Eating & Cooking & Baking

I eat almost all my meals at home, home cooking & baking, so constant kitchen cleaning and grocery shopping are just a huge part of life. The exploration of new things foodish is a great love. 

My very latest cake, new to me anyway, was a Classic Hummingbird Cake, which my wife loved. I think it is basically banana bread with crushed pineapple baked into it, plus a cream cheese frosting. My wife claimed that she couldn't taste the significant amount of pineapple, but agreed it was more moist than the banana bread that I've made in the past. I used my springform cake pans and learned about using parchment paper on the bottom. It was a bit tricky getting the parchment paper into place and closing the wall ring around the bottom, but I figured out a sneaky way of placing the bottom of the springform pan on a small saucer, which being elevated a little allowed me to get the wall ring into place much easier with a flatter piece of trapped parchment paper, then used shears to take off the excess parchment paper.

In the last few months I just got started with sous vide and love it. I’ve made pumpkin bread for a long time, and my friends & family love it - especially my older dog Pepper.

Lasagna and spaghetti happen about once a month, and burgers from ground bison & pork sausage that are my favorite, happen 2-3 times during a month.

Meat smoking started in this last year which I like but it’s a wood pellet device and it doesn’t control temperature very well.

One of my latest discoveries is duck fat by FatWorks. The town of Portland, Maine has two places that sell French fries made with duck fat, as well as other items. So I have started making my own duck fat fries, too. I know no one personally in the state of Maine, but at least we have french fries in common.

Life is Wonderful

My Water Broke

I am cooking breakfast for the last time. On a massive scale anyway for awhile, my son goes home to Washington state today. So I won't be doing sausage, bacon, eggs, biscuits and sometimes gravy for a very long time. I usually eat lighter, and have soup or a sandwich for breakfast. The dog is now spoiled in another way.

My son asked me why I am so gloomy.

"I'm not gloomy, I'm just focused on cooking all these things, so I don't burn anything"

He gives me a lesson on how to cook his eggs. Next time I'll do better.

My wife walks into the kitchen for the fifth time to see if the bacon is ready, but I am cooking it too slowly for her, but it is finally getting close. She says, "Wow, you have a lot of dirty dishes to do today!"

My singular sneaky solemn reply, "Maybe"

She responds with a curious what do you mean 'maybe' ? with an ever so slightly mean comical voice with eyebrows scrunched forehead wrinkled, her eyes 30 percent closed and head turned slightly.

I told her, "Well, the city water main may break again like it did yesterday - I never thought I would be able to say 

 'My Water Broke!' 

as an eXcuse to get out of doing housework."

So I'm behind on laundry as well. I did get one load done late last night.

But it is s'pposed to be a very gorgeous day today, December 29th in Texas with a high in the 60 F's with no wind. 

I am going walking. 

Watch the last of the blizzard bits burn away. 

Outside!!!

Hmm, I may need to learn how to sabotage water lines on a regular basis.

PART TWO: The Park 

I went walking as planned and I was surprised that no one was at the park at what was most likely the very warmest time of the entire month of this December. I was walking in my short sleeve shirt, no jacket. Even though winter was only officially 8 days old, I could tell that Spring the Season wanted to come out to play. How do I know this? I discovered a tiny spring on the walkway! And practically all the snow was gone, eXcept for this one strange crazy warm snowball that wouldn't melt. I know it sounds crazy, snow that doesn't melt. Someone had even wrote the word "Loco" on it, the Spanish word for crazy.

Such a nearly perfectly round snowball !