ALERT! ALERT!

 

"Don't you try to ignore me.  My twin lasers have detected that you have food up there."

BEATING THE HEAT

I tried Mark Bittman's recipe for 60 Minute Bread yesterday.

It's in the cookbook down there on the right.

It's a basic bread recipe of flour, water, yeast and salt.

You just toss those together in a bowl until you get a sticky ball, put it on a sheet pan, let it rise for an hour (or more) and bake it.

In his introduction to the recipe, Bittman notes that it might not be the best bread you've ever had but it's certainly the easiest.

As a rookie in the kitchen I'm always looking for easy recipes so I decided to try it.

With a twist.

I baked it in our air fryer toaster oven.

It's on a rack in the garage and it bakes a lot faster so it doesn't heat up the house like the oven in the kitchen.

Well, I was amazed.

I set the baking temperature lower and watched carefully.

It took less than 10 minutes!

Using a hack I read about on the Internet, I turned on the broiler function at the end to brown the top a bit.

It's not a real pretty loaf of bread because it's a very wet, sticky dough.

I let it rise on the toaster oven's pan so it spread out to fill the space.

But it was quite tasty, very fast and the baking process didn't heat up the house.

Voila!

I'll do it again, maybe using a loaf pan or two instead of a flat pan.

DADDY'S NEWEST BABY

Just arrived yesterday.

Fresh from the oven.

A fresh baked loaf of Apple Cinnamon Quick Bread.

The Halloween decorations are already in the stores so I thought I'd better get busy on Fall baking.

Can you see those chunky apples in there?

Can you taste them?

Well, sorry about that.

They taste pretty darned good.

Happy Autumn, everybody!

("Humph, who is he kidding? It was still 97 degrees there yesterday!"

THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

Yea, verily, there is humor afoot in the land.

And you know what that means.

It. Is. Friday.

Once again.

If you can make any sense out of the first one, you're a better man than I am, Charlie Brown.

Uh-oh, now I've started an earworm.

Do you hear it?

" . . . like we did last summer . . . "

You're welcome.

Now that I've set the tone with that music for your marvelous weekend, the rest is up to you.

But never forget to always keep laughing!

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

( . . . uh, oh. . . cheeze it! . . . )

A FEAST AMONG FRIENDS

Gayle, the BAD (Beautiful Artistic Daughter), came over today for a visit with her mother Judy, SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed).

We had a little lunch, prepared by her nibs.

Tuna salad, deviled eggs and tomatoes.

Only the four round red ones at top came from the store.

The rest were homegrown.

Here's another look at some of our yellow pear beauties.

Dessert was a flourless chocolate cake (not shown) made by yours truly.

A perfect meal for an August day when the temperature soared to 97 degrees F/36 C.

(harrumph)

 

"Hey, you woke me up from my nap just to take my picture?

What a jerk!"

THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

Ah there you are again.

Waiting under the lantern by the big clock.

You might call it Big Ben.

Or Hickory Dickory Clock.

Oh don't try to make any sense out of what I write here, it's just my idle mind winding up for another weekend.

And what precedes the weekend?

Why the Friday Funnies, of course.

BruceAI:  "That is all.  You may stop laughing now.  The humor is over."

The real Bruce: Okay, friends and neighbors. Glad to have you here at Catalyst's Cavern where the humor never stops.

Now try your bestest to have a fine, funny, fulfilling weekend.

And ignore BruceAI, never forget to keep laughing!

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

( . . . ohhhhh . . . )