We had bananas that were overripe and some buttermilk that
was slightly past its sell-by date so I decided to make buttermilk banana
bread.
Usually, I use Bisquick but lately I've been making it
really from scratch (and as a result, I have to re-stock flour, baking
powder, baking soda, and vanilla....I'm almost out all of them!).
I found the perfect recipe on the internet, which used a
whole cup of buttermilk and decided to make that.
I had the recipe on my cell phone and was following it.
No mixer -- all by hand.
When it was all mixed, I tasted the batter and it didn't
taste quite the way I thought it should, but owell...I stuck it in a pan and
put it in the oven. Usually I forget and leave my phone in the
kitchen, so I made sure to bring it back to the recliner with me so I didn't
have to make a second trip to retrieve it.
I was about to erase the recipe when I realized that the
recipe continued past the last line visible on my screen. The last two
ingredients were sugar and vanilla! No wonder it didn't taste right.
The bread had only been baking for 7 minutes, so I took it
out of the oven, put it back in a bowl and added the sugar...and then also
added almond flavoring because I discovered I was out of vanilla.
Fortunately, that worked and it turned out beautifully...even
the almond flavoring went well with the other ingredients. But there's
no danger of my deciding to baking anything else until I get to the store
and replenish all of my baking ingredients. I think I'm NOT going to
buy Bisquick, which has been a staple in my kitchen for probably ever since
I moved into an apartment before Walt and I were married. The real
"from scratch" recipes taste so much better and are not all that much more
difficult to make.
I do have to get to the store today or tomorrow because
Thursday is March 14 and you know what that is, don't you? 3/14,
pi day.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
Today is the 30th birthday of the
Internet. When Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal that resulted in
the creation of the internet, it "described what, in just a couple years’
time, would transform into the World Wide Web: a connected system for
sharing information that would revolutionize how the entire planet
communicated."
Boy, he never could have envisioned what
this baby of his would grow into.
I think back to when I had my first
modem (yes, dial-up modem), which I knew I wanted but didn't have a
clue what I would do with it. I remember the night when I tried
accessing the UC Davis library, about a mile and a half from here. I
was thrilled that I could connect...didn't know what to do with it,
but I did connect.
Then came Davis Community Network and
the free year of internet access we were given, trying to "electrify" a
community. I remember going to some instructional meeting where we
learned how to toss out a message and see how far we could send it.
The lucky one connected with Africa or Europe. I can't remember how
far I connected, but it wasn't that far.
I remember the pre-Google days and how
excited I was when someone finally merged a few search engines so you could
just use one engine and get a lot of suggestions, other than having to use
several and see which one would get you your answers.
I remember CompuServe, my first
experience with social media and how a guy named Paul helped me use the pay
portions of the program by bringing message to my computer so my actual
connection time was affordable. That changed my social media
experience, especially since I made so any friends through the Women's
Issues forum, women who are still friends of mine today, far-flung though we
may be (everywhere from California and Washington to England and Scotland!)
I also remember the first deaths of
"invisible friends," people I came to know well, but never met...and
sometimes never even saw a photograph of. Far too many of those losses
amd on line memorial services. I think we even were invited to a
wedding once, where the bride logged into our group after the service just
to say hello (or maybe that was the plan and she never made it...but it was
fun planning it!)
I remember when Mary in Seattle
accompanied the body of the son of a woman in Hawaii because she couldn't
afford to fly to collect his body herself.
I remember the early days of Funny the
World, when I learned how to write things in code, with the help of my
friend, the late Mike Kelly, until I managed to find Front Page (which is
now terribly outdated, but I'm hanging onto it until I have to give it up).
I think I learned about Front Page from David Gerrold when I was helping him
put up his very first web site. It was a huge extravagance to buy the
program myself, but it changed my life...and this journal.
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