Musings

Stack of wonton wrappers: raw dough on the hoof, as it were.

Yesterday’s gyōza adventure lead me to think about doughs today. That’s one product we often buy and don’t even think of as a processed food. Examples of raw doughs on the supermarket shelf include pasta, unbaked frozen breads and rolls, and, I suppose, by extension, muffin and cake mixes.

Doughs are basically ground starch powder plus a liquid. Add flavorings, maybe eggs or yeast, etc., and you’re there. Around the world. We commonly think of wheat and maize as dough bases, and doughs can be made from powdered starchy roots, too (think Italian potato-wheat gnocci). One of the easiest ways to cook the dough is to drop it into boiling liquid—voila, dumplings.

A surprising fact about dough, if you believe WikiPee: dough masses usually act like non-Newtonian fluids. As near as I can tell, this refers to the gooey viscosity of the dough. Think of working bread or pizza dough: you can poke it and the surface bends in with your fingertip: the fluid acts like a solid. There are plenty of technical terms in the non-Newtonian entry, if you want to digest ’em!

Posted at 4:23 PM | Comments Off on Dough, the starchy kind

We never decided whether we were making gyōzas or wontons. We used a Chinese cookbook as a guide to making these delicious dumplings, but thought in terms of gyōzas.

We learned some good lessons from this first attempt. We preferred the round over the square dough shapes. It’s difficult to convince yourself what a small amount of filling is necessary to fill them. We had sticking problems in the steamers; maybe we should boil them next time? Or fry-steam a few, and call them potstickers!

I also figure that we could easily use raw meat in the fillings and expect them to be fully cooked when the dough is ready. This time we cooked ahead of wrapper-loading just to be sure….

Great fun! And tasty!

We used lots of grated ginger, and that made the dumplings taste far fresher than frozen ones.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Gyōza experimentation

The heat is back and the ’maters (Solanum lycopersicum) are doing their thing!

Meanwhile, the epazote (Dysphania ambrosioides, formerly Chenopodium ambrosioides) in the back yard isn’t getting enough sun, so it’s shooting up towards the heavens (excuse my lame sense of poetics) without making big leaves. Bummer.

Posted at 10:10 PM | 3 Comments »

I’m not sure why it strikes me that way, but the glorious scent of the camillias in our front yard is, frankly, inspirational. I might take my cocktail out there for a few minutes this evening just to, well, breathe it in! And relax….

Posted at 6:31 PM | Comments Off on The smell of inspiration

The other day I mentioned we have dwarf, late-blooming azalaeas in the back yard, and I showed a picture of a white bloom. Here’s the orange one. And the strangest thing: at night, after dusk, the blossoms look deep fuchsia-pink.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Color shift

Sometimes you just gotta capture a roadside moment, even though there’s glare on the windshield and the light is pure crap.

This is on the south side of town, out where it feels like “out in the country” to me, as I guess it was a half-century ago!

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Night-time, by day

If yesterday featured a wild ride (or a not-so-wild ride!), today featured pomp and circumstance.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on A milestone day

This is the strange menu Zestos in Little-Five advertised….

There was no Mr. Toad.

Actually, we didn’t really go on a wild ride, either.

But we did lunch down in Plains. (And the meal was, well, plain.)

The lights of Atlanta welcomed us back well after nightfall…(yawn)….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on On the road

Our low, as in less than two feet high, azaleas in the back yard are late bloomers, and they are just getting going in the heat that’s arrived this week.

Posted at 6:35 PM | Comments Off on Late bloomin’ azaleas

I’m fessing up, this photo is from a year ago today….

A mystery photo is consistent with my day. I had a kinda mystery day, as in, it’s a mystery what I accomplished.

Well, I guess I posted two stories to the SGA website (yes, getting ready for business meetings on Friday in advance of the regular Spring Meeting that I’m skipping on Saturday). And I discussed PayPal and archaeological organizations with a colleague in Ohio. And I frittered away a bit of time on the Mega Sudoku (but not much). And I got The Guru to order a book for me from Barnes&Noble (better price than the competition). And…?

So, now I’m facing a bit of a scramble to come up with a dinner menu, which is complicated by the general emptiness of the fridge and pantry….

Posted at 6:51 PM | Comments Off on Let’s see