Jenn Dolari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

Dear Spiders,

I realize we are in spider season in the PNW.

As per our Spider/Human Treaty of 1997, you are allowed as many spiders as you wish outside of the house, as long as you do not web my face.

However, you are limited to one spider, no larger than a dime, inside the house. I have now seen five spiders, and they were really big, in the house.

Please retreat to the treaty boundaries and quantities, or risk summary eviction.

--Jenn

This Week's Bread: School Cafeteria Yeast Rolls (Third Try's the Charm)

I finally nailed down what I was getting wrong and it was a lot:

Scaling down to 15g carbs per roll was too small, and left me with yeast pebbles.

I've been activating my yeast in 95 degree water. That's great for some yeast, but I'm using Active Dry Yeast. I didn't realize there was a difference and that active dry yeast needed to be activated at 105 degrees. And boy did it activate. Hopefully this will translate to my constantly dense struan bread.

Finally, I let the dough rise in a warm oven each time and oh, boy, did it rise.

But finally, school cafeteria rolls like I remember!

# School Cafeteria Yeast Rolls

Plain Chicken
24 rolls

2.5 Tbsp yeast
0.75 cup warm water
6.5 cups bread flour
11.0 Tbsp instant non-fat dry milk powder
6.5 Tbsp sugar
1.0 Tbsp salt
6.5 Tbsp vegetable oil
1.25 cups water

1 - In a small bowl, combine yeast and warm water. Set aside.
2 - In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, combine flour, sugar, salt, and dry milk powder.
3 - Add vegetable oil and water. Mix on low for 3 minutes.
4 - Add yeast mixture and knead on medium speed for 8 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic.
5 - Loosely cover the bowl and let the dough rise in a warm spot until double in size, about 45 minutes.
6 - Punch dough down.
7 - Lightly spray a 9×13-inch baking dish with cooking spray.
8 - Divide the dough into balls and place in the prepared baking dish.
9 - Loosely cover the dish and let the dough rise in a warm spot until double in size, about 30 minutes.
10 - Preheat oven to 400ºF.
11 - Bake rolls for 15 to 20 minutes.
12 - Brush baked rolls with melted butter and enjoy!

#thisweeksmeals #baking #cooking

They're perfect. I did it! Another childhood fave recreated! 😃

Thoughts Before Bed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_gwnFSFzv0

I THINK THIS IS IT, Y'ALL! The tops look perfectly brown, the sides are perfectly crumbly, and even the bottoms look perfectly toasted. We might have finally got the yeast rolls down!

I'm not even upset that I burned my fingers by grabbing the 190 degree glass sides of the pan with my bare fingers!

Oh. Oh my. They rose! THEY ROSE! We might have a winning set of yeast rolls, folks!

My last three months:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14v0tMQuWeo&t=16s

A little something for Star Trek day.

During the heyday of Star Trek Fan Productions, I considered doing a webcomic called "Star Trek: Redskirts."

The idea was that there were an elite team of women Starfleet Marines (based from the team sent down in the TAS episode, The Lorelei Signal), who had absolutely nothing to do because Starfleet missions tend to be peaceful. Idle hands are the devil's playthings.

It would also explain Chekov's absence in TAS as he joined to the group to get a start on his security career which is where we see him in ST:TMP. No gender change for Chekov (at least not past the first episode), but he was in the red minidress because the Redskirts were proud of...well...their red skirts.

I'd started work on the first episode, and since it was going to be a love letter to TAS, I'd started work on making some high resolution plates of Filmation backgrounds to use in the comic. Then Paramount came down on Fan Productions and given that I remember how Paramount came down on Star Trekker in the 90s I kind of abandonned it.

It wasn't all for naught, though. I recycled some ideas in the Lower Decks spec script I wrote a year or two back. Which was at least something nice to do on a weekend.

A little secret about Madison (the blonde on the left). She was originally going to be written as trans. Not in the closet, but not really outting herself. Why? Doesn't really matter in the future. The only clues that she would be trans is a certain amusement at Chekov being self-conscious of the uniform on the team.

It's funny how I often say my favorite Street Fighter II is Super Turbo. But I almost never play the arcade version. Why? I love the mechanics, but the difficulty level borders on MK2 levels of cheating.

The Japanese version, however, plays more like the other SF2 versions, while maintaining the mechanics of Super Turbo. And the Japanese difficulty is what most of the home versions are based off of. So instead of the arcade version, I'll play the Playstation, or 3DO or PC versions (the PC is the most nostalgic, but the 3DO music is the best).

This post brought to you by Jenn attempting to play Super Turbo on MAME and getting her ass handed to her by Ken. Again. And again again.

(I swear I was good at the arcade version back in the day, I swear it....)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t48Myt5t4O0