Blogging, for starters.

I'm a bad blogger. There has been plenty to report, but I just haven't had time to write about it. Or, I forget the camera. Or, my husband cuts up the roast chicken before I have time to photograph it to go with the recipe. Or, or, or. I'll get the hang of this eventually.

We attended the local Robert Burns Supper on Saturday. Every Scot in the region dresses in their plaid-y best and turns out for a night of bagpipes, haggis, fiddle music, poetry and laughter. If you think you've seen it all, beat this: a cowboy who could be Sam Elliott's brother, sporting an impeccable Western evening jacket, cowboy hat, and a kilt.

Are you following the Knitting Olympics ? I like the concept of a personal challenge like this, and being in concert with over three thousand other knitters for two weeks. For me, finishing anything in the next few weeks will be a challenge, let alone an entire project start-to-finish. But, in all the excitement I joined in with the bunch and will be knitting up a "Liesel" scarf, out of some tweedy wool or other that I found at the LYS. I'd post one of the hilarious buttons on my site but still haven't quite figured out how to do that, or what "team" I would declare for. The games can begin... right after I wind my yarn into a center-pull ball and warm up my number eights.

The aforementioned socks are proceeding apace. I escaped the black hole and have achieved six inches of ribbing for each one. Once I launch into the stockinette the rest of the socks will fly.

A couple of weeks ago a friend gave me some "Amish Friendship Bread" starter, which is a sourdough-type of bread starter or sponge. This launched me into some deep thinking and light-hearted research. I'd been aware of a bread-starter culture before but its scope remained unknown to me until I started to look for recipes that didn't require copius amounts of sugar or the use of packaged pudding mixes. Apparently, the American World of Bread Starters divides itself into three main categories.

Sourdough. This is the simplest form of starter, and the most traditional. You can get a sourdough starter going with flour and water left over from boiling potatoes. It takes some fiddling, feeding and nurturing and religious avoidance of metal containers and utensils but eventually you get a quantity of stuff that will leaven bread. The older the starter, the more sour the taste. You can also get sourdough starter-starter-mix from commercial sources, or from a someone that has one already going. About fifteen years ago someone gave me some twenty-five-year-old starter but I didn't do something right and killed it. I read recently that there is a bakery in California somewhere that claims to have starter left over from the Gold Rush and they'll send you some if you ask. However, I will say that good old starter is green, and I don't know if I ever want to see the stuff from California if it's the real deal.

Herman. This popular starter is begun with yeast, and is fed on a regular basis with half a cup of flour, half a cup of milk, and half a cup of sugar. Herman has that name to remind the "owner" that starter is a living thing and if you treat it well it will continue to raise your bread. Herman recipes tend toward sweeter varieties of breads. You can find Herman recipes all over the Web if you "google" for them. I received a Herman from somebody about twenty years ago, so the concept has been around for a while. Again, you have to avoid all contact with metal for this starter to survive and the recipes to work.

Amish Friendship Bread Starter. This is another one that you'll find all over the Web if you enter those words in a search engine. Fed with one cup each of flour, sugar, and milk, this starter makes a sweeter sourdough than the others. I dug up a recipe that didn't require so much sugar, but it did use both baking soda and baking powder, in addition to the starter. That made me wonder -- what was the starter doing? This recipe would have made a leavened bread without the sponge... but it was still a friendly bread. A recipe for sourdough pancakes made the value of this stuff more clear. Use the Amish Friendship Starter and skip the sugar in any sourdough pancake recipe and the result will take you straight to heaven.

I don't know enough about Amish culture to be able to tell you if this recipe really came from them. That's a topic for another entry. Meanwhile, try the pancakes with some applesauce.