Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Ugh, Monday!

I know, I know, the calendar says Wednesday. But my weekend is Monday/Tuesday, so Wednesday is my Monday.

I did finally get the bank situation sorted out, but I have to tell you, I am SO less than impressed by BECU right now.

2 months to get this taken care of, and while I fully admit that the first delay was me not getting my rear in gear... the second part was their butt munch jerk not being competent enough to return phone calls, and then them deciding to drop the loan amount by $600 from what they told me I could get in October.

So now, I have to come up with an additional $600, which we all keep just lying around the house, don't we? (Of course not. Most of us live rather paycheck to paycheck. Right now, I'm super lucky to end a pay period with $5.) Now we are just waiting on the HOA to make a decision.

I did get bread baked, because that is done every week. I go through a loaf in about 5 days, but that's okay. It doesn't go bad in those 5 days, and that gives me bread for sandwiches every day at work and a little extra to go with a dinner or two.

The loaf turned out a little flatter than normal, the flour to water ratio was off, I needed more flour, but just couldn't seem to get enough in there. I added nearly a half cup during shaping and it just vanished into the dough. I could have used more, but then my ratios would have been off the other way. So it ended up being a slightly wetter dough than normal, and my loaf is a bit flatter than normal. Still will be fine.

Depending on what time I get home tonight, I may make a new batch of scones. They take between 30 and 45 minutes (depending on your kitchen, really.) I'd love to have a new batch for snacks, but it depends on when I get home.

I did finally get my whole grain sorghum this week, I was totally thrilled. Brief bit of backstory... I love popcorn, but I don't eat it anymore because I just cannot deal with the kernel hulls getting stuck between my teeth or between my teeth and gums. Floss didn't always work to get it out and it was immensely uncomfortable. So I gave up popcorn. A couple of years ago, I learned about popping sorghum. Apparently it looks and tastes very similar to popcorn and has no kernel hulls!

Lots of forgetting what it was, and looking it up later... I said to heck with this, I'm not going to forget this time, and I ordered a pound from Bob's Red Mill.

I tried their popping recipe first, 1/4 cup in a paper bag in the microwave. My microwave is ancient. No turn table, and kind of spotty radiation inside. So most of that 1/4 cup didn't actually pop. But that was NOT the grains fault, that was definitely the microwave. I may have to break down and buy a turn table to go into the microwave. I do think that I want to experiment with adding a little oil, but it doesn't necessarily need it.

The resulting popped kernels are teeny tiny, as in a lip balm tube cap could hold a lot of them and look like a large tub at the movie theatre. Seriously tiny. I have a picture:


But the taste was lovely. Just slightly sweeter than corn, but the same texture. Much smaller, but you don't feel like you need bigger handfuls to compensate... At least I didn't.

I will definitely be getting more when this bag is gone. Because I love popcorn, and this may not be corn, but it is the same idea and will let me have my snack back.

And last thing I'm going to expound upon before I wander off to start doing chores... After Google got rid of iGoogle (RIP, I miss you still, iGoogle!) and the Google Reader (also missed, also RIP...) I have spent a lot of time trying to find a new RSS reader for blogs. I was getting further and further behind on reading blogs because the only ways I had to read them were from bookmarks or browser based readers on the computer. NOT working.

Finally I went looking for a new reader program, because this was stupid. After trying out several, I liked some, disliked some, hated some... Then I got a suggestion to try Feedly. Feedly and I are now in a nice, solid relationship. I love it. Best thing I've found (at least for me) for reading blogs. I'm not just caught up with my blogs, I'm adding more. Because Feedly has allowed me to be able to do that. I love the fact that it is multi-platform. I have it on Android, iOS, and my computer. I love that it keeps itself up to date with what I have read versus what I have not. I love that I can save things to Evernote, or just bookmark them and save them for later (hello hot chocolate recipe, how are you tonight? ;) I love that the interface is touch/swipe on the Android/iOS platforms. I see the post, I touch on the post, I can touch links in there and they don't dump me out of the feedly app, they just move to a new screen. I touch Done when I am done with the page. I can bookmark them right there, and I can swipe up if I want to move to the next one, or swipe side to side. I still miss iGoogle, because that was my favorite home page ever... But as far as RSS readers go, Feedly is definitely making me miss iGoogle and Google Reader much much less.

And with that, it is time to go get ready for the day.

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