Bagels!

I made bagels tonight! E and I tried to make some a year or so ago, and they did not work out well. We haven't tried since. But tonight, I wanted a bagel. There are no bagel places in town now that the recession took out the local family-owned bagel shop, and store-bought bagels are an entirely different food. So I found this recipe and decided to give it a go. Here's how it went.

4 cups bread flour

1 Tbls sugar

1 1/2 tsps salt

1 Tbls vegetable oil

2 tsps instant yeast

1-1/4- 1-1/2 cups of warm water

We put all the ingredients into the bowl of my stand mixer, attached the dough hook, and mixed it on "stir" speed. I added the extra 1/4 cup of water and pushed the speed up one level. The mixer is a pretty good one, but it wasn't liking the stiffness of the dough, so I kneaded it in there for about five minutes and then took it out and kneaded it by hand for another three or four. It got to the smooth point, and I cut it into eight equal sized balls. The plan was to let it rest for 15 minutes, but one thing led to another and I didn't get back to it for about an hour and a half. It had a slight crust over it, which may have happened even without the extra time, so I'm going to try putting a towel over it next time. Anyway, we followed the rest of the instructions:

Pre heat your oven to 425.

Now, take each of the dough balls and using two hands, roll it into a little snake on the counter. When the snake is longer than the width of your two hands, wrap it around your dominant roiling hand. The dough rope should be wrapped so the overlapping ends are together at your palm, near the start of your fingers. Now take the two overlapping ends, and use your palm to squish/roll these two ends together.

Let your bagels rest on the counter for about 20 minutes, and meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil, and grease a large baking tray lightly. You can just rub a splash of vegetable oil and rub it around.

After the 20 minute wait, your bagels will start to look puffy, and it's time to get them boiling! Add them as many at a time as you can to your boiling water without crowding them. Boil for about a minute, turn them over, and boil for another minute. Take them out a let dry for a minute and then place them on your oiled baking tray. Repeat until all the bagels are boiled.

Add the tray to the oven, and after 10 minutes, flip the bagels over, bake for another ten minutes; and they're done!

Let them cool for at least 20 minutes.

You can add any toppings you like to these. To make sesame, onions, poppy seed, caraway etc. etc. bagels just have a dry plate ready with the seed or spice topping spread out on it. After the bagels have come out of the boiling water, place them face down onto the seeds, and then place the seed side up onto the baking tray. Bake and flip as for plain bagels. 

I timed the boiling for precisely one minute on each side because that seems to be where we went wrong last time. We made four plain, two with dried onion and garlic, and two with cinnamon-sugar. The toppings didn't go so well. They all burned, and turning them over at the halfway point didn't work. Our oven rack was also too close to the bottom, so most burned a little. There was a round cake pan left in the oven from another recipe that requires a water-filled pan to be underneath the bread, and we just never got around to taking it out. The bagels that cooked over that pan didn't burn on the bottoms.

Anyway, they're amazing. And if I don't go ahead with the other six businesses I really want to start, I'm totally going to start the Fort Snuggle Bagel Bakery. (Fort Snuggle is what we call our house. The Fort Snuggle Auxiliary Extension is what we call our chicken coop.) Come to think of it, we're going to a garage sale tomorrow that a bunch of friends are having... I should whip up another batch...

Replace Normal

This is my favorite thing that Microsoft does:

I always click "yes."

I didn't think there was anything that could make me not vote for the guy running against the devil

Our U.S. Congress representative here in Athens is Paul Broun Jr. This man is not the person I want representing me in any way shape or form. No one has been able to win against him for years because the makeup of our County is entirely unlike the makeup of the rest of the area.

A third-year law student (presumably now a recent graduate) from UGA is running against Broun, and though his campaign has been haphazard thus far, I expected to vote for him because he's running against the person who's pretty much last on the list of people I want representing me.

Unfortunately, I won't be supporting Russell Edwards either. If it's close, he'll get my vote, but he won't get my support. In an email I got through a liberal listserv, Edwards questioned Broun's "mental health." At least 1 in 4 people in the U.S. has a mental health issue. With 535 congresspeople, that's at least 130 who have a mental health issue. I can count on one hand the people in my life who have not been diagnosed with a mental health issue, especially depression, anxiety, or gender identity disorder.* I can think of none who have never seen a therapist. What's the best way to deal with stigma and the very real problem of people not receiving treatment? It's to understand that mental health is something everyone deals with. Sometimes it affects your daily life, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's situational, sometimes it's genetic. But always, it's not an acceptable reason to question someone's humanity.

Say Paul Broun is unfit to represent us. Say his view of government comes from the 1850s. Say his moral character is questionable and his legislation is unwaveringly useless, hateful, and hurtful. Say he should get the hell out of the way and let someone less ridiculous represent us for a way. But don't question his mental health. Mental health issues aren't an excuse for racism and assholeness. Paul Broun very well may have a mental health issue, but that's not why I don't want him in office. I want him out of office because he's an ass who's wasting my vote.

*It's debatable whether this gets to count as a "mental health issue." Officially, it does, but I think that varies greatly among individuals and how they define their own experience. However, it's one of the most common topics about which my friends have gone to therapy.

ID...K

Out with Amy this afternoon, I took out my UGA card to show her. I looked at the three IDs I had in my wallet -- drivers license, UGA card, Ga State student ID -- and laughed at how they seem to be from very different genders or at least gender phases. Behold:

August 2007

April 2009

May 2010

Insert posts about
Religion and genetics
Career panel
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Mothers Day bouquet

I work for a nonprofit that serves low-income seniors citizens, and my mom's a nurse, so it's a natural thing for me to make donations to work in honor of mom for lots of holidays. We also do a big fundraising push for honor gifts for Mothers Day, so I sent her and my grandma handmade cards that seniors in our Senior Centers made. They were lovely. My partner's relationship with his mom is as close as mine is with my mom, but different. So when we went to spend time with her on Mothers Day, we brought her a bouquet from our garden. It was a bit early for too much to be blooming, but the combination of sage, rosemary, and basil smelled amazing. The flowers are little weeds that grow in our front yard. (I love pretty weeds.) Tied it all together with purple ribbon, and I was quite happy with it's loveliness.

Oh hey after looking at this for the bazillionth time, I realized that I'm wearing sandals in the picture (that's my leg), so I'm not wearing a sock. My skin is just that creepy of a pasty color. My pants are off-white, not green as they appear, so maybe it's just the lighting...yeah...

silenced

I went with E to have beer with his professor tonight -- something I've been lobbying him to let me come to for a week. The professor is a young guy, the class is public opinion, and his blog is Gin and Tacos. For a while, it was just the three of us having a comfortable conversation about politics, pop culture, college culture, and the like. Then a fourth person joined us -- a student from E's class (who I'm calling DoucheBag) who kept coming up with out-of-the-blue questions like "Why doesn't Athens have a Steak 'N' Shake?" when the topic was abstinence-only "education." The conversation moved from bars (college vs grownup) to strip clubs, and DB decided to talk about going to the Clermont Lounge in Atlanta and getting a lapdance.

I have never been to the Clermont Lounge, but I've delivered meals on wheels to its attached hotel. The strip club is known for having real women -- fat, skinny, old, queer, straight, whatever. Just real. DB was floored that such a place existed that would showcase women outside the airbrush boobjob strip club stereotype that he apparently prefers. I interjected several times that the Clermont Lounge is known for having real women; I hoped this would dissuade DB from going further. It didn't. He decided to describe, in detail, the lapdance his friend bought for him. The dancer was a large African-American woman, around 50 years old, who had been a stripper for two decades. When he started pantomiming how big her chest was, the prof told him not to describe any more. DB did anyway. I started squeezing E's hand, and he squeezed back. We were both trying to think of ways to cut DB off, but we couldn't. I know that my face and my body language clearly signaled UNCOMFORTABLE. When it became clear I wouldn't be able to handle sitting it out -- "she took one tit and smacked me in the face with it" -- I got up and walked down the block. I left my purse and my phone and didn't say a word, just got up and walked away.

I felt silenced. There was no way out of that situation for me, except the one I took. If I said the story made me uncomfortable, I would be the castrating feminazi bitch who brought the conversation to a dead halt. If I asked E to say something, he would be the pussy-whipped boyfriend of a castrating feminazi bitch, and the conversation would still come to a stop. If I sat there, I would continue to feel myself and my self-confidence be minimized and I would shrivel. What else was I supposed to do? Argue that he should have enjoyed himself? Abruptly changed the subject? Get used to be objectified and ignored? Even the worst privileged unintentional asshole doesn't tell offensive jokes at the expense of a minority present, at least not without a "hey, I swear I'm just joking" disclaimer. (My family are experts in this sort of "disclaimer.") DB could tell that story because he knew I wouldn't stop him. He overpowered me without my having to say a word. The entire situation became unsafe for me in an instant; a conversation that I had been at least 1/4 of a few minutes earlier was suddenly For Men Only and I was neither welcome nor excused.

I walked back several minutes later, and we all left about ten minutes after that. On the walk back to the car, E told me how the conversation ended. They let DB finish his story, then E immediately said "Have you guys ever seen 'Live Nude Girls Unite'?" Prof said he used to show it in some of the classes he taught. DB asked what that was, and E explained that it's about the sex workers organizing and unionizing. The conversation moved on from there, and when I got back to my phone I saw that E had texted me to tell me when it was safe again. I don't think I said anything the rest of the time we sat there. I couldn't. I ignored DB; I don't think I looked up. If I did, it was on Social Autopilot.

And I still don't know what I should have done instead.