30 yr old milk makes great bread

Published on August 27, 2008

I inherited some food storage from my grandma who passed away last year. I knew the wheat was good, maybe not even as old as the rest since she regularly ground the wheat and made bread until about five years ago. But I had two boxes of dry milk in sealed cans that had been purchased in the late 70s early 80s.

I opened a can and it looked good. I tasted it and it tasted good for powdered milk. I went to a local food storage place and they said that it looked good and could very well have survived that long. If it tasted strong, I could just use it in cooking. Well, I have never liked reconstituted milk in anything but cooking, so that was okay.

Now, I love homemade bread. My Kitchenaid mixer came with a great white bread recipe, but it required that I heat up the 1/2 cup milk with the butter to dissolve the sugar. Then wait for it to cool down. I decided to try just adding enough powdered milk to 1/2 cup water + the 1 1/2 cups water called for, all warm. The sugar melted quickly and the melted butter was just a nuke away. It tasted wonderful, maybe even better. The family scarfed down both loafs in a day.

So now bread is easier and yummier thanks to the milk that sat in my grandma’s basement for thirty years. Thanks Grandma!


Fire on the mountain

Published on August 26, 2008

I took a run this morning while it was still dark. Got past the houses so I could see the mountains and saw an orange glow in one of the canyons.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=460&sid=4104232&pid=18

That picture must have been taken last night because there was a lot less glow this morning and by the time I was finished, when I looked again, I could only see smoke. And there is a lot of smoke in the valley today.

I’d forgotten seeing this yesterday afternoon when I picked up a daughter from school.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=460&sid=4104232&pid=191

The next is a picture of the new Draper Temple

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=460&sid=4104232&pid=28

No one has lost their home or been hurt, though one hiker got stranded and had to be rescued. The fact that he was evaluated at University of Utah Medical Center suggests he got a chopper ride there. At least he is okay until he gets the bill.


Anniversary

Published on August 23, 2008

Today I’ve been married for seventeen years to Vladimir. We still chat until the wee hours at night. We still hold hands. We like to tease our kids by kissing in front of them. They’ve been really great years and I’m excited to see what the next years bring us.


Killed darlings

Published on August 20, 2008

Got off on a tangent in a short story today. Must keep word count down. Had to delete this:

“Rumors and rumors of rumors abounded. So when testimony time came around at church, I got up and told those self righteous people that rumor mongering was a sin and evil. They nodded and shouted, “Amen sister!”. Then they came up to my family after church, praised my grown up maturity, and turned to my mom to commiserate with her about my crazy aunt. “


Two month recap

Published on August 19, 2008

It’s been two months since I’ve written. A lot is still going on and not enough of it is the novel.

We took a surprise vacation that turned out to be the worst vacation we’ve had, except that within it was one of the best trips to the beach we’ve had and a great family reunion. But car and back troubles and a couple of other things made us wish we’d stayed home.

Then a couple of weeks later, my aunt died. She was the one I spent summers with growing up; the one we moved to be close to when I was 16. It isn’t just that she’s gone, but the circumstances involving a bad mix of not trusting doctors and not following the plan because it was too expensive. And it was hard to see my uncle lose his wife and my cousins, most of them younger than me, lose their mother.

I’m back to running. Usually about 5 miles on my regular days and my latest long run was 7 miles in about an hour and a half. But they’ve been bad the last couple of weeks. Except the long runs. Maybe that’s what I need to do more of.

The two older girls go back to school next week, while my 10 yr old has already been to school for 3 weeks and has just gone off track so I will have another couple of weeks when I can run that long in the morning.

I love biking, but it is such a pain to get the bike ready. I just want to go out and do it already.

On a good note, I just got another article for 3D World finished and had the one I did this spring come out. And I have some more things about eye surgeries to write.

And comments are working now. At least according to the amount of spam I’ve had to delete.


What’s going on?

Published on June 20, 2008

A lot!

Not enough of it novel, but the novel is making progress. I’m very excited about the method I’m using, and though I’m frustrated to not be racking up the word count, I am developing the story and have physical proof of it. Things nag me, I figure them out and fix them and it doesn’t matter where in the story they are.

If I’d attacked this like a short story and found my problems sometimes after finishing an entire piece I could potentially have wasted hours and days of writing and tens of thousands of words. I am very much a story grower with rough drafts usually being smaller than final drafts and a bit of pruning in the middle of the process. So this method of having the story as a fully developed embryo before I start telling it in words is very appealing to me.

A lot of brain power is going into this, hence the not posting. I also had a paying gig a couple weeks ago, and one right now.

I think, for now, comments are working. I’ve been very bugged by it, which may be another reason I wasn’t writing. Yeah, I thought it was solved too, but it mysteriously stopped and has just as mysteriously started again. So we’ll cross our toes and fingers. I’m going to have to figure out how to crosspost this stuff to facebook or something.

So what about fiction friday? Well, you know what? An entire story line that you saw here is wiped out. No longer necessary or existing within the universe. And I’m very excited about it because doing that thing differently has solved some problems.


Ami’s Blog Update success

Published on May 20, 2008

After much work, Ami’s blog has been updated to use WordPress 2.5! Many thanks go to Jason Buchanan, of Geekatplay.

This means, that comments are now working! And I’ve already gotten one that I promptly deleted.

It looks wierd and cool here in Admin land, like a new paint job or haircut that I have to get used to.


Writing, to do list, and training

Published on May 15, 2008

Well, I guess we’re in a bit of a blog drought here. Usually inevitable with huge inputs of information coupled with creative outputs.

I’ve been thinking heavily about the Fiction Fridays. I’ve been advised they’re a good idea, but since going to Dave’s novel workshop I am in the process of giving my world such an overhaul that I’m not sure I want to anchor myself down right now with existing text. So I’m going to spend more energy working on the outline. Also, 500 words here are 500 not in my novel. So, honestly, there is a good chance that while I’m actively working on the novel, I won’t be doing Fiction Fridays. But I do like the concept so I’ll be returning to them later.

To do:

  1. outline novel and series 
  2. final draft of short story
  3. first draft of novel
  4. first draft eye surgery book
  5. submittable draft of novel
  6. find agent 
  7. proposal for eye surgery book
  8. submittable draft of eye surgery book

Sprinkled in that are two tutorial lines for Geekatplay. May write a whole book. Will probably have a magazine article or two going on.

And saturating my life is my family.

And that triathlon training.

I have a confession to make: with all the job stuff, house cleaning stuff, and workshop stuff I let the daily training go. I’m back to doing it but am in recovery mode. I’m only walking, but next week I’ll add some running into it and hope to run (not walk) the full 5K of my town’s country fest in late June. Won’t be fast, but I’ll do it. We got a membership at our city fitness center, and I like that place much more than Gold’s Gym for two reasons: It has an indoor track, life guarded pool, and most importantly, it’s not a meat market.


During the workshop I found out

Published on May 8, 2008

Intergalactic Medicine Show has just accepted my short story “Tile Setters”!

Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!


Dave Wolverton’s Novel workshop day 1

Published on May 5, 2008

First of all, I understand that comments people are trying to post aren’t showing up, and this started happening when we changed servers.

Second of all, here I am in a quiet room and no kids are going to interrupt me. I am because I have a lot of hours to just write.  But I feel a bit like a fish out of water without my family surrounding me.

Today we learned about throwing our nets wide for our audience and bringing emotion into the story.

And today my story was critiqued. I found out that my narrator voice isn’t working well. This was a question I wanted answered, so I’m glad to find this out now. A lot of other interesting ways that people viewed my story. I love seeing this reflection, how someone else has created the story out of the words I wrote.  But I definately have some work to do.

I have a writing assignment then I’m going to work on my short story, The Amaranthine.


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