Art of the Odd

NovySan made bread last night. This inspired me to make a starter this afternoon, so we’ll have it for future loaves.

I cracked open the normally-very-reliable Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads,
and selected a recipe for honey starter. Warm water – check. All-purpose flour – check. Yeast – check. Two tablespoons honey – check. Pour into a one quart jar with a tight-fitting lid? Hmm… Yes, there’s a jar – an old honey jar, in fact. Size? 48 ounces – more than a quart. Hmm… That seems very full, but that’s what the book says… Now, lid. Well, this one’s not exactly airtight, but it should do. (And do I want it really tight? Won’t there be gases from the fermentation? How will those escape?) Now, leave it somewhere warm… Aha, I’ll put it in this stockpot, next to the slow cooker – that’ll keep it cozy.

Half an hour later, I heard a sound. A sort of yeasty, moisty, burbly kind of sound.

I went to investigate.

And this is what I found.

One of the things I miss most about Wyoming is the sunset. LA’s famously smog-enhanced sunsets have never matched, for me, the flame-edged clouds that crown Wyoming’s mountains, or the honeyed wash of light across the prairie.

Sometimes, though, LA sneaks up on me. Tonight, I looked out my back door and gasped.

Yeah, that’ll do.

I didn’t intend, when I walked into the Council Thrift Shop this afternoon, to photograph the five ugliest items in the store. And, in fact, I didn’t. I photographed the three ugliest items in the store, as well as the most out-of-place, and the coolest.

To start with the machine-made – the Swimming Pool, which is, as you can see, unfortunately shaped like a bedpan. (The brown box on the far side of the pool is the fat little man’s radio. I hate to think what he’s got to swim through to get to it.)

Moving on to the religious, we have this brightly-colored, papier mache god, who looks rather startled to find himself in the Jewish Ladies’ Thrift Store. Each head is a separate unit, as I discovered when I inadvertently pulled the middle one off trying to pick it up.

And moving on to the hand-crafted, we start with a candelabrum that I’m just sure was someone’s summer craft project…

…and move on to an abstract piece that was doubtless the project of someone either rather less talented than the candelabrum artist, or someone rather more artistically advanced. (I’ll admit, it shows a nice sense of asymmetry, but why, why is it glued to the tray? And it is glued down, unlike the god’s middle head.)

Finally, though, we come to the item I almost couldn’t leave without. Two things stopped me – the price tag, and the “made in” label on the bottom. $30 wouldn’t seem so high for such a fantastic piece of pewter penguiness, if it hadn’t also been made in India. I prefer my martinis unleaded.