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| The Writer Rejoices......BECAUSE HER YEAST AREN'T DEAD!!!!!!
It has been a long and dangerous, difficult and trying, frustrating and yummy, flat and unrisen process to get to this point...and we're still not done. But that fabulous news is I CAN actually make a killer pizza dough (rising included), AND my yeast AREN'T DEAD! Isn't that exciting news! Come to my house for some yummy homemade pizza. 
So here's the deal. After many frustrating times of less-than-desirable, flat dough, I decided to just go back to using a single packet of yeast I got from the grocery store - instead of the bulk yeast I bought at BJs. Dough rose beautifully after 2 hours, punched it down, popped it in the fridge overnight, rose some more, pulled it out the next day, let it sit and rise a little more and then baked up some fab pizza crust.
So, I knew it wasn't me. I knew I was capable of good dough, kneeding it right, etc.
So I test my yeast again and still proves to be dead. Back to the internet to do more reading up on yeast. After much looking and contemplating and testing of the yeast, I found my answer.
Death by hot water.
I was killing my poor yeast before they even made it into the bowl. It says dissolve in warm water - somewhere around 110-115 degrees so say some sources. So I used warm water...but it was too warm. My guess is my little yeast granules felt like they were being scalded to death as they were dumped into the "warm" water. So today, I test again. Tepid water. Really. Dump the sugar and the yeast in the measuring cup. Wait 10 minutes.
And this was my result.
If you can't tell what you are looking at, you are looking at a half cup of liquid with dissolved yeast and sugar that has bubbled up to well over one cup. The yeasties look pretty alive and active to me.
I pretty gosh darn excited about that.
And this is what my homemade pizza looks like...in case you had your doubts. My husband says its fabulous.
One of these days I'll get William to take some pictures while I'm making the dough and tossing it in the air. It's pretty exciting. He says it makes him too nervous to watch though. The thought of dough flying up in the air and perhaps landing somewhere other than my hands makes him worry about dinner. ;)
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| Was it so much to ask......that on Resurrection Sunday, when we celebrate Christ rising, that my pizza dough join in the celebration and rise too?
Ok. That probably was very irreverent talking of Christ and pizza dough. Please forgive me. I just thought that maybe after my string of bad luck with flat dough, that it would rise - get it- to the occasion and do some rising as well....since it was, after all, a day of celebration.
Alas, no avail. The dough did not puff up one bit. I have been having several unsuccessful attempts at pizza dough lately, which after my conversation with Jennifer and Marie Sunday, I am blaming on the yeast. I thought for sure my yeast was ok - I just bought it, and the expiration date was next year. I thought surely it had to do with my kneeding technique, or my ingredients, or the temperature in my house, or just some dark cloud of despair plaguing my kitchen causing my little ball of yeasty goodness to just sit there in a slump instead of getting all happy and gaseous. Most things aren't happy when gaseous, remember, but dough is. But I think trying some different yeast is the key.
So my quest is to make a successful pizza crust...which of course involves a successfully risen ball of dough. We'll see what happens.
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| What has four wheels......a cd player, automatic windows and locks and is out of the 90s...
My new CAR!!! Hurray!! I definitely have a new 2004 Toyota Corolla. It was needed. My poor little 1990 Ford Probe was in the process of biting the dust...pretty hard. It had already died mysteriously on me once recently. And the car wasn't going to make it much longer without serious repairs which would have cost way more than what the car is worth.
So the new car has a cd player and tape deck, automatic locks and windows, 4 doors, and possibly my favorite thing - a drink holder. :) My poor little probe never had a drink holder. So for the 7 years I drove that car I was stuck in the awkward position of holding it in one hand or putting it in my lap...that makes for awkward spills.
Oh, and it has little compartments for me to stash all of my stuff. How cool is that? Not that the little things make a car...but...sometimes, they do.
This past weekend William, Dan, Bethany and I made a trip down to Jackson to see Nana and Grandbobby. Quite fun. Spent the day doing some shooting on Grandbobby's farm. Quite fun. Never actually hit one of the clay pigeons flying through the air. But still - quite fun. I did much better shooting the "dead clay pigeons" lying on the ground. ;) I'll have to work on my moving targets. And Bethany and I both forgot our cameras. How pathetic is that....
Get to take another excursion this weekend over to Greensboro to see Erin and Daniel. Very excited. :)
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| Time stops for no man.....and I am "no man," so shouldn't it stop for me? Okay, that was bad.
It's been a while. Here are the updates of my life. In no particular order.
My brother in-law Dan proposed to Bethany on Christmas Eve at the beach and they are now getting married in less than two months. Hurray Dan and Bethany! And a beach wedding to go with the beach proposal and the beach way of life should be quite wonderful.
Had my first ever two long all day Christmases - one obviously with my family and the other with the Coxes. Both were quite enjoyable, and the highlights of the gift giving season were receiving a nice hair clippers from my MIL, which I promptly used that day to cut William's hair and trim Stephen and David's hair, and a nice sewing basket stuffed with goodies from my mother. The mothers clearly win out this year. :)
My good buddy Karolinda, aka Karoline Will, is now engaged to Evan Strickland and is currently hunting for a place and date for the wedding. Hurray for wedding planning that I am not directly involved in!
I discovered that I have the same pair of shoes as one Virginia Groover, as we both turned up at church two Sundays in a row wearing them. I say man, good taste we must have.
I was all set to go visit Justiney Beany and her mother the weekend of her birthday when my car mysteriously died in my parents' driveway (thankfully it was their driveway and not a parking lot or the middle of the road). It's now working again (oddly enough), but it's one of those things where it will just die again suddenly on me with no rhyme or reason so Dad and William say. And thus the car hunt begins. Which is sort of okay since we knew the end was near for the car anyway.
I have attended my first congregational meeting at Pilgrim Presbyterian Church. After going there for nearly 4 years now, William and I are finally members and therefore got to attend our first meeting. Very informative. I enjoyed it.
I've gone shooting now for the first time. I mean, shooting BB guns and 22 rifles with the Indian Princesses don't really count. A guy from our church offered to take us to the range he and his family use. It was great fun. William had just bought his hand gun and so we tried it out along with several of Scott Will's hand guns and rifle. I did pretty good actually, until my arms got tired. I like shooting.
I have a fabulous new kitchen knife. Cuts like a dream. William has a gun. I have a knife. We're all set.
I am on a hunt for an original rubik's cube as I want to master solving it. I've already solved a little dinky one that I have right now, but it doesn't work well. And Mom and Dad's old rubik's cube is so old it falls apart on me as I try and move it. And I've read bad reviews about the rubik's cubes that aren't the originals. And so the hunt continues.
My good buddy Erin is pregnant and nauseas.
I've joined the piano rotation at church.
Mom's car bit the dust and she and Dad bought a mini van...in spite of their youngest being 21 and the last one at the house. That's what loads of grandkids will do to you.
And I think that about sums up my life right now. Other than the eye twitching and the waay too many vivid dreams/nightmares right now.
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| Leggy Bugs...is all I have to say.
Okay, not all I have to say. You should go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_centipede
I can't bare to post such a wretched picture on my actual site so I'll just make you go see it instead. Not that I really think you will purposely subject yourself to a nasty picture like that...unlike if you innocently came to my site and were assaulted with such a leggy monstrosity without fair warning.
Those wretched things are living in my house. I hate it. Show me a spider and I'll kill it - unless my husband is around. :) Show me a cockroach in a kitchen and I'll kill it. Show me one of those things and I just cower in a corner staring at the walls to make sure that there aren't more crawling about. Ok, I actually kill them too, unless William is around, in which case I get him to kill them. But seriously. These things freak me out more than I can say. They are like the Jumping Bugs - aka Camel Crickets - of my youth. Those things haunted me my whole life. I have found said jumping bugs in the bathroom, in the shower, in the kitchen, in my living room, buried in a corner I was cleaning, in my shoe that I was putting my foot into, climbing up my leg while cleaning an old closet, in my clean jeans laying on the family room floor waiting to be folded and of all places my bathing suit which I didn't discover had inhabited the suit until I had gotten it half way on!!!
So these house centipedes are the new bug of my youth...err....bug of my midlife. I have found them in my bath tub, in dark corners, in my vegetable bowl. I have found them on the walls, in the laundry room and in some gift bags. And NOW as of two days ago, I have seen them scaling the wall above our heads on the couch, I have seen one scaling the kitchen wall near my toaster and my drawers. I have seen one hanging out in my front walkway by the door, and I have come home dutifully to wash my dishes and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, only to discover on my last item that I must have been scrubbing the life out of one that was hiding in my dishrag when I started and whose limp, lifeless, leggy body was now draped around my crockpot!!!
After that I just dropped everything until William got home and paced around the house with cold shivers up and down my spine. There is a small potential, but potential nonetheless, for someone to be rather gallant and brave about these sorts of things up until one finds jumping bugs in their swimsuits, and washes the dishes with leggy monsters in their dishrags!!!
There were so many fabulous things that happened over Thanksgiving break, etc, that I promptly forgot to write about and then forgot period. Sigh.
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