It’s Wednesday. This means that somewhere between 6:30 – 7 a.m., I will be standing at the counter of Sun Street Breads – a bakery about 8 blocks from my house. I won’t actually be ordering because the guy who waits on folks in the morning (David) starts my order as soon as he sees me.
Sun Street Breads is a little bakery/restaurant that’s been open ten years and I discovered it right away. They do artisan breads, a few very nice pastries and cookies; they also do soups, sandwiches and one night a week, they stay open a little later for pizza. Then about six years ago they started making glazed raised doughnuts. But only on Wednesdays. And only their initial batch. Once they run out, they are out. If you don’t get there before 9 a.m., you might not get one. I’m not sure how you make the best raised glazed doughnut on the planet, but they have clearly figured it out.
Back to Wednesdays. One raised glazed and one raspberry cream scone (also excellent). And don’t judge – two cans of Diet Coke. Sometimes I can’t wait and I eat the doughnut in the car. If I have a little more willpower, I drive straight home and eat there.
So now you know my dirty little Wednesday secret.
Do you have a habit that you just don’t want to give up?
Husband and I spent six days in Tacoma last week, with a couple of days on the Olympic Peninsula. The trip to the peninsula was rather more eventful than we wished, with daughter slipping into a deep tidepool and breaking her wrist, but, overall, it was a great trip.
Our Tacoma hotel overlooked Commencement Bay on Puget Sound. The city has made a nice development free and open to the public along the Sound, full of piers, shops, restaurants, running paths, and green space for people, pets, otters, sea birds, and sea lions to coexist. We watched sail boats, container ships, canoeists, and paddle boarders. I saw otters swimming around close to shore.
I took the header photo from our hotel room window. Just below our window we had a lovely view of a large cement area about the size of half of a basketball court that had recessed colored lights and sprays of water shooting out that all members of the public could access. Children, dogs, skate boarders, and adults ran through it. Lots of people sat on benches and talked. We also watched lots of bicyclists of all ages along the path that borders the Sound by the hotel, and families with small children in strollers. There was ample, free public parking. What we most appreciated was the diversity of ages, races, and income groups amongst the revelers. This area was meant for all, and not just for the privileged. On our last evening it looked as though the whole city had come for a visit. Husband commented that this is what a city should be like.
Main character: Relatively intelligent woman with cooking skills
Location: A kitchen loaded with pots, pans, utensils and cooking toys
Weapon: Kitchen Pro 2000
Plot: The main character, despite being careful, always manages to cut herself when using her mandoline. The latest attack by the mandoline occurred not when she is actually using it but as she is moving back to the sink to wash a dish.
Mystery: Why does the mandoline have it out for her?
It’s as high as a small elephant’s eye. There have been a few years the corn was only knee high on the fourth and those were extremely wet years and it was planted very late.
Beans are coming along and looking good. Oats is just starting to turn color. The green is fading and it’s turning yellow as it matures and dries out. Now I worry about storms and high winds knocking it down; we want rain, not storms.
We keep scouting the crops, watching stages of development and looking for diseases or insects. Beans can get aphids that affect yield. But we don’t spray for them unless it hits an ‘economic threshold’; the point where the cost of the damage from the pests would be greater than the cost of the spraying. That’s about 250 aphids / plant. It’s been a few years since I sprayed for aphids, it doesn’t happen very often.
The corn I like to watch as the brace roots emerge – extra roots that come out to help stabilize it as it gets taller.
I found a few places where corn plants are still emerging after all these weeks. They’re too far behind the rest to amount to much; the ear most likely won’t fully develop or be dry enough by fall, but it’s pretty amazing the seed still grew this long after planting and being in the ground all that time!
We are delighting in the warm summer nights and enjoying the fireflies over the crops. They’re always such a treat to watch. Some of us like the “warm” part better than others of us. Growing Degree Units are up – 355 over normal.
I mentioned the helicopter spraying at the neighbors. I’ve always been fascinated with helicopters, so it was fun to watch that operation. I’ve been in a helicopter a couple times; Many years ago I took a helicopter tour over Gettysburg Battle grounds and just a few years ago a helicopter tour over Charleston SC. That was fun.
One night, Kelly was taking a walk and she texted me that a hot air balloon was pretty low. We’ve had a few balloons land in our fields, but usually it’s winter and there’s no crops to worry about. It was a very still night and this guy had lost all his wind and was really just hanging there. I drove up and met his chase crew. I told him if he could at least get to the edge of a field and not land in the middle I’d be happy with that. He said he would do his best. And he did. He managed to get to a water way (just a grassy area) to land and the crew dragged him over to the road. Always fun to see them. If they land 3 times on the farm I get a free ride. It hasn’t happened so far.
Still fixing things, had a flat tire on the lawnmower, which isn’t surprising given the areas I’m mowing. I couldn’t find a hole, so I took the tire apart and couldn’t find anything inside either, so bought a bottle of ‘Slime’ and put that inside and it worked! Plugged up the hole! (‘Slime’ is a green, thick, goop, you squirt inside a tire and it’s supposed to plug up holes and prevent new holes. I’d heard of it before, but never tried it.) I just bought a second bottle. If this works, I might be sold on it!
Working on the grain drill too. It needed some bushings on the arms that support the press wheels and a couple new bearings in the press wheels (they press the seed into the dirt for good ‘seed-to-soil’ contact.) Plus, one of the actual seed cups had been broken since I bought it. Wasn’t really hard to fix, but it was 44 little ¼” bolts and it takes two people. I have a college kid, Khalid, that is helping me with that. Waiting on parts to finish that project.
I also took the bucket off the loader and have it over at my nephew, Matt’s. He’s a welder and got his own shop going as a side business. The loader bottom was bent because I work it too hard. And it’s also 20 years old and it has pushed a lot of trees over. He tried to straighten the bottom, but it couldn’t be repaired so he got a new piece of steel for that and I ordered a new cutting edge from the dealer. Half the price of a new bucket and this will be better than new. [photo]
I bought another funnel at Menards. ¬¬Funnels are a mystery. I have a dozen different funnels and still didn’t have one that will hit the transmission oil filler on the lawnmower. Although this one today might! I even bought a funnel with a right angle on it and that wouldn’t reach either. Some funnels have too big of a funnel end. Some are too long that they’re awkward. Some are too narrow and the thick oil won’t flow through. Some are metal, some are plastic, some are tapered to one side, some are flexible but never the way I need them to be.
It doesn’t seem like it should be this hard, but I guess it is. You think “I’ll just get a funnel for this”, and then it doesn’t work. I got two flexible folding funnel things. Silicone and moldable, made to fit in wherever you can squeeze it. Sometimes that’s the right tool. I tell the kids a lot, “Every new job is an opportunity for a new tool”.
Helicopter ride? Hot air balloon ride? What’s the craziest/most fun thing you’ve ridden in?
My driver’s license expires in three weeks. I haven’t thought too much about it – I figured I’d do the REAL ID thing at the same time. I’ve seen all the various documents and I’m well covered. And even if for some reason I had trouble w/ the REAL ID, I have a valid passport so will still be able to travel, even after the (again) extended deadline. I had even heard from somewhere that the DMV preferred that you make an appointment to get your license renewed.
So I was a little non-plussed when I went online yesterday to do the “pre-screening” for the REAL ID and make an appointment, only to find that you can’t get an appointment ANYWHERE in the Twin Cities area in the next month. I would think that if everything were taking 2-3 months, we’d be hearing about it; I’m surely not the only one who didn’t think twice about having to renew so far in advance.
I called the AAA that I normally go to for all DMV things and the guy who answered the phone was very nice and when I told him my license would expire before I could get an appointment, this is what he counseled:
Go to the office so that you are there before opening.
If you are one of the first 15 people in line, they bring you into the building and you get waited on
If you are NOT one of the first 15, they take your phone number and will call you sometime later in the day with an appointment time
Apparently you have 15 minutes to get there (I’m hoping I mis-heard this, but probably not)
He then suggested that if you want to be in that golden first 15, you should shoot to arrive by 6:30 a.m. at the latest. Sigh.
Looks like next week one morning I’ll be sitting in my stadium chair outside the DMV at 6 a.m. I think the sun will be up by then so I won’t need a flashlight to read.
Any particular bureaucracy getting you down these days?
I’m not going to bore you with my love of lists – this has been catalogued many times on the Trail.
As I was straightening up in the breakfast room after my return from St. Louis, I found a folded piece of paper on the table. Having been burned more than once by tossing out something that is needed, I opened it up to see what it was. I found a list of various foods sorted by whether they were to be picked up at Target or Trader Joe’s.
It took me a minute to realize that this was not a list I had put together (although it could have been) but something that YA had done in my absence. And not just a list jotted down on a post-it note, but clearly a computerized list. With a title! I’ll admit I got a little teary.
Do you have a trait that you’d like to pass on – either to offspring or acquaintance?
I like to think that I have a pretty good imagination. After all, the fantasy genre is one of my favorites – give me a good dragon story any day. So it wasn’t out of character that yesterday, when I stumbled upon a show called “Mythical Beasts”, I didn’t automatically change the channel. I won’t go into the ethics of the Science Channel in airing this stuff, but suffice it to say the way they lay out these shows isn’t using exacting science.
It didn’t take long before I was down the rabbit hole. I started looking for the iconic Loch Ness photo (which was debunked decades and decades ago). This led me to the Lagarfljot Worm, an ice serpent in Iceland. It’s supposedly been terrorizing the countryside for centuries, often cited as being responsible for harsh weather and crop failures. This led me to Nahuelito, another lake-based monster in Argentina, similar to Nessie. This led me to the Windigo, which I had heard of but didn’t know about. Apparently it can influence people into greed, murder and cannibalism. This led me to a book called “Abominable Science: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids” (yes, then I had to look up cryptids)! Of course, I have requested the book from the library. If I hadn’t decided to go downstairs for lunch, who knows how long I would have been trolling the internet for made-up beings.
If you had asked me last week if I would be looking up mythical beings this week I would have laughed out loud. You can just never tell where my bring wants to go.
You all know I adore my mom. And for the most part, we do quite well when we spend time together but the 9 days I spent in St. Louis did stretch our patience a few times. The place where we have the most friction is the television. I’m happy to leave the tv off most of the time but Nonny has habits that she doesn’t want to relinquish. This starts in the morning as she likes to watch the news. I prefer my news in short, concentrated bursts and would really just like to read my news online. Both the tragedy of the falling condo and the Bill Cosby reversal were in the news while I was there and both stories got re-hashed and re-hashed. I was working in the morning so pretty much tried to tune it out but it was difficult.
The evenings caused more tension. Nonny likes the Hallmark movies, especially the romances and the holiday films. And I’m sure I’m not giving any of you news when I say that I detest the Hallmark Christmas movies (which are playing 24/7 beginning two weeks ago and through July). This is not a secret to Nonny but despite my saying so more than once, she filed this fact away. After a couple of nights we decided to switch back and forth. First I would pick a movie, then she would pick a movie. You’d think we’d both be adult enough for this solution, wouldn’t you?
She didn’t like Ant-Man and the Wasp at all. I thought she might because the Ant-Man movies are much lighter than some of the other Marvel universe movies. I was wrong. She had trouble following the storyline and got impatient pretty quickly. Then she chose one of her Christmas movies, although I know she’d already seen it because she recounted the plot to me in the first 10 minutes. I pretty much ignored the movie, but she kept muting the tv during the commercials to “talk about it”. I was more testy than I should have been.
I chose the old Woman in White with Alexis Smith, Eleanor Parker and Gig Young. How could this go wrong? Well, the thought the Sydney Greenstreet character was too creepy and complained that she just didn’t like movies where the bad guys held so much sway over the good guys. She got quite crabby. But not as crabby as I got when she chose another Christmas movie. I will admit that I pouted and decided it was a good time to do laundry; that took me out of the condo (laundry machines are across the hall) several times. Unfortunately she was convinced that I needed to hear the song at the end of the movie and called me to come back to the living room. Twice.
Luckily I found How to Marry a Millionaire with Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable – this turned out to finally be something we could agree on. It was funny (with great costumes) and since Nonny had seen it before, she already knew the plot line. It was nice to have something we both enjoyed as our last movie of my trip. I’m not sure what would have happened if I had stayed in St. Louis longer. Is there such a thing as bad-movie-induced-matricide?
What’s the worst movie or tv show you’ve been subjected to lately?
I have spoken critically in this forum about my mother’s cooking. She was a typical 1950s Midwestern housewife cook, and I fear that isn’t a flattering standard. Unlike my classmates at college, many of whom grumbled bitterly about the food service, I thought I’d never eaten so well. But my mother took desserts seriously. I can forgive her those Jello desserts she served so often, for her cakes and pies were tasty. Relative to other areas of cooking, she did desserts well.
Her social world was centered on bridge clubs. The hostess of a bridge club meeting was expected to serve a dessert so special that club members would be talking about it for days. At one bridge club meeting, Mom’s chocolate devil’s food cake was a huge hit. Someone called out, “Charmion, this cake is wonderful! You have to share your recipe!” Mom didn’t have the nerve to admit that the cake began life as a Duncan Hines box mix. Her embarrassment doomed her to spend many hours one week researching library books for made-from-scratch chocolate cake recipes. She had to find a recipe that was both tasty and credible as the source of the cake she had served.
Each member of my family had a strong dessert preference. Dad thought nothing on earth could be better than apple pie. My mother loved her Graham Cracker Pie, a simple dish made from Eagle Brand Condensed Cream mixed with eggs and lemon, served in a crust that was smooshed graham crackers. My sister came to favor French silk chocolate pie. On my birthdays I always requested a white angle food cake that was heavily frosted with chocolate-flavored whipped cream.
When I tried to teach myself to cook I thought the logical thing would be to collect recipes. When a recipe appealed to me, I’d type it out and add it to my personal recipe book, kept on my computer’s hard drive. I see now that I collected about a hundred dessert recipes, of which I only ever used two. I’m actually not much of a dessert person. The really big sections of my cookbook are salads, chicken and soup dishes. My erstwife was a fine cook, but she too cared more about main dishes than desserts, so I failed to learn how to make good desserts from her.
While I’ve mostly ignored desserts most of my adult life, now and then something catches my fancy. When my erstwife and I traveled in the UK, we discovered a tiny London cafe that served crème brûlée, and I was totally smitten. Still am. I once won a writing contest whose reward was a free trip to the Florida Keys to flyfish for tarpon. While I never caught a tarpon, I sure made a pig of myself with Key Lime Pie, something I’d never encountered before. The dessert I’d now request on my birthday would be pecan pie served with a generous scoop of cinnamon ice cream.
What’s your favorite dessert? Which desserts do you remember most fondly? Do you have a recipe to share?
Last month Bill asked “How do you judge a cookbook at first glance?” For me the first thing a cookbook has to have is a great photo on the front to initially catch my interest. Then it needs to be a niche that I’m interested in (vegetarian, ethnic, baking). That’s enough to get me to request it from the library. Once I get the book, the quality of the production is key, how easy it is to follow the directions, how many recipes appeal to me, will the ingredients be do-able? Probably 50% of the cookbooks that I peruse from the library go back and I never think about them again. Then about 49% might have a recipe or two that I’ll copy for myself (I have a big white binder for these). Then there is the rare 1% that I feel I would to have my own copy of and then I try to find it as inexpensively as possible. And then I have to get rid of an existing cookbook. Cookbook shelving unit is cram-packed!
All of this quantifying led me to another thought. How do you judge ANY book at first glance? How do you decide to read a specific book? And if you choose badly, what do you do about it?
For me, great titles are key; it needs to be interesting, maybe some word play. “Dragons” in the title is a gimme. The phrase “mercenary librarians” on the cover of a book was too tempting to pass up last month. It’s a toss-up whether author or subject matter is the next ingredient for me. I’ll pretty much read anything by my favorite authors. I even read Michael Pollan’s LSD book last year. Only a very few authors have failed to keep my interest. Poor Barbara Hambly lost me between the vampire books and the nasty ice queen series. If a book has an author with whom I am unfamiliar, then subject matter can draw me in. Of course, I’m curious about so much stuff that pretty much anything can work in this respect. I’m not a romance fan and I get irritated pretty quickly with historical fiction but even having said that, I will still occasionally read something in these genres. I prefer fantasy to science fiction. I’ve read my fill of WWII titles the last few years but if something comes well-recommended, I might put it on the list.
There is another category of “what do read” for me because I’m one of those folks who reads multiple books concurrently. At any given time I have a book on CD in the car, an audiobook on my pc and a variety of books piled up in my bedroom. When I decide I want to read, I have to decide WHICH of those books to pick up. Most of the time, it’s my mood that decides, but if a book is coming due soon and I can’t renew it, that factor often takes precedence. Now that the library has re-instituted due dates, I have to think about this more.
I am also a book-abandoner. I decided about 15 years ago, after struggling for weeks to finish Blood on the Snow by Tunstall, that life is too short. There are so many books published each year that no one could read them all so if I don’t finish a book, it won’t doom the publishing industry. I once quit reading a book on page four; I already had the feeling that I wouldn’t enjoy the characters or the plot. Authors beware – you gotta hook me fast!
So the answer to Bill’s question is complex.
How do YOU decide what to read? Can you abandon a bad choice?
Trail Baboon 