Today I cranked up the bread machine, which has lain fallow since before engineering school, partly to see if it still works and partly to consider whether it's one of the things we should give away if we're not going to use it. We like bread, after all, and good bread from the grocery store or bakery is considerably more expensive than good bread out of the machine.
With that in mind, I picked up a jar of yeast and some King Arthur bread flour on our last trip to the grocery store, and dug my baking books out from the bottom of the cookbook stack.
Before I could get started with my raisin-pecan oat bread, however, I had to clean out my machine. I've been dusting it off all along, of course, but it got dusty inside. I found cat hair inside. Yes, my cats managed to shed into a closed box. How do you like that, Schrodinger? Put that in your wave function and smoke it!
I was even more in awe of my cats' shedding superpowers when I discovered cat hair in my two-cup liquid measure which I keep squirreled away in an upper cabinet. Also, kind of grossed out. But is that quantum tunneling or what? I ask you.
I'm sure by now you're thinking, "Well gee, lady, your house is obviously a filth pit. What do you expect?" And while you're not entirely wrong, you should know that I do keep the food prep gear clean and my cabinet doors closed except when I'm putting stuff in or out.
The bread turned out great. And since tonight I cleaned out Oz's blender which he brought over from his house, which had cobwebs and dead bugs inside the carafe, I'm not feeling nearly so disturbed by the state of my kitchen.
I'm still in awe of my cats.
313 words | June 2, 2006 09:08 PM | Kitchen