Baldur

Hello, Baldur is quite sorry that he has been absent through the recent mooscapades. We had a large cookout for friends this Satyrday which necessitatated several days of cooking and preparation.
Sunday we had a dinner/meeting to attend (after spending the morning feverishly getting Boughbreak back in order).
Then this evening Robert had a surprise for me, a pair of tickets to see Leon Redbone perform at 'Chan's Eggrolls and Jazz' in nearby Woonsocket.
I've seen Mr Redbone perform at least 15 times through the years and he only gets better and better.
We had a wonderful dinner at Chan's beforehand and then did a lot of people watching before the concert.
Our seats were at the tiny bar and because of this we were in the midst of a hub of activity with waitresses dashing about.
Mr Redbone also made his appearance from a door behind the bar which was quite cool as he brushed against me squeezing through the crowd.
Baldur is quite glad he wore his cuffed linen trousers with the black and white gangster (Spectator ) shoes.
Robert got several very up-close photographs for the Boughbreak scrapbook.

Baldur

As mentioned we hosted a cookout for 50 or so of our closest friends this past Satyrday, the last remnants of the crowd departed only at 2AM.
I fear our gatherings must cause the neighbors to fret. Certainly a few barred their doors and drew the heaviest draperies. Those that are most comfortable associating with yours truly often look rather sinister to the untrained eye, there is an abundance of black leather garments, tattooed flesh, hirsute limbs and unkempt beards. In reality most have rather mundane lives but that matters not when their arrival resembles an invasion.
One of the gentleman who arrived earliest was Uncle Ted. Ted is not related to me in any way but I have called him Uncle since learning that during his 3 tumultous marriages no heirs were produced. My intention is to have as many as possible hear me refer to him in a familial manner so when he departs this plane of existence his dearest nephew will have the most logical claim to his real estate holdings.
Uncle Ted finds this most amusing.
His trade is that of an electrical contractor, and I have often noticed him fiddling with small electonics. When he arrived I led him to a seat that coincidentally had my non-working Spirit of St. Louis telephonic device cleverly on display directly in front of it.
He toyed with it briefly as he drank his beaker of coffee and finally asked why it was sitting there partially dismantled on the kitchen table.
The bait had been taken!
I explained that it was not working and it was clearly beyond my skills to restore it.
In two shakes of a lamb's tail he had his spectacles on and was probing the wiring with a table knife. He lamented not having his tools with him so I cheerfully packed the telephone up in a neat sack and ran it out to his automobile for him to repair back at his own workbench.
Hopefully it will be back and on my kitchen wall within a couple weeks.

Qsilv

......trying to muffle mounting laughter here (and so unsuccessfully that it's come out a positive cackle )

Used to know a guy like that. Caltech geek of the first order, but he HATED to be asked to do anything. Well in fairness his plate was already full and of course everyone automatically turned to him for help with the worst problems.

A friend of mine noticed tho that he was inveterately curious....

so of course all we had to do was leave the problem out there on a lab bench.... an item broken apart, or a weird formula on half rumpled paper, or (trickier) a puzzle stated out loud but quietly, to someone else or just to yourself, with juuuust the right note to your voice.... and then.... loooong silence..............

You had to be verrrry patient and poker-faced to pull this off (he was smart enough to know darn well it was a baited trap... but hey, no one WAS pestering him!) ....might take a whole day or even two.... but eventually you'd notice him hunched over it, or it would just magically appear overnight.

It worked every single time.

sheftali52

ROFL at Baldur's and Q's cleverness!!!!

Baldur

gentleman - a + e = gentlemen

Baldur

It's good to know that I am not the only one employing devious tactics when it comes to difficult repair jobs.

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So THAT's why I end up building all my friends MFI purchases!

indigo

Leon Redbone! NICE! I envy you...I'd love to see him just once....

Baldur

It's peach season at Boughbreak. We have finished eating the small but nice peaches on the 'early' tree. Now the luscious huge peaches on the 'late' tree are ready.
I suppose I will bake something eventually but right now we are just eating them straight off the tree and warm from the sun.

Baldur

indigo, have you also heard the rumour that Leon Redbone was born in Canada? There is no definitive biographical information about him out there but it has been suggested he is Canadian because his first documented appearances on stage were in Toronto.
Have you heard anything about this?

AuntieB

Take a large perfectly ripe peach and carefully peel it, avoiding and damage to the flesh.
Place the naked peach in a large balloon shaped wineglass.
Drizzle a small amount of Chambord (raspberry) liqueur over it.
Fill the glass with chilled champagne.
Repeat as necessary.

Baldur

um.....
and - d + y = any

Baldur

Baldur has been experimenting with Indian food here at Boughbreak.
I am wondering if any of you have had any experience with Paneer.
This is a soft white cheese that is cut into cubes, fried and added to several Indian dishes.

There was an easy enough sounding recipe at Allrecipes.com that I would like to post here for your perusal.
The version that you will be reading has been adjusted according to the comments left by the original author. Apparently the way it was presented on the recipe site was somewhat misleading.

'Paneer' by Amibould (taken from Allrecipes.com, an excellent recipe site)

Directions
Pour the gallon of milk into a large pot. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Watch carefully, as it will boil over almost as soon as it starts to boil. As the milk begins to boil, pour the buttermilk into the pot in a steady stream while stirring constantly. The milk will separate into curd and water.
Place a 4 or 5 layers of cheesecloth into a colander, and pour the milk mixture through it. Reserve some of the liquid for later. Let the milk mixture sit in the colander for a couple of hours, or until it stops dripping.
After the curds are strained and settled, transfer them to a food processor. Process until smooth. It should be able to form a ball if it is the right consistency. If it is too dry, add a little of the reserved liquid and process again. The consistency should be like a firm ricotta cheese.
Form into a ball, and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate until needed.
To cook the paneer, heat oil over medium-high heat. Cut the paneer into bite size pieces. Fry for about 1 minute, or until a very pale golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Add to your favorite curry or dish.

Baldur

When I copied and pasted the quantities vanished for some odd reason.
They are:
1 gallon whole milk
1 quart buttermilk

sheftali52

Ahhh...Sheftali sits in a trance, enchanted with Auntie B's peach-raspberry liqueur-champagne delight, and intrigued by Baldur's Paneer recipe. Haven't done any Indian recipes, but would most likely love them for the wonderful spices.

marius

Alas, dear Baron of Boughbreak, I have no tips or hints about Indian cooking. Let us know what you figure out. Meanwhile ... time for another Missouri Moment.

This is a tale of Missouri weather, dreams and other things. Yesterday was our fourth (or was it the fifth but feels like the tenth?) day of heat indexes floating around 112 degrees (44-45 degrees for you Canadian folks). We are all most tired of this but then, in the late afternoon ... a surprise: clouds, torrential rains and temperature drop of twenty degrees in less than twenty minutes! That was sweet relief but winds were whipping round in every direction. The tomatoes did fine but about twenty stalks of corn fell over and landed in a kind of untidy swirl pattern. Then we heard a transformer blow and that was the end of power.

Well, there's nothing more to do after the power company has been notified, so having slept only five hours the night before, I decided this was the perfect time for a nap. The house was already heating up, outside temps had climbed fifteen points and if it was going to be miserable, I may as well sleep through it! Tee hee, the next thing I knew I was dreaming that spouse came in from the yard where he'd been picking up storm detritus (ten points). He yelled out, "Where are you?" That was most strange because spouse does not yell. He calls out, but never yells. I figured something must be wrong and called back to him, "I'm in the living room ... oh, wait ... no ... I'm in the family room." Then I remember thinking/dreaming, "I can't be in the family room because we don't have a bed in there and I'm pretty sure I'm on a bed." Then, no more memories, just sweet sleep.

A couple hours later spouse said, "That was no dream. I went to the living room. You were not there. You were not in the family room either. You were however, sprawled across the bed and I couldn't believe you could yell loud enough for me to hear and then fall back to sleep in thirty seconds!" Tee hee - that's the trick - if you only sort-of wake up, are you really falling back to sleep? : )

It was a quiet night after that, the power came back on and I went to sleep wishing for the energy to stay up late and watch the Perseid meteor showers. (They were predicted to be spectacular this year!) Then, miracle of miracles, at two in the morning something awakened me. I was rather excited because I already had my "night vision" (didn't have to wait the twenty minutes to get it) and maybe now I could catch at least some of the showers!

So, poured a big glass of water, situated the self on the back porch step, looked to the northeast and hoped to be blessed with a sweet vision. In less than a couple of minutes I saw several 'stars' streak across the sky. Oh, this was perfect ... the air temps were comfortable, mosquitoes were not biting ... it was all quite lovely, dreamy (was I thoroughly awake? think not) and ... there I was sitting in my nightgown, in the dark, when I heard low grumbly noises that took eyes from the sky and directed them at three dark shapes gathered round me in a sort of semi-circle. They were so close I could have reached out and touched them!

That vision was so startling that I threw the water from my glass at them and you know, apparently the yard is THEIR territory at two in the morning. They weren't interested in leaving! The problem is that Missouri raccoons have been hit rather hard with distemper in the past few years, I was not fully awake, and my quiet pleas of "Shush, now. Go away!" did not affect them in the least.

Finally I stood up and that was when the dear furry ones seemed to realize, "Oh, it's human." After they left there were a few more 'falling stars' but I was so tired and sleep won out again. Oh well ... maybe next year I'll be able to stay up and see the whole Perseid shower. Did anyone else see it? Would love to hear about it. : )

Dragon

Oh, wish I could have watched the Perseids! First problem- very cloudy and rainy night. Second problem- we live in the city which means quite a bit of light pollution and not very good night sky viewing. Third problem- didn't have a clue they were last night until this afternoon .

Loved hearing about the raccoons, that would be neat and unsettling all at once. Not to alarm you or anything, but I understand that an enormous percentage of raccoons in North America are also rabies carriers, so if you do encounter them again make sure they don't bite you. Or I suppose you could get rabies vaccines if you really wanted to have some hands on experience with them but somehow it didn't sound like that was the case.

Arw65

The shower should still be going on, you could catch a few more 'stars' tonight.- and i wholeheartedly agree about not getting bit! My brother went through rabies treatment about 2? years ago- he's still not back to normal- his immune system got wiped out.

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Sorry to hear that, Arw. Fortunately for us, rabies cases are rare in UK ... so far. It's a terrible illness and I hope your brother is on the way to a full recovery.

Marius, it's great to see you back here again. You certainly had an adventurous afternoon/evening. I can't claim to have experienced anything as exciting yesterday, but I did see a bout 20 minutes of the meteor shower. I went out into the garden about 11pm UK time. All the lights were out in neighbouring houses and my husband had gone to bed early. I took a dark green plastic chair to the middle of the lawn and settled down to watch. There were a few small 'flares' and some 'particles' shooting across the sky but it was slow ... about one sighting every two minutes. The newspapers had promised more action around midnight UK so I strolled back in, put the computer to bed, donned a white dressing gown on top of my clothes, made a cup of hot chocolate and went back outside. going back out into the darkness outside, I had to move very slowly until I found the chair. I saw a few more shooting particles and then the clouds started to creep across the sky. Rising from the chair I meandered slowly back to the house and went to bed. It was nowhere near as exciting as I had imagined it would be but if there were any neighbours looking out for the meteor shower, they may have seen a 'ghost' sauntering around in my garden, looking heavenwards. If the rain that descended upon us today eases off, maybe the ghost will reappear tonight ... maybe.

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