Finally, Phd in hand. Next!

Half a year later we have something worth posting about, Anya's PhD. From the icy grip of winter emerged a successful defense in February. Fast forward to a hot, hot day in June for the UW Commencement... perfect for a heavy weight, dark gown.

PhD Defense

Anya's PhD Graduation

New Years 08/09

2009 came, 2008 went. It rained. We ate. I made ugly, ugly noises at Kerry Park that sounded like animals in the midst of a stampede. All in all, not too bad for Seattle.

New Years 2008/09

and More Snow....

Well it seems maybe this will be it... for now. We ventured over to Magnolia to see the activity there. It snowed through the afternoon. Late that night we went for a walk, having expected all the snow to be over, but it started again. So now Day 4, I have studded tires being put on the car. Of course that means everything will immediately melt.

Day 3 and 4 of the Snow

More snow during the night

Well, if it doesn't warm up in the morning, things will get really interesting. We went out tonight to walk around and it was pouring snow... in Seattle... at sea level. The fresh snow is covering a thick layer of ice underneath. Fun for all!

2008 Snow - The Night Patrol

Pumpkin Ravioli

This afternoon we finally made some fresh pasta for the first time: pumpkin ravioli. My new oxo rolling pin rulez! It made rolling dough into smooth thin sheets super easy. Maybe one day I will be ready to make a committment to a pasta maker, but for now I'll stick with with the basic tools. I didn't follow any particular recipe. The dough was regular egg dough (400 grams of flour, 4 eggs, salt), the stuffing was pumpkin, with some sage and parmesan. We ended up with 60 ravioli and froze 45 of them. The other 15 were cooked, served with cream sauce and some leftover prosciutto butter chicken. Check out the photos here:

Pumpkin Ravioli

The snow has finally arrived.

A day late, but its here at last. We'll see how we get before it stops. Go convergence zone!

December Snow on Queen Anne, 2008

Making “no knead” bread after the recipe from the New York Times

About two weeks ago I started baking our own bread. Mostly because all of our groceries are delivered by Amazon, but they do not carry any breads from Grand Central bakery (they do sell bread from Macrina, but we don’t like it). First off, I am NOT a baker. Really, I am not. I never make dough and even when I make pizza or pies, I always buy dough from Trader Joe’s. So baking bread from scratch was really venturing into an entirely new territory for me. I finally decided to do it after reading this recipe in NYT. It looked easy enough, so I decided to give it a try. It turned out to be very easy, delicious and very successful, even for a beginning baker with zero experience like me. And there’s almost no clean up. This weekend we decided to document the process, so that you’d see that that home-made bread we’ve been telling you about is for real…

Step one, the tools:

From BreadMaking

Step two: measure all dry ingredients into the bowl (3 cups flower, 2 tsp salt, 0.25 tsp yeast)

From BreadMaking

Step three: add 1.5 cups of water and mix everything into ‘shaggy’ dough and cover with plastic wrap

From BreadMaking

Step four: ok, i’m not sure if this qualifies as a “step”, if all one has to do is to wait 12 or so hours… after 12 hours the dough looks like this:

From BreadMaking

Step five: fold the dough with a spatula 2-3 times, shape it into a ball and put it out on a mat (you can put it on a piece of parchment paper instead, this will make moving it around much easier later on). Oil the dough.

From BreadMaking

Step six: dust the dough with flower, cover and let rise for another 4+ hours:

From BreadMaking

Step seven: heat the oven to 450 degrees, with a heavy dutch oven inside. After about 30+ minutes, when the oven is hot, slide the dough into the dutch oven and cover. Bake for 30 minutes.

From BreadMaking

Step eight: Remove the lid from dutch oven and bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown.

From BreadMaking

Step nine: Cool on rack. The loaf is not as big as the Como, but it does last us 3 days.

From BreadMaking

From BreadMaking

Here’s the final product, served with eggs and bacon:

From BreadMaking

And a close-up on the texture:

From BreadMaking

NOTE: this weekend Amazon was out of King Arthur Flour, so I ordered Stone Bur (sp?) brand instead. The bread tastes ok, but NOT as good as the bread made with KA flour. So when Amazon has it back in stock, I plan to buy a few extra packages.