A DAY IN THE LIFE

 I have a friend (who shall remain nameless) who used to say when he was hungry: "I need food! F-U-D, food!"

Unfortunately for my long suffering wife, I picked that expression up and have used it often in the decades when she has provided for my appetite.

I have written here before that in recent years she has grown "sick and tired" of the kitchen and has fairly often relinquished it to me to provide for myself.

I can turn out a pretty good Friday night pizza, even though it comes from the store frozen and all I do is doctor it a little.

But yesterday Her Nibs decided to make Sunday dinner and it was a huge success.

And all done on one sheet pan!

Regrettably my appetite overcame my common sense and I did not get a photograph of the finished meal.

What I did get was a photograph of the meal about to go into the oven, right after Her Majesty said, "That looks darned near good enough to eat right now!"

There was a pork tenderloin, mini-peppers, some undefined green peppers from our garden plants, a passel of halved mini-potatoes, some halved yellow squash (also from our back yard), and some quartered onions.

I wish I could show you a photo of the meal on my plate but the closest I could come would be to show you my mid-section and since this is a family blog I choose to forego that.

Suffice it to say it was delicious.

So today I announced to the Royal Companion that I would be spending my day baking.

To begin, she needed a couple of fresh loaves of English Muffin Bread, which I have grown to be good at.

As usual, it came out brown and beautiful.

I'm a little curious, though, what it will be like once she slices it tomorrow.

(I leave the slicing to her ever since I found out that I am incapable of slicing bread in a straight line.)

But I'm curious because I found out later that I had measured the five cups of flour that goes into this concoction with a 3/4 cup measure instead of the one-cup measure the recipe calls for.

By my calculation that means they were one-and-a-quarter cups of flour . . . light!

Now the loaves look and feel exactly the same but we are both anxious to see what the inside looks like.

But leaving idiocy and carelessness aside, I plunged on into my next project - Sour Cream Blueberry Scones.

I made scones once before and recall the memory as a messy and unforgiving attempt at what I would call Foolish Cookery.

This was no exception.

There was flour everywhere, especially on me.

I might add that I own a very nice black with white pin-stripes chef's apron but, like today, I forget that it hangs just feet from me in a closet.

But all that being said the finished scones, though somewhat messy in appearance, were delicious.

And finally I turned to one of those rip-off recipes one finds all over the Interwebs, this one titled Copycat Olive Garden Breadsticks.

Everyone loves those breadsticks, right?

I remember going to dinner once with the wife of a friend (no, it was completely on the up-and-up!) who shocked me by asking our waiter when he brought the notoriously buttery breadsticks to the table . . . for some extra butter!

Could be she and her husband, my late friend, ate that way all the time.

He died many years ago of a sudden fatal heart attack in the kitchen of his home.

My breadsticks today were . . okay.

They're not perfectly symmetrical like the breadsticks from Olive Garden but they tasted about the same.

I got one of those eye-rolling "Oh, really" looks from my Lord and Keeper when I said I thought the restaurant must have some kind of machine rolling device to make theirs so perfect.

So anyway my day in the Taylor Family Bakery is over and done with and tonight's vodka tastes particularly good.

And my take on the life of a baker?

It's DRUDGERY!

FREAKIN' DRUDGERY!

Not fit work for an 81 year old slacker.

FOUR

 

I wrote on this blog recently that I was not a superstitious person.

And yet.

I have always believed that 4 is my lucky number.

That idea originated when I became old enough to take note of the day I was born.

April 24, 1940.

Or, 4-24-40.

Lots of fours in there.

Today, when I looked at my daily calendar, I found that this is the fourth anniversary of the "installation" of my fourth Pacemaker.

Hmmmm.

Should I buy a lottery ticket?

'Course then I noticed today's date.

August 21, 2021.

Or, 8-21-21.

Now I'm really confused.

THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

Welcome to Ye Olde House of Humor!

In yet another trying week of news, the Olde Catalyst has arrived just in time to lighten the Olde Mood and offer some respite.

And some jokes.

So let us not delay one moment longer.

Cue the cartoons!

So that's all for now, my friends.

Now I ask you to abandon all abhorrences, abasements, aberrations and any additional addled and asinine activities and affectations.

To abbreviate: TGIF!

Have a wonderful weekend and always keep laughing!

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

WAY-BACK WEDNESDAY

 Last Thursday, a throw-back Thursday, I showed you a magazine from 1945 with an advertisement for Old Taylor bourbon whiskey.

Today, on a way-back Wednesday, I'm going to take you back even further, thanks to an issue of Success Magazine from the year 1908!

That means that magazine, which my wife had squirreled away in a drawer and which came to light during some cleaning recently, is 113 years old.

That's One-Hundred-and-Thirteen years!

Probably older than anyone reading this blog post.

Here it is.

For those of you who don't recognize him, that's the then-President of the United States on the cover.

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt.

The magazine was founded in 1897 by Orison Swett Marden.

Googling him will produce a fascinating biography of one of the rags-to-riches men of the late 19th Century.

Looking at old magazines like this is always fascinating, to see how things have changed and at how some things remain the same.

Here's an advertisement for an early invention by one Thomas Edison.

Take notice of the very-corseted lady on the left and her well-attired gentleman companion.

Another advertisement inside told of a cereal created in 1894 by William K. Kellogg for patients at a sanitarium where he worked in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Interestingly enough, all these years later, Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Success Magazine are still with us.

EBONY

 I was surprised to read this morning that today, August 17th, is Black Cat Appreciation Day.

Now that sits just fine with me because I have for decades appreciated the affection and friendship of black cats.

I've never been one of those suspicious people leery of letting a dark furred feline cross their path for fear of bad luck.

I've never been fearful about seeing one on Halloween.

I've never been one of those people who believe black cats are omens of bad things about to occur.

In fact I love black cats.

(Actually I love *all* cats but those of the midnight color are my favorites.)

One of the first cats to enter our (Judy's and my) life was a scrawny stray the kids picked up somewhere and named Primo.

I thought that was a great name, meaning number one, and Primo he became.

Primo

It wasn't until years later that "the kids" admitted that they had chosen the name because it was a nickname for some kind of hashish!

As a member of our family Primo had moved with us from Indianapolis to Arizona and made half a dozen moves in the Greater Phoenix area.

Some years later, we acquired a mostly black and always mischievous youngster who became Jazz.

Jazz

"You even reach for that faucet and I'm outa here!"

Finally, there was a young ruffian who showed up in our backyard some years back with some bleeding sores around his neck apparently inflicted by a neighborhood encounter with another creature.

I named him Blackie Detroit because of his apparently pugnacious nature.

Blackie Detroit

At first we weren't going to allow him into the house but as the Cat Motherer (Judy) washed his wounds and took him to the vet and petted him, he wormed his way into our affection.

As he calmed down, becoming an indoor cat, and grew his name didn't suit him and he became our beloved Blackwell.

Blackwell

After a long run with us, he grew old and ill and weak.

He used to jump up on my desk and share the bird-watching with me.

But on his final day I had to pick him up and lay him gently on the desk so we could spend some final moments together.

Blackwell's Final Day

I've loved all of our black cats and hated to lose them.

They become and became members of our family.

So on this Black Cat Appreciation Day, let's all hail the mighty black cats.

UP CHINO WAY

 As I mentioned in a brief post last night, Judy and I took a little Sunday drive yesterday.

We headed up to Chino Valley, then went east a couple of miles out of town on Perkinsville Road, where we took the pictures in today's post.

We then went to what I think must be the northwest limits of the town before heading back south and finally wound our way into Williamson Valley before heading home.

It was a good tour and we were constantly amazed at how green everything is, due to the fairly continuous daily or nightly rains we've had.

Anywhere here is something of what we saw.

SUNDAY DRIVE