Sourdough bread is so easy to make! Just ask any author of a 500,000-word, 17-part instructional website on sourdough baking.

First, you’ll need a starter: a runny mixture of flour, water, yeast and bacteria. It must be regularly “fed” (unlike the mold in your refrigerator, which grows by itself).
 
Nurturing the starter, and then making the bread itself, is a simple process provided you don’t have anything else in your life, such as a job or children. Allow 48 uninterrupted hours, minimum. 

For the actual baking, you can either purchase a $500 Dutch oven pot and $25 parchment paper, or put the dough directly on that old pizza pan crusted with burnt anchovies. Either way, your sourdough bread is bound to disappoint by turning out too flat, dense,  fragile and/or pale. Now you know why store-bought loaves cost $5 each.

Now that the snow is melting, strange objects are turning up in our yard.

Last night I tried a new recipe for roast chicken. I'd found the recipe in our daily paper. Never have had much luck with newspaper recipes, and this one was no exception. It took 6 tablespoons of butter and about 1.5 hours to make, and it didn't even turn out all that well.
Next time I'll skip the extra gourmet stuff and just make grilled chicken "sitting" (ahem) on a beer can, like the one pictured here.