Tori’s Writing Hole

The last few days have been hectic, to say the least. Here in the lovely Capital Region, we’ve been hit with around 20″ of snow - causing Stephen’s work to be canceled but also requiring hours of digging. I’m not equipped for that, so Stephen was forced to dig out the car and shovel tons of the white sludge off of our sheer cliff face of a driveway. His car is still buried and he took mine - not like I’d be driving around in this.

The day before, however, was the day I ate Buddha. Seriously - he was an organic chocolate, homemade caramel and salty almond confection from Lucky Chocolates (located just outside of Woodstock, NY). And boy - was he sacrilicious. Happy smiling chubby Buddha makes for a good sweet treat, and these chocolates are pretty great. The store is teensy, barely a storefront, and it feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere - but they do have a website. Prices are steep, compared to other local choco-stores, but the products here are all made with fair trade organic chocolate and other neat items like agave nectar. I think I’ll go back and try some more when the weather doesn’t suck as much.

Finally, the sourdough. As you may have read previously, I made a starter. Said starter was going well - frothy, doubled in size, sour smelling. So I made a sourdough French bread, carefully following the directions for this deceptively simple food. I let it rise, punched and kneaded, and baked off the bread as directed. And… ended up with a rock. Thick and dense, it never seemed to get the height or crust I was looking for. I was convinced this meant that the recipe (and not the baker) was faulty, so I came up with a “standard” sourdough recipe and tried that. Nope, even worse. My verdict: trek over to Panera and buy a loaf. My friend the sourdough starter found a new home - the toilet.

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