Long weekend experiments

So apparently long weekends (yeah presidents day) mean that I choose to cook strange things.  First up I started a sourdough culture from Goldrush Sourdough Starter.  In the past I've tried a so called spontaneous sourdough where I tried to let wild yeast start fermenting in my kitchen, but there are two problems with this.  1 I always want to start this in the dead of winter, and 2 my wife and I don't tend to run the heat very high.  Both of these things conspire to prevent the yeast from taking off.  Having a kid now we run the house much warmer than we would if it was just us, so the yeast had a fighting chance.  It is sort of hard to tell, but that is sour fermentation going on there in the picture.

I also tried the dried apples I wrote about here.  They taste good, but I think that you need a mandolin slicer to get thin enough to have a prayer of getting the store bought quality.  I sliced them as thinly as I was able by hand, but they are still too thick.