Memorial observances – Making bread at home again – Weather forecasts – Evening statistics
The past two days have been somber. Yesterday I logged via Zoom into a virtual funeral of a distant relative, the husband of one of my mother’s Canadian cousins, and today I went to a memorial gathering for the husband of one of my hiking friends. These occasions were solemn rather than sad for me, for I did not know either of them well. The deaths were not COVID-related. My relative died peacefully in his sleep but MD, the husband of my hiking friend, endured a long bout with cancer that first affected his sinuses and then – after a deceptive period when it seemed he was progressing towards remission – it metastasized and affected cells in the brain. I am sorry now that I did not get to know him better. He was a man of considerable artistic gifts. The funeral parlor displayed various photographs he took of many different natural phenomena – and of birds in particular – that were of professional quality and had something of the depth and sensitivity associated with photographers such as Ansel Adams. He also was a notable expert on archaeology and made many flints and arrowheads simulating methods dating from the Stone Age. Finally, he was skillful at lapidary. Samples of his art both from the arrowheads and the polished stones he created were given to the guests.
After the memorial gathering – which is the closest one can get to making a condolence call under the circumstances imposed by the virus restrictions – I returned home, shopping to restock the larder on the way. But the bread they were selling in the store did not appeal to me, being soft and cottony. As the shortages have been receding I’ve become a bit lazy with regard to bread-making. There is plenty available in the stores now. But I did not want to drive to another store this afternoon, so I decided to make some bread of my own, just as I did habitually during the early months of the pandemic. Since it was late in the day, I used the so-called “new method,” which consists of mixing the yeast, water, and salt vigorously (along with other optional ingredients such as eggs, honey, oil, herbs, etc.) with only about half to two-thirds of the flour initially to develop the gluten (the mixture is still thin enough to be able to stir it with a wooden spoon, although it requires considerable effort) and then working in the remainder of the flour, after which the dough is set out in loaf pans. The rising time is only twenty minutes. After the dough rises, the loaves are placed in a cold oven with the thermostat set to 200 degrees for the first ten minutes, at which point the loaves expand to the tops of the pans. Then the over temperature is increased to 350 degrees. The entire process from mixing the dough to removing the loaves from the over takes about 90 minutes. The texture is not quite as good as it is in a kneaded bread, but it is reasonably close approximation.
It was a good idea for other reasons; the bread I made this afternoon used a fair amount of the whole-wheat flour I’ve been storing in the refrigerator. Whole-wheat flour does not keep indefinitely. The germ that is ground along with the endosperm contains oil, which means that the flour can become rancid if it is kept too long, even when refrigerated. The flour I have in the refrigerator is still well within the expiration date, but I have had it for a couple of months and it’s best to use it up before it becomes in danger of spoiling.
The most pressing items on the news that I heard on the radio today were connected with the weather, which will become more wintry over the next week after the relatively balmy temperatures we’ve been enjoying. Monday in particular threatens to be troublesome, with a mixture of snow and rain for much of the day.
Memorial services, bread-making, weather . . . It feels strangely luxurious to be able to go through the headlines without being apprehensive about the safety of the nation’s capital or about the recommendations of the medical experts with regard to the pandemic being flouted as part of our national policy. It is possible now to concentrate on more personal matters, to a degree I have not known for the past several weeks.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 98,713,555; # of deaths worldwide: 2,114,657; # of cases U.S.: 25,390,042; # of deaths; U.S.: 424,177. It seems odd to recollect that at one point both Brazil and India seemed likely to equal the number of cases in our country. By this date Brazil has less than one-third of the cases that we do and India’s case count is only about 40% of our own. Since India has four times as many inhabitants as we do, that means that an Indian is, on the average, ten times less likely to get infected than an American. The Czech Republic is the only country with a population over 10 million whose case rate exceeds our own.