Tag: pain

Pain au levain: recette pour paresseux [fr]

[en] Making sourdough bread with a lazy recipe. If you're around Lausanne, I have starter for you if you want it.

Depuis quelques mois, je fais mon propre pain au levain. J’ai toujours aimé l’idée du pain maison (mon père en faisait à une époque lorsque j’étais enfant), mais beaucoup moins l’idée du temps que ça prend, de pétrir la pâte, etc.

Pain au levain

En plus, je mange très peu de pain.

Mais bon, j’étais passivement tentée, surtout après avoir goûté le délicieux pain que fait mon père depuis quelques années. Il m’avait aussi vanté les mérites d’une recette qui prenait très peu de temps. Un beau jour, il a passé chez moi en disant “j’amène le levain”.

Le levain, c’est une colonie de levures et autres bactéries dans (et qui se nourrissent de) un mélange eau-farine. Ça se garde d’une fois à l’autre, ça se nourrit, on en prend un portion quand on veut faire son pain. Je vous parle un peu plus du levain après.

Voici comment ça marche (étapes décrites avec force détails en anglais dans le lien ci-dessus):

  1. mélanger dans un bol une mesure* de levain* avec deux mesures d’eau
  2. ajouter 3 mesures de farine et touiller
  3. rajouter une mesure d’eau (touiller bien sûr), puis le sel*
  4. incorporer encore trois mesures de farine (et des petites graines si on aime)
  5. couvrir et laisser reposer 12 heures environ.

Vous avez bien lu, pas besoin de pétrir! Cette première phase prend à tout casser 5 minutes. 12 heures plus tard, deuxième phase:

  1. saupoudrer la pâte, le plan de travail, et ses mains de farine
  2. sortir la pâte du bol en décollant les côtés avec les mains (il faut reprendre de la farine en cours de route sinon ça colle!)
  3. laver le bol, le sécher à fond, le graisser avec un peu d’huile
  4. remettre la pâte dans le bol
  5. couvrir et laisser reposer 5 heures environ.

Vous avez toujours bien lu, on ne pétrit toujours pas! Le plus pénible dans cette histoire c’est de laver le bol. Compter 5 minutes, 10 minutes max.

Pâte dans bol huilé

On passe à la cuisson.

  1. préchauffer le four à 240 avec le récipient* dans lequel on va cuire le pain
  2. verser la pâte dans le récipient chaud, après avoir saupoudré le fond de flocons d’avoine (par exemple) pour faciliter le démoulage
  3. cuire 30 minutes avec couvercle
  4. cuire 15 minutes sans couvercle.

Finito!

On voit que l’enjeu ici n’est pas le temps de travail mais le timing entre les différentes phases. Ça demande qu’on soit là et dispo. Voici un exemple qui pourrait marcher:

  • vendredi soir, mettre en route le pain vers 21h
  • samedi matin vers 9h, deuxième phase
  • samedi après-midi vers 14h, cuire le pain.

Quelques clarifications pour les éléments à astérisque.

La mesure

C’est bien d’utiliser une mesure dont on a deux exemplaires, comme ça on peut en garder une pour la farine et une pour l’eau/le levain. Ça évite de laver pendant qu’on fait le pain.

Ma mesure

Voici la taille de la mienne. A vue de nez elle fait environ 1.8 dl. De la taille de la mesure dépendra la taille du pain! Une tasse à café avec poignée c’est pas mal aussi.

Le levain

L’idéal c’est d’obtenir du levain de quelqu’un. Mon père m’a laissé une partie du sien, et j’en ai donné déjà à mon tour à une demi-douzaine de personnes. (Si vous êtes en région lausannoise, demandez seulement. Ça ne coûte rien.)

A température ambiante, le levain a besoin d’être nourri tous les jours. Un peu contraignant! On peut en fait le garder au frigo, où il survit avec une semaine entre les “repas”. Beaucoup plus pratique!

Pour nourrir le levain: ajouter une part d’eau et deux parts de farine pour une part de levain, idéalement. Ça veut dire qu’on doit peut-être jeter du levain, parce qu’il quadruple théoriquement de volume à chaque repas! Il n’y a pas besoin d’être exact-exact.

Levain qui bulle

L’indication d’un levain content c’est qu’il monte (beaucoup!) et fait des bulles. S’il sent l’acétone (le vernis à ongles) c’est qu’il a faim, donc il faut le nourrir plus. S’il y a du liquide clair dessus, c’est un alcool, produit par les levures quand elles n’ont plus assez de farine pour se nourrir. On peut le balancer, ou s’il y en a peu, simplement le mélanger dans le reste quand on nourrit. C’est assez résistant, un levain. Si ça semble aller mal, revenir à “une part de levain, une part d’eau, deux de farine” et nourrir 2-3 fois à 8-12h d’intervalle.

Comme je fais du pain à peu près une fois par semaine, je garde mon levain au frigo. Ça veut dire que je sors mon levain du frigo le matin du soir où je vais mettre en route le pain. Je le nourris à ce moment-là.

Si j’en ai l’occasion (et l’envie) je le nourris à nouveau 3-4h avant de faire le pain. Le but c’est qu’il soit au sommet de son activité quand on met le pain en route. Donc je regarde un peu suivant son état (il sent souvent un peu l’acétone quand je le sors du frigo, donc je me dis que bien le nourrir ne peut pas lui faire de mal).

Quand je fais le pain, je complète mon levain pour remplacer ce que j’ai pris (toujours double de farine que d’eau) et je le remets au frigo

Le sel

Là, pas de miracle, il faut expérimenter un peu. Je sais qu’avec ma mesure il faut deux bonnes cuillères à café rases de sel. Si on utilise toujours les mêmes mesures, on apprend d’une fois à l’autre combien mettre de sel pour obtenir le goût qu’on veut.

Le récipient

Ça, c’est une des grosses surprises de cette façon de faire: on ne façonne pas une miche de pain, on le cuit dans un récipient (typiquement une casserole en fonte avec couvercle) qui va au four.

Deux choses auxquelles il faut faire attention:

  • pas de plastique, ça fond!
  • bords verticaux ou qui s’évasent (pas qui se referment), sinon on arrivera jamais à sortir le pain…

Chez moi, j’utilise une grosse casserole en métal et je recouvre de papier d’alu parce que je n’ai pas de couvercle adéquat. La casserole est un peu grande alors ça me fait des pains un peu trop plats. Je passerai un de ces quatre à l’Armée du Salut voir si je trouve mieux! Au chalet, j’ai trouvé une sorte de marmite pour rôti qui est assez légère mais qui va plutôt bien.

Pain tout droit sorti du four

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Back On The Heat Wave [en]

[fr] L'oeil qui voyait trouble? Pas un coup de soleil, mais un mini corps étranger métallique. Oui, ouille. J'en ai monstre marre de voir flou de mon oeil dominant, juste là.

It was much cooler up in the mountains. Here I am in Lausanne, with another heat wave hitting us. Or the same. I don’t know anymore, this summer has been endless days in survivor mode trying to keep my flat cool. The largest part of my flat faces southwest. As soon as it gets warmer outside than inside, I close everything. I close the blinds so the sun doesn’t heat my rooms through the windows. And late in the evening, when the temperature has dropped a few degrees, and the outside air is finally cooler than inside, I open everything wide.

heat wave 2015

No ceiling fans or AC here. Swiss buildings are designed to keep the cold out.

Remember the fuzzy vision I told you about a few days ago? Wednesday morning I headed over to Lausanne’s eye hospital. I spent most of the morning there. The fun bit is that I got to see two young doctors doing their internship. They were very friendly and relaxed, went through all the preliminary questions, examined my eye, tinkered with the devices in the room (they usually saw patients in another room, they explained, and weren’t familiar with this one), and then went to present my case to the doctor supervising them, who then saw me to close the case.

Turns out it wasn’t too much sun. Oh no. It was a speck of metal dust stuck in my eye, right in the middle. Tiny, a fifth of a millimetre or something. My first reaction was “OMG metal in my eye”, followed straight behind by “OMGOMG you’re going to have to remove it!” The doctor reassured me that this was something they did many times a day and was no big deal.

A few drops of anaesthetic in my eye, some deep breaths (well, I tried, at least) and clenched hands on the handles in front of me, staring straight ahead with my other eye, straight ahead, very important not to move, straight ahead… and that was it. He scraped out the nasty little thing from my eye. Oh, and a tiny layer of my cornea, too, he explained. (Luckily I’ve had enough feline eye adventures with Sir Quintus that this didn’t alarm me. But still.)

So, now I’m left with gooey antibiotic drops (we don’t want an infection there) and still-blurry vision. It’s really making reading (on-screen or off-screen) difficult and frustrating. The blurry eye is my dominant eye, otherwise it wouldn’t be so bad. It still hurts a bit at night, but hopefully the pain should go away in a few short days. I don’t know about the timeline for the blurry vision, and it’s starting to distress me. The nurse on the hotline suggested I give it the week-end and come around on Monday if it was still bad. At this stage what’s going through my mind is “I hope I get all my vision back at some point” and “I hope it doesn’t take too long, because it’s starting to impact my ability to work”.

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Getting Meals Back Under Control [en]

[fr] Quand j'attends d'avoir trop faim pour me demander ce que je mange, ça se passe mal. Au programme: réfléchir aux repas du lendemain chaque soir.

Many years ago, but still late in life, I realised how big an impact food and meals had on my mood and general ability to function. Looking back, I wonder how I managed to stay in denial so long. For the better part of my adult life, I thought eating was just a matter of calming the feeling of hunger, and the rest would take care of itself. Now, I know better.

Gratin de côtes de bettes

First, when I’m hungry, I do not function well. I disfunction, even. Some people can be hungry and just go along as if they weren’t — not me. My ability to think clearly drowns inside the pain in my stomach (yes, it hurts when I’m hungry, I know it’s not the case for everyone). I have trouble making choices. I become irritable. I get stuck in the rut of whatever it is I’m trying to do, or set off in a frantic search for food.

Second, what I eat matters. It’s not just a question of filling up. I’m not religious about any diet, my belief being simply that you should strive to have a balanced diet — carbs, meat, fat, veggies, grains, mix it all up.

Panier de légumes 2013-10-31

A couple of years ago I started “inverting” my meals. (Thanks, Julien.) You know what they say: have breakfast like an emperor, lunch like a king, dinner like a beggar. It makes sense, I think: when do you need your energy, during the day or at night when you’re sleeping? The way I do this is have a “normal” meal in the morning. As I type this, around 8:30am, I’m eating past and a salad. Nope, I have no trouble doing it. And when you had a light meal in the evening, trust me, you’re hungry enough in the morning to eat more than a croissant. It’s also a question of habit, I guess.

Where does it go wrong? As my life has little routine in it, I easily fall into the trap of waiting until I’m hungry to wonder about food (what will I eat? what’s in the fridge?). By the time I get moving I’m starving, which usually results in a suboptimal meal.

Racines au four

What I’m going to do now to get out of this is:

  • not wait until I’m hungry to start preparing food (use the clock instead)
  • plan my meals for the next day the evening before so I don’t have to make decisions on the spot.

Started today! That was a nice breakfast. Now I’m off to ski 🙂

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10 Years With RSI [en]

[fr] Plus de 10 ans que mes mains ont commencé à faire mal. Bilan: c'est sous contrôle, même s'il y a certaines choses que je ne peux plus faire. J'ai aussi procédé à des aménagements pour certaines activités.

In September 2002 my hands started hurting really badly at the computer. I had to take three breaks while writing this article. I took some time off, and when I got back to work, within half a day, things were back where they were. I panicked for a few days. A lot of my life revolved around computers. How would I finish my studies? I discovered it was possible to use a computer with speech recognition, and that reassured me a bit. I saw the doctor, spent 5 weeks off work and computers (well, at work but not allowed to type, it was dreadful, actually), the neurologist confirmed my nerves were all right, I got Dragon NaturallySpeaking (version 5 at the time) and started speaking to my computer.

Life resumed, at home and work. I practically stopped using my hands with my computer and dictated for pretty much a whole year, including my university dissertation and my last written exam (they stuck me in my teacher’s office for that).

When I left my job at Orange, I got an iBook, which meant I said goodbye to speech recognition. By then the rest had done its job, and I had also made some changes which certainly helped improve things:

  • I got rid of my old clunky keyboard and moved the computer away from the drafty window
  • I got a laptop, actually, which meant I started varying the positions in which I typed
  • I started paying attention to my hands: was I in pain? was I uncomfortable?
  • I used a break timer to force myself to learn to stop and take breaks
  • I learned to say “no” a bit more, and give a higher priority to myself over others (ie, taking care of my hands became top priority, whereas others’ needs used to be what came first)
  • In general, I started listening to myself more: how was I feeling? was I stressed? was I tired? did I want to do what I was doing? etc.
  • I made sure I continued to get (gentle) exercise; I went easy on my hands at judo for a couple of years.

Where am I at now, 10 years later? Well, I still say I have RSI, because it’s just around the corner, but most of the time it doesn’t bother me. It’s “under control”. Many years ago my osteopath actually managed to do something to make my hands hurt less. Something to do with my arteries, it seems. No guarantee it will be the same for everyone with RSI, but it does it for me. So when my hands start feeling painful again, I head off to my osteo. With the years, I’ve learnt to recognize my hands hurting as a warning sign rather than a problem in itself. They don’t normally hurt. If they hurt and I go to my osteo, she’ll usually find a whole bunch of things that are, let’s say, “out of balance”.

Here’s what my life with RSI is, 10 years later:

  • I type on my Macbook in all sorts of non-ergonomic positions: I vary
  • At my desk though, I make sure that I am sitting high enough that my elbow makes a 90°+ angle (for me the most comfortable place to type is on my knees => laptop)
  • I never use a mouse, and know tons of keyboard shortcuts
  • I have Dragon Dictate but don’t use it enough — I haven’t invested the time to be comfortable with it
  • I have discovered speech recognition on my iPhone and use it whenever I can
  • I cannot carry my groceries very far without taking a break, even though I have plenty of upper-body strength (I have a rollie-bag)
  • I avoid repetitive hand movements: chopping lots of hard stuff, screwing with a manual screwdriver, polishing by hand… if I have to I take breaks, but if possible I’ll let somebody else do that kind of job
  • I’m still doing judo, and can fight “normally”, though it hurts “more than it should” when people rip their sleeves out of my hands or when I’ve been strangling somebody really hard 😉
  • If I feel RSI coming back, I run to the osteo
  • In general, I take much better care of myself than I used to, and I am much “softer” on myself (I used to be the “tough it out” type, RSI cured me from that)
  • I cannot write by hand more than a few lines anymore; this is a combination of lack of practice (I always type) and some loss of fine motor control probably due to RSI. If I try to write, I become illegible after a few lines, and it hurts. So I don’t.

Over the years, I have seen so many people develop RSI in some form or other. Don’t overwork yourself. Take care of your hands before they start hurting.

3rd #back2blog challenge
(7/10), with: Brigitte Djajasasmita (@bibiweb), Baudouin Van Humbeeck (@somebaudy), Mlle Cassis (@mlle_cassis), Luca Palli (@lpalli), Yann Kerveno (@justaboutvelo), Annemarie Fuschetto (@libellula_free), Ewan Spence (@ewan), Kantu (@kantutita), Jean-François Genoud (@jfgpro), Michelle Carrupt (@cmic), Sally O’Brien (@swissingaround), Adam Tinworth (@adders), Mathieu Laferrière (@mlaferriere), Graham Holliday (@noodlepie), Denis Dogvopoliy (@dennydov), Christine Cavalier (@purplecar), Emmanuel Clément (@emmanuelc), Xavier Bertschy (@xavier83). Follow #back2blog.

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Tears Do Heal — But Slowly [en]

[fr] Un retour d'Angleterre un peu difficile, des vagues de chagrin qui vont et viennent depuis trois mois que Bagha m'a quittée. Mais le chagrin, c'est notre réaction à la douleur de la perte. Le sentir, c'est avancer sur le chemin de l'acceptation.

I’ve had a handful of pretty miserable days upon my return from England. Feeling very sad again about Bagha’s death, and some other losses 2010 brought along with it. But this last couple of days have been better, because tears do heal, and spring is here.

Pencil Effect Sunday 26

Three months after Bagha’s death, I’m thankfully not bursting into uncontrollable tears in socially awkward settings anymore. It comes and goes. I might spend a week or ten days with hardly a tear, and then a wave hits and I’m going through stacks of tissues every day. I’m getting used to it.

I know I need to though, so I dive into the pain and grief when it comes — and when it’s appropriate to let myself do so.

When I’m “in”, it feels like my life is over, like it hurts so much that I’ll never get over it. It feels like some part of me will forever refuse to accept that he is dead and gone, refuse to accept that there is nothing I can do about it, and refuse to accept too that nothing will bring him back. It feels like I will never manage to move on and open my heart this much again, like I will be stuck in grief forever.

Of course I know this isn’t true, and outside of these moments of intense grief, I’m living my life pretty normally these days, despite my heavy heart.

But what I’m starting to understand — and understand really because I’m experiencing it — is that these moments of pain where I am so adamantly refusing to accept that Bagha has died, and I now have to live without him, are actually the very thing that is helping me accept it.

When I was told this it made immediate and perfect sense to me. I feel pain and sadness because I am facing the fact Bagha is dead. Even if my reaction (defense mechanism) to that pain is a futile refusal to accept that which is causing the pain (clearly a flavour of denial — “I want my cat back, I don’t want him to be dead”), it remains that if I am feeling that pain it is precisely because I am realizing or accepting a little more that my life from here onwards will be without him, and I have no choice in that matter.

That is why sadness and tears heal: they are the expression of a step forward in accepting a difficult reality. And though it feels sometimes that the steps are small and the road long, I know I am making progress, and that my heart will heal again.

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Demain, Capsule de Pain [fr]

[en] On the radio early tomorrow morning. And the day after. Not live, thank goodness.

Un mot rapide pour vous dire que je serai dans [la Capsule de Pain](http://info.rsr.ch/fr/rsr.html?programId=110451&bcItemName=capsule_multimedia&rubricId=3500&contentDisplay=last_five&siteSect=1000) (RSR1) demain et après-demain matin (c’est tôt, vers 7h25 il paraît — nul souci cependant, nous avons enregistré ça il y a quelque temps déjà). Sujet: blogs, entreprises…

**Addendum:** vous pouvez écouter tout ça sur [le blog de M. Pain lui-même](http://capsule.rsr.ch/site/?p=208).

Aussi, pendant qu’on y est, Femina du week-end prochain. Ah, et la Tribune de Genève de jeudi passé (quelqu’un l’a?), et le Quotidien Jurassien de mercredi dernier, et de vendredi (?). Et RougeFM/RadioLac je sais plus quand. Et… je dois en oublier.

Un peu le déluge de journalistes ces temps, de nouveau. Va falloir remettre la page [Presse](/about/presse) à jour.

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Films, TMS, et blabla nocturne [fr]

[en] A couple of film recommendations, update on my RSI and some considerations on chronic pain, as well as various random other things (like cats in boxes).

Je trouve mes blablas un peu plus décousus que mes billets. Des tas de petites choses à dire plutôt qu’une grande. J’ai rajouté un “générique” (haha), parlé de deux-trois choses (les liens ci-dessous vous donneront une idée) et pas mal de TMS et de douleur chronique (avec quelques nouvelles d’où j’en suis). Allez, assez de parenthèses, [plongez dans le vif du sujet](http://climbtothestars.org/files/2006-08-03-ctts-stephanie-booth.mp3) [16min41] — oui je sais, c’est un peu long.

Liens pour aujourd’hui:

– [Volver](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441909/)
– [Water](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240200/), [Earth](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150433/), [Fire](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116308/) et [Cracking India](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0915943565/)
– [l’Avenir](http://www.resto-rang.ch/info.cfm?canton=LS&restono=1159)
– [Beercasting and Podcasting Thoughts](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2005/03/23/podcasting-and-beercasting-thoughts/)
– [Bagha dans sa boîte](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/205136045/) et [autres chats mis en boîte](http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=cat%20box&w=all&s=int)… (trouvé en passant par hasard: [la fiche IMDB qui a donné son nom à mon chat](http://imdb.com/title/tt0063023/))
– [43 Folders](http://www.43folders.com/)
– [ma page sur les TMS (mon histoire)](http://climbtothestars.org/tms)
– [Odeo](http://odeo.com/)

J’ai oublié un lien? Dites-le-moi!

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