you lost,//but darling, don't lose it!

Ok, you didn't "win" a scholarship.

but really, you have lost nothing.

27.5.2015

What matters now is that you just not lose your hope, your love of life and trust in people! Chin up, my girl! Keep smiling.

DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ENDEAVOR//and why

today. listen carefully:

oh no! the biscuits even injured my mother!

family was coming over. i wanted to share love through biscuits. and the recipe i referred to looked great! it called for only 3 ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour

16 oz sour cream

1/2 cup whole milk

plus, it was found on a mom blog:

http://momonamission.me/worlds-easiest-sour-cream-biscuits/

plus, it provided evidence: 

PLUS, mom blog.

"Mom on a Mission." intoxicating.

where did the recipe go wrong?

ah, wrong question. where did i go wrong?

~~~~~time to reconsider my actions~~~~~

So, why is it that i can play knock-knock with my biscuits?

5 major reasons.

food threads offer a breadth of advice--and demonstrate individuals' amazing desire to help others.

(source of screenshots: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/442520)

1.) using whole wheat flour

this comment immediately resonated: whole wheat flour "can make biscuits heavier." 

Although the original recipe called for 4 cups of white flour, i substituted 1 for whole wheat.

i thought, wow, whole wheat flour. so healthy. but it can complicate the baking process.

whole wheat flour is less refined than all-purpose flour; it contains wheat germ and bran, both of which pack vitamin E, iron, fiber, and other nutrients. while vitamins and minerals are generally pluses, "Thing is," writes Smithsonian Magazine's Alastair Bland, whole wheat flour renders "life harder for bakers." Germ and bran (we'll call 'em G&B, for sentimental purposes) despite their nutritive potentials, propose their own pitfalls to baking:

1.) G&B soak up water more readily than refined flours (like all-purpose) do, creating drier products

2.) G&B make the dough heavier and less able to rise, "leading to loaves almost as dense as French cobblestone" (solid simile, Alastair Bland).

of course, baked goods made with whole wheat flour can still turn out airy and flaky; adding more water may help, again to compensate for G&B's drying effect:

"'You really need to hydrate the flour. Only then can you get really beautiful, soft bread.'" ~Dave Miller, whole wheat enthusiast

(source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-makes-whole-grain-bread-so-hard-to-bake-63878/?no-ist)

2.) overworking the dough

(source: http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/basic-cooking/overmixing-doughs-batters)

first off, gluten is a protein found in wheat and other grains. when gluten is mixed with water, protein chains form. we'll call these protein chains gluten networks: they provide the elasticity that ultimately holds your ingredients together. stretchy dough illustrates this:

~~~~~though stretchy, my dough is not exemplary~~~~~

gluten networks provide structures in which carbon dioxide gas (CO2) can embed and expand, uplifting the dough. but where does the CO2 come from? 

fermentation. 

in baking, CO2 is produced as a byproduct of fermentation, or the chemical breakdown of sugars, typically by yeast or bacteria. yeast (a fungi), often used to make bread, chemically "eats" the flour sugars, producing CO2 and alcohol as waste. 

overall, fermentation influences texture and taste by producing:

CO2 bubbles. they allow the product to rise, giving it that nice airy quality

alcohol. in the heat, alcohol is baked off--but it leaves behind flavors that color our carbohydrate dreams~~

~~~~~HOWEVER~~~~~

"leavening agents would just be bubbling brews without something to contain them."

(source: https://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/bread/bread_science.html)

again, gluten networks provide structure. CO2, as a product of fermentation, is captured in the structure; little pockets of gas become suspended, expand, and some gas even escapes. overall, the dispersion of gas gives bread its airy quality and causes it to rise. 

~~~~ON THE OTHER HAND~~~~

overworking/overmixing dough or batter overdevelops the gluten. when this occurs, according to JoePastry.com, the gluten networks TRAP steam (in this case CO2). Although bakers use gluten networks for this very purpose--to trap and provide CO2 with structure--overdeveloped gluten networks trap the gas too tightly, impeding even distribution of CO2 bubbles. 

when overdeveloped, gluten networks have grips on CO2 that are just too strong. 

When CO2 is detained by gluten, baked goods increase in volume--resulting in dense, tough, rubbery, and tooth-chippin' products.

(source: http://www.joepastry.com/2008/what_is_overmixing/)

AND as The Foodie RD spares audiences of "the organic chemistry details," she highlights that BISCUITS are particularly susceptible to becoming hockey pucks. "Overworking biscuit dough," she writes, "causes not only too much gluten formation, but it also allows the carbon dioxide gas to escape" even BEFORE the biscuits are placed in the oven. here, CO2 potential has been doubly compromised; its ability to provide airiness is severely cut.

(source: http://thefoodierd.blogspot.com/2011/10/food-science-101-over-mixing.html)

watch it again!: do you think i overworked the dough? comment below!

3.) sealing the edges

as you can see, i did somethin' to those edges:

my first instinct was to separate the biscuits on the baking sheet, as i've learned to do with cookies. L.V. Anderson, an associate editor for Slate Magazine, recommends the contrary: "make sure they touch." 

"As they rise in the oven, their tops will brown and harden, but their abutting sides will remain soft, feathery, and white—just like the delicious insides."

4.) omitting buttermilk?

Anderson also contends that biscuits made without buttermilk "inevitably result in disks that are shorter, drier, and blander than buttermilk biscuits." She also warns against overworking the dough: "knead it just until it comes together."

(source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/04/18/buttermilk_biscuit_recipe_infinitely_better_than_baking_powder_biscuits.html)

i think Anderson's argument is extreme; one person's biscuit-making preferences do not apply to everyone. still, i look to experiment with buttermilk in the future.

SO from this

and this

failure happens, flour spills. but sweep it up and create.

oh, major error #5

5.) failing to visit Maeve in Ireland 

and the major take-away of this blog post: visit Maeve in Ireland and learn to make scones.

understanding how bread rises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvD-8ZfxfOY

an essential: quinoa

//high in protein, low in gluten

Banality/not yogurt

I cannot be without doing.
Do, do, do, that's all I

(click on it)
"men, not Man, live on earth and inhabit the world."

Do for you as much as for others. Through living for yourself, you can live for someone else.

It is so easy to get caught up in one of these.

Easy to do mostly for yourself

Easy to do mostly for someone else

From this, I can follow my logic with one of Arendt's legacies.

We must first define the "banality of evil," a term for which Arendt is often credited as having coined.  

While observing and reporting for The New Yorker magazine on the Adolf Eichmann trials (held in Israel in 1961), Arendt remarked on the apparent absurdity of evil in human form.

Background on Eichmann: Served as a German Nazi administrator. He is thought to have organized the collection and transfer of Jews and other Nazi-defined social pariahs to concentration and extermination camps. At the 1945-marked "end of the war," Eichmann fled to Argentina and assumed a new identity. 

He was found and captured there by agents and brought to Israel in May of 1960. Trial proceedings began in April of 1961.

Acknowledging the "banality of evil" is to penetrate the notion that evil is a thing of itself--horrible, wretched, condemned. On the contrary "evil" can be committed by anyone. 

Given the pressures of working for the Nazis, perhaps Eichmann's contributions to genocide were an extreme case of "blind perception," or losing sight of the implications of one's actions for others. 

sitting on your hands, not wholly understanding the miseries on them.

the weight of one's situation, one's fear of misery, blots out others' situations, others' miseries.  keep using your hands, and keep sitting on them

so as to match a circadian rhythm, which brings us into 

the day and out 

of the night so

simply.

naturally.

regardless of meter, of beat, of overtone.

the aches of others sonorous trombones but they play into

the rhythm.

it is you are 

the foreground.

Maybe Eichmann wasn't ideologically committed to the "Final Solution," or decision to exterminate the Jews. Maybe he decided to disregard every train car he sent to the camps, rationalizing his job as a necessity. 

just trying to make it for himself. for his financial security.

Millions of lives for his individual well-being.

And this is essentially banal, Arendt argues; evil is done for simple purposes. Millions murdered to put food on the table.

Now, the proceedings were partially implemented for a "rallying cry" effect, or in the hopes of bringing old conversations to the present, broaching forgotten/retired discussions, and promoting consciousness of Holocaust legacies among the younger Israeli and Jewish publics.

To remind everyone of what happened, to evoke decades-old emotions and thoughts from the present.

This is a way of seeing that emotions, events, and thoughts cannot be relegated to a set time period and place. They can be maintained and reborn.

 a benefit of being distanced from events is the chance to take on a new perspective--new, compared to the perspective one may have had immediately following the events.

To look at the Holocaust not from a Nuremberg Trial standpoint, but from one more than 15 years later.

History is not set in place; it is our view of the past given our present situations and ways of understanding.

Arendt sat in on the proceedings, witnessing "history" in the present and offering insight based on her temporal and personal positions.

And so back to this idea of "the banality of evil"

anyone can commit it.

it is not impenetrable or absolute or reserved for "evil" people.

I don't think this is a concept to shy away from or call "depressing." It inspires the individual to remain balance, to look at all sides, to think of actions and events as hydras.

if there's anything enduring about actions and events, about life, it's its many aspects.

Do, do, do, that's all I

but what am I doing it for

and where is my being?

I recommend topping off a bowl of yogurt and fruit with nut butter 

and chia seeds.

unveiling

The Doormats:

http://the-doormats.bandcamp.com/releases