Pasadena Housewife

Happy Valentine’s Day! I love you so much.

I went outside as it was getting dark to unpin the laundry from the clothesline. While I was folding it and setting it in the basket, I looked up and saw the moon through the branches of the big tree in our back yard.

Tags: baking, bread, sourdough

I’ve been making sourdough starter from scratch using Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery recipe. It’s a two-week process. You start with flour, water and organic grapes, you monitor the room temperature, you’re careful about the temperature of the water that you add, you feed it on a rigid schedule, you don’t let it touch stainless steel, and if all goes well you end up with something you can make bread from. My first batch died, but this second one is bubbling along happily. I’m two days away from being able to bake my first loaf of bread.

I’m keeping track of the feeding schedule on that splattered index card over to the right.

Yesterday, a cat who I was getting to know died. I found him in the morning, stiff, with his eyes open, laying next to our trashcans out in the street with a little bit of blood on the ground near his head. He used to watch me in the back yard from a distance. He was just starting to come closer. He killed birds. At first it disturbed me, but I was counting on him to keep them away from the seeds I’m about to plant. I cried when I saw that he was dead.

Then I killed my favorite spider by accident. He was a little jumping spider that lived near where the dishes dry. He had jumped into the neck of the coffee pot, I didn’t see him until after I lifted out the steaming coffee filter. He was still alive, so I tried to help him out with a paper towel, but instead I accidentally knocked him into the pot of coffee.

I told Jack about it when I picked him up from school, and he was sad to hear about the cat (”What if it belonged to someone?” “I don’t think it did — it didn’t have a tag”), and then after a minute he asked, “You have a favorite spider?”

The venus fly traps are still alive. The trick is to give them only distilled water.

I have a sprig of rosemary on the window sill.

It’s growing roots.

Next to it is a fighter jet I found in the back yard.

And here’s the tea kettle on the stove.

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