Steven Harper's Blog, page 66

How Distractible Are You?

Just now, I realized I needed my glasses.  I knew they were in my briefcase, so I went to fetch them.  Inside my briefcase, I found my lunch bag and a water bottle, which I hadn't put away from Friday.  I emptied both out, put them into the kitchen, and came back to my computer.  Only then did I realize I hadn't gotten glasses.

How often to you get distracted and forgetful by something related to your original task?

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Memorial Day Puttering

Memorial Day weekend has so far been dedicated to puttering around the house. 

Max was marching in a Memorial Day parade on Saturday, so he had to get up early to leave.  (Ah, the advantages of a teen who can drive himself!)  Darwin and I slept later and drove down on our own.  After some finagling, we found a spot toward the middle of the parade route and watched from a grassy curb.  The weather was cloudy and warm, perfect for parades, really.  We all think we want bright sun for parades, but it would have been scorching!  So we were glad for the clouds.  The parade was the usual mix of firefighters and police and school bands and local politicians.  The crowd was light, and the parade marchers kept throwing candy at us.  We had a respectable pile of it when everything was done.  Max finally came past, and handed out sheriff stickers.  We were very proud, and didn't embarrass him, but I did take photos--he couldn't stop me!

Back home, I had put ribs in the Crock pot for an early supper (with a wine and mustard marinade), and they came out succulent and delicious.  We had them with corn on the cob and cold watermelon.  I tried and failed a mirror glaze cake, but will try again.

Our lawn guy leveled the bushes on the west side of our front porch.  Oh, I was unhappy!  I wanted them trimmed, not buzzed.  The bushes wrapped around the porch, keeping it shady and cool all day long.  Now it gets sunny and hot out there in late afternoon.  The bushes will grow back, but it'll be a while.  I poured fertilizer on them to speed the process. 

The new sunniness also crisped the low-light potted plants I'd hung from the beams.  I rushed them into the shade when I noticed the new sunlight and watered them copiously.  They've since recovered, thank goodness.  I swapped in some plants that like a little more light, and they're doing all right now. 

Sunday was sunny and hot, hot, HOT.  We turned on the AC right after breakfast.  Good thing.  You could cook a roast out there.

I bought more plants, this time for the back deck and the altar.  I also bought a fountain for my front porch office.  It's a set of Greek urns that cascade water from one to another in a series.  I like the sound of the water, and it'll make my summer office that much more tranquil.

Max, meanwhile, is starting a new job at a fast food restaurant.  (His previous job at the ice cream store was proving less and less tenable, thanks to an increasingly difficult owner.)  For this, he needed work shoes, so we went down to the local super store to find some.  I also got myself a few items of summer wear and some hardware stuff.

Back home, we shifted into yard puttering.  I installed plants around the back yard and distributed water and fertilizer while Darwin repaired a broken hose (hardware stuff) and cut out dead sections of the rose bushes. 

Boy, do we have chipmunks!  Their burrows are everywhere around our house.  I think it's because we're the only ones in the neighborhood who don't try to kill them.  They don't bother me, really, and their chittering reminds me of camping trips we took when I was young, so they can stay.

For supper, I grilled T-bone steaks and served them with cheese potatoes and cucumber salad.  They were perfection!

It's been a fine Memorial Day weekend.

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Mirror Cake, First Attempt

It was a fail!

I made the glaze strictly according to the recipe I had, colored it purple, cooled it to the exact temperature required, and got one of the cakes from the freezer.  I chose one of the plain lemon cakes.  I didn't want to use the mousse cake for my first attempt.  I set the lemon cake on a stand, then poured the glaze over it and swiped it with an off-set spatula smeared with red food coloring to create a nice design.  It seemed to work perfectly!

At first.

Fairly quickly, the glaze ran over the sides and also got sucked into the cake itself.  The glaze is =supposed= to run over the sides, but it's supposed to harden, not soak in.  That's why the cake is frozen first.  The recipe very clearly says that mousse cakes worked best, but =any= kind of cake would do.  Well, clearly not.  The results were edible, but not at all mirrored--or even pretty.  The white chocolate and condensed milk soaked straight into the sponge of the cake.  I tasted it to see what it was like, and it reminded me of a Tres Leches Cake.  Very good, but without the desired effect.

I wondered if I'd made the glaze wrong, so I tested it.  I dipped a finger in it and let the glaze run off.  The glaze behaved exactly as it was supposed to, forming a thick mirror coating on my finger, with drips that solidified like icicles down the side, despite the fact that my finger wasn't frozen, or even cold.  So I'd done the glaze right.

I decided it must have been the absorbancy of the cake.  Clearly you have to do have a cake encased in mousse or ice cream or frozen whipped cream or something non-absorbent.  Even a frozen sponge-style cake will absorb the glaze.  Okay, then!  Next time, we'll try the mousse cake.

Meanwhile, I have a tasty-but-ugly cake in the fridge . . .

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Cake and Mirrors

I'm a terrible cake decorator.  Awful.  World-class dreadful.  I can make a delicious gourmet cake so good that a single forkful will make you swear you just had sex with a angel.  But the moment the frosting comes out--wham!  It lumps and slides and gloops under my spatula, and any three-year-old can write better with colored frosting than I can.  Hell, I worked in a freakin' BAKERY for a year, and still couldn't master basic cake lettering.  That tells you how awful I am.  Eat the cake, but close your eyes first.

I came to terms with this awful limitation long ago and thought I was good with it.  Then I came across mirror glaze (sometimes called mirror cake).  It's a glaze made with condensed milk, white chocolate, and gelatin that you pour over a frozen cake.  It hardens into a smooth, shiny surface that is easy to manipulate with an offset spatula into lovely designs.  Google it.  Very easy to find.

I watched a few videos of this phenomenon and got weirdly excited about it, like I'd found a treasure chest in the garage.  My main thought was "Holy shit!  I could actually =do= that!"

And right now, I'm between major writing projects, so my afternoons and evenings are free.

So I headed to the store with a grocery list.

Since this is the learning and experimental stage, I wanted to run through a bunch of these.  To that end, it would be better to use box mixes for the cake part, rather than make a bunch of cakes from scratch.  Box mixes generally taste bland, but I'm more interested in the glazing process and the final look than in the taste.  I chose a red velvet and a lemon.  Mirror cakes usually have one layer, so this would give me four cakes to work with.

Mirror cakes are always frozen before the glazing process, and they're often encased in mousse.  But mousse takes a lot of whipping cream, which is expensive, so I got ingredients for one batch of mousse.  The other three cakes I would glaze naked. :)

This was yesterday.  Today, I mixed the cake batter and poured them into parchment-lined pans so there was no risk of breakage when they came out.  While they baked and cooled, I whisked eggs and sugar and hot cream and white chocolate and vanilla into a mousse, which I refrigerated.  When everything was cool, I lined a springform pan with a layer of creamy mousse, set on it one of the chocolate cakes, and covered it all over with more mousse.  This went into the freezer, along with the bare cakes to chill and harden overnight.

Tomorrow we'll try the actual glazing.  Watch this space!

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Run Away, Little Boy

A few minutes ago, I saw coming up my drive a Fresh-Faced Boy.  He looked to be about 19, and was wearing a freshly-pressed pastel shirt.  When he got to the door, I opened it to see what he wanted.

"Hi!" said the Fresh-Faced Boy.  "My name is Michael ____, and I'm campaigning for [name redacted].  He's running for representative."

I glanced down at the flyer he handed me:

Pro-Life
Pro-Church
Pro-Right to Work
Pro--

Michael continued, "[name redacted] is working on a platform to--"

"Sorry," I interrupted, and handed him the flyer back.  "I'm gay, and your party has nothing to offer me.  Thank you."  A number of nastier things occurred to me, but I didn't say them.  Instead, I shut the door on his, "Okay."

The FFB is now walking about the neighborhood, handing out more flyers.

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Roast Lamb, With Flowers

I hate gardening the way Donald Trump hates being president.  He knows what he has to do, but I hates doing it and avoids it as much as possible.

But I like the way the house looks when it's surrounded by flowers.  What to do, what to do?  Why, pay someone else to do it!

So every year after the fear of frost lifts, I go out and buy a carload of hanging baskets to put outside.  The front porch, which becomes my office in the summer, always gets done up first.  The main challenge is that the front porch faces north.  This makes it cool and shady for summertime writing, but it's hell on plants.

Today, I drove around town, searching through various garden spots.  Prices have gone up since last year, by about $3 per basket!  I found deep red impatiens at one place, and some gold ones in another.  Impatiens are good in the shade, so I bought a whole bunch.

I also stopped at the local butcher shop.  It's an old-fashioned meat shop with three different counters, a deli, and a grocery section dedicated to helping you cook meat.  The place is always packed, and I was glad I got in there before noon, when the traffic really picks up.  As it was, there was barely any floor space.  "Only" six people were in line ahead of me, and the counter workers were rushing about, gathering meat, weighing it, and tearing butcher paper to wrap it all in.

I spent my waiting time deciding what I wanted.  In the lamb section, I noticed a boneless roast that had been cut in half.  Perfect!  A full roast is too much for our little household, but butchers are always reluctant to chop up roasts.  Someone had gotten here first and done the persuasion for me.  When my turn came, I snapped it up.

Back home, I hung the baskets on the front porch and pulled off the price tags.  Ta da!  Nice, garden-y feel in my summer office with minimal actual gardening.

In the kitchen, I scored the lamb and smeared it with a combination of minced garlic, kosher salt, and olive oil, then put it into the oven while Darwin and I went for a little walk in the delightful spring air.  Lilacs!

We got back, and the roast was nearly done.  I threw together a rice-tomato pilaf and a spring fruit salad of strawberries and bananas.  The lamb came out crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, with a hint of garlic in the meat.  Delicious!

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Turtles All the Way Down

Southeast Michigan has snapping turtles.  Big ones.  The size of a bike tire.  My house is near a big, muddy pond, and we absolutely don't go wading in it.  Why?  Today, I found this stumping through my back yard:



It's a tank with a temper and a beak. 

It was crawling with determination away from the pond and deeper into the subdivision.  Any number of my neighbors freak out at the sight of animals (any time someone sights a coyote, they sound the alarm on the community bulletin board), so this one probably wouldn't survive long away from home.

I put on some leather gloves, got a big bucket, and went out to retrieve it.  I stayed safely behind it and set the bucket down in front of it so it could crawl in, if it had a mind.  Ho ho ho!  The turtle snapped at the plastic several times with lightning speed.  From the rear, I flipped it into the bucket with my gloves on.  Oh, it was upset!  It struck at the bucket several times.  But it couldn't do anything.



Then I simply hauled it to the swamp and tipped it out.  It came out upside-down, so I used the bucket to nudge it upright again.  No way was I going to grab it, even with gloves!  It sat on the shore of the pond, glaring at me.  What, no thank you?  I left it there, and when I went back to check an few minutes later, it was gone.

My good deed for the day.

https://www.facebook.com/steven.pizik...




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Are You Angry LOL?

Look, folks, when you're pissed off, angry, or furious, don't use the following words when you post about it:
grumblegrumpsnortlolshame
These instantly turn your post into a whine or minor complaint. Notice:
"I just learned the GOP in Oklahoma passed the strictest anti-choice law in history. Grump grump."
or
"A terrorist in Las Vegas shot and killed more than a dozen people. Shame!"

Notice that the posts look like someone's kidding, or not really angry at all.  "Shame" is the biggest culprit.  "Shame" is for pets who mess on the rug, not for murderers and Republicans.

Words to use instead include:
furiousangryhorrifiedenragedincensedlividshocked
As in:
"I just learned the GOP in Oklahoma passed the strictest anti-choice law in history. I'm livid and horrified!"
or
"A terrorist in Las Vegas shot and killed more than a dozen people. I'm shocked and furious."
Don't make fun of your own anger. Use the right word and take back your power.


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Mother's Day 2018

For Mother's Day this year, my siblings (and one sibling-in-law) and I trooped up to my mother's house in the Land of Farms and Windmills, Michigan.  We had a delightful barbecue filled with unexpectedly tasty vegan dishes.  Brother-in-law Bill sang an original song that made everyone cry. My mother had a great time:



Afterward, we played croquet. (This is a seriously competitive game within our little family.)  Mom was in the house when we started, and she came outside to play two turns behind everyone else. She came up from behind and destroyed everyone to win handily.

It was a delightful way to spend Mother's Day.




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Winding Down

The heavy lifting for the school year is over for me.  I finished grading my freshmen research papers, and I read/critiqued the scripts for all my seniors in their senior project.  The seniors have to present their video projects, but those are easy to grade, since I do it during the showing in class.  No big stack of papers to wade through!

My lesson plans are completed through the end of the year.

My seniors have two weeks left, and they're getting more and more restless, though we've had some great conversations about Ibsen's A DOLL'S HOUSE.

The year is winding down.

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