BACK FROM THE ASHES

I have been remiss in informing you about the rebuilding of the Legado apartment and commercial project.

The huge project was nearly 50% completed when an arsonist torched it on April 1st of last year, totally destroying it with an estimated loss of 60 million dollars.

Since then there were many weeks of cleanup and then the project was begun again.

I went to the site today to take some pictures.

Many people have commented that the building in the heart of downtown Prescott Valley is ugly.

Once again I have to remind that this is a parking garage and elevator towers and they will be wrapped with wood frame construction housing more than 300 apartments and a number of businesses, including a 5,000 square foot rooftop restaurant.

In fact the framing has already begun at ground level.

Meantime, across the street and adjacent to the Findlay Toyota Center the TownePlace Suites by Marriott is still under construction  but is expected to open this fall.

All in all, Prescott Valley is developing a cosmopolitan downtown.

P.S.  By the way, the arsonist has so far not been caught, in spite of a massive investigation and a $50,000 dollar reward.

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 . . . )

FAILURE AND SUCCESS

I tried a new recipe this morning for a Lemon and Yellow Squash Quick Bread.

It didn't turn out as well as it should have because I made several mistakes.

For one, I didn't squeeze all the moisture out of the grated yellow squash after it had sat in a colander in the sink to drain.

And I may have overmixed the batter.

And I may not have greased the pans enough.

And I mistakenly poured the glaze on the finished bread instead of brushing it on.

So . . . it fell in the centers of both loaves and stuck to the pan where the glaze had leaked through, dried and hardened.

I did realize my mistake with the glaze and got a brush and brushed it around the top of the loaves.

But the damage had been done.

The loaf on the right tore it's bottom side off getting shaken out of the pan.

And there's a darkish center where you can see the glaze ran through.

The other loaf is still resisting its exit from it's pan.

After all of that you might expect that we just chucked both loaves in the bin.

(Have I been reading too many British blogs?)

But no, Gentle Readers.

After trying the damaged loaf on the right and finding it absolutely delicious I suggested we call it spoon bread and just eat it out of the pan.

And we did and it was great.

As Julia Child is alleged to have said, "You're alone in the kitchen and who needs to know!"

KEEPING HER HEAD IN THE GAME

 

Does this cat know her head is upside-down?

Probably, since it's her favorite sleeping pose.

We call her Sweetie-Pie.

When I'm not calling her something else for waking me with her yowls while it's still as dark as her fur.

4 a.m. seems to be when she's ready for her breakfast.

Then while I stagger around trying to get accustomed to being awake at that hour, she goes back to a contented sleep.

Sweetie-Pie indeed!

Bah!

TIGER TIME

 I was intrigued to learn that today is the Day of The Tiger.

It's especially interesting to me because I had an older brother who was given the nickname "Tiger" when he was in high school.

Apparently it was bestowed on him by a coach for his ferocity on the basketball court, the baseball diamond or the football field.

As I recall, he wasn't particularly talented but he didn't let that stand in his way.

He played with passion, shall we say.

He was 7 years older than I was and my only sibling and in our younger days we were constant companions.

When he was involved with sports in high school I used to follow him around to practices and that same coach nicknamed me "Little Tiger".

That became "Little Tige" and later I changed it to "Cougar".

At any rate, here we are.

Shoveling snow off the sidewalk in front of our home in North Dakota.

Posing for a family picture with our Dad.

Wayne "Tiger" Taylor's high school graduation picture.

Two brothers surveying his garden in Minot, North Dakota in the late 1980's.

Wayne lived to see his 90th birthday but died only a few months later.

Good to see you again, Tiger.

I bet you never thought there would be a day named after you.

LUCKY MAN

My wife, as regular readers know, is a master of cuisine.

French, Italian, Chinese . . whatever the flavors . . she can do it.

Without looking at a recipe, as I do slavishly.

It's all in her head.

So, without further ado, let me show you what she created in our kitchen today.

Shrimp in a garlic lemon sauce.

I asked her what gave it the orange appearance.

Smoked paprika, she said.

Just to give you a better look, before I devoured it . .

You must trust me.

The "bubble pasta" (Israeli couscous); the salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado in Italian dressing; the Sea Salt breadsticks, the Pinot Noir wine . . . are your mouths watering yet?

It was devastatingly delicious.

As I said above, I'm a lucky man.

FIRST HARVEST