Pump King

Turkish psyche will make your loaves rise better, it's a fact.

The other day I bought some sugar pumpkins and roasted them in order to make this pie (it was f-ing delicious by the way). The seeds were reserved for brining and roasting. Alas, we lost the seeds (tragically) to mold durng the brining process (boo) but the two pumpkins gave up so much flesh that I had a ton left over. I wanted to make pumpkin soup but the recipes I found were all just so BLAH and SAME OLD, SAME OLD. Then I stumbled upon this recipe for Black Bean Pumpkin Soup over on Smitten Kitchen. This recipe gets a hundred Magic Child thumbs up. SRSLY. It's soooooo goooooood.

But let's face it: if you're going to make soup, you might as well just spend a Sunday making bread to go with it. It is a true fact that homemade soup tastes precisely 900 times better with homemade bread. If you've never made bread before, do this: get the Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown and then follow the directions. Yes, you'll be letting the bread rise 4 times. So what of it? You want your bread to be fluffy, right? I'm guessing that you do. But to forewarn you, the whole process will take about 4 hours, so like, invite a friend over or get a book to read or something. Recommendations for books to read while making bread: Up and Down with the Rolling Stones, by Tony Sanchez; In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan; anything by Flannery O'Connor.

Bake Bread, Not War

"Completing school is often simply a certification that you will put up with a basically boring situation, be moderately productive and not sabotage the system. Young people are asked to be thankful for the opportunity to be exploited in low-paying, essentially meaningless jobs. After all, if you do not want one, we can always put you in prison. Even though prisons cost $50,000 to $80,000 a year per person, we'd rather spend the money that way than actually invest in changing the system and creating real jobs, real opportunities. I guess that is what is called capitalism.
Yet the real joy of work is in providing for yourself and your family, in working to benefit your community. We could be baking and cooking for one another. I'd like to see a bakery every few blocks. Skip the trucks. No one out of walking distance of fresh bread and pastries. Sure it's hard work, but it is also loving what you do, in companionship with flour and water, sugar and butter; loving what you do, which nourishes your spirit and others' stomachs, and provides convivial space for neighbors to get together."
-Edward Espe Brown, The Tassajara Bread Book