Derannimer

Hello all! I ordered my first Ping on Wednesday (Kewensis, from Curious Plant), and because it is my first, I didn’t have any growing medium, so I ordered the add-on ~1 cup of medium. Well, the order arrived today, and I just got home from work, and the Ping was in the box, but the medium wasn’t. And okay, whatever, it’s not expensive; but what do I do with the Ping? About the closest thing I’ve got is a succulent medium (the “Gritty Mix” from Sol Soils), but it looks much coarser than the mixes I see pings growing in. Should I use it anyway, just to get the little guy out of its paper towel? The ping itself looks great, I just don’t want to hurt it.

Sorry to bug you all about this. I have

Okay, this is probably the sort of question which only a hypochondriac would ask, but I am a hypochondriac, so there. I just got diagnosed yesterday with anterior uveitis; first time diagnosed, although about five years ago I did have similar (lesser) pain that resolved on its own within a few days. Partly because the pain was familiar when it came this time, I kind of just kept waiting for it to go away, and for a few days it actually did seem to get better. But then it got significantly worse, and my vision started getting blurry, so I freaked out and went to the ER. It was about day 10 by that point.

I was prescribed prednisolone and Cyclogyl. I started the prednisolone drops last night,

So I was in an accident which banged up the front of the car pretty badly, but didn’t do any engine damage. The car—2015 Impreza—was in the shop for FOUR MONTHS, because that’s where the supply chains are; and a couple weeks after I finally got it back, I realized that the passenger front door wasn’t locking any longer.

At first I thought it was just stuck: it won’t lock with the key fob, and if you try to move the lock manually it only goes halfway, and then won’t budge. But today I had a passenger, for once, and turns out the problem is weirder than that; the door also won’t open from the inside. Also the passenger pointed out that the lock isn’t stuck in the UNLOCK position, it’s stuck i

Hi! I'm kind of embarrassed to link this video, because… well, you'll see. It's not exactly a serious culinary/baking video. But I have serious, serious questions about what is happening here, starting at the 3:44 mark. Dude takes his starter, adds the entire amount of (warm) water in the recipe, and a relatively small amount of flour; he says it should have the consistency of "thick kefir," and you can see it's still very liquid. Then he lets it sit for ten hours, by which point it's got what looks like an inch of foam on top. Then he adds the rest of his dry ingredients, but no more water or starter, and lets it sit for two more hours, and bakes it. It's not remotely artisan, but for a 1

Sorry, total n00b here, posting for the second time. (To anyone who responded to my previous comment: I baked the bread after it finally rose, and it had the approximate consistency of bread; so that's good! However, I accidentally put in like 4 times too much roasted malt flour, so it did not taste good and I lobbed it into the woods to feed woodland creatures.)

So anyway, my starter, after like 3 weeks of doing nothing but half-hearted bubbles, has suddenly gone critical over the past 2-3 days. I don't know why. The only thing that's changed is that after the first failed bread attempt, I switched from feeding the starter on a wheat/rye mix to feeding it all rye, so maybe that helped? (OT

Hi, total noob here! [/waves nervously.] So TLDR version: If my starter isn't strong enough, am I apt to poison myself? I mean, I know there are bacteria in there, as well as yeast.

Slightly longer version: This is my first time making bread with a starter, and although my starter is bubbling a lot, and starting to visibly rise and fall, it's definitely not doubling in size, like people talk about. And I'm not sure it smells like yeast, really. (Though I don't think it smells bad. I don't have a great sense of smell, so.) Also, for most of its life it's been in the same jar, and the jar got pretty gunky with dried-up starter on the upper edges. (I found a second jar like two days a