February 18th

FEB 17th:
DOW
7,552.60
-297.81
-3.79%
Nasdaq
1,470.66
-63.70
-4.15%
S&P 500
789.17
-37.67
-4.56%

February 17, 2009 - 10:21am
DJIA 5 ½-year low of 7552 set on Nov. 20; Now at 7577.
Gas A gallon: 1.99 last week now 2.05

Feb 11th
ASU is doing away with 48 academic programs, I think that means undergrad degrees but I’m not certain I can’t find a list of them yet at the ASU site. And ASU West and the Mesa Campus—site of old Williams Air force Base—nay both be closed next year! Eek! Those two campuses have been in business for years and years.

All K-12 districts are going to be hurting, too.

Feb 8th

I’m doing the big beef barley soup recipe today. I say big because it’s done in the crock pot—some kind of slow cooker—and it’ll feed me for at least several days. This would be another recipe to use in a solar oven if it fits in the oven container okay.

Picked up chicken and two packs of sirloin tips at good prices today. Sirloin tips need to be sold and used pretty quickly so they’re in the beef barley soup. They seemed to have lots of meat on some kind of specials at Bashas’ today. They also seemed to have more people than usual for a Sunday.

February 5th

My 5 or 6th attempt at bread making today; this one is the best one yet. I’ve had trouble getting it to rise high enough in the pan and come out with decent sized sandwich bread. It is a sandwich bread recipe from Joy of Cooking, called fast one loaf bread. I ‘ll know when it comes out of the oven in about 30 minutes.

When I tried to make pizza dough two weeks ago, I had accidentally killed the yeast with too hot water and the dough never rose at all. I now have a candy thermometer to measure the proper temp of the water.