When Husband moved to Winnipeg for graduate school in 1978 he was immediately captivated by the rye bread from the City Bakery, a venerable institution that made wonderful baked goods. City Bakery rye had just the right texture for Husband, neither mushy nor hard, with an open but fine grain. He has spent the last 47 years trying to replicate it.
For all the years of our courtship and marriage I have watched him try scores of different rye bread recipes. Some sour dough, some not, some with dried yeast, some with fresh yeast, some with caraway, some with no herbs, some successful, some true disasters. They have been baked in a variety of pans. Last weekend he declared that he had finally found the last rye bread recipe, which he made yesterday. He also declared that he would throw out seven rye bread recipes and keep seven rye bread recipes.
We shall see how long this lasts, and when I shall have to see him fuss over some new rye recipe. It is hard to be a perfectionist.
What is your favorite bread? What have you tried to emulate or perfect?
The Badlands Opera Company staged Into The Woods last weekend at the local college auditorium. It was a fantastic and absolutely professional production. Costuming, special effects, and tech were superb. The cast was comprised of all local folks, and their voices were fabulous. The director/ Cinderella’s Prince was a 30 something local man who had made good as a theatre professor in another state. This was his directorial debut. About half of the cast are members of our Lutheran Church.
The oldest member of the cast was our church organist. She played Jack in the Beanstalk’s mother. She is a feisty 76 year old with a huge soprano voice, wonderful acting skills, and a sharp tongue. Most of the other leads were in their mid to late 30’s, and I realized I have watched many of them grow up through church and school productions. We were at the infant baptisms of the Baker and the Witch! Cinderella’s parents are wonderful ranch people who I have known for years and worked with when they were foster/adopt parents. We sat with them at the Friday night opening and talked and joked. It was wonderful. Little Red Riding Hood’s dad is Husband’s real life barber!
When we got home from the performance I took a look around our home, a pretty modest home for the most part, and saw the family mementos and possessions we have, and thought about the relationships we have built over the decades, and I considered how priceless they all are. They wouldn’t be priceless in the marketplace, but they are irreplaceable to us.
What are the things and memories and relationships that are priceless to you? What is your favorite scene from Into The Woods?
You know my drill. Find an interesting cookbook out and about. Get that cookbook from the library. Try out a few of the recipes. If they turn out well, consider adding cookbook to the collection. And the hard part, getting rid of a cookbook to make room for the newbie.
So yesterday I’m made a Roasted Tomato, Potato, Dill and Feta Frittata from a cookbook of tomato recipes. I like to follow recipes fairly closely when I’m testing a cookbook; I think of it as giving the author a chance to really show their stuff. After a couple of paragraphs in the recipe, I came upon this phrase – “… heat a generous glug of oil over medium heat”.
To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen “glug” listed as a measurement in a cookbook before. I was pretty sure a glug has to do with the sound of the oil if you tip the bottle all the way up and the oil makes a glugging sound as it pushes its way out. But for fun, I looked it up. Internet says “about two tablespoons”. So is a generous glug three tablespoons? Four tablespoons would be two glugs, wouldn’t it? Not exactly a precision measurement.
What I didn’t say is that when I read that instruction, I laughed out loud. The reason for that is that in an earlier recipe, the author explained in excruciating detail how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.
“Arrange the cheese on one slide of bread, then put the two slices together. Set a skillet that’s the right size for you bread (too large, and you’ll end up with burned butter), add about 1 Tablespoon butter, swirl it around to coat the skillet; as soon as it stops foaming, lay your sandwich in the skillet.”
To be fair, the grilled cheese recipe turned out great but not because I needed step-by-step instruction on how to grill a cheese sandwich but because it called for a Sun-Dried Tomato & Smoky Red Pepper Mayonnaise which was fabulous.
Glug, pinch, dash, handful…. how closely do you follow recipes? Do you even USE recipes?
The robins have been snowed on twice now. Once more and we should be good to go. I see the turkey vultures have returned, we’ve seen and heard sandhill cranes, I’ve heard there’s rhubarb coming up, and we’re starting to see hints of green in the lawn and in the rye that I planted as a cover crop. Spring is coming. Oh, and nettles are growing. Why do the weeds always get the upper hand?
One day last week I found both the lost pen and pencil from two days before, and a water bottle from about three weeks ago. The water bottle was in the office at our Townhall. I remember stopping there to look through some files, would not have remembered that I had a water bottle with me, I just knew that there used to be two in the refrigerator and now there was only one. And I was pretty sure I had put the pen and pencil in my pocket one morning, but that afternoon they were gone. Three days later I found them in a box I had bent over to pick up. There’s always, usually, almost always, a rational explanation for missing things.
Last Saturday, Governor Walz held a Townhall meeting in Rochester at the largest high school auditorium we have in town. Three days before, I got an email asking if I would be free on Saturday to work lights and sound for this event. Details were still being ironed out, and on Thursday I found out they were asking about various locations at the college, as well as various high schools in Rochester. Buried in an email someone said they were not expecting a very big crowd. I had to laugh at that. I don’t know why anyone would’ve thought that. A few years ago, yeah, small crowds, not these days.
One of my jobs is doing technical support for community education events, or anything that’s not school related, in the public school auditoriums. So it’s pretty basic lighting and sound. We don’t do anything fancy, I don’t do video, but I can get him a microphone and turn on the stage lights.
I train in college kids to do this job and then ideally they can cover many of these events, most of which are dance recitals or various meetings. I keep the interesting things for myself. Like governors. But I did bring along a college student to train.
The large high school was finally selected and we did a walk-through there Friday afternoon with security and the governor’s staff. Saturday morning we were there at 7:30 AM and I observed this meeting of security personnel out in the hallway:
It sounded like this crew was searching purses and bags. I hope the big guy got to do more than search bags. I know the local police department was around, and I’m sure there was other security person that went unnoticed by me. From my position up in the balcony I really couldn’t see much.
I worked an event for Governor Walz several years ago at the college and it was much more low-key than this one. As we finished up and were leaving, we saw the black SUVs with the tinted windows.
Some of you know Governor Walz would stay and take questions all morning if he could. He was only scheduled to speak for an hour, and they had started to make some indications they needed to wrap up. Shortly after the one hour mark, his wife Gwen, who had been sitting on stage, approached him and placed her hand on his shoulder. Governor Walz finished his thought and quipped, “You can see who holds the real power around here.“ and gave her the microphone. She spoke, she got the crowd up and on their feet and cheering and they both waved and exited. What a perfect way to wrap this up. The governor never had to say he had to go, no one had to cut them off, nobody plays the bad guy. Just smile and wave. Smile and wave. Well done.
I make a show file on the lightboard for these events, and I have a ‘general’ file, which I then created a sub folder, ‘Walz’. Hence, GENERAL WALZ, which sort of made me giggle.
On the farm front, I didn’t get much accomplished this week on the farm. I hope to clear a down tree off the field on Friday, before it rains and gets muddy again. And I’m hoping to get some straw spread where I had the dirt work done last winter so that I don’t get any more erosion from the snow melting and spring rains. Still sorting bolts, but I am just about done with that, they don’t quite fit back where they were so I’m still figuring it out as I go.
Electricians should be there on Monday to get the electrical done in the shop. I picked up the electricians scissor lift and will get the lights mounted on the ceiling prior to their arrival.
I’m looking forward to having a door opener installed, plus some exterior lights and more outlets in the shed.
And then I really need to stop spending money on this place.
The chickens followed me to the barn one day, eager for corn. And they got a drink while they were there. The ones with their head up are swallowing.
For the past two months I have been inundated with the question “How are you enjoying your retirement?” I usually smile and say that it is nice, but, if truth be told, I would tell people that it hasn’t been the greatest experience.
To begin with, my body has let me know it is unhappy with me by having increased aches, pains, sciatica, a week long low grade fever, and a nasty bout of diverticulitis. I seem to be over most of those ailments now.
I also have been beset by corporate stupidity that has left me exhausted and anxious. I don’t know why these things seem more exhausting and overwhelming than they used to. For example, for years we have dealt with a computer virus protection company we previously utilized that keeps thinking we still want their services, and keep trying to charge an expired credit card to renew our account. I was getting several emails a week saying “Hmm, your card was declined”. Monday it seemed that they had somehow managed to actually get the card to work, so I spent an hour on the phone with their customer service explaining repeatedly we didn’t want their products, we didn’t need their products, and to please leave us alone. The customer service person kept insisting we really needed their products. After repeatedly telling her we wanted this all finished, she finally relented. I think I finally got it taken care of. It was exhausting. Of course yesterday I got an email asking to rate my experience with customer service. Arrrgh!
In January I heard from our auto insurance company that the insurance for our 2011 van was being transferred to a subsidiary company for the same but less expensive coverage, and that I would receive all the particulars in a couple of weeks. Yesterday it dawned on me that I hadn’t received any such information, and the coverage for the van expired tomorrow. Our long term agent retired, and it seemed that the new agent lived in Watford City, about 70 miles away. We finally figured out that she had moved her office to Dickinson, contacted her, and she printed off our new proof of coverage. That took a whole morning to accomplish. They had just forgot to send me the renewal cards. Arrrgh!
Retirement has been an adjustment for mind, body, and spirit. I thought the months leading up to my retirement were stressful. I just hope I can tolerate the change now that it has begun.
What corporate stupidity have you encountered lately? What are some big adjustments you have had to make?
Although I probably won’t go down again to boil sap, I truly enjoyed the experience. Part of it was learning all about the process, but a lot was also the ambiance. Not in any particular order…
The weather was just about perfect. It started about bright and sunny (I put on sunscreen) and even when it clouded up in the afternoon, the temperature seemed just right for boiling. Not cold enough that you really felt it but not warm enough that the work made us sweat. There was a short rain shower after dark, but when it cleared up, the stars in the night sky were amazing. As a city gal, I never see stars like that.
Before dinner we had tea but instead of plain old boiling water, we used the boiling sap. Very sweet tea but wonderful drinking it outside.
There was good company while we were working. Astrid is a big dog with a big deep bark but a big softie; after dark we heard coyotes and while Astrid worked hard to convince us that she was a guard dog, she didn’t move more than 20 feet from us. Whiskey looks like a cat, but he is really a dog. He comes when he is called, hangs around most of the day for petting and doesn’t seem to think the rain matters at all.
My godson doesn’t actually “farm” but is embracing country lifestyle. He was happy to tell me about all the classes he has taken at the local folk school (bee keeping, chain saw safety, how to “manage” chickens, syrup making and to show me all the improvements he’s made to the house and outbuildings. He has some animals: chickens and a mean rooster (I have bruises to prove it) and also a small herd of goats. He has just acquired a male, so perhaps there will be kids and milk in the future. I shared with him the wonderful soaps that Barb made when she had goats.
He is also a terrific cook and by the time he went in to make dinner, I had a handle on the boiling so didn’t need to panic. Several of the borscht ingredients come from their garden and it was delicious. Just soup and toasted baguettes. Yummy.
Children. He has three kids – 7, 5 and 3. I got to play Legos with the youngest. Lots of racing “vehicles” and crashing. The 5-year old was obsessed with arithmetic so we did a ton of “what is ten plus ten” and other combinations. He hasn’t worked on subtraction yet, so we did some “what is three minus two”, using fingers. There was a very lively conversation after the 7-year old got home from school concerning the weight of the earth and how you would weigh it. He’s got a lot on the ball for seven and there was gravity walls/barriers and gravity robot discussion. My godson brought up the planet-building spheres from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to which I replied that the weight of the earth is clearly 42. The 7-year old didn’t get this joke but god son did!
It was just a wonderful trip, even if you don’t count the maple syrup (and a bonus small bottle of their black walnut syrup which I’ve had before and it fabulous). I can’t imagine how it could have been better!
When was the last time you just really enjoyed something?
I spent a few days down at the farm of my godson last week; he invited me down to see his process for making maple syrup. The past few years I’ve been the recipient of his syrup and have asked quite a few questions. He thought I would like to see you it’s done – he was correct.
We started at 6:45 a.m. by getting the fire pit going. He does his boiling out in the open – no hut or roof or anything. You have to watch the weather forecast carefully when you do it this way. The three pans fit right over the edges and we filled them about 2/3 full of sap. With the 10 gallons that we harvested that day, we were working with 60 gallons total.
After about 5 hours, the farthest two pans started to darken as the water in the sap boiled off; the closest pan, due to being near the opening for adding wood, didn’t boil quite as vigorously. We spent a far amount of time transferring from this pan into the darker pans. That way we only added cold sap to the closest pan. It takes quite some time to boil down 60 gallons of sap so we were still at it into the night. The fire kept us warm as the temperature started to drop and it rained (lightly) for about 40 minutes.
When we had it all boiled down to about 3 gallons, we closed up shop and moved the syrup into the kitchen, where it sat overnight. There was about an hour more of boiling on the stovetop the next morning. There was quite a bit of fiddling with it, using a hydrometer to make sure it was the right density. Not dense enough and the syrup can develop mold, too dense and the syrup crystallizes. At that point we had about 2½ gallons and we filtered it through a very heavy duty filter that was hung from a camera tripod; why purchase something when the camera tripod works wonders?
Then all that was left was to get the syrup into bottles. Although I had worked hard the day before, the bottling was the only thing I really helped with all morning. It was really a one-person operation once it moved inside.
Seems like a LOT of work (16 hours on Friday and 4 hours on Saturday) for the amount of syrup we got but I will say that the ½ cup that was left over after bottling, that we all ate with spoons was probably the best syrup I’ve had in my life. See the bottle with the green cap in the photo above, that is a little larger than the other bottles? That’s the one I claimed.
During my other book club yesterday, we got to talking about movies = what we like, what we don’t like, the benefit of seeing things on the big screen, etc.
I was mentioning that I had really enjoyed seeing Conclave on the big screen (although to be fair, I have watched it a couple of times since it came to my tv). This led to the first movies we remember seeing “on the big screen”.
My family did drive-in movies when I was a kid; How the West Was Won may have been my first. I barely remember it. I clearly remember seeing Gone With the Wind when I was about 7. For some reason I have a very clear memory of the last scene from the swing set that was on the playground right below that huge screen.
The first couple of movies that I saw in a movie theatre were Disney. Bambi was traumatizing to me. Losing his mother in that fire left me bereft; I’ve never seen it since. The other was Fantasia. I adore Fantasia and have seen it many times. I love all the various bits, although the hippo ballerinas and the Arabian dance/fish from the Nutcracker rank right up there. And I am very fond of Night on Bald Mountain that blends right into Ave Maria. I have watched Fantasia 2000 a couple of times; Firebird is wonderful but I prefer the original Fantasia the best. Even on the small screen!
As happens often, a book sent me down a rabbit hole last week. Martyr by Kaven Akbar has been highly lauded recently – New York Times Bestseller & Best Book of the Year as well as finalist for the Waterstone Award. 4.2 rating on GoodReads and the same on Amazon. Only 3 stars for me. It was well written but the protagonist was exceedingly annoying and unbelievably full of himself. It had a plot twist that I saw coming about a million miles away and the ending wasn’t very satisfying at all. Oh well….
There was a good story embedded in it though about a Persian poet named Ferdowsi who wrote an epic poem in order to get money from the king to rebuild a bridge in his town. Akbar ended this section saying that the king built a bridge like no other and it is known as the Poet’s Bridge.
You know this was more than I could resist. Looked up Poet’s Bridge and discovered that there is such a bridge in Isfahan, Iran but it was built considerably later than Ferdowsi lived and is called Poet’s Bridge because “it has been a popular meeting spot and a source of inspiration for poets and artists, with many beautiful poems written about its beauty and the surrounding area.” However Ferdowsi was a poet and wrote The Shahnameh, one of the world’s longest epic poems (50,000+ couplets) and the longest epic written by a single person. Here is one of the most famous lines:
“Though you have little wealth, fear not the decree of fate; for the ocean of the sea was once a drop of rain.”
It was written between 977 and 1010 and there are some resources that suggest there may have been a bridge involved, but it’s pretty shadowy. And clearly any bridge built in Ferdowsi’s time is not the Khaju Bridge which was built in the mid-17th century. But the Khaju Bridge is gorgeous and is a significant landmark. If Akbar had not named the bridge in his telling of the Ferdowsi story, I wouldn’t have found the Khaju Bridge. Not sure if this was Akbar’s intention or not, but I’m glad it happened.
Any favorite bridges? Do you have any worries about long, tall bridges?
Another Wednesday, another blizzard warning and snow day.
For good measure, the three of us took Thursday off as a snow day as well. Wanted to make sure we gave the roads time to improve. And really, on the north side of Rochester we only had about 2 inches maybe, and most of our driveway didn’t have any snow on it. Credit to my dad for having the road built up like he did 50 years ago. I remember maybe 30 years ago there was a snow storm every Thursday for about a month. I would plow the driveway before milking in the morning, Kelly would take the kids in and go to work, and then before they came home, I’d clear the driveway and again wait for them out at the highway. Must’ve been before cell phones, and in one of those odd little memories that sticks with you, I remember sitting in the tractor with the door open while one of the sheriff deputies that we were friends with, stood outside and we talked for half an hour. I remember watching his ears get more and more red and thinking “I’m sure glad I’m in this tractor cab.“, and “why doesn’t he end this conversation and get back in the car already??” Maybe Kelly finally came home, I don’t remember. Maybe he wasn’t cold. Maybe I should have had him get in the cab out of the wind at least. Don’t know.
Daughter and I have the place to ourselves this weekend as Kelly flew out to Boston to staff a booth for some work-related event. Flew out Saturday, works Sunday, back on Monday. I don’t think you can even call that a working vacation. Sounds like just plain ‘work’ to me.
I think I have finally finished farm bookwork and can get our taxes done now. The software I use generates a Year End report that will be 31 pages this year. About half of it being farm related expenses, and the other half being household expenses. There’s no profit on the farm this year and that’s primarily expenses related to the farm shop. I always enjoy looking at the final tally of these expenses. The dogs cost us $3000: Half is vet expenses, the other half are dog treats, joint medications, and frisbees. Pretty astounding how much we’ve spent on groceries.
I have finally, I think, finished all the construction in the shop. In fact, I moved the miter saw and table saw off to storage corners. I started moving bolts to the new bolt shelves and placed another order for more storage bins and dividers. I am throwing out a lot! A lot of not only old, rusty, bent, things, but just bolts that I’ll never use. For example, a box of nuts and bolts from my father-in-law when he had a grain bin taken down. There’s just not a chance I’m gonna use 1000 round headed, 1 inch bolts, that have a glob of tar on them. I also threw out a box of 3/8 inch flat headed plow bolts. Again, it’s just not something I’m gonna use. I use plow bolts, but they’re ½” diameter and 2 inches long.
I have two boxes of stuff I’m saving for my crafty sister. Just weird little odds and ends that she always appreciates. Although in this case, I’m not sure what she’s gonna do with all this metal stuff without a welder. Maybe I should buy her a tube of JB weld to go with this junk. I mean “these supplies”.
One of the boxes of dad‘s odds and ends and bits of doo-dads, contained eight sets of ignition points and three condensers. I have no idea if they’re from tractors or cars and it sort of boggles my mind that if he replaced a set because it wasn’t running well, why did he not just throw it right away in the first place??
I saved those for my sister. Some of you might know what those are. Electronic ignition and everything these days has eliminated the need for these things, but these were a pretty remarkable creation in the history of the automobile and kudos to whoever invented them.
(OK, I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, Charles Franklin Kettering, founder of Delco, and worked for GM, is credited with creating this ignition system. It was first used on the 1912 Cadilac. Huh!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delco_ignition_system
The online auction in Plainview finished on Tuesday. I had taken a small, 4 drawer toolbox that I got for free, a large 5 drawer ‘document’ cabinet that had large, shallow drawers, and the anhydrous applicator toolbar. There were two other, much nicer anhydrous applicators than mine on the auction. I got $200 for that item. A lot less than I paid for it ten or fifteen years ago. I also got $40 for the small free toolbox. So at least all that stuff is out of my hair.
I’ve got 1 chicken laying eggs in the garage.
I’ve chased her out of the garage a couple times recently, so I was keeping an eye out for eggs. Every now and then I get a chicken laying eggs in the garage for some reason. Once they were nesting up on a shelf behind a box of sidewalk chalk. This time she’s on the ground, behind a shovel. I figure that out one day when the shovel was tipped over. Chickens are so weird.
Hey- check out this ‘egg fetcher’ tool I use when the eggs are in the corner underneath the nest boxes:
WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON THING IN YOUR JUNK DRAWER? DID YOU GO LOOK OR DID YOU JUST KNOW? WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT MANY OF THAT THING?
Trail Baboon 