Nate Houge

Happy Birthday Nate

Humble Walk had it’s very first bake sale on Sunday. Four loaves of bread turned into $80. Not bad. Now the kids can go on an urban immersion retreat. Rock on.
As one of the contributing bakers I had planned on bringing a loaf of sourdough but since sourdough takes a bit of time and can be a little unpredictable with how it uses that time I also made some simple sandwich bread and a garlic baguette. Those are the ones that made it to the bake sale. I stuck the sour dough in the fridge to slow it down for the night and returned to it on Monday.
Here’s what I came up with.
Step 1. Make dough.

Step 2. Grill Steaks. This step is optional, but why would you fire up the grill just to bake bread? Why’ll we’re at it, why would stand next to those fine slabs of beef at the end of a long day without a beverage in hand? Again, you don’t have to, but why wouldn’t you? Oh and you’ll note there’s an iron griddle preheating on the top rack – that’s where the bread will be living in a bit.

Step 3. Set down your optional beverage and remove the steaks from the grill. At this point I slid the coals over to the left and placed my griddle on the main rack to the right. I thought this might give a more indirect heat and lower the risk of scorching the bottom of the bread.

Step 4. Go eat your steak. Check back in a bit. I actually forgot this step. I meant to check it at 45 minutes but got distracted with some basement remodeling details. Luck for me an hour and 15 minutes worked just fine.

Step 5. Cut it. Adorn it. Eat it.

I think as spring progresses I’ll try this a few more times – it’s always nice to keep the head outside and I hate wasting all that heat after you’re done grilling.
Go buy some steaks, go bake some bread.

1. banjo lessons
2. good beer with good friend
3. biking home through downtown st. paul as the wild game cars turn the streets into parking lots. best comment from drunk woman as i passed, “what the (bleep) has he got on his back?” Drunk woman (that totally narrows my readership by half), that would be my banjo.

get a bell for your bike. ring it. pedestrians will thank you. no really, they will.

Hey – Becoming Liturgy, that hit acoustic liturgical sensation that’s sweeping the nation is now available on I Tunes. Just go to the I Tunes store and search for Houge and there it is, along with my kids cd, my brother’s power pop ep with the hit single Love On TV and Don’s quintet. You know Don… the guy with those other four guys?

Also I had a chance to record some acoustic lap steel with Joel and Aimee Pakan back in January and the song is up for a free download on their website, www.tangledblue.com with the story of how the song came to be. My acoustic lap steel also appears on Becoming Liturgy, and yes the steven’s steel I played with used to belong to Ben Harper. Kind of. Or at least he stole it from his grandpa and handed it to the guy I bought my lap steel from. But it was in his posession allright? So get off my back and listen to some music already.

Twice today, in two different locations I saw this billboard:
Life Moves Fast. Don’t Miss A Thing. Palm.

For a number of reasons my reply is
Lives Moves Fast. That’s okay. Calm.

Because the folks I want to be most like tend to miss all kinds of things in life, just not the important things like hugging their wife, being patient with their kids, and being their for their friends. If I could do those things and miss the rest I’d be just fine. Say no to Palm. Say yes to Calm.

I temporarily suspend my hiatus status for the greater good of the world.I just spent 20 minutes looking at websites of local Lutheran churches in hopes of finding a morning Ash Wednesday service.  Here’s what I have to say.  Church web sites stink!  I know I’m biased but my home congregation was the only website that was clean, clear, up to date, and informative.  One other website had a calendar that was up to date and all of them had way too much (mostly outdated) information and horrible organization.  Sheesh!  Who do they think they are?  Natehouge.com?Back to hiatus.  Nate.And no, I have no idea why I thought this post would make the world a better place.  My bad.

Check back in March.

Session Four Song Sheet (PDF)Another session is upon us!  Here’s the song sheet.  Sadly there will be no audio accompaniment due to general upheaval in the Houge family basement finishing extravaganza of 2010.

listening to bottle rockets brand new year.  back home from ringing in the new year with wife, brother, kjel, amy, and a lot of neighbors at skinners… one time my brother in law said you know you’ve had too much to drink when you lose your ations – innunciations, pronunciations, etc… so driving home a song came on the radio and i say, ‘is this death cab for cutie?’ and my brother says, ‘i was wondering the same thing with all of that over innunciation.’ and being still headlong into this joyous christmas tide i thought he said over-annunciation which lead to the two of us yelling with perfect innunciation things like, ‘an angel came to the town of nazareth, to a woman whose name was mary…’ and so on and soon it led to the converse and we pondered under annunciation.  ‘so some celestial being came to this lady and was like a kid will be born, god, probably you’re going to be the mom, but whatev, city of dave, blah blah blah…’no segue.so in 2010 i will be fitter, thinner, eat less crap, drink less booze, play more guitar, finish the basement, set up my pedal steel, be a patient dad, supportive husband, role model to underprivileged kids everywhere,  do more laundry, don’t do more laundry (my wife hates it when i dry stuff that’s not supposed to be dried and she has to buy it again – though i say if you can’t dry it don’t buy it – but no one listens to me), be more listened to, write more letters, cuddle more kittens, be nice to the nice guys and mean to the mean in my dreams, stand up to the evil el guapo, tell my family i love them, (i just told my family i love them so i can check that off pronto) celebrate my accomplishments, appreciate my brother for not being a dj but rather for being an electronic musician (not that he’s electronic but his music often depends on alternating current) (but that doesn’t make it alternative, that makes it electronic), use moisturizing lotion to get rid of the obnoxious dry skin back itch that i often have in mn during the winter of my discontent (are you wearing a doily?) make shorter more manageable lists, keep it chill, keep it tight, keep it real, keep it real tight and chill, give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now, blog more, spend less time blogging, buy sensible shoes, spend more time logging, log less, unless it’s sustainable logging, help someone who needs help by finding a helpful person to help them in a helpful sustainable way, go on vacation and not feel like the most relaxing and fulfilling thing i can do is work, cop out on vacation and do relaxing and fulfilling things that i love and sometimes get paid for (work for instance), stop contradicting myself in my futile underread blogs, congratulate those who actually make it through my nonsensical rantings, stop basing my self worth on the basis of comments, come to grips with the fact that my mom e-mails me with the preface, ‘i was going to comment on your blog, but it’s probably not cool that you’re mom comments on your blog more than anyone else so i thought i’d just e-mail you,’ write my mom more often so that my blog is not our number one means of communication, write shorter blogs, know when a good ending line is present and claim it, listen to more bottle rockets, and of course there’s more but i’m already intimidated and giving up at the monstrosity of this list, and chances are you quit reading lines and lines ago because it’s boring and chances are you didn’t even read that line because you gave up lines and lines ago because it’s boring and chances are…