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Monthly Archives: October 2015

I make! Jim Lahey’s no knead pizza dough edition

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A-pusher (THEM-COM) 08:519
anyways…. yahoo had that as a banner this morning
made me think of you hahaha

Me (THEM-IRV) 08:53
Hey now…
I haven’t eaten a whole pizza by myself in years.
Well actually…
I think my brother and I both ate whole pizzas when he was here….

A-pusher (THEM-COM) 08:53
it was even better cause it was a whole pizza first

Me (THEM-IRV) 08:53
So,

A-pusher (THEM-COM) 08:53
and slice by slice went away

Me (THEM-IRV) 08:53
Since January.

A-pusher (THEM-COM) 08:53
it was more so just the thought of pizza is always on your mind
not so much the binge eating part
but it works either way

Me (THEM-IRV) 08:56
hahaha

I’ve been making pizza again.  I’m sure this comes as a great shock to you.  You had no idea that I would be furtively making pizza in the background.  But I was.  Actually, I don’t know if I’d really describe my pizza making as furtive.  Anyway…

I recently tried out another no-knead dough recipe for pizza.  This time it was Jim Lahey’s recipe.  This one makes the most pizzas out of any of the recipes I’ve tried thus far and also is so very nicely already in weight measurements.

I made two pizzas after 24 hours: one pan and one…not pan.  They’re both topped with some jar marinara I had lying around, prosciutto, yellow bell, grape tomatoes, fresh basil, asparagus, sweet onion, and fresh mozz.  Basically, things in my fridge that I needed to get rid of.  It’s an ongoing theme in my cooking.  The pan pizza had a bit of garlicky olive oil and was baked at 550degF for about 15 min.  The not pan pizza was baked on a pizza stone preheated to 550degF but under the broiler for about 15 min.

IMAG00459 IMAG00458

The result wasn’t bad but one thing I immediately noticed was how much salt there was in the dough.  Granted, it may not have been the recipe itself.  I did notice that my scale was acting up a bit while weighing out the salt.  I may have just oversalted the dough.  I’ll try it again some other time to make sure.  The saltiness kind of held my attention the entire time so I can’t really say how much I liked the crust.  Also, I made the pizzas within 24 hours.  I would have preferred to wait at least another day to let the dough develop some flavor.

Which I did.  For other pizzas.  But that’s another post.

Also, I don’t think I have binge eating disorder but if you think you might, maybe you should seek help.

On priorities and time management

Whaaaat?  It’s a Monday and I’m posting.  I haven’t posted on a Monday in months.  There’s a post scheduled for Friday too.  Indeed, that is two posts for this week.  And the goal is two posts per week at least until the end of the year.  Why?  Well, take a listen to what Michael Aranda has to say.  Yes, I know it’s a roundabout way of quoting sources, but I can’t find the original reddit post but I remembered he mentioned the post.  The relevant part is from 2:49-4:06.

So, priorities and the subsequent time management around those priorities.

I have been thinking about my priorities a lot recently.  Actually, not so recently.  I started thinking about them even before I saw that vlog I linked to and that was from April.  But the vlog and the reddit post mentioned did help crystallize how I felt about some things.

For a long time now, I’ve prioritized work and fulfilling all my responsibilities outside of work.  This is a good thing.  I have a reputation for being responsible and dependable and I’m not trying to change that.  I quite despise dealing with flaky people and I have no intention of becoming one.  But I’ve been considering lately if maybe I’ve allowed work to dictate too much on how I allocate my time and whether I’ve taken on too many responsibilities outside of work.

There are 24 hours in a day and a certain number of those hours are dedicated to fulfilling basic biological needs. Everything else needs to fit into the remaining hours.  But if the remaining hours are: 8 hours dedicated to work (on a good day and maybe 10-12 hours on not a good day), 4 hours commuting (also on a good day), 2 hours on sundry other responsibilities, you’ll note that on a bad day that’s already at least 18 hours.  That leaves maybe 6 hours in which to eat, shower, sleep, and all the other basic maintenance activities for sustaining life.  This does not leave time for other maintenance activities that do not tie into biological need but should probably still be considered necessities for mental health.

It doesn’t seem sustainable, does it?  It probably isn’t.

I’ve been considering that perhaps 16 hour days at work, counting the commute, is unreasonable when it ends up being the norm.  That’s already 2/3 of the day.  That’s every work day.  While I do realize that my compensation for work is what funds the rest of my life, it still seems unreasonable that it would be 2/3 of my day and at least 5/7 of my week.  So, I’m making an effort to take back some of my time so I can dedicate it to other things, one of them being the blog, which I had started because I wanted an outlet for…stuff.

So let’s see what happens for the rest of the year.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep up the two posts per week at least until the end of the year and maybe even through it.  But it’ll mean that I can’t prioritize complaining and wallowing in self-pity over getting other things accomplished, like committing whatever strange idea is in my head to a post.