Baldur

Joseph Stalin is born (1878)
The discovery of the Piltdown Man is anounced (1912)
Cowboy Troy is born (1970)
In Oakland, California the school board declares 'Ebonics' a language or dialect (1996)

Baldur

3 ships depart carrying the first English colonists to North America, eventually settling Jamestown (1606)
George Washington and the Continental Army set up camp at Valley Forge (1777)
'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens is first published (1843)
Emily Bronte dies (1848)
Leonid Brezhnev is born (1906)
Edith Piaf is born (1915)
Adolf Hitler names himself Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the German Army (1941)
Warren Sapp is born (1972)

Baldur

Baking begins at Boughbreak!
yesterday Baldur made both pumpkin bread AND banana bread.
This afternoon it was the mincemeat streusel squares.
It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas.

Baldur

The Louisiana Purchase is a done deal (1803)
An earthquake and tsunami strike Nankaido, Japan. 1300 are killed. 38,000 homes are destroyed (1946)
'It's a Wonderful Life' premieres (1946)
Moss Hart dies (1961)
John Steinbeck dies (1968)
Dona Paz, a ferry, and Vector 1, an oil tanker collide in the Phillipines. An estimated 40000 are killed (1987)
The US invades Panama (1989)
Carl Sagan dies (1996)
Happy first day of Hannukah

Dragon

My Grandma sent me this one, I thought you guys might enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei3rTITyOhY

Baldur

-0 that's 4000, bot 40,000

Baldur

bot - b + n + not

Baldur

- + + =
Baldur should stop typing today, it's not going well LOL

Baldur

Thank you for the video Dragon, but I noticed Superman in there.
I though he was from Krypton.

Here is a Canadian Moment from Baldur's past.
Every August for 13 years Baldur drove up to New Brunswick to attend a bear event. At it's height there were about 120 men at this weekend-long party.
At the Satyrday night dance, as things were winding down they would order in a stack of pizzas. Knowing Baldur was a vegetarian there would be a Veggie Pizza among the pile. This was the only time in my life I ever encountered carrots on a pizza, which I found quite strange.
In the end it doesn't matter as I rarely got a slice of it anyway.
It is a universal truth that Carnivores will eat Veggie Pizza first, knowing the Vegetarians won't be able to touch the meat pizza.
That way the Carnivores have them all to themselves. LOL

mdawrcn

Oh, how I can relate to Baldur's story. I work with a group of about 20 people and often we order pizza for a working lunch and while I am not a vegetarian, I cannot stomach the processed meat on a pizza, so always request that a veggie pizza be ordered. While those in the ordering chair always balk that it will not be eaten, inevitably the veggie pizza is the one that is gone first and usually I don't get any unless I bully my way to it. Not sure why this happens, but it is very annoying!

Baldur

I think it amounts to people liking variety.
The person doing the ordering assumes that everyone likes pepperoni and sausage on their pizza.
The people eating the pizza may like pepperoni, but also like onions, or mushrooms, or olives etc. They see the veggie pizza and go for it.

But carrots? really..... who thought of that?

Baldur

Once upon a time...(pre-1995), Baldur lived in Providence, RI.
My neighborhood was very quirky, diverse and cosmopolitan. Close by was Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Within easy walking distance was excellent pizza, Indian food, Sushi, Organic food, all night espresso/cappucino places, art galleries etc etc.

2 of the best pizza places I'd ever eaten at with within 3 blocks of each other. The restaurant that invented the grilled pizza wasn't too far away either, but Baldur never ate there.
Anyway, one of my favourites, and at the time I was not a vegetarian, was a barbequed pulled chicken pizza with Spanish olives. There was BBQ sauce on the crust rather than tomato sauce.
Heavens.
A decent walk into the bowels of Downtown Providence (incidentally in recent years it has been christened or perhaps rechristened 'Downcity' Providence.. I'd never heard it called that growing up, but plenty of people insist it was the proper term) could bring me to Leo's, a great bar in a bad bad neighborhood.
Leo's is long gone. The food was always amazing, the crowd unpredictable.
One could try to shoulder his way to get the bartender's attention and brush past the mayor, the local news-stations meteorologist, or the wino you gave a quarter to by the bus station. You never knew.
Baldur is bad with facial recognition, and apparently lots of people know me or perhaps just think that they do.
It made for some interesting evenings.

If I happened there near dinner time I would have a bowl of their chili, it was excellent..and oddly I'd found carrots in that more than once.

Baldur

Baldur is not carrotophobic.
It's just that carrots just do not belong in some foods. Pizza for example, tapioca pudding would be another bad place to put some.
I'm waiting to hear about carrot tapioca now.

Baldur

Today was another good day for holiday baking.
Yesterday in was mincemeat streusel squares.
This afternoon saw the preparation of Bourbon Balls, Lemon Coconut Bars and Cherry-Almond Biscotti.
I really should have bought chocolate today. This month's AARP magazine had a recipe for 'Millionaire Shortbread' that must be tried. It's shortbread with a layer of caramel on top and then capped off with a thin layer of dark chocolate. What could be better?

Baldur

The Mayflower lands at what became Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620)
Calico Jack Rackham is born (1682)
Ibsen's play 'A Dollhouse' premieres (1879)
Approximately 2000 striking saltpeter miners are massacred by the Chilean army (1907)
'The New York World' publishes the first crossword puzzle (1913)
Disney's 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' premieres (1937)
Frank Zappa is born (1940)
F. Scott Fitzgerald died (1940)

Happy Solstice
Pan Am flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie Scotland killing 270 (1988)
Israel passes control of Bethlehem over to the Palestinians (1995)

Dragon

Have never had carrots in tapioca (must agree that it doesn't belong there) but I have had a very tasty pumpkin pie that was actually made with carrots instead of pumpkin. Until my sister in law told us we never guessed that it was anything other than pumpkin. That makes me think that most of the flavour in pumpkin pie comes from the spices that are in it.

On the note of strange pizzas I must relate a story from some time ago when I was ordering pizza at work. I had suggested a hawaiian pizza as they always seem to go over well at group functions and was immediatly shot down by my co-workers who said "Pineapples, gross, fruit doesn't belong on a pizza!" They then proceeded to tell me to order the Taco Pizza and "make sure they put the lettuce on after it comes out of the oven." So fruit is a no-no on pizza but appearantly lettuce is a-ok!

Baldur

My recipe for Mincemeat Streusel Squares makes a 9" by 13" by 2" pan.



Mincemeat Streusel Squares.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a food processing device place 2 cups of old fashioned oatmeal.

Process this until it has formed very fine crumbs.

Add 1+2/3 cups unbleached white flour. 1/4 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup white granulated sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda and 1 cup (8oz) of cold butter cut into small pieces.

Process this all together until once again you get fine crumbs.



Take 2/3 of the crumbs and scatter them evenly across the bottom of your greased 9" by 13" pan. Using the bottom of a drinking glass or some other flat bottomed implement, compress the crumbs into and even flat surface. Once complete the resulting layer should be less than1/2" thick. But in essence some variance does not truly matter.

Place the flattened crumb layer in your preheated oven for some 12 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven and spread 2 cups of mincemeat across the top in as even a fashion as possible.

Should your mincemeat be of a very dense variety it is perhaps best to thin out the consistency somewhat. Rum or brandy are ideal for this purpose.

Now scatter the reserved 1/3 of the oatmeal crumb mixture over the mincemeat.

Do not compress this layer as you did the bottom.

Return the pan to the oven and continue baking it for approximately 25 minutes.

Once finished baking place the pan on a wire rack to cool.

(Please allow it to cool completely before attempting to cut it)

Baldur gets at least 24 small squares from this amount, at times as many as 36. For ease in serving I transfer each piece into a fluted paper cup, the type used in modern times to line cupcake or muffin pans.

This works exceedingly well for any bar recipe that results with a sticky end product.

Baldur

Pumpkin recipes do indeed get most of their flavor from the spice.

Baldur

The Non-Intercourse Act is passed by the US Congress (1809)
In France, Alfred Dreyfuss is wrongly convicted of treason (1894)
Happy Birthday Mekeys
Ma Rainey dies (1939)
Beatrix Potter dies (1943)
Chico Mendes is assasinated (1988)
The Brandenburg Gate re-opens, reuniting Berlin (1989)
The Archives of Terror are discovered (1992)
Richard Reid attempts to blow up American Airline Flight 63 by detonating his shoes (2001)
The repeal of 'Dont Ask Don't Tell' is signed by President Obama (2010)

Dragon

Happy b-day Mekeys!