Sourdough Bagel recipe...

Snap, I thought I'd lost this recipe. I'd been searching for it for days now, and finally located in the "spot I'd never lose it", which I couldn't find for days. Clearly, I should put his here so this never happens again. And no, I haven't made these yet after the sourdough-unfriendly summer temps, but here it is. Bakers Percentages included for those who wish to screw with the batch size. This recipe makes six, 4.8 ounce bagels. Dig it:

Ingredient = weight = bakers percentage

Flour = 339g = 100%
Starter = 301g = 88%
Cold water = 121g = 36%
Milk powder = 28g = .08%
Malt = 16.4g = .048%
Salt = 10.1 = .029%
Wheat gluten = 10 = .029%

I'm growing up my starter now to blast out a few of these guys. Stay tuned...

The MRE experience..

Got my hands on a legit MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) that the Army guys are eating overseas as we speak. Though it would be interesting to see how they rough it over there, so I dug in to one yesterday for lunch. The object: to follow the directions and eat as much as I could stomach.

I say follow the directions because it's a bit of a puzzle to put the thing together. Here's the bag it all comes in:

Once you open the bag, there's a myriad of things in there. You can see the Spicy Chicken meal in the center there, the cooking bag (gren color), white bread crackers, cheese spread, peanut butter, utensil package, lime drink mix and a 'power bar' or some sort. 

This is the puzzle I spoke of before. Lots of directions here in small print. It's pretty interesting, actually. All you need to have a hot meal is about 3 ounces of water, really. It has a water activated heater inside, sort of like those kinds you put in your gloves during the winter that get warm? Except this get's so hot it'll bun your hands. I was sorta frightened for a bit when I first added the water. It was intense. 

Essentially, you take the foil food bag, and put it into the green back with the heater, add 3oz or water or so, and then fold the bag up and put it back in the cardboard box, and tilt it up on end like I'm doing here on this red colored tray, and leave it for 10-15 minutes. It get's hot! Afterwards, take the bag out, tear open the top and eat with the spoon. The foil bag acts as a 'bowl' of sorts.. you don't even need a plate, really.

Food back in the box

Peanut butter and crackers are a high protein and carb addition, apparently. 

This stuff is just like what you buy as drink mix in the store, except a bit more maltodextrin, I think...

This was sorta cool in that the bag with the spoon also contains a wet nap, a paper towel, instant coffee package, powered creamer, sugar and a small salt and pepper packet. Really, there's everything you need in here. Curious! They don't tell you how, or give you any fancy way to het up the required 6oz of water for the coffee, though. I cheated and used the microwave. 

The mix didn't really wanna mix in all the way...

A view into the bag with the heater...

And the heater itself, after use. Helpfully, they tell you not to eat this part...

And here's the finished Spicy Chicken meal in a bag. It looks a little of putting, but it was actually quite tasty. I didn't get to eat any diner on this day until 2130 hours, and this had held me over since I ate it at 1300 hours. Not bad! And yeah, it was good and spicy, too. I'd definitely eat another one of these things. It was quite interesting. 

Spicy chicken!

Relish!

Got a few jar of Hot Cherry pepper relish put away and then did up nine 1/2 pint jars of Jalapeno pepper rings the next day. Very industrious! Still haven't cracked open any of the salsa, because they say to wait a couple weeks for all the flavors to meld together well, but we're getting close now and I should have some results to post soon. Here's some of that stuff I mentioned above...

Hot Cherrys, all chopped up.. 

87 Jalapeno's in this basket alone, all from the Earthbox.

Pepper rings! 

Canning still going strong. I expect to do up the Portugese Hot's in a while, but they're such a massive pepper, they're taking forever to mature. The Fatalii's are small, bu they're also taking their time to come around. I've been using them green, and they're still quite tasty, but the color is not quite there in them.. I've also got a few Hab's in the dehydrator, for use in chili's later on. Those things are killer. Dried out a few handfuls of hops from the bines, too, although it's tough to do with the small sized dehydrator I have here.

Updates to a few things...

Just to keep you in the loop and document the progress, I've been doing some cylinders ont the wheel and then cutting into them to see the cross section and how well I'm keeping things even. Here's what I mean:

That one's not so bad. I kept working on the previous one, too, and came up with this:

What I'm aspiring to, however, is to imitate the quality of this cup, shown on the left, next to the finished project from what appear above. Then, when I can do this much, I'll know I've gotten to at least college level skillz. ;-) the handle on this is terrible, but hey.. first try, right?

Lastly, some flapping chicken action from the new grey colored baby.. they're already noticeably larger and more feathered out in size than they were when we got them last week.. almost all of the downy feathers are gone now, and they're turing into quite good looking birds. This grey one in the photo here, although you can't see it in the pic, has an almost Americauna-esq chicken feather set alongside her head.. they look like tiny tufs of ears/feathers on the side. Curious look!

New babies...

Got a few new additions to the family now. Three replacement chicks, about 5 weeks old when we picked them up. They're all incorporated into the club now with the remaining two big chickens, and no real issues to speak of when getting them acquainted. We got 'em from a friend of a friend, who's now my friend, Shawn, a micro-farmer out in NY state. Got a nice setup with a zillion chickens and a few head of goats. Envious! Anyway, here's a few pics of the new arrivals..

A bird in the hand.. yep. 

They're a mic of different breeds of chicken, so we're not sure exactly what we've got. We'll maybe be able to tell a bit more when they get older.. and if we've maybe even got a rooster in the group? I sorta hope so, and hope not, all at the same time. We'll see...

First adventures with the pottery wheel...

So, just finished reading that book I got on pottery wheel stuff and now hat I've scored some clay, I've given it a whirl on the wheel for the first time. Took my perfectly cleaned up wheel and turned it into a disaster real quick, that's for sure! Here's some first time ever spinning pics..

New box of clay...

Gettin' centered on the wheel.

My first pull!

Disaster!

Bryan's Fat Tire clone...

I'm talking to Bryan on the phone as I'm drinking this beer, and so I wasn't really thinking about taking too many notes as I was discussing it, but hey, what the heck..

It's supposed to be a Fat Tire clone beer, but I'll be damned if I know what a Fat Tire tastes like, as it's not really available out here. It's coming from a Grolsh bottle with a truckload of yeast stuck to the bottom, but this presents no more trouble than to make me really may a bit more attention to the pour. I know for certain that I've got a deep mahogany colored beverage in front of me, though. An American Amber has a good range of color it can occupy, so I'm sure he's in the ballpark with this. It's got not much of a smell on the nose with the exception of a faint brown sugar note. Sorta like Brown Shugga by Lagunitas, but not offensive, like Brown Shugga is (one man's opinion!). Other than that, not gettin' any hop aroma. No hop flavor either, as we go further along. It's got a bitterness to make the beer perfectly drinkable, but it's definitely a malt forward product. It's clean, and a bit of a fruity ester comes along in the flavor, but not much.. certainly not enough for me to pinpoint what the ester is flavored like. Like I said, it's clean, no defects, and well brewed. I'm thinking I liked some of his earlier reviewed beers a bit better, but this is still a well made, solid beer. Nothing wrong with it, and I'd drink another one.. but my first choice would really have been his Belgian style thing first.

Come on Bryan, get that All-grain rig together and let's see what you can do. and put some frickin' hops in the damn thing!