Kitchen Tragedies

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

I nearly murdered my sourdough starter yesterday.

I tend to fuss over all of the living things in my home. My cats, my dog, my spiders who have found sanctuary in some of the quieter corners of my house, my houseplants, my outdoor plants who have wintered over inside, my spring seedlings who are nestled between wet papertowels all over my kitchen sideboards, and especially the little beasties (yeasties in this case) who live in my sourdough starter. I constantly feed them little snacks, far more frequently than is recommended. I stir them and talk to their tiny bubbles several times an hour when I'm waking them up in a slightly warm oven after a long hybernation in my referigerator.

But I have a terrible habit of switching on the oven to tweak the temperature up a few degrees when it starts to feel a little too cool - kind of like tucking the covers up around their microscopic little necks while they're in there bubbling away. That's not the terrible part of the habit. The terrible part is forgetting to turn it back off. I've nearly killed them almost a dozen times this way. But I brought them back from death's door one more time.

Speaking of death's door, extra virgin olive oil is one of the most vile smelling substances I've ever encountered. I love olive oil and use it all the time, but the extra virgin version - blech. I got some a few weeks ago and once I'd tasted it and realized that it was anything but pleasurable to my palate, I should have drawn a skull and crossbones on it and stored it under the sink. Instead I left it in my pantry.

Which brings me to the other tragic event that took place in my kitchen yesterday - the defilement of a huge bowl of sourdough rye bread batter. I was having a nice time as I added some rye flour to my resurrected sourdough starter and stirred, added some whole and crushed caraway seeds and stirred, added some mashed potatoes and stirred, added some buttermilk and stirred, added some orange rind and stirred - (I love the adding and stirring part of making bread, enjoying the colors and textures and scents swirling around in my old cracked jade green pottery breadbowl as the batter becomes dough) - added some salt and stirred, added some white flour and stirred, added some oil and stirred.

Wait a minute. As I continued to stir, I started to notice a really unpleasant odor beginning to obliterate the scents of rye and caraway and buttermilk and orange peel. I leaned down to sniff my beautiful batter and blech! Double blech! There's only one thing that smells... like... that... extra virgin olive oil! I'd used it by mistake instead of corn oil. When I realized the hurlworthy tragedy of what I'd done, and after I'd made several over-dramatic gagging noises, I was so discouraged and disgusted that I threw the whole batch in the garbage.

I decided that maybe it wasn't such a good day to make bread. So I re-caulked my bathtub for the fourth time in as many days. File under bathroom tragedies. Again.