Of loaves and birdses

There was a failure in the commercial kitchen used by Stephane of All You Need is Loaf last night so I was forced to bake a few loaves myself in my less commercial, but seemingly more reliable oven:

Banana bread (using the Christmas stocking bananas) and an English muffin loaf (already cut into--hungry!)

 Making bread means you're in the kitchen but with  plenty of time to look out the back door, and today has been very birdy in the back yard indeed. Listed in no particular order:

Steller's jay
Scrub jay*
Dark-eyed juncos (so many!)
Gold-crowned sparrows
Black-capped chickadees
Chestnut-capped chickadee
Thumbprints (aka bushtits, and also oh so many!)
Varied thrush
American robin
Starlings
Crow
Townsend's warbler
Yellow-rumped warbler
Northern flickers
Red-breasted nuthatch
Spotted towhee
House finches
American goldfinch

 And out the kitchen window so technically a side-yard bird:

Anna's hummingbirds

*California? Western? I'm hazy on their current designation

New Christmas Tradition?

 

Satsumas filling the space where two rolls were removed to be eaten while still warm

 I decided that this year it would be nice to have fresh cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. Steps were taken, and some of those steps were photographed which means another recipe post. 

 While I have a recipe for cinnamon rolls that I suspect I started using more than forty years ago, I felt that a new recipe was required this year though I can't say why. I've been feeling a bit hazy about a lot of things lately. T'is the season, perhaps.

Kitchen on Christmas Eve around midnight

 

  Regardless, I settled on "overnight cinnamon rolls 1" from the allrecipes.com site, though I made a few adaptations as I went. The "milk" I used was a combination of 1% and half-and-half since that's what we had, and I beat the eggs a little before adding them to the other ingredients. Flour was added until it seemed about right for kneading and then, of course, more flour was added while kneading.

The dough really did feel utterly lovely after it had risen (which took more like two hours than one; see later notes about coldness of kitchen). It rolled out nicely and I brushed it with a bit of melted butter rather than wetting the edges with water. I also brushed the pan with the remains of the melted butter in lieu of using shortening or oil.

Rather than refrigerating the rolls for the second rising I left them sitting on the kitchen table; as Scott pointed out, it's plenty cool near those windows. That approach seemed to work well enough and when I finally got up the next morning I could jump right to the preheating the oven stage. I also sprinkled a little more brown sugar / cinnamon mix on the top of the rolls since I hadn't included all of it earlier. This likely resulted in darker tops. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

What appeared to my wondering eyes Christmas morning (aka rolls post-overnight rising)

And only now do I remember the true impetus for making cinnamon rolls; I had icing left from decorating the army of darkness cookies* and I didn't want it to go to waste.

*Regiment of Army of Darkness

I used that rather than the corn syrup horror included in the allrecipes recipe. It melted a bit when added too soon to the two we ate with our tea while opening stockings, but was quite perfect for the survivors featured in the first photo of the post.

A properly civilized start to the day

Somewhat less tidy a little while later**

**Yes, Scott was the happy recipient of some used doorknob plates from Earthwise Salvage; we know how to celebrate the birth of our Savior around here.

 

Cookies, continued

These neighbors are having a bare-bones Christmas

Some sort of 36-hour bug delayed the continuation of the cookie project for a few more days, and even once recovered I still somehow lacked enthusiasm. But "Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without any cookies," as an early (as-yet undiscovered) draft of Little Women started so on Friday I gathered all the necessary goods and got to work mixing up dough. 

The means of production, day 1

I started with the kitchen sink cookies (note hammer in above photo) and methodically worked my way through, cursing the new jar of Field Day peanut butter (for the Mongol Hordes) that was remarkably difficult to stir though I guess the positive way to look at that is that the cutting board received an unplanned oiling in the process. There was, fortunately, a decent amount of still-green fronds on the fennel (for fennel cookies--recipe from The Front Yard Forager) while I had just barely enough molasses for the windowseat cookies. I wisely took a break for a bike ride (see first photo above) which probably saved my sanity, but I was definitely losing steam by the time I got to making dough for pillowcase cookies, and I didn't mind at all that I had to wait a bit for yet more butter to soften before I could finally mix up the aggression cookies.

My favorite element here is the kitchen sink cookie rolls wrapped in old tortilla chip bag packaging.

This year's innovation was to then put all the dough, in its various forms, into the refrigerator and move on to cocktails. The downside of this brilliant plan was, of course, that it all had to be dealt with today. But Scott kindly took part, cutting out the armies of darkness and light, unwrapping Hershey's kisses (some shrinkage there . . .), slicing up the rolls of kitchen sink cookie dough, pulling cookies off cookie sheets, reminding me to use potholders, finding some Christmas music playlists, and generally making it all much more pleasant and efficient. 

Final production round

 A mere three-ish hours after putting in the first cookie sheet, the final sheet came out and the paragon of Virgos washed up the remaining dishes and I swept the floor. We then wisely took to our bikes to ride to Paseo in Sodo for some less sugar-based nourishment. The plantains (tostones) were a little disappointing, but otherwise it was just what we needed. After getting home I eventually worked up the motivation to make some fresh icing and finish the work on the army of darkness (aka windowseat cookies aka molasses cookies). I'm quite pleased with the final results:

I call it the Year of the Dot

My one concern is that the aggression cookies are extra fragile this year and I just don't know why. I worry about whether they'll hold up to shipping.

Now to find more permanent homes for all of them!

 

Of cookies, mostly

Santa looking for one honest man on this year's Christmas tree

It's a dark, dark, dark world which I'm trying to ignore by doing the usual Christmas business of trees and modge podge and making cookies. I've misplaced my kitchen sink cookie recipe so I had to find an old email in which I'd sent a link to an article containing the recipe. I was intrigued to see that the piece (by Margaret Button in the Brattleboro Reformer) starts with:

I recently read an article on The New York Times wire service about procrastibaking — the practice of baking something completely unnecessary, with the intention of avoiding "real" work. Reporter Julia Moskin claimed it is a common habit of almost anyone who works at home and has a cookie sheet in the cupboard

 because I've had a hard time getting motivated to bake. I'd assumed it was my "dark, dark, dark" state of mind, but now I'm wondering if it's that I'm not working so I don't feel a need to avoid (or recover from) "real" work (to quote the excerpt). This relaxation business may be harder than I expected! Bravely, I soldier on.

This year's bits and bobs wreath (Yes, I'm quite taken with it.)

 PS. Looking for something else, I stumbled across this post from a few years ago in which kitchen sink cookies are discussed at length. How helpful blahdeblahblah will be if only I give it a chance!

 

More quotes from "Moby-Dick"

There are also some whale-specific scenes that I'm swiping direct from Project Gutenberg here:

But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;—even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar’s bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears newly arrived from foreign parts. 

-from Chapter 84, "The Grand Armada"

Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance. 

-from Chapter 134, "The Chase--Second Day"

Hast read the white whale? (Avast! Spoilers ahead!)

 

I finished Moby-Dick about an hour and a half ago and after sitting somewhat stunned for a few minutes I went in to interrupt Scott (who was trying to accomplish something himself) to say things like, "My goodness! I didn't see that coming! The Pequod! And, and, and . . .  " Which is a little absurd since I did see the movie with Gregory Peck as Ahab not that very long ago so you'd think I'd have remembered--plus, of course, it's sort of a book that one knows the ending of. But still. 

 It's a pretty amazing book with, admittedly, some pretty saggy middle. Oh, I was actually fascinated by some of the technical details about whale skeletons and the like, and truly intrigued by all the "pre-adamite fossil" discussion because I tend to think of the 1850s as a time when the Bible was still taken as literal truth and, clearly, Mr Melville well understands--and expects his readers to accept--that all manner of stuff was going on on Earth before humans showed up so that was somehow quite encouraging in some way. But I did sort of long to know what was happening to Queequeg who disappointingly pretty much disappears for very long stretches even when the focus is back on the Pequod. 

But Ahab's weird soliloquies and Stubb's hysterical ones and the sort of doomed MacBethesque prophecies and the so sad Pip and Starbuck's rigid yet sympathetic morality and the unexpected little playlets and the fact that Moby-Dick himself does not appear until the final thirty pages--it was all so much better and more than I expected. (The detailed descriptions of whale slaughter and the rendering down of whales were also even more disturbing than I'd envisioned.) 

Early on I was making note of some of my favorite quotes but then I dropped that so I offer only a few quotes from early on and then one very brief bit from the final chapters:

Scott points out that Melville had an office job:

"Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort." 

--from page 51 of the Wordsworth Classics edition of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (red letter edition aspect added)

 This bit also seems timely:

"I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;—but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."

 --from page 70, ditto 

And then the long gap until I marked:

"In this attitude the white whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse."

--from page 449, ibid. (It's the "mildly cruel" that sells this one for me.)

 (And a few additional quotes, added later, are here)

I feel a bit sorry for Jonathan Evison's Again and Again; it's going to be pretty impossible for any book, I think, to compete with Moby-Dick.

It is done

 

No turkeys were injured by the creation of this update

 One way or another, today was even less Thanksgivingy than planned, but it's been a fine day nonetheless. I baked pumpkin pie last night while Scott made potato leek soup, so we were able to have pie for breakfast and leftover soup for dinner. Between the two meals, we went on an occasionally frustrating expedition.

The original plan was to go to Camp Long and we set out, with sandwiches and a thermos of coffee, after checking the Seattle City Parks website to make sure it was open.* We marched up the hill to find that, in fact, the front entrance was locked up tight. There was a sign on the gate saying that the park was closed when it was icy or snowy but as it was, in fact, a sunny, dry day, that didn't seem so relevant. We went a few blocks farther to check the other entrance but it was also locked shut. A man with his dog asked if we knew if the park was open because someone had told him it was, but we couldn't so much help him.

We retraced our steps back down the hill to see about getting in via the golf course as we've done once or twice before. There was a new fence where we used to enter. The golf course itself was open, but since we'd read on the parks website that golf courses would be closing at 2:00 and it was already well after noon, it seemed like we might end up locked in if we entered that way so we finally abandoned the Camp Long plan.

But we had sandwiches and coffee! After some discussion we decided we'd do the Longfellow Creek Trail since, when we attempted it some years back, we'd quit partway through. Today we reached the headwaters, but we also realized it wasn't just the bitter cold and challenging routefinding that discouraged us the original time: it turns out the route is a lot of walking through neighborhoods on sidewalks with very little of the trail anywhere near the actual creek. But, good fabulist that I am, you'd never guess that from the photos I took (interwoven above).

Okay, maybe the route through Westwood Village is a little less faux wilderness. But it's there that we found not only a public restroom at the QFC but also what we deemed the headwaters:

Not that we didn't cross the Westwood Village parking lot and continue to the south end of Roxhill Park, the destination referenced on every bit of trail signage and reputedly the home of the true headwaters of Longfellow Creek: Roxhill Bog.

While it was downright weird to be out exploring without Bessie, it was good to find that we were still capable of walking eight or nine miles while lugging about camera, binoculars, and lunch. Not that we weren't pleased that the trail ended just beyond a Metro stop where we could catch a bus to take us home.

*Full disclosure: Now that I look at the parks website again, I see that the "closed on Thanksgiving" list includes "environmental learning centers" (tucked between "teen life centers" and "swimming pools") and--damn it--Camp Long is considered an environmental learning center. Predictably, I'm now doubly annoyed.

Not Moby-Dick

 I have a draft post that consists of a few quotes from Moby-Dick, the book I am currently reading, but that's just going to have to wait because this evening my plan is to toss some photos from (mostly) today's bike ride onto blah-de-blah-blah and then do some more reading. About M-D (as I'm sure no one so irreverently abbreviates it) I will say only that it's much more fun than I'd expected, though the middle is bogging down a bit. 

Today's bike ride started later than planned but I insist that since we were out and about before noon, it was still "early" by my Saturday standards. I was feeling anxious, god knows why, so we stuck to West Seattle--which was fine as I wanted to twitch the giant Steller's jay that had been reported in the West Seattle Blog. It was, handily, practically en route to Fresh Flours and not that hard to spot once we were on the right corner:

First sighting!

Naturally, we had to get a little closer and then, just in case Scott had somehow lost sight of it, I helpfully pointed:

Bessie and I provide some scale

We continued on our way to a surprisingly well-stocked Fresh Flours and then looped about back homeward, taking in the sights along the way.

Scott agreed that the Airstream planter attached to the Airstream was worth looping back to see.

I failed to take photos of the many fine trees so this one will just have to do.

Not usually my sort of thing, but the fairy garden of gnomes kind of charmed.

I'll never fail to be captivated by this view of the Sound from West Seattle.

Jesus wept, but I've got photos

Decisions . . .

 I've been sick the last few days with what I'm assuming was/is the flu--more than once I found myself muttering to myself that before COVID, there was the influenza epidemic of 1919 and maybe I shouldn't keep saying it was "just the flu" that was troubling me. But I am feeling somewhat better now which means I am probably up to starting a new book. That I've been binging on re-reads of Louise Penny's "Gamache" novels says something about how unambitious I've been in my reading options of late. The world is a miserable thing, and some of us like to escape into fiction, okay?

 So pictured above are my options. It turns out that Sun House has a lot of weird typography and it weighs a ton (why was it printed on semi-gloss/slick paper?) so I'm leaning towards the impulse buy of the three: What Napoleon Could Not Do though maybe Democracy Awakening would be, as the Kirkus Review suggests, empowering?

Before the illness, I snapped a few shots of Halloween decorations around West Seattle. I'm not sure that the first one captures the full creepiness of the dolls, while the second was just darned amusing. 

This house always has some pretty creative stuff happening

I don't know--maybe this one only works in Seattle

I no longer remember what put me in Pioneer Square early one evening a few weeks ago, but the light was quite lovely, there was a jazz duet performing outside of an art gallery, and it just seemed such a fine place to be. In another case of the "cell phone snap didn't really capture it, but here it is anywhere," I present a Pioneer Square alley that apparently contains a bike repair shop I should check out:

Perhaps overadjusted photo of a picturesque alley that probably shouldn't be looked at too closely.

Continuing with the way-back machine, I was late with the fall equinox installation on the green man, but I insist it was worth the wait:

Meanwhile, a million people are supposed to shift themselves when they really have no place to go, so that their homes can be blown to pieces in some sort of show of god knows what. What the fuck, really.

Activities Appropriate for the Equinox

I didn't get to Solstice Park for Alice Envoldsen's Equinox event yesterday, but it's not like the day passed entirely unnoticed. There was, afterall, the semi-annual hanging of the Equinox Laundry early in the morning:

Followed by a pause to admire the fennel, all flopped over and gone to seed:

 But most of the big activity was today, the first full day of Fall, for today I picked tomatoes, beans, and basil, 

Basil hiding tomatoes, beans, and cucumber with sweet pea and gardenia garnish

 

The means of production, fall edition

and then we spent the entire damned afternoon flirting with death and dismemberment using the pressure canner. One jar, alas, broke in the canner but no harm was done to the rest of the production run which, while modest, fills my Caroline Ingalls heart with joy:

Rounding out the day's festivities was the annual packing up of the mason and leafcutter bee blocks for return to the Rent Mason Bees people. 

I'd say it was neither our best nor our worst year for fostering the next generation of bees. Regardless, I insist it's the native bumblebees that handle the bulk of our pollinating.

Though, on the topic of pollinators, there was this fellow from several months ago:

No idea who this is, but it was impressive.

 

Later that same day

 The basil plants have been very productive, the plums are also ripening, and last week's market purchases of tomatoes and cilantro weren't getting any younger. And while the forecast for tomorrow has been revised from hella-hot and smoky, to just smoky, I didn't know that a few hours ago when I decided I should actually deal with some of the abundance before it got too hot to go near the kitchen. I'm quite chuffed about the results:

Clockwise from top: tomato basil pasta sauce, fresh basil to be dried, two jars of basil-cilantro pesto, NYT plum torte.

Traveling without leaving Seattle

The first of the "I have to take a picture" stops; he looks so happy up there!

Scott's so modest; you'd never know he had a street named after him.

Today Scott and I biked to the exotic Georgetown neighborhood in Seattle, a destination less than six miles from our house but a part of town we'd not really explored before. (I went there for a work lunch during the height of the pandemic and have been wanting to return since, but there's always someplace else calling more strongly.) It was just a coincidence that the day we chose for Georgetown was also the day that the Hopped Up Vintage Chopper show was happening, on the very street our route took us. That the show backed up to the restaurant we ended up eating at and that our meal was timed to coincide with the first band taking the stage was also happenstance. Scott noted that the guitarist's A string was a little flat but opted not to go tune it for them. I sort of wish we'd checked out the booths at the show, but alas--.

I don't think we stopped by here. Next time.

 Instead we walked the strip of intriguing shops and restaurants along Airport Way. We visited Fantagraphics for the first time ever--it's always a shop we skip on Seattle Independent Bookstore Day because it seems so out of the way--and we explored the trailer park mall where I, at least, found many treasures I could not resist. Sadly, neither of us took photos of the charming Adler-and-Sullivan-inspired (according to Scott) old brick factory buildings, but I assure you they were lovely and pretty uncommon for Seattle. 

I think Scott said this was the soundboard of an upright piano. I call it pretty.

Terracotta pot not for sale at the mall, but fetching anyway

These were for sale, but I didn't think they survive the ride home so I just asked permission to photograph them.

Close-up so you can appreciate the gobsmacking nature of the arrangements

I was ever so surprised to spot the Buckaroo neon that used to be signage for a Fremont bar in Georgetown. And--bonus--a bit of reflected old building.

Not so much Georgetown as along the route: I've been meaning to get a snap of this coffee spot for years now and Bessie was eager to pose. A recorded voice kept telling me I was being recorded. Hmmm.