In other life list news

   10. Successfully make a boule of bread (mine are always flat)

I think I'm going to cross "successfully baking a boule of bread" off the list. My new job allows me to work from home so I can do things like baking bread. Bread baking takes almost no effort but you have to periodically punch down dough in between rises. I throw the ingredients in the Kitchenaid mixer before I fire up my computer, then I punch down the dough while I'm making lunch. By the time I'm done with work the bread is ready to be thrown in the oven. I've been trying to make a loaf a week and I've been getting better and better at executing free-form loaves.

Behold:

This was a loaf of deli rye. This recipe is AWESOME.

And pumpernickel:

I've also attempted Jim Lahey's no-knead dough, which was incredible. Except for that time that I inexplicably effed it the hell up and the whole loaf was stuck in my pan. But that wasn't a boule!

Then I got on a roll and made pretzels and bread in loaf pans (I had no idea how these were rolled before this), and I've been making pasta from scratch, too. Basically, my house is a celiac's worst nightmare.

I guess I'm also trying to explain why I've gone up a pant size. It has nothing to do with Halloween candy or Thanksgiving or Christmas goodies. It is because of the 5 pound bags of flour that I go through so regularly. If you are bread challenged, as I was, I can't recommend Deb's recipes enough. She also has a write up of bread baking tips on Smitten Kitchen that are really helpful.

In my case what I needed to change was letting the dough proof longer, learning to properly slash the top and keeping a spray bottle of water to mist over the loaf during the first fifteen minutes of baking. Steam = a great crust and more expansion of your loaf. But I think really great recipes were really the key here. Learning to walk naturally in heels is going to be a LOT harder.

Mighty life list: there will be nacho cheese

Consider this Mighty Life List item done: unlimited fried shrimp at The Sizzler.

I didn't actually get the unlimited option because that comes with steak but no salad bar. And the salad bar at The Sizzler includes nacho cheese, so not getting it wasn't an option. Also in the salad bar: onion rings and chicken wings. It turns out I had more than enough fried shrimp.

Jess and I were joined by the post-church supper set, for the most part. For a while there we were the only guests in the restaurant under the age of 70. They ate baked potatoes and ranted audibly about Obama while I whispered, "I'm worried this will give me E. coli." But really The Sizzler was clean and cozy and I would totally be down with spending my twilight years that way. And guys, the service there is GREAT. If you've eaten out much in Portland then you know that our collective waitstaff are surly and slow and they often act as if they are doing you a great favor just by showing up. As someone who used to wait tables, this makes me crazy. So mega-points to The Sizzler for that. Your lettuce is iceberg and your fried shrimp are just okay but your staff get gold stars.

There's a taco bar! And a sundae bar! But no sprinkles, FOR SHAME, SIZZLER. I made Jess this silly pillow as a thank you for fulfilling my childhood dream.

Jess is the only person I know who likes this silly video as much as I do. This came out before the honeybadger video and I find it way funnier. What a great way to let everyone know how much you like tigers!



So thank you, Jess, for helping me fulfill a childhood dream. I had a blast. Next up: tap dancing lessons!

Europe pictures!

Again, this has nothing to do with the house but everyone likes looking at other people's vacation pictures, right? When we were traipsing around Amsterdam I asked Greg, "Remember how you used to pull out the slide projector, invite friends over for dinner, then force them to look at a thousand pictures of your vacation?" and he was like, "What? No, my family wasn't weird."

So let's just pretend I crawled back into the scary closet under the stairs in my parents' house (spiders, OHMYGODSPIDERS) and retrieved that screen that weighed a thousand pounds . . . . and all of these photos are Greg's since my camera took a dump.

Dam Square.

Amsterdam is the Venice of the north! It's very romantic and civilized and there are 650,000 bikes that can go anywhere, making it hazardous to walk if you don't pay attention. Almost everyone speaks English and they are nice about the fact that you can't pronounce anything correctly. And they give you little cookies with your coffee. Free cookies, EFF YEAH, NETHERLANDS! We had spectacular fall weather and I don't think I could love Amsterdam any more. And they have a floating flower market where they tempt you with tulips. I didn't buy any because I had ordered 150 bulbs back in August. And while the bulbs there were cheaper, they didn't have anything you couldn't get online.

They have a lovely botanical garden and they give you zinnia seeds with your admission. They have a greenhouse dedicated to pokey plants that I wanted SO BADLY.

And another greenhouse for terrifying butterflies from hell. When one butterfly floats through my yard I love it. When multiple gigantic butterflies try to land on me? You might as well let a taratula walk across my face. It totally freaked me out.

Giant rhubarb!

Water lillies OH MY GOD.

Each lilypad can hold 40kg, which is like 60 MPH in the US.

My impression of sunflowers.

Then we took a flight to Torino where we discovered that travel days make me so cranky I'm almost evil. Getting to Cinque Terre required us taking a train from the airport to the heart of town where we took a city bus to a different train station where we had to take three more trains to get to Cinque Terre. It was very hot, and I am a doughy American used to being chilled while traveling, so the lack of air conditioning on some of the trains made me irritable (WHY was I wearing jeans?). Greg was trying to do things like put his arm around me and I basically told him, "Touch me again and I will punch you in the throat." It was not my finest hour.

But then we got there and it looks like this!

Overlooking Manarola

We stayed in Riomaggiore; if I had to do it all over again I would have stayed in Vernazza. The youth hostel is in Riomaggiore, which means lots of 18 year olds more interested in drinking than attempting to speak the language or enjoy what's around them. It made me crazy. Being Type-A in Europe is totally counter-productive, just FYI.

Regardless of where you stay it's very cute and there's not a lot to do except hike around and eat gelato and drink wine and watch the water. One day we walked from Riomaggiore to Manarola along the Via dell Amore. Sayeth Rick Steves:

"[It] became established as a lovers’ meeting point for boys and girls from the two towns. (After one extended closure in 1949, the trail was reopened for a Christmas marriage.) A journalist, who noticed all the amorous graffiti along the path, coined the trail’s now-established name, Via dell’Amore: “Pathway of Love.” 

Closing a padlock with your lover onto a cable or railing at a lovey-dovey spot—often a bridge—is the current craze in Italy, having been re-popularized by a teen novel."

I love teen novels and I love locks so I convinced Greg to do it. He even threw the keys in the ocean. Now he's stuck with me! Sucker.

Fun fact: If you stupidly post this photo on Facebook with the caption "We're official" everyone thinks you're engaged and/or pregnant. AS IF I WOULDN'T CHANGE MY RELATIONSHIP STATUS TO ENGAGED AND/OR PREGNANT. Come ON.

Italians will graffiti anything.

Six foot agaves!

We had dinner at the top of a cliff in Vernazza, in a restaurant that slopes noticeably toward the Meditteranean. They opened the clear plastic walls and you could see France going to sleep for the night. We ate risotto di frutta di mare and the owner made us drink limoncello (which they call limoncino in that part of Italy) before leaving.

That tiny hunk of land in the far distance? It's France.

After two days in Cinque Terre we hopped back on the train and stopped off at Pisa. Again, I was very cranky. We got a little turned around and being lost makes very irritable, apparently. I think Greg started thinking about going on a diving expedition for those keys.

Exactly as advertised, it leans.

A few trains later and we were in Florence! Florence feels like New York City after Cinque Terre. It's a little overwhelming coming out of the train station. There are people EVERYWHERE. There is sculpture everywhere, there are beautiful vistas everywhere. It's a gorgeous city.

Fresco depicting the end of time in the Duomo.

3-D Medici floors in the Duomo. 

We hit the Uffizi and saw nine million Renaissance depictions of Jesus and Mary. We climbed the Duomo, which was spectacular. I want to live there--they let atheists do that, right? We saw David at the Accademia, which was spectacular. We ate ravioli in walnut sauce that knocked my socks off at Trattoria Nella. There was this huge extended commotion going on outside all through dinner. One man had urinated in the street and the other man didn't like him defacing the city like that so he called the cops. There were heated conversations and shoving and the whole thing was like a giant stereotype about Italian passion. Then we stumbled out of the trattoria and there was a Charlie Chaplin-esque street performer doing a long routine to music. Florence felt like being in The Truman Show, the Italian version. Amazing buskers play while you wander cobblestone streets that are older than your country. It's unreal.

One last thing: I will never travel again without my American Apparel circle scarf. I read about it on Mighty Girl and it was fantastic. It made covering my shoulders in churches a snap and it did all these things while being small enough to fit in my tiny bag.

Wrap thing

Hands-free, shoulder covered administering of first aid in the Duomo  because I also carried bandaids.

Demonstrating how I could sleep in a rain storm without getting my hair wet.

The normal scarf function catches your tiny cookie crumbs!

I want to go back to there.

If you're wondering what a cenote is . . .

They are huge sinkholes that form when the ceiling of limestone caves collapse, exposing underground water. They are like the inverse of Karst topography, which is also on the list. This is one we visited near Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula:

They can be hundreds of feet deep and they tell you to wear a life vest because they will make no attempt to rescue you. Don't you want to swim in one, too?

This has almost nothing to do with the house

Feel free to skip reading this one.

Much of my life has been spent being cautious. I'm a worrier, I'm clumsy, I'm broke, I'm afraid to fly, I always have a lot of reasons for not doing stuff. I've had people tell me I'm boring (which is so rude! and not true!). At some point about five years ago I decided to stop being afraid of stupid stuff. It's okay to be afraid of flying because that shit can actually kill you. But being afraid of karaoke? Unless there's a freak gasoline fight accident at the karaoke bar, you're not going to die. So I finally sang at karaoke and, indeed, I didn't die. Not even of embarrassment! I did other stuff like eating dinner at a restaurant by myself and buying a house. I may be boring but it takes guts to buy a fixer. I've established that here, right?

Then last fall the boy took me to Hawaii with his parents and I flew over the ocean, something I was really nervous about. At the time I joked that if he took me to the all-you-can-eat fried shrimp buffet at The Sizzler, he would have officially fulfilled all of my childhood dreams. But I lied. I'd also need tap dancing lessons. Hawaii, fried shrimp, and tap dancing. This little girl dreamed big.

Maggie over at Mighty Girl created a Mighty List of 100 things to do before she dies, which is a familiar riff on the bucket list. Lots of people make lists (you should in particular check out Jess' 30-while-she's-30 and Amy's life list) but Maggie's is fun to follow because she has corporate sponsorship so she goes amazing places and tells you what she wore.

I started thinking about what would be on my list and looking at other people's lists. It's fun because I've already done some of the stuff that other people want to do. I've done a night swim with manta rays (terrifying and awesome). I've run a 5K and learned sign language. I've grown my own vegetables and made my own limoncello and held adult dinner parties. I've rewired a lamp, seen the Northern Lights, bought a house, and taken hip hop classes. Reading these lists makes me feel way better about my life, which has made me pretty happy so far but still seems boring to other people. I'm not a thrill seeker, so sky diving or bungee jumping won't make my list, though I highly recommend going ziplining to anyone who hasn't tried it. I had to consciously avoid putting things on the list that I thought I *should* do, like hang gliding. That doesn't mean I won't do it at some point, but I don't need to do it before I die to feel content. Also, I love having toenails so running a marathon will never make this list. And why would I run when I can take Zumba classes?

A lot of this is aspirational stuff I've always dreamed about (Italy, manatees) and other stuff is more banal but somehow it hasn't happened yet.

So here's my Mighty List, in no particular order and still in progress:

1. Go to Hawaii (done 10/10!)
2. Unlimited fried shrimp at The Sizzler
3. Take tap dancing lessons
4. Spend an entire day making bolognese and homemade pasta, drinking wine, and watching The Godfather 1&2 with friends (I did something similar once and it was awesome).
5. Go to Italy (just done 09/11! ohmygod!)
6. Visit New York City
7. Refinish the floors in the house
8. Road trip of the States
9. Learn how to can food
10. Successfully make a boule of bread (mine are always flat)
11. Bike to a picnic in the park
12. Vacation on Isla Mujeres
13. Learn to walk naturally in heels
14. See Glacier National Park before all the glaciers melt
15. Learn to salsa dance confidently
16. Make a pie for someone else, which means not eating a single bite myself
17. Vacation with my mom
18. Pay off my credit card debt
19. Roast my own coffee beans
20. Learn to crochet
21. See the manatees in Florida (sea cows, how I love you!)
22. Learn to type without looking
23. Take piano lessons
24. See Machu Picchu
25. Set foot in seven continents
26. Croissants in Paris. Remember it fondly afterward with some International Coffee.
    
    
    
27. Kayak a major body of water
28. Complete the 3 day Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure
29. See the Grand Canyon
30. Get a role in a musical
31. Attend a seder
32. Catch a fish
33. Attend a Dia de los Muertos celebration in Mexico
34. See the Karst topography in China




Photo yanked from here

35. Swim in a cenote
36. Go backpacking again
37. Take one of my nieces or nephews on an awesome trip
38. Make my own mozzarella cheese
39. Have a dinner party and not feel disappointed about how some of the food came out.
40. Happy hour oysters at Cafe Nell
41. Camp on the southern Oregon coast
42. Take a painting class
43. Learn how to swim, for reals (I *love* being in the water but I do this sad mashup between the breast stroke and doggie paddle and I'd be screwed if I ever needed to get somewhere quickly.)
44. Get my yard prettified enough to be featured on a garden tour . . .
45. . . . and then invite LeAnn over for cocktails
46. Float in the Dead Sea
47. Sew a sundress
48. Visit my family in Scotland
49. Go to Japan
50. Helicopter ride in Hawaii
51. Have a ladies-only tea party in the garden where we all wear dresses and eat little sandwiches.
52. Curry at HA & VL
53. Take a vacation with Bill
54. Make pizza on the barbecue
55. Host a board game night
56. Find the perfect jeans
57. Learn how to hit a baseball/softball
58. Play craps (it's look like so much fun in the movies . . . until something TERRIBLE happens)
59. Tea in the Chinese garden
60. Indian food at Vij's in Vancouver

Just a heads up: If you have "take a road trip to all the Sizzlers in the US" on your life list, there's a trip planner on their site. Nothing is stopping you now!

Anybody else have a mighty/bucket list?