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Catch-22

The stress fracture in my foot is supposedly healed. I'm taking my osteoporosis medicine and extra calcium. The next step is to get back to moderate, weight-bearing exercise to build up those bones.

The problem is that moderate, weight-bearing activity is what cracked that bone.

Theoretically, sturdy arch supports will help the poor, weak bones in my arches support my weight. Unfortunately, sturdy arch supports aggravate an old soft tissue injury in my left knee.

I'm having a hard time finding the balance between not moving at all, moving enough to keep my body functioning, and moving so much that more parts break. (At the moment I'm sitting with my foot propped up, actually, because it started protesting more of that strenuous "standing in the kitchen" thing I do.)

So, what does a photographer do when she can't go for a walk?

She lies on the floor and takes pictures of cats.

Monte Alban using his favorite headrest. Cute!

Oz always says, "He's just too lazy to hold up his head!"

I always say, "National Geographic ran a photo of a lion doing the same thing. He's like a lion!"

Sparky gazing out the window at a squirrel or something else tasty-looking.

I like how the bokeh blurs the background so you can't see the paper grocery bags filled with paperbacks. (We need more bookcases.) If I'm going to be doing a lot of interior photography, we'll have to clean the place up a bit. Oz suggested hanging a backdrop in front of the clutter.

Amtrak provides a few opportunities for sedentary photography as well.

Like when the train just stops for a half hour after traveling five minutes from the station where you got on.

American railroads are in about as good a shape as I'm in.

World of pain

Except for monkeying around with my bread machine, which hardly counts, I've never been a yeast bread baker. The mess, the stickiness, the general tar baby experience of it. And did I mention the stickiness?

I have issues with stickiness. By the time I work enough flour into the dough so that I can stand to work with it, I end up with bread that has all the flavor and appeal of particle board.

I've just accepted that I'll never be a bread baker, just like I'll never be able to make omelettes or over easy fried eggs (no matter what I try, I always end up with scrambled eggs). Then I heard about no-knead bread recipes, but I didn't look into them because I do have a bread machine, after all, to do the kneading.

Then ozarque mentioned how she was trying this "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" thingy and it was turning out wonderfully.

Then I was listening to The Splendid Table podcast, while sitting on the train (Is it masochistic to trap oneself in a smelly old train with no dining options beyond a snack bar and then listen to people rhapsodize at great length about fabulous food? Yes, probably), and the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes people came on to talk about their bread and their book and they brought some bread for the hostess, whose reaction was basically "NOM NOM NOM! Where's the butter?" They talked about their bread method, which sounded remarkably free of stickiness because you barely handle the dough. Of course, I was intrigued.

So. I got their book. I watched the video on their website.

I analyzed their method, detecting any points at which stickiness might occur, and figured out how to prevent or avoid sticking. I don't just detest sticky on my fingers, I hate it on pots, pans, or any other kitchen surface. Comes of having been the child stuck (hah!) with doing the dishes for a family of five and never being allowed to soak the crusty pans. (Oh no, those pans, they must be washed right away. No soaking allowed, no matter how nasty and crusty.) I'm a big fan of Teflon. People who turn up their noses at nonstick have obviously never had to scrape a grill clean with their fingernails while the rest of the family relaxed in front of the television. Better living through chemistry, I say!

For this bread, silicone is the answer. Stir up the dough with a silicone spoon, not a wooden spoon. With a wooden spoon you're just asking for misery. Let the dough rest, rise, and bake on a silicone mat. When the dough is done baking, you can just lift it off the mat and set it on a (Teflon coated) cooling rack. For Oz's favorite cinnamon swirl bread, I roll the dough out on the silicone mat with my Teflon coated rolling pin and peel the dough gently away from the mat when I roll it up.

Oh, and all neuroses aside, the bread comes out really well. I even sent a copy of the book to my mom. I've been trying all the recipes (a loaf of olive oil bread is cooling in my kitchen as I type). The crusty loaves travel well too. I bake a loaf the night before I go to Richmond and carry the bread home in my purse for Oz, who is liking this new hobby.

The engineer in me is quantifying everything in the quest for consistent results. Volume measurements are not consistent enough for me, because a cup will measure out a different weight of flour depending on how compacted your flour has gotten sitting around in the bin. Even if you stir up the flour with a knife before you scoop it out, the weights still vary from scoop to scoop.

My 6.5 cups of flour has been weighing in at 857 grams, while the authors say that 6.5 cups is about two pounds (or 906 grams). The lesser quantity of flour yields a stickier dough and flatter loaves, but with a lovely moist crumb. The greater quantity yields an easy-to-handle (hardly sticky at all) dough and nicely rounded loaves with a denser, less moist crumb. My quest for the happy medium has brought me to 883 grams of flour, relatively unsticky dough, a pretty round loaf, and a fabulous crumb. My kitchen scale and I, we are friends.

I am also questing for the perfect level of saltiness. So far, I think their recipe, with 1.5 tablespoons of kosher salt, yields bread which is a bit on the salty side, but delicious. The buttermilk bread has that much salt but isn't salty-tasting at all. I tried the master recipe with 1 tablespoon of salt and it's great, but maybe needs more salt? (Must eat more bread to confirm.) Also, the salt suppresses the action of the yeast somewhat, so adding less salt without reducing the amount of yeast means friskier yeast and more dramatic air bubbles in the bread.

I've also tried the refrigerator rise technique with the dough (after seeing a few comments about it on the authors' website). You can shape the dough and let it rise, covered in plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for eight hours or overnight. Take the dough out of the fridge while you preheat the oven and bake it as you usually would (maybe add an extra five minutes to the baking time). I used this method over the weekend for cinnamon swirl bread with great results (prepare bread in the evening, overnight rise, bake it first thing and enjoy the aroma of cinnamon while you sip your coffee), and today with regular bread (shape the dough and let it rise while I was away at work, bake it when I get home and have fresh baked bread for dinner).

Obviously, this is a great activity for obsessives who like carbohydrates and butter.

I'm happy to say: Good bread can be easy, and it's certainly cheaper to bake good bread than to buy it. You don't have to take my word for it either. Like all good gateway drugs, their basic recipe is free.

Ladies, take your calcium

With my left foot hurting worse and worse instead of feeling better and better, I broke down and went to a podiatrist, who found a stress fracture in my second metatarsal. No wonder it hurt so much to walk.

Treatment involves wearing a surgical boot and trying not to take any more steps than necessary. I also get to keep using my glamorous cane.

I've been spending a lot of time with my feet up. In theory, it sounds luxurious, but the reality is on the dull side, especially when it's springtime outside and one is missing all the flowers. Especially when one has spent all winter looking forward to evening walks among the spring flowers.

But how, you ask, does one get a stress fracture? Skydiving? Jogging? Sticking one's landing after doing a backflip off the uneven parallel bars? Standing around in the kitchen stirring a pot of soup?

Any of those things can cause stress fractures, but the last one is only dangerous if you have very weak bones.

It turns out that I have very weak bones. Unexpectedly so. I'm not that old, so although bone-thinning is a known side effect of the steroids prescribed for my lupus, it was not expected that my dosage level would turn my bones to air.

So not fair. Other people get big muscles and 'roid rage. I get osteoporosis.

Now I get to take the old lady osteoporosis drugs and try not to worry too much about falling. Sucky as this is, though, I think it would be much worse if I were older. I'm in fairly good shape, and my balance is pretty good (though the fracture has thrown it off a bit and every wobble is terror-inducing when the consequences of a fall involve broken bones). My coping skills are getting quite the workout. I'm finding that when you're enduring a big thing with all the equanimity you can muster, there just isn't much equanimity left for the little things, like constantly dropping your keys (when you're juggling a cane in addition to the rest of the stuff you always carry, the keys are always leaping to the floor), or anything that requires extra walking (Stores reorganize. How dare they do this now?).

So if you're in your thirties or forties, and you think that your regular, or not so regular, weight bearing exercise and occasional dairy consumption are probably enough to protect you, you might want to re-evaluate that "probably". What level of certainty is appropriate for consequences that involve the bones in your feet cracking just from walking around? Even if the consequences are thirty years in the future?

That time of year again

All through this past cold, dark winter, I've been looking forward to spring, when I can get home before dark to walk around with my camera and take pictures of pretty things. But fate is cruel.

I've been hobbling around for the last three weeks. With a cane. Ugh. Either the lupus or the lupus medicine did something to my foot. My cane and I will be spending a lot of quality time together for the foreseeable future.

It being cherry blossom season, we wanted to do a little o-hanami, but hiking around the Mall this weekend was out of the question thanks to my foot. A friend at work suggested the National Arboretum, which has cherry trees and parking, and even has cherry trees near the parking. A great plan, except that all the Cherry Blossom Festival traffic was between us and the Arboretum. Blooming brake lights, as far as the eye can see.

Yeah. And some genius had set light up highway signs along this road to display really helpful suggestions like "Take Metro." Which, by the time we're here, it's a little late for that.

A few minutes after I shot this, we got on the GW Memorial Parkway South and headed back to Del Ray.

Del Ray has cherry trees too.

Hanami will be close to home this year.

What to do with that lovely fennel

Olive oil
3 shallots or one medium onion, chopped
crushed red pepper, to taste
2 fennel bulbs
6 cloves of garlic, pressed
28 ounce can tomatoes, with juice
2 15 ounce cans of small white beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 teaspoon of salt, or to taste
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar (optional)
7 sun-dried tomatoes (optional)

If using, cut the sun-dried tomatoes into strips and place in a small bowl. Pour boiling water over them to cover and let soak while you're doing the other preparations.

Prepare the fennel by cutting off the green stalks and feathery tops. Set the bulb, root side down on a cutting board and slice vertically between the bases of the stalks so that you end up with one stalk base on each half.

Check out the core of the fennel bulb. Did you get a big core? You have won! Much of the flavor is in the core. When the core is cooked till tender it has a really lovely taste and texture.

Place the halves of the bulb cut side down on the cutting board and slice thinly, about 1/4 inch or less, lengthwise (with the grain of the stalk). Leave the stalky parts attached to the core. It may be my imagination, but it seems like the parts attached to the core retain the anise flavor better.

In a large pot, saute the onion or shallots in the olive oil with the red pepper and salt over medium-high heat. Once the onions soften, add the fennel and cook for a few minutes more. When the fennel appears to soften a bit, then add the garlic. Once the garlic starts to sizzle, add the tomatoes, beans and vinegar (if using) and sun-dried tomatoes with their soaking liquid (if using). (I actually forgot the vinegar last time I made this, and it still came out tasty, so that's why the vinegar is optional.)

Let simmer over medium-low heat till the fennel is tender and easy to bite through or cut with the side of a fork. This may take a while. 45 minutes? The time may depend on the toughness of your fennel and the thickness of your slices. And, I suppose, your teeth.

Adjust salt.

Serve however you like. What is this dish anyway? Serve over pasta or polenta, and it's a sauce. Eat it from a bowl with some nice bread on the side and it's a stew. Garnish it with grated Parmesan and/or the feathery leaves of the fennel stalks and it's gourmet.

Because of the dearth of good fennel, I haven't been able to experiment with this dish as much as I'd like. The licorice taste is mellowed, or made way too faint, depending on how much you like that taste, by cooking. Next time I get some fennel, I'm going to make this again and try adding one to one-and-a-half teaspoons of ground or whole (or a mixture of the two) fennel seeds to see if I can get a stronger licorice taste.

Now, what are you going to do with the leftover stalks? I've found that when cooked, they have no flavor at all. They are edible and taste pretty good raw, if you like that celery texture. Just google your way to the recipes and scoff at those which tell you to discard the core. The core is the best part, but it does take some cooking.

Unfortunate vegetables

I went to Giant to pick up some milk and bananas. The usually lackluster produce section (What is it about produce in Northern Virginia? The produce at the stores in my area is generally made of Fail and brown slimy spots) had six spectacularly fresh and fabulous-looking fennels on display. I grabbed the two most spectacular, because when am I going to see good fennel again? Probably not till next February.

Sadly, fennels do not have the handy little PLU stickers and the cashier probably hadn't seen fennel since last February. She called around to other cashiers to see if anyone knew the code or had the chart of codes.

"What is it?"

"Fennel, anise."

"You mean anus?"

"No, a-niece!"

"Uh, fennel?" I chimed in. Fennel and anise are not the same plant.

"No, they never list it under fennel. I guess they think you'll find anise faster," she said. The list of produce is in alphabetical order.

"Yeah, but people can say fennel."

"4515!"

I wonder if I can remember the PLU till next February?

Hurray!

Celebrating the Internet as the ultimate cat picture delivery system:

The Sparkster, deceptively sweet

Monte Alban, typically nervous

Wasn't there something else going on today?

Oh, yeah.

The Washington Monument and the Capitol, seen from the Lincoln Memorial, 11 January 2009

We're celebrating the inauguration of Barack Obama from the comfort of home down in Richmond. After the election, we started planning to attend in person, but as the reality sunk in (hours and hours and hours in the cold, a public transportation system overloaded by four times as many people as it was ever designed to handle), we changed our minds. So here we are in our reasonably cozy house, with coffee and doughnuts, and with media delivery devices turned on in every room so we can enjoy the vapid commentary and get all teary-eyed at the interviews with the civil rights activists. Best of all: No Frostbite! Places to sit down! Bathrooms for everyone!

Here's to the light at the end of the tunnel!