I am really ready for this election to be over, assuming everything goes my way of course. I’m really tired of the endless ads, etc., and the evidence of their pervasiveness is this: Owen was playing with his superhero figures the other day and I heard him say: “I am batman, and I approve this message!” Ha!
I won’t have pictures until sometime in November, so I decided if I can’t give you photo breaks, I’ll at least give you bullets:
· I made my third loaf of whole wheat sandwich bread last Saturday and it turned out well. Now I’m going to move on to trying out a bread cloche I got for Christmas many years ago and forgot about. It’s a large and heavy piece of pottery that is supposed to be good for making a peasant loaf.
· And can I give a shout out now to King Arthur Flour?! They are the best company. I used their hotline the other day when I was having trouble with my bread dough, and then more recently I sent them a question in an email, because the only specific recipe I had for the bread cloche called for all white flour, which I didn’t want to use. They got back to me within 24 hours with the proportions of wheat or rye flour I can use instead. They have great customer service!
· We went apple picking on Sunday and I have some cute photos which I shall have to add later. We had to journey pretty far into the orchard to find trees with apples still on them – note to self: don’t wait until the end of October to pick your apples. But we came home with a large box of apples and I immediately made some whole wheat apple muffins, which turned out well although I seem to be the only one in the family who is eating them. So that is 2 apples down, about 48 to go! I need to get my mother’s apple sauce recipe, and I think I’ll make Smitten Kitchen’s breakfast apple crisp again.
· Owen is a Hillary supporter, of course, and Susan informed me that at Target the other day he was telling anyone who’d listen that we need to Dump the Trump. That’s my boy! It reminded me of the story my sister Martha tells about my nephew Henry at 5 years old lecturing 3 year-old Georgia about not shopping at Walmart because, as he screamed in her surprised face, THEY ARE MEAN TO THEIR WORKERS! Sounds about right.
· The weather this October has been very Jekyll/Hyde. We had several days in the eighties last week (very odd) and now it is the low fifties (more like it). One feels a bit battered by it all.
· I can never get Owen to talk to me about what he did in nursery school usually. The only time he gets very animated about it is when reporting on another kid’s transgressions. Yesterday he told me three times that Brayden had to sit on the time-out bench for hitting the teacher. The time out bench, in case you are wondering, is blue. And Owen, according to Owen, has never had to sit on that bench. Let’s keep it that way.
· Sean and I are both completely smitten with the British TV show “The Detectorists”. There are two seasons available on Netflix and it is a complete gem. We both watch each episode with goofy grins on our faces. It is so funny! And so well-done. I’m adding it to my list of the best TV shows ever, after Buffy, Star Trek:TNG, and Sex and the City. How about that for an eclectic pairing?
· I got Luisa Weiss’s (The Wednesday Chef) much anticipated new cookbook last week, Classic German Baking. It’s a beauty, but I realized upon eagerly paging through it that I didn’t want to so much cook the items myself, as be served them all, one after the other. Any takers? I do plan to attempt many items, slowly. I hadn’t realized there was a difference between European and American butter, but there is – and guess which one is better?! Luckily, one can get Irish Kerrygold butter at Trader Joe’s, which should do the trick. There’s also yeast differences, vanilla extract differences, and the fact that a main ingredient in some German concoctions, quark, is not readily available here. Plus I’m not sure where to buy fresh poppy seeds, and do I really need a poppy seed grinder? The jury is still out.
No comments:
Post a Comment