two days in a row with social activities!
Sep. 7th, 2008 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaToday is Father's Day (at least in Australia--I don't know if it is the same in other countries), so ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t invited his parents over for lunch.
We decided to feed them pizza, that being one of the few foods he and I both eat. The fact that his prefered diet is meat and I don't eat it any more does complicate things, fortunately we are both very fond of eating whilst reading, so rather than sharing meals we just grab a bite whenever we feel like it. But it does mean that on the rare occasion we invite someone over for a meal we are at a loss of what to do. However, we both love home-made pizza, though our choice of toppings are very, very different.
Today's pizza dough was a little different than I often make. I have mentioned here before how my prefered breakfast is muesli with a blend of herbal tea, ginger, lemon, & apple/pear juice, which I tend to mix up six litres at a time (since the juice comes in 3 litre bottles here, and I like it cut 50% to reduce the sweetness. This has always worked out very well in the past, but for some reason, this particular batch was different, and I noticed this morning that my breakfast tasted a bit odd, and the juice felt just a little bubbly--it is starting to ferment! Fortunately, whatever it is which causes my aversion to wine and vinegar wasn't present in the juice, so I was able to eat the cereal anyway, but I didn't like the change in flavour enough to drink the liquid as I normally do. There being a couple of cups of this altered juice blend still in the bottle, I decided to use it for the liquid in the bread dough. I'd set a bread sponge the night before (put a bit of yeast into a cup of flour, add a cup of hot water, stir, cover with a damp cloth and let sit an hour or two or overnight, to give the yeast a chance to wake up and be happy for a bit before making the bread) so I warmed the juice blend in the microwave, and put that into the bowl. Oh, my, did that make the yeast happy! The gentle bubbling that had been taking place was replaced, instantly, with a veritable plethora of bubbles! Not surprisingly, once the dough was made, had a chance to rise a bit and was baked it wasn't really possible to taste either the flavour of the juice, or the slightly fermented taste. Gotta love baking--such a good use for liquids which have gone "off" (sour milk makes excellent cakes and breads!).
For Pizza toppings we had a choice of ground beef, pre cooked with herbs and spices, fresh herbs from the garden (thank youbaronsnorri for planting some of them, and teaching me which of the plants which were already here are edible!), fresh spinach, canned (*not* marinated!) artichoke hearts, grated carrots, feta , parmesan, and mozzarella cheeses, and avocado (added *after* baking). Since our oven is small and we've only the one pizza stone, we did two pizzas, one at a time, divided into quarters, with each person's choices in their quadrant. clovis_t and his dad were able to eat their two slices each from both the first and second pizzas, but his mother and I stopped after our first two (which is nice, since that gave me fours slices (she also choose meat-free toppings) left over so I don't have to cook again later!)
For desert they brought over some ice cream, whcih went very well with small slices of birthday cake whichbaronsnorri was kind enough to let us have (he was off at Fighting Practice himself--not that anyone actually fought today, but apparently the archers had fun).
All in all it was lovely to have them over. The food was good, and the company nice. However, it did mean rather less uni work accomplished today than I would have liked. I did some calculations in the morning before they arrived, and more this evening after they left, but alas, can't report any success yet. There are any number of techniques which *might* wind up giving me an estimate of temperature and pressure for these samples, and some of them work, for some of the samples, but not the ones I've tried today. And the clock is ticking, with only this week left to see if I can manage to find something that will work before I have to give up and simply report on the results that already exist. Pity there are still some areas with no results yet...
clovis_t invited his parents over for lunch. We decided to feed them pizza, that being one of the few foods he and I both eat. The fact that his prefered diet is meat and I don't eat it any more does complicate things, fortunately we are both very fond of eating whilst reading, so rather than sharing meals we just grab a bite whenever we feel like it. But it does mean that on the rare occasion we invite someone over for a meal we are at a loss of what to do. However, we both love home-made pizza, though our choice of toppings are very, very different.
Today's pizza dough was a little different than I often make. I have mentioned here before how my prefered breakfast is muesli with a blend of herbal tea, ginger, lemon, & apple/pear juice, which I tend to mix up six litres at a time (since the juice comes in 3 litre bottles here, and I like it cut 50% to reduce the sweetness. This has always worked out very well in the past, but for some reason, this particular batch was different, and I noticed this morning that my breakfast tasted a bit odd, and the juice felt just a little bubbly--it is starting to ferment! Fortunately, whatever it is which causes my aversion to wine and vinegar wasn't present in the juice, so I was able to eat the cereal anyway, but I didn't like the change in flavour enough to drink the liquid as I normally do. There being a couple of cups of this altered juice blend still in the bottle, I decided to use it for the liquid in the bread dough. I'd set a bread sponge the night before (put a bit of yeast into a cup of flour, add a cup of hot water, stir, cover with a damp cloth and let sit an hour or two or overnight, to give the yeast a chance to wake up and be happy for a bit before making the bread) so I warmed the juice blend in the microwave, and put that into the bowl. Oh, my, did that make the yeast happy! The gentle bubbling that had been taking place was replaced, instantly, with a veritable plethora of bubbles! Not surprisingly, once the dough was made, had a chance to rise a bit and was baked it wasn't really possible to taste either the flavour of the juice, or the slightly fermented taste. Gotta love baking--such a good use for liquids which have gone "off" (sour milk makes excellent cakes and breads!).
For Pizza toppings we had a choice of ground beef, pre cooked with herbs and spices, fresh herbs from the garden (thank you
baronsnorri for planting some of them, and teaching me which of the plants which were already here are edible!), fresh spinach, canned (*not* marinated!) artichoke hearts, grated carrots, feta , parmesan, and mozzarella cheeses, and avocado (added *after* baking). Since our oven is small and we've only the one pizza stone, we did two pizzas, one at a time, divided into quarters, with each person's choices in their quadrant. clovis_t and his dad were able to eat their two slices each from both the first and second pizzas, but his mother and I stopped after our first two (which is nice, since that gave me fours slices (she also choose meat-free toppings) left over so I don't have to cook again later!)For desert they brought over some ice cream, whcih went very well with small slices of birthday cake which
baronsnorri was kind enough to let us have (he was off at Fighting Practice himself--not that anyone actually fought today, but apparently the archers had fun).All in all it was lovely to have them over. The food was good, and the company nice. However, it did mean rather less uni work accomplished today than I would have liked. I did some calculations in the morning before they arrived, and more this evening after they left, but alas, can't report any success yet. There are any number of techniques which *might* wind up giving me an estimate of temperature and pressure for these samples, and some of them work, for some of the samples, but not the ones I've tried today. And the clock is ticking, with only this week left to see if I can manage to find something that will work before I have to give up and simply report on the results that already exist. Pity there are still some areas with no results yet...