My Crazy Family: Raisin and Little Bit

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As many of you know, I picked up a little dog on my long walk around Texas. I named her Raisin, and she regularly pesters the members of this household for walks and extra servings of food.

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A few weeks ago, I heard crying outside my window all through the night. I finally investigated in the morning and discovered a little kitten near my neighbor's side door. I took her in, and she's been with us ever since.

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I was a little scared by how excited Raisin was to have another animal in the house. It was akin to a kid's excitement over getting a stuffed animal that could also run, talk, and play. In short, my dog went nuts.

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Oddly, the kitten did not freak out, and further she actually seemed to enjoy the torments my dog originally put her through. The kitten went a step further and went on the offensive! I was nervous at first, often separating the two, but now they both play regularly and unmonitored.
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My mom, who was pretty much against the kitten, was the one to name her Little Bit. She is allergic to cats and doesn't play with her at all, but my dad makes up for that. I caught him playing with Little Bit by hanging his belt from high and letting her chase it.

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So now we are a family of three humans and two animals. Who knows? Maybe one day it'll go up to 50-50.

The Baking Life: It's All About the Hat

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Well, I got a part-time baking job. The place I work at is Le Succes, a bonafide French bakery located on Staples just south of the Saratoga intersection. I just couldn't stay away from the flour, I guess.

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I hadn't realized this when I chose this picture for the blog, but the small hat makes my head look out of place, sort of like the kids on Weezer's 'I Want You To' video. I don't handle customer service, so I don't get an opportunity to freak anyone out.

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The owners Daniel and Alicia Louis are a lovely couple. As far as production goes, Daniel is the meat and bones of the operation, though Alicia does do quite a lot when she's on. When Alicia arrives to work, Daniel calls her "babe" and usually tries to give her a kiss and a squeeze. It's very easy to work for a happy pair.

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I primarily work with Daniel, though I have on occasion taken notes from Alicia and another employee at the bakery. I handle baguettes, batards, and shorter loaves of French bread. I shape a few boules with Daniel (he doesn't yet trust me shaping all of them), and usually do a few roll-outs of either croissant or danish. Unlike my former baking job, I am working without break the entire time (though I do squeeze in lunch).

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Every employee wears the uniform, owners included. The hat, direct from France, is part of it, as well as a Le Succes shirt and plain white apron (in the picture, I'm just wearing the hat). Daniel complained to me that when he and Alicia went to France last year that they couldn't find any hats. The way he said it, you would've thought the whole country had sold out.

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I'm getting paid crap, which is okay for the time being. I'm learning how to make several pastries, as well as mastering various shaping techniques. Daniel is an extremely strict teacher, making sure I gather up unused flour and getting the details of this job just right. He's a sort of Miyagi-san. He's fair, so I go along with it.

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There are so many related tales, so I'll save them for another post. I work Wednesdays and Thursdays, so drop on by if you want to say 'hi.'

Killing Time: The Corpus Christi Jazz Festival

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The Jazz Festival has come and gone, but I stopped by for a few hours. There were tons of people, which is always a welcome thing, though I hardly knew anyone. I recognized one person from high school, just a familiar face, and that was it. There were the usual food and informational stands, but it was easy to pass all of that. I'd brought Raisin along for the fun, so we wandered from tent to tent looking at all the bands and listening to the sounds.

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The first thing I did was catch the last few songs of a fantastic Tex-Mex-Jazz band. Such good music! These guys were out of Houston and really had the audience going. Unfortunately for them, the announcer at the end was hardly intelligible. I couldn't understand what the band's name was. I wanted to find out from one of the pamphlets that were floating around, but a new one costed five bucks! I suppose I could've asked someone, but I soon lost interest in finding out.

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Wandering around with Raisin, I was surprised by how many people pointed and smiled. Raisin had fans! She's small and cute, of course, but the amount of attention she got was unreal. Perhaps a dozen and a half people, mostly women, tugged on their spouse's/partner's arm and pointed at Raisin while we passed. Crazy.

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The musician above was from the second band I visited. While the announcer of this band was perfectly understandable, I forgot to write the name down. There were about five men, and the last song they did was a long John Coltrane number. I closed my eyes a few times and just enjoyed the rhythms. Again, a real polished performance.

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Finally, Raisin and I were tired of walking around. I found a grassy knoll, and we sat and chilled. A military group got up and blasted the night away. They were enjoyable, but my mind was elsewhere, far from the festival and the people and all the lights. It was just one of those moments in which it's easy to slide away.

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Happy 50th Anniversary to the CC Jazz Festival! This was an all-around good time.

The Baking Life: Flour Power

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One of my many jobs in the past several years has been baker (thanks, UT English degree!). I was lucky to get a slot at Sweetgrass Bakery in Helena, Montana with no inside contacts (I'm told that three members of the same family are currently working there.). They taught me the basics of shaping dough, which is surprisingly tricky at first, and how to bake a variety of bread using unreliable ovens. Among the many highlights of working there were dozens of interesting conversations, a connection to the town locals, and a story I'll have for the rest of my life concerning Montana celebrity Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski.

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I have since made lots of baked goods on my own. I frequently make croissants and danish, but I have also made loaves of bread, cookies, and miscellaneous treats.

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Tonight, I botched some French baguettes. I'd take a picture, but instead I'll focus on the scene of the crime: the flour jar.

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This jar has been in use for what seems like my entire life. It's hosted cookies mainly, but when we have a surplus of flour and a scarcity of cookies, you can find it filled with the former. Oh, it's probably not a great idea to have a glass container, but until we break it, we're going to use it.

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Tonight the flour jar oversaw my tortuous project. I really don't have any good excuse for messing up, though I was trying a few different things. First, mixing French dough is the very first thing the good folks at Sweetgrass teach a newcomer. Sure, the newbies screw it up for a few months, not realizing that the morning crew spends a commensurate amount of time cursing their very existence, but they eventually get it right, or at least okay.

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Well, one thing I tried was mixing active dry yeast with weak wet yeast. This shouldn't matter at all, but I mention it for accuracy. I added warm water at first to active the dry, then added lots of cold water.

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Then I don't think I added enough flour, as I was shooting for the wet end of okay. You see, I'm experimenting not only with doughs but with my family's mixer. It doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl, so I have in the past added too much flour. I swear, you can't win in my house.

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Finally, I spaced out on the rising process. That is, I let it rise too much and dry out. Yes, I did this.

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The thing that's great about a bakery is how many different projects you can have going at one time. They all require you to stay in or near the kitchen.

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At home, I don't want to stay put for the requisite amount of time to let something rise and wander away, usually to the demise of the bread. I used a timer in this case but ballparked too high.

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Double finally, I burned one tray of bread and did okay on another. The stuff did NOT turn out like French bread AT ALL, but it didn't taste half bad with butter. The burnt loaves will go to the birds, and my dad and I will eat off these half survivors. C'est la vie.

Killing Time: Coffee at the Coffeehouse

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I play a lot of chess at Cafe Calypso. I wish I could claim some great games, but really it's just to get out of the house.
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I usually get either a cookie or a coffee. They make some pretty good cookies there. However, the coffee lasts longer and even when empty makes me look legit.
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Coffee tastes like crap. I've always thought so and have added a ton of milk/cream and sugar to compensate. My dad drinks it black, and it got me to wondering if there's some hump I have to get over to enjoy the plain unadulterated taste.
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Tonight, I had some coffee and a biscotti. Having the cookie offset my plan to get used to the bitter drink, at least while I had both. Soon enough, the biscotti ran out, and I was left with my cup of jo. There's nothing I dislike more than paying for something and leaving it, so in spite of not actually liking it, I drank it.
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I guess the real question is this: Is the chess worth it?

It's All in the Details: The Little Sign at H.E.B.

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I've been looking at this sign for some time now. It can be found at a small H.E.B. on Alameda, close to my family's home. You walk in under the pharmacy side and hidden off to the side near the carts is this sign.

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There's no story here. I just really like this sign.

My Crazy Family: My Mother's Quilt

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Okay, I got some negative feedback on the gymnastics I described in the last post, so I decided to take this one to a place even the littlest old lady would feel comfortable entering: quilting.
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My mom habitually cuts up old clothes and makes rags out of them (I did this in Guinea, West Africa, by the way.). Well, a couple of weeks back, she decided to make a quilt from all the old fabric lying around the house. In a fury she put the entire thing together in two or three days.
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The light blue denim is all from my dad's old pants. All the rest is from scraps from who-knows-what. She also added a red trim around the entire thing. It's quite nice.
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Now, my mom is putting the finishing touches on the thing. She is cutting the sewn sides of the squares (shown above) to give the quilt a soft-looking frayed appearance. At the time this picture was taken, not much of that had been done.
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It's not a big quilt, maybe 4' by 5', but I asked for it nonetheless. Viola! I've got so many colors now, I can now hit the streets like Joseph hit the cities of Egypt. I sleep on the quilt or under it, depending on if my parents have the temperature at 72 or 75. Raisin likes it too. I've seen her dragging her behind over it a few times for the rough surface; this doesn't please me too much, but she licks me afterward, so we're all good.
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And for the toilet naysayers, may I add that there's more to this blog than potty aerobics. I had hoped to establish a range of topics within my little slice of Corpus. After a few more posts, you'll get a better idea of what I'm up to. Hopefully, I will too.