7 Quick Takes (Vol 80)

1.
I have got to tell you what happened this week and how small, really the world and the internet are.  Back in April I was opining in #1 of Vol 66 of Quick Takes about several friends that I had lost touch with over the years. How I wondered where they were and that I wished that I could touch base with them.

And then I went on with my absolutely scintillating life….well, I did go on with life but whether it is scintillating or not is a matter of some discussion. I just wanted to be able to write the word scintillating and not have to use the spell check.

OK, back to the story. So Monday morning I am up at the crack of dawn as usual and I have my morning Elixir steaming beside me and I am checking emails. There is an email from someone that I don’t know and I have to say that I almost deleted it without actually looking at it. I came so close. But oh am I glad that I didn’t because……

It was from my childhood friend Carla, she who was mentioned in the Quick Takes. She had googled her dad’s name and came across her OWN name in my blog. And an even bigger thing….the other “lost” friend that I mentioned……Carla had lunch with her the week before and told her about the blog post.

Hi Carla and Kathy!!

The world is a REALLY small place……

2.
This is what happens when you forget to spray the baking pan before you put the bread on it.

And it is a reminder that I should not bake bread when I am in a hurry. And that corn meal alone, however thickly applied, will not keep the bread from sticking to the pan.

3.
As I mentioned earlier this week it is peach season here in the frozen Northeast Ohio, where it has been anything but freezing this week. And I have all these peaches with the possibility of purchasing more because, you know, more is ALWAYS better.

So I made Peach Blueberry jam on Wednesday….and it is really good.

Oh I wish I could share it with all of you. It smells heavenly and it tastes divine and if the angels ate jam this would be it.

Next week I think it will be Peach Raspberry jam as the raspberries are also in season. But those I actually have to go and pick. I sure am not going to have to buy jam of any kind for perhaps the next millennium if I keep up this pace.

4.
So I was doing a Swagbucks search for information about taking pictures if you are attending the Bridgestone Invitational golf tourney at Firestone (HHBL and a friend went yesterday). When you Swag search there is always a little list of “related searches” that shows up in the left hand sidebar. Today one of those searches was for “Rectal temperature”. I am still trying to figure out how you go from taking pictures at the Bridgestone Invitational to rectal temperature. Even my weirdly wired brain can’t make the connection.

Just as an aside, if you are interested in signing up for Swag Bucks just let me know. I will steer you in the right direction…….and score some Swag Bucks in the process. Swag Buck searches are how I am feeding my ebook addiction at the moment.

5.
So if you have read #2 you will have seen the small bread debacle that happened earlier in the week. Not one to let something like that get me down (we consumed the entire loaf in 24 hours) I decided to do a bit of experimentation. This most likely will be a longer post at a later date but lets discuss now too OK. We eat a lot of homemade bread around here. I have a basic recipe that works well and makes 3 loaves at a time. I have been reading through Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio (I SO want a copy of this book) and he said that bread dough will rise just as well with less yeast. It just takes longer. And he was also talking about how you can put the dough in the frig to rise, also just taking longer. So I did. The dough was mixed up Wednesday and sat in the frig until Thursday morning and it rose beautifully. I then formed the loaves, let them rise (they took a bit longer because the dough was cold) and baked them up. They are delicious as usual.

I love it when those things turn out. And I love Michael Ruhlman because he showed me the way about homemade mayo. It is divine.

6.
Cartoon Girl and I are working on a little project. It is still in it’s early stages and so I can’t tell you what it is but when we “launch” I will let you know. We have been talking about this for a while and it is dealing with something that we both love. We just have to get all the details worked out.

Are you sufficiently intrigued yet?

7.
So, there have been two possible black bear sightings in the past week at the community park where I walk three mornings a week. That is right, bear sightings. AND Sandy and I saw a young Bald Eagle on Monday. I am beginning to think that I live in Alaska and not Frozen Northeast Ohio, which hasn’t been very frozen this week let me tell you.

So, if some day I inexplicably stop blogging. Just assume that the bear ate me on my morning walk.