knead. 3. Shape it into a ball and let it rise. 4. Wheat bran flies as Jim Lahey lifts dough and drops it into a hot pot. 5. After baking, the crusty result.

*toot toot*

That's me, tooting my own horn. The results from the Folio Magazine Awards came in today. I sauntered into my office 20 minutes late. My editor came in and I thought I was about to be reprimanded. Instead he shook my hand and said, "Congratulations on winning a Silver Award for your article!" And then I congratulated him right back, since we co-wrote the piece :)

Consumer, Religious/Spiritual, Full Issue

Gold Winner:
Yoga + Joyful Living
Himalayan Institute
September/October 2008

Silver Winner:
Sojourners
Sojourners
June 2009

Bronze Winner:
Spirituality & Health
Spirituality & Health Media
March 2009

Consumer, Religious/Spiritual, Single Article

Gold Winner:
EnlightenNext
“A Theologian of Renewal”
EnlightenNext
December 2008

Silver Winner:
Sojourners
“The Meaning of 'Life'”
Sojourners
November 2008

Bronze Winner:
Elevated Existence
“Searching for Spirit”
Elevated Existence
September 2008

Sad thing is that we won second to a Yoga magazine and EnlightenNext. Sigh. Oh well, nobody else needs to know :)

mad men circa now

(Mad Men, Season 3, Episode 12)

(Sally Ryan for The New York Times: David Greising, the deputy editor of the upstart Chicago News Cooperative, and Sharene Shariatzadeh, the business development director, hung the company's sign as the editor, James E. O'Shea, right, planned how to compete with The Chicago Tribune.)

Please support your favorite publications. But don't fear what is to come. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

camelot

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

woman warrior

Ever since I learned about the Terra Cotta Warriors in my history books in grade school, I've always dreamed of seeing them. The first emperor of China (Emporer Qin) was obsessed with fear of the afterlife. He built an army of terra cotta soldiers more than 8,000 strong, each crafted by hand and with exquisite detail. When he died prematurely, he was buried in a secret tomb surrounded on all sides by thousands of warriors, generals, chariots, horses, archers, musicians, entertainers, and even terra cotta animals. True story.

The army was not discovered until thousands of years later ... in 1974. Can you believe that? 1974! A group of peasant farmers discovered them while digging a well, and today archeologists are tirelessly excavating and reconstructing the soldiers one by one. Many were destroyed with time, and due to a peasant uprising just a few years after the emporer's death, but miraculously, many are well-preserved and you can go see them in China--a silent army standing guard for thousands of years.

I intend to go see the actual site in China some day, but today I got to see a small portion of them at the National Geographic Museum in D.C. I've been excited all weekend. Was I really going to see the ACTUAL Terra Cotta Warriors? Could it be!?

When we finally entered the room with the first terra cotta soldier, looking so solemn while holding the reins of a beautifully crafted horse at his side ... I teared up. Yes, I am that big of a dork. But I was simply overwhelmed by the opportunity to see these artifacts that date back thousands and thousands of years, to 209 B.C.!

The emperor was obsessed with preserving himself well into the afterlife, and I'd say he succeeded, beyond his wildest dreams. Could he have ever conceived that thousands of years later, this girl, a descendant of korean peasants, growing up oceans and eons away from his royal palace, would tear up at the sight of one of his warriors, and contemplate the character of a man who many years ago lived in such fear that he needed an army of thousands to grant him peace?

(that face says, OH MY GANDHI)

allow me to introduce, HJ

I have lovely friends. HJ, in particular, is a real doll. lol. Actually, she's not a doll--she is an amazing, strong, brilliant, inspiring, lovely woman and I had the pleasure of working with her for 2 whole years! Alas, she went to Minneapolis, I went to D.C., and now our daily lunches and coffee breaks are no more.

I miss her terribly, but am so happy to be able to keep up with her via phone, email, and her blog, HJ's Haunt.

Her most recent post was truly inspiring. Here's an excerpt.

Tough skin

...

But recently I’ve also realized that I’ve toughened my skin in other areas—namely my singleness. Singletons have to, at least a little bit, to survive! Dating is not easy. First, there’s the fear that he just will not think you’re attractive enough. And then, let’s say, you get lucky and you actually find him attractive and he’s clearly digging you...then hold on. Just you wait. Something will fall, because it always does. It always has. I mean, we’re single! Something has always gone wrong! Either he stops liking you, you stop liking him, he hurts your feelings, he never calls back, he freaks, he stands you up, he moves away, he doesn’t understand, he needs anger management, he turns out to be psycho! (Yes, I speak from experience.) Perhaps he even says you’ve elicited a visceral feeling in him! Something goes awry. And I can assure you that misreading intents and desires is much more painful than misspelling a name. So, don’t you worry. I have grown tough (read: cynical). Me and one of my single friends don’t believe he’ll actually call. We don’t believe we’ll actually fall for someone. We think the chances of something lasting longer than a coffee date, let alone three coffee dates, is slim to none. We’re not stupid. Fall for something once, twice, but three times? C’mon! We’re smart girls. Sure, we’ll date, but we won’t believe. We must protect ourselves.

So, when someone does call, when he does show up, when he does understand...how’s a single girl to respond? How do you not fear a misspelling and wait for the complaining emails to fly?

Well, as I said, we’re smart girls. So first, we make sure he calls, shows up, understands not just once, but twice, three, four times. Heck, let’s go for five! And then you pray—hard—that he will be able to put the period at the end of your run-on, callused sentence, even though you think it’s too late.

Amen, HJ! Dating IS hard, and keeping a soft heart is near impossible. But I am hoping for great, majestic love in your life. Love that transcends superficial, Hollywood romance and settles deep within your bones, your marrow, your being.