2stollen

2 cooks, 1 kitchen

One Kitchen, Two Cooks!

(Or Disaster finds a place to happen)…

Last eve as I was prepping my magical concoction of leftover salmon, leftover roast lamb, and noodles all in one casserole, Superwoman decided to make another Christmas Stollen. (Stollen is a German yeast bread with some raisins and bits of few other fruits. It’s a delightful slightly heavy loaf that must sit for a week after baking to cure)

I waited until she finished her mixings and mashings and kneadings and thumpings and helped her clean up a bit before I started our dinner. Unfortunately, somewhere (I know not where) we crossed paths.
She heard about this trick of putting dough in a warm oven to raise. I didn’t know that (Do you see something coming?).

I boiled the noodles and when they were almost done, cranked the oven to 300 to heat it up….and went on cooking’s merry way….got everything in the casserole, the flaked salmon, bread crumbs, drizzled milk, salt and pepper.
At the last minute, on sage advice of #2 daughter, I decided to not add the lamb. Then put on my heat mitt and opened the oven door.
”What’s this?”
Great jumping catfish! It’s a big bowl of slightly crusted dough spilling over. Turns out I should have looked in the oven before I started pre-heating.

Superwoman managed to separate the crusty outside of the dough, and put that mix in a separate pan and took it somewhere else…I know I heard one of those 15 syllable untranslatable German cuss words. (she now uses them quite softly after 40 years of practice.)

The dinner casserole turned out fine and dandy; but I don’t know how raisins got in with the noodles. She finished baking the Stollen late last evening, and was muttering something under her breath (15 syllables) when she came to bed.

This morning the Stollen sits on the butcher block, looking lots flatter than the last one; maybe it didn’t raise much at all. Looks and smells darn good. I grab my super razor sharp Deutchen Henckel Solingen Stollen knife to cut a slice for tasting. Hmm, It’s a brick…and the knife doesn’t even touch it…

DeWalt tools makes a reciprocating saw blade designed for cutting through cars at accident sites. It’s called Demolition Blade. I wonder if this will cut Stollen. I fetch the saw, clean the blade, put everything together and BZZZZ! It worked!

Stollen is pretty tasty, except for a couple flakes of salmon in the bread mix….

Yup, One cook in kitchen is way to go to stay married. Check the video.

ghost

Dickens forgot one ghost....

and the ghost of Christmas Leftovers...

is gonna get YOU!!

like he did me..

test

holy catfish finally

We'll See How THIS Goes...

We're going to try and get Mr. Emreez set up so he can post to the blog all by himself! He even SKYPES now. Go Dad!

Check Out Almost Persuaded

Here's RFE and his wife ballroom dancing!

Dancing Good News

Dear Liebe
August 5, 2006 Saturday morning. We are wireless-less here but there is
Dancing good news!!! Wow.

Guess what? Chief and Briggie are going to let me perform in one of their dancing skits. It’s called Brahm’s Lullaby, a CD by Kenny G on Clarinet.

My part is to be “the baby” wrapped up in a blanket. They start sitting in chairs, Briggie holds me like a baby, then they get up, she spins, then lays me down on the chairs, and I just wait there. They will dance around, pick me up, cuddle me, and they sit down again, all to this beautiful and exquisite music.

All I have to do stay in the blanket till the very last part, then when Briggie hands me off to Chief, he lets me go and I run and water a potted plant. Piece of cake!

2 hours later
August dancing bad news! Rats. I didn’t make the cut. Practice is a torture!

First they tried walking it through, with Chief whistling.
Aggr, have you ever heard Chief try to whistle? It was so bad that Briggie told him: “Either you stop whistling or we quit!” Right on, I say.

So then he tried counting while they walked it though: ”A One, A Two,
A Three’uh”. (Three’uh is the drag step). He is not very good at that either.

Then he tried to sing. OH my gosh. Do you know:
“Lullaby and good night,…..”. This was worse than “Almost Persuaded” and lots worse than the whistling. My poor ears both droop now.
Then Briggie said, “For Pete sake, turn on the music!”

After all this time the blanket was really hot. I had enough of this craziness, so I ripped up the blanket before they got thru the first stanza. Then I jumped off the chairs, ran around the room and then watered the plant.

I was still so hot I had to water each of the chair legs, hm that’s 2 chairs times 4 legs at one pint each. (Someone was yelling “Get a mop”). Now I was feeling lots better and pretty feisty, so I ripped the pretty flower plant out of the box and shook it really good, spreading dirt and bark chips all over the floor.

Then Chief tried to pick me up for “hesitation step” and I nipped him. This was a really big mistake because now I am in Doghouseville again, dagnabit.

Looks like the bowling pin (BP) is gonna get the part. I don’t know how they are going to get the plant watered. .So much for dog showbusiness.
Your friend, Charlie

'Tis a Mad Scientist in Battle Ground

The crazed scientist labored long hours into the night in the hidden laboratory. Strange tools did he use. Weird vapors emanated from the roof smoke stacks, each time he fired up the hidden gizmos.

Often, loud shrieks of dismay and anger were heard. Haggard and weary, he would creep from the dungeon late at night, and show up late, tired and lethargic at work each day. His normal cheerful demeanor slowly changed to sullen moods and strange bursts of anger and expletives would come with no warning.

Finally his friends and neighbors and peers approached his poor downtrodden woman. They crowded to her front door on a day when he was away at work and knocked. The woman opened the door, looked at them, and peered furtively about, looking to see if “he” was watching from some hidden vantage point.

”What is the fiend up to now? Is this some strange device to rid the world of imaginary aliens or ghosts?” “Why do you stay with that wacko?”

The poor woman was clearly in fear for her life. She quietly beckoned them to enter, then she closed all the doors and windows, and even checked that the phones were properly on-hooked. She ushered them to the darkened dining room, where a black cloth with strange symbols hid something on the table.

“OH, it’s so terrible, and much worse than anything you could imagine. He’s possessed with this vision, and it’s so clouded his mind that he cares naught for his work, his children, his dog, or me. He’s been pissing around in the garage and the bathroom trying to get this new project to work. He left the hair dryer on for 20 minutes once last week, made a heck of stink. Finally last night, I think he was successful, so maybe this hell of the last 2 months will finally cease.
Let me show you. Stand back, everyone!”

She furtively whisked the blanket off the object on the table.

The friends and neighbors gasped in awe and disbelief.
“It cannot be! This is terrible. What is it? What are they?”

The poor woman answered: “He has managed to glue linoleum strips on old shoes so we can perform ballroom dancing skits on rough concrete sidewalks.”