My Rising Up ... or Not

I had lunch at Atria on Wednesday.  I realized I was dragging my feet about going there again.  Just didn't want to get back to that world right away, and it was as I suspected.  I answered the question  "what are you doing for the rest of the day" a hundred times and she told me a hundred time that everything was very quiet there.  That is pretty much our visits lately. 

But lunch is a nice distraction and we ate with a lovely woman, whose name I did not get.  She was telling me that there is (another) new chef at Atria and the lunch was really good.  I still remember the totally inedible "Chef's platter" I had a few weeks a go.  This day it was a shrimp salad on avocado with a louie dressing.  And it was good.  Very good.  It was big enough for a meal, especially when paired with little slices of dark raisin bread.

So good, in fact, that I decided to have it for dinner at home in the next day or two.

I bought a package of frozen little shrimp at the store, brought them home and divided the bag into two portions, one of which went into the freezer, the other into the fridge to thaw.  We had leftovers for dinner that night.

I was looking forward to the shrimp salad and when I was at Logos, I found the book "Bread Machine Magic, Book 2," the sequel to my bread making bible, "Bread Machine Magic."  That has been my bread guide for decades.  There was a time when all of us in he Women's Discussion forum on Compuserve got bread makers and we were all experimenting with bread, and we all decided that Bread Machine Magic was the best of the bread recipe books.

So I was happy to see Book 2.  I read cookbooks the way I read novels and sat there happily perusing recipes, thinking what kind of bread I could make to accompany my shrimp salad, when I decided to make it.

On Logos night, there would not be enough time to make focaccia unless we wanted to eat dinner at 10 p.m. I had some hamburger to use up, so I left the shrimp for tonight and made my old standard, "Joe Special" (hamburger browned and mixed with a package of chopped spinach, cooked, about 6 eggs, and some Parmesan cheese).  It goes together quickly and it's probably the dinner I make the most.

But today I had nothing to do and it was time to use the shrimp.  I was going to get the focaccia into the bread machine to make the dough at 4 p.m.  Before that, I whipped up some louie dressing, kind of making my own mixture of mayo, catsup, chili powder, Worcestershire, and a dash of Sriracha to give it a kick (that's a phrase I learned from the Food Network).

At 4, I got the ingredients into the new bread machine, given me by a Facebook friend who doesn't use it any more.  The timing would be perfect.  The dough would come out around 6 and I'd get it rolled out and rising before the final bake.  I'm never sure if this machine is going to work or not because it takes about 15 minutes before it starts, but it does work and it works well.

I was sitting there reading my latest Ruth Rendell book and listening to the bread machine mixing, then noticing when the mixing stopped and figured it would take about an hour to rise and then beep to let me know it was done.

All of a sudden, I leaped out of the chair.  SHIT!!!  The dough was beautiful, nicely formed, felt good...and I had forgotten to add the yeast.  How could I have forgotten the yeast?

Nothing to be done at that point.  I could either just throw this beautiful ball of dough out, or I could try to salvage it.

I decided to cook it anyway as a flatbread and figured that anything with a topping of butter and garlic couldn't be all that bad.  It looked fine in the oven except for the huge blister it developed in the last 15 minutes of baking.

But it was awful, in fact.  It was heavy and tasteless, despite the garlic. All it was, really, was flour, water and olive oil. Walt took a bite and agreed with me.

I'm not sure if I'll give it to the dogs with their morning kibble or just throw it out.  I suspect I'll just throw it out.  No need to make the dogs suffer too.

Fortunately the salad was a big hit and big enough that it filled Walt up without needing the focaccia after all.

My lovely, inedible flatbread