Veggie friends beware

I NEED THIS!!

The Siege of Talonvale

What a fun event. Beautiful site, great weather lots of friends I hardly ever get to see. Before we left I baked the second attempt at period sourdough. (Mission: period bread in a period oven at Gimli) It was far more successful than the last time. It didn't raise much in the oven at all, BUT it had a nice crust and wasn't repulsive. No freaky bacteria strings of crazy gluten this time. In fact it had rather nice crumb. The crowd was split. Kassia and I felt it was too "bitey" still but Pete and Carol liked it. I'm gonna try 1/4 of the amount of starter and some white flour. Carol said whole wheat is a bitch to get to loft up properly and that it was a good attempt. It's just that I have Zingerman's as my bench mark. Maybe I am shooting too high?? The land jager was a tasty hit and they made a nice period snack together.

glazed over

and I don't mean donuts.
Not even bacon maple glazed from VOODOO DONUTS in Portland. This whole moving thing. Shopping for a house, finding a house getting out bid on a house, repeat.

I have Sworn up and down that I hate "cookie cutter subdivisions" and will never live in one-- then Petey found a near perfect house (a purple Victorian. It looks like they plucked it up from San Francisco and plopped in down on the edge of this sub division. It has it's barns and out buildings and four acres (so I can practice archery for FREE!!) but the people whose backyard touches our backyard?

They are the outer edge of a subdivison. Now, truthfully we can only see four of "them" from the driveway,and they are different colors-- but we will have to drive by them every day. But it has a VIKING RANGE and double ovens AND a fireplace. But then we have to actually let go of this house and this is MY house damn it.

We have a wonderful wonderful agent named Anna. She and Pete have all sorts of emails flying back & forth--all filled with scary numbers of immense proportions and frankly it makes my head spin. I tried to rationalize this whole pretend numbers thing by thinking about buying BBQ sauce. We like Sweet baby Ray's and it was on sale at Hiller's 3 for $5. I can comfortably stand there and figure the price per ounce and see a good deal and purchase three bottles of BBQ sauce without batting an eyelash. Why is comprehending square footage of real estate any different? Buying BBQ sauce doesn't make my stomach hurt or my head spin.