Record and Recipe

On the menu for today is a simple oat wheat bread, the dough of which is rising on this beautiful early summer day.

Simple Oat Wheat (makes two medium or six small loaves)

2 c thick oats
2 c whole wheat flour
3 c white flour + 3/4 c for starter
1 tsp salt + a dash for starter
1/2 c brown sugar
1 stick (8 Tbsp) butter
yeast (about 2 or 3 tsp)

I made the starter last night, mixing flour, salt and water until it is just past doughy, then added the yeast and mixed thoroughly. Sooner or later (probably next time I make potato bread or get rye flour) I am going to make a sourdough starter, but for now I have plenty of store yeast to use.

This morning, I blended the dry ingredients until evenly mixed, then softened (or melted) the butter and mixed in thoroughly with a spatula (though I prefer wooden spoons). After it was well-blended, I scraped out all of the starter and added enough warm water to make a wet but solid dough. (I tend to add water by eye and touch, but it was near 3 cups, which the oats and whole wheat flour will absorb during. Further, adding oats to anything seems to protect the bread from drying out.) With the dough incorporating all of the dry ingredients, I added a bit of extra water and covered before setting it outside.

After it has doubled in size, I will turn it out onto a floured counter and knead until smooth, then let rise again for about thirty minutes before shaping and baking on baking stones or cookie sheets. They ought to take about 20 to 30 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees, but I am getting used to an oven that actually maintains its temperature, unlike the one at school. I will likely slip in warm water and spray the boules (round, bowl shaped loaves) with water for a firmer crust.

...

Now, a bit for recording.

The last three weeks have been boggling. I have run loops and chutes and what feels like a marathon. Finishing up finals was the easy part, whereas finding the mental space and the actual time to host friends and family in the midst of adieux and cleaning and ceremony, as well as a little bit of pomp, drained me. We would never have been allowed the time to meaningfully depart everyone--faculty and student and staff alike--with the affection and respect we owe them and one another, but all the same, I worked hard to vanish. Perhaps it feels too readily like we are admitting amicable defeat; that our friendships and other bonds have found some sort of terminal punctuation. I cannot feel that way. That may mislead; rather, I refuse to acknowledge any real sort of terminacy in graduation and departure. What I have, or what I choose to perceive, is the necessity for reunion, for interconnectivity and that maddening gravitational pull we have on one another. What does it mean to hug professors and friends at a time of division? I feel it must mean some admission or affirmation that divisions are temporary, that it is in their nature to be bound between moments of unification.

So, we left. My mother, father, Lauren, and I journeyed south for the land of Lincoln, the Jeep overfilled with my belongings, leaving some with friends in the Cities for retrieval next month. If anything, that expedition feels closer than the time in between because of the time I have spent unpacking, sorting, repacking, arranging, and the like in the space that has again become my room. My mother later commented on the way Lauren and I chattered away about friends and episodes we had shared with them, the difficulties and madnesses we had experienced and surmounted, frequently loving them all the while; and then, after all our words were--for the moment, at least--spent, we settled in and found space to be silent, in unison, like saying the same word at once, only the word was our silence.

The days with Lauren were a blur of paperwork and phone calls, of trips for food and driving I was begrudged to since biking was not much of an option. It bled easily into our adventure to Ozark State Park via Kansas City, meeting up with our compatriots and soon to be camping buddies. We were all mad, all crazed with music and company and farewells that were too easily forgotten. The musical highlights came to include Langhorne Slim, The Black Crowes, STS9, G. Love and Special Sauce, Matisyahu, and someone less so, Shpongle, Moonalice, and Buckethead. What stands out most readily is our exploits in camp cooking, most obviously with our solar powered couscous with tomato and onion dinner on Friday. I frequently felt dislocated, out of my element, and inappropriately attuned; but dinner and some distance from the speakers made it all gel a little more serenely. Musically, it is hard to top the boundless energy and fluidity discovered in the performance of the Black Crowes, followed by the second performance of STS9 at which thousands of people leapt and shouted and grooved. Though we parted once from the land refered to as Mulberry Mountain, we parted from one another at the Greenhouse Grille in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Meals provide their own substance to times together, lending all the more to understanding our times of parting. I can say little more that would be sincere other than it would have been nigh impossible to one up our lunch, both food and company, there.

Lauren and I made our way to Kansas City, wandering around the outer rings looking for cheap motels, finding most notably the terrifying 4 Acre Motel, which requires its own space for explanation. We made our way to the bus stop, and with the help of her mother (and the attempts of the diner employees near the stop) we stayed at a nearby hotel. Hot, luxurious showers later, we found our way to Grinder's for ridiculously hot food, before nestling in at ten, watching a little TrueBlood before falling asleep. With the morning, I was finally beginning to feel the release of tensions and concerns that had not precipitated away with all of the hullabaloo of the past days and weeks. We drank tea and coffee, before I traversed the highways out of Kansas City and back toward home, singing ever-so loudly most of the way.