Skipped a Generation 
Well, I finally had the opportunity to use my new fancy dancy Kitchenaid mixer. I’m zero for two in my success ratio. I tried making hamburger buns on Tuesday, and I didn’t proof them enough. They looked more like stones than hamburger buns. Yesterday, I tried again, this time using a very easy recipe for basic white bread. All went well up and though the first proof. However, after I formed the loaf and put it into a loaf pan to rise for the second time, I let it rise too long. It was over-proofed. My brother told me Tuesday that overproofing is as bad as underproofing. It rises too much and then when it hits the heat of the oven, it goes POOF and deflates, and doesn’t brown. That’s exactly what happened to my bread. Today I’m going to try the white bread again. When I set it to proof the second time, I’m going to watch it like a hawk. Third time is a charm.

I’m the Boss
I’ve mentioned my niece Jessie in this blog before. She is the smart-as-a-whip, tough-as-nails, tiny as a hummingbird engineer who recently moved from AZ to Denver. In her job, she heads up projects in which her company is involved. Her current project is a water treatment plant. Her staff are all men, who likely learned early on that she may be small but she is fierce (to paraphrase Shakespeare…..

Here she is standing next to my brother — her father. Her steel-toed boots almost go up to her knees.

Her staff presented her with the Rosie the Riveter poster, very fitting for this mighty young woman…..

Unmasked
The other day I was grocery shopping. I was half-way through produce before I realized that I wasn’t wearing my mask. It’s funny, because as time passes, I am having more difficulty remembering my mask. You would think it would be the other way around. No one said anything to me, and I was glad I realized my mistake before I got kicked out of the store.

Falling into It 
I discovered a new television series on Acorn TV called The Fall. It stars Gillian Anderson, who I have liked ever since I watched her a million years ago on The X Files. I got swept into it from the get go and sat and watched on entire season in a sitting. That was after my bread failure. Sigh.

Ciao.