OceanicThai

I got obsessed with bread. Not just any kind of bread, but artisan bread. Natural yeast, sourdough, whole wheat 7-grain boules, to be exact. I am a bread lover, to be sure, but somehow my love for bread turned into a quest for a difficult but supremely delicious bread, in short, my bread obsession to make the perfect loaf. So what you see below is the product I finally managed to make after several weeks of trying to get a good fungal/bacterial culture going, I mean, bakers yeast/lactobacillus, also known as sourdough starter. That was a challenge in itself, considering that Thailand is bacterial heaven and the temperatures are not ideal for the growth of yeast cells. I am too ashamed to tell you how many hours I have spent on the superb website "The Fresh Loaf" which you can get to yourself if you click on my title above. I learned from chemists, who also like to make bread, more than I ever imagined I could or wanted to know about growing microbes. Certain special m...

Poppy ended 8 years of homeschooling and entered highschool at Grace International School in Chiang Mai mid-August of 2010. She also went into a dorm so we could continue our ministry in Southern Thailand. In the end, the enormous changes proved to be a little more than she could handle without mom & dad. Kennedy decided there would be no more dorms or living with others, these would be our last few years with our daughter and she needed us to be with her. Within days of his final decision almost all of our furniture sold and everything fell into place to make a very fast move. Personally, this was a difficult move for me and I am still in a bit of shock about the whole thing. I am very glad to be with Poppy again, though, and she is so much happier to be with us. So here we are in Northern Thailand and I am feeling rather dazed and confused. I know that everything will make perfect sense later and right now is a time of transition. Kennedy picked a lovely house for our famil...

The Grand Finale snake story, anyway, since we did have snakes after this one. This was the most dangerous snake of all, a king cobra. I never in my life thought I'd find one, much less next to my kitchen. Earlier that morning I had encountered a huge black snake while gardening that scared me to death but turned out to be just a rat snake. After lunch I heard the dogs bark their "I found a snake" bark, so I went out to investigate. I pulled back a box, heard a hiss, and thought "Oh great, a cobra." I called my Thai friends to come kill it. Then I saw it. It was huge. I thought how strange it was that a python was hissing, didn't think they hissed. So I called another Thai friend, Tanom, who is a hunter and wouldn't be afraid of a big snake. The 2 men killed it and it was a king cobra. I hope I never have to find another one.

No longer in Southern Thailand, now I am in Northern Thailand. A lot has happened, there are still more stories to tell from before and during and then after the move. Life is a journey.