A Late-Night Trip to Marsh with sethifus!

Yesterday was Saint Patrick's Day.

After Princess Melawesome and I had a few drinks with friends we decided to stop by a Marsh grocery store on the way home to get some snacks and more drinks to see us through the rest of the evening.

The title says "Late-Night" but it was only about 10 o'clock.

One of the first things I saw was this:

It seems like I keep seeing Crystal Pepsi everywhere. I see Surge on occasion too, but not as often as Crystal Pepsi. I saw a big cardboard display tub of them at Target the other day, I see them at random gas stations, and now Marsh a few times.

It kind of bothers me.

It wouldn't, but since it came back in the same year that they brought back and discontinued Ecto Cooler, well... it kind of feels like rubbing salt in a wound.

An emotional wound.

Then I saw this.

Now I have a bit of a problem with anthropomorphism.

It was exacerbated by "The Christmas Toy" and the "Toy Story" movies.

So when I saw Lamb Chop hanging up there in the dog toy aisle, I considered buying her so she wouldn't have to end up mangled by a dog.

But then I thought more about it and thought, "But what if she wants to get mangled by a dog because it's her purpose as a dog toy?"

Then I just felt all kinds of mixed up and walked away trying not to think about the even smaller version of Lamb Chop on a higher peg.

Then I saw these:

Wine Gums are pretty tasty. I tried them one year at Irish Fest. But these boxes frustrated me even further because now Marsh has Wine Gums and Pims (which are pretty much Jaffa Cakes) but they don't have Jelly Babies!

And like any good Doctor Who fan, if Jelly Babies were available at my local Marsh, I'd always have a steady supply of them in my house.


But NOPE! Just Wine Gums so far.


At least there are Wine Gums.



Here's the stuff I ended up getting:

Candy shell chocolate eggs (yum), Doritos Loaded (I haven't tried them yet because the box doesn't tell you how to microwave them, they look like they'll be gross though), Tontino's Pizza Sticks (good if what you want is a long pizza roll), Japanese noodles that look like ramen (figured I'd see if they were any different from the ramen I usually get), Laughing Water beer (the only individual big beer bottle I could find at this Marsh, it's okay), Woodbridge Wine (the favorite wine in the Ponder Haus), and Starburst Jellybeans (the only jellybeans I really like).


In the checkout line I saw this:

and I thought to myself, "When did Mentos start making caramel candies?"




Wow, after reviewing the pictures I took, that late-night trip to Marsh made me angrier than I thought.

Good thing it's not Saint Patrick's Day anymore.

BREAD!

Remember "Insomniac with Dave Attell"? I used to watch that show in college when it was first on Comedy Central. In the show Dave would travel around whatever city he was in to do his stand-up comedy, visiting all of the different places that were open, or at least running in some way, from late night through early morning.

If I remember correctly he went to a lot of places that made dough. I'm talking about cakes, cookies, pizza, but especially bread.

People starting to make bread at like 5, 4, 3 o'clock in the morning.

I always thought that sounded... nice.

It reminded me of a visualization activity one of my high school teachers had us do. He had us all close our eyes and imagine that it was 5 years in the future. It was early morning, we were the first one up in our house. How did we look? How did we feel? What did we do? Have breakfast? Coffee? Juice?

I don't remember the point of the activity, but I remember picturing myself with facial hair (which I did have 5 years later), drinking juice, looking at the paper, etc. Whatever else I did, I remembered it feeling peaceful.

In college my friend Chris and I would walk around Mitchell, SD late at night. We'd spend a lot of time talking. Usually we only went until 2 in the morning before we headed back to the dorms for sleep, but occasionally it would be longer. These were peaceful walks that helped us both sort a lot of things out.

When I saw people baking their bread at the time of night that Chris and I were often walking around the deserted streets of Mitchell, it reminded me of that visualization exercise. I started to think that I might like to learn to bake bread.

That was a good 11 years ago.

I've had that thought in my head all this time. Several years ago I bought a book about the Art of Baking Bread. I even started a sourdough starter:

I named it Squidward because he's so sour.

But I forgot to keep feeding it. It went moldy, and I wasn't sure if I could save it.

RIP Squidward Sourdough.

That was about a year ago.

On January 15, 2017 I set my alarm for early in the morning and made some straight dough bread!

It tasted pretty good! I think it would be better with white bread flour (I used whole wheat flour), but I really liked it!

It took a lot longer than I thought it would. But I want to keep doing it when I can.

Today, January 29, 2017, I baked my first loaf of sourdough bread!

I used my NEW batch of sourdough starter:

I named it Oscar because he, too, is sour.

That's supposed to be Oscar the Grouch peekin' out of his trashcan. This lid was a lot smaller and I started drawing it smaller than I meant to.

Anyway:

It didn't turn out as poofy as I though it would.

It's much more dense. I probably didn't fold it enough or something. I'll try something else next time.

I'M NOT LOOKING FOR TIPS, BREAD BAKING PEOPLE.

It took from 7:30 - 2:45 to make it, and I had to wait another 2 hours before I could cut into it.

It doesn't look like a professional sourdough loaf, but MAN does it taste good...

I will definitely be making more sourdough in the future!

Since I don't get paid for articles, here's a song I wrote a long time ago about junk food:

If you watch that enough times, I might get a penny.

Mmmm.... bread.