daily bardo

  • running the gaps

    As of last night I recorded 1,457 different running activities in the app I use to track my fitness. There’s nothing special about that number except to make the points that (a) it’s quite a lot and (b) when you stack all those individual activities, in particular the GPS maps they generate, on top of each other (which there is a feature to do) you get what they call a heat map, an orange on black map of cumulative routes tracked.

    Places you run a lot glow bright orange with dozens or hundreds of track lines.

    Places you run occasionally are dimmer with one or two lines.

    Places you’ve never run are just empty black streets.

    I was surprised to notice recently that even after nearly fifteen hundred activities there are streets near me, in my neighbourhood, even just a few blocks away which I’ve never run down. Ever.

    My goal for the next while is to try and run at least once per week down a road which I currently have no track… to fill in the running gaps on my heat map.

  • sourdough second day

    The dough spent the night in the fridge and this morning, shortly after I got up and while I was bustling around the kitchen to feed the dog and make coffee and wake up, I put the covered bowl onto the counter to warm up a bit.

    It was still cool an hour later when I weighed, cut, kneaded and rolled the dough into a pair of loaf blanks and dropped them into my parchment-lined cast iron loaf pans.

    Those two loaves will rest and proof on the counter, out of the way from disturbance, covered and quiet and warm at room temperature until later today. Maybe it will take ten hours, twelve hours or even fourteen — it all depends on the mood of my yeast this week. (But I’m guessing 12 hours.)

    When those loaves rise up over the lip of the pan and start to look and feel ready, I’ll heat the oven up to 450F and put them inside for a thirty minute bake.

    When the timer chimes, I’ll pull them out onto a cooling rack and savour the smell of fresh baked bread through the house while it lasts. It only lasts a while, sadly.

    Ten more minutes of work, spread across the second day and I’ve got two loaves of fresh sourdough ready to enjoy for breakfast in the morning.

  • sourdough first day

    I sometimes tell people who ask about my bread that sourdough isn’t difficult. It’s just twenty minutes of work spread across two full days.

    On day one I start in the morning and take my starter out of the fridge. Some people will tell you that you need to keep in on the counter, feed it every day, and care for it as if it were a child. My starter will be four years old next month and he comes out of the fridge for about 12 hours at a time, just long enough to prime for action… then fed, watered, and right back to bed.

    My starter comes out of the fridge at about 7am, before I head out to work, and by the time I get home it’s warm and bubbly and active.

    I mix my dough, and while I’ve got the flour out on the counter, I replace the half of the starter I used with two parts flour and one part water and double him back up to his regular size with a good mix.

    The starter goes back in the fridge. The dough has some countertop time and some folds over the next couple hours, and it joins the starter.

    Ten tough minutes of work, spread across that first day and I’ve got a fed starter and a bowl of dough resting for tomorrow.

  • like a lion

    I recall a March three years ago that came in like a lamb and left like a lion. March 2020 started calm and quiet, at least in my little corner of the universe, with big vacation plans and a mild winter and slowly ramping up for a season of marathon training.

    By the time March 2020 ended it was definitely growling and snarling and ready to slash at anyone who came close, an angry lion if there ever was one.

    This March first I woke up to fresh snow and a clear determination to accomplish some lofty goals before the month is over. This March, my March at least, is coming in like a lion.

    How’s yours shaping up?

  • spicy mustard

    Sometimes you need to trip over your own little assumptions in order to realize they’re even assumptions at all.

    We went on vacation about 10 days ago, and rented a condo suite with a full kitchen. It’s nice to have somewhere to cook regular meals when we’re out busy exploring the mountains. The small minor upgrade to the expense in accommodation makes for much less expense when it comes to dining. We can have simple breakfasts and lunches with ingredients from the grocery store.

    We bought supplies to make sandwiches for lunch every day — buns, sliced cheese, deli meat, greens, and…

    The store was all out of the regular mustard I usually buy. I won’t mention brands here at the risk of sounding like an endorsement, but sometime you just grow up with a single brand of something and never really re-evaluate it. Basic yellow mustard has been that for me. Same brand. Forty-six years… well, assuming I ate mustard as an infant. Unlikely.

    The store was out. So I tried another brand. “Prepared Hot Yellow Mustard” in a little vacation-sized jar.

    I think I just tripped over my own assumptions about the mustard I thought I liked. I think I like this new stuff better.