At THIS Late Date?

 Well it happened. Someone flagged my blog again.  And seriously, what the actual fuck? The cows are already out of that barn, ya know?

                 Go ahead and try to make them go back in the barn. Ha! You can't! Cow Freedom!                                                                          *wild cheering*

I highly suspect that any flagging done was accomplished by a bot of some kind because I'm getting notices to enable the 'Adult Content' feature - something I've had up for years! 

 ...if you're real, and you're out there, tender reader, sweet dove, and it's only just freakin' now shot through that you've been wading through a cesspit here at Steve, then you deserve every single ounce of discomfort you've experienced. 

                                                         ...on the subject of discomfort. 

Is this your 'dirty little secret' read? And why wait until now to give me the flag? Was it because Trump got elected?  Did your SA catch you looking up a special decoration for your car?  Or do you see yourself as a latter-day digital righter of wrongs, you clever little moral superhero you? 

I've already dealt with one pisspot saint - someone who hung out here through the years, from Paul to Steve, through the descriptions of childrens birthday parties, sauce making, fist fucking, erotic cannibalism, cavemen having sex with animals and so forth, someone who commented frequently, and who was always to be found on the 'explicit content' blogs.  I met this person in real life, and that was...a thing that happened.  It's very odd to meet someone who has absolutely no use for you whatsoever - but who adores everything about you that fits their idea of what a soul lost to God looks like. It's also very uncomfortable to be standing there realizing that they have no idea whatsoever that what they're laying on you is anything but God's tolerance and mercy. Very awkward visit. Had to get a burger later. 

I guess yeah, I could  I stop putting out the appalling, vulgar fart-humor content I do so well, but then I wouldn't be having any fun; and I don't do this for any other reason than to screw around and have fun and bullshit with different people around the world who know how to appreciate a short video about a Sasquatch giving birth in a tree.

Unfortunately it's the grossaroni shocko stuff that also pulls in the religious weirdos. And here's the thing, religious weirdos: you don't get it. Don't be here. 

Anyone who keeps coming back day after day is not on the lookout for souls to save, or sins to be suppressed. You're on the lookout for titillation. You get your fix, run hide behind God, and tell yourself what a good little Christian Soldier you are to be resisting temptation -over and over again.  If you had a real problem with what I do here, you'd have visited once and then split for good - so suck on that the next time you come here and see a pronghorn antelope licking its own dick.

Because there is always going to be a picture of a pronghorn antelope licking its own dick here. Rely on it. 

Thundercow 7000

This is about making bread. Bail now if you came here looking for freaky boob porn.

I've been running a project for the past three months that has nothing whatsoever to do with historical figures, history, literature or history and literature or Leonardo Da Vinci. I have been BAKING MY OWN BREAD.

Yes I have. Every three days, just like great-grandma.

Baking bread is a thing that I've struggled with in days gone by. It's claimed that baking must be a precise art; and so The Biker invested in a remote digital read for our oven, and out came the measuring cups, the scale, the teaspoons and tablespoons. (If I had to cook this way for every meal I'd scream.) I've also been taking notes on my progress. A sample:

If you insist on enlarging these prepare to be disappointed. It's gibberish. 

What sparked off this this project was a search for a supermarket loaf that A. was not weirdly squatty, and B. could stand up to a messy sandwich without turning into mush. 

That quest failed because there is no such fucking thing. Modern supermarket bread is made with a batter and never builds much of a gluten structure = squatty, mushy bread.  Do not even get me started on the ingredients I SAID DO  NOT GET ME STARTEDOf course, this being Bellingham, we have lots of craft bakeries, but they want to charge $9.00 and up for a single loaf of bread?! which is highway robbery.  

I did the math, laboriously, and determined that if I used King Arthur APF I could make a loaf of bread for a buck fifty a loaf. That's probably wrong, but it's wrong on my side of the margin so I'll take it; because I spent way too much time trying to figure that out and kept getting different answers and I got frustrated and gave up. Anyway, at a buck fifty, no matter what it looked like, any loaf of bread I made at my level of skill in the beginning of this project would still A. fit in a toaster, and  B. hold a sandwich.  

To the Bat Oven!

Making bread is not laborious or frightening.  It takes me on average twenty dawdling minutes, spread out over the course of a day (this isn't counting cooking time of course, which I should not have to point out, but I did.) It involves no special skills or special tools whatsoever. No, the only difficult thing about making bread, as it turns out, is learning how to factor in Climate and Temperature, and developing something known as 'feel'.

Figure out your own caption. I got overwhelmed.

Some people are born with the knack. I was not. To me, wheat flour is as fickle as working with eggs. It's all been about learning when the dough is right, and the only way to do that is to simply forge ahead and make a metric shit ton of bread and pay attention to things like:

 

What time you want the bread done and baked

How long you need to 'proof' the dough

How to see and feel and smell when the gluten is well-formed, 

how much water the flour wants to absorb on any given day,  

how hard the dough wants to be kneaded, 

what direction the gluten fibers are going, 

what the weather looks like outside, 

the liveliness of your yeast,  

the temperatures of all the environments the dough will experience. 

Probably five or six other things too. 

And to make things even more complicated, I've been culturing a sourdough for the sake of flavor, and it's name is Dave. Did you ever own a Tamagotchi? Culturing a sourdough is exactly like taking care of a Tamagotchi. A suicidal Tamagotchi.

-oh wait you came here for freaky boob porn. Hang on. 

  

The thing is, every single loaf of bread is different. Every single motherfucking loaf. And this, my friends, is because of the damn weather. It has to do with the humidity, the barometric pressure, and the fickle whims of the gods, or France. Consider:

Some take only twenty-five minutes to bake, others forty. 

Some want to rise once (after mixing) and some twice. 

Some take all day to rise, others rise in twenty minutes. Or less. Or more. 

The amount of kneading varies wildly and can be subject to things like downward force, number of quarter turns, speed of kneading (!!!) or lack of proper protein strand development, 

Which could mean it didn't rise long enough  on the first or second rise, or that you kneaded to too long, or not long enough, on one or both of the rises, or that you didn't get all the strands of protein going the same way when you formed the loaf, or that you didn't slash the top of the loaf to prevent 'oven blowout', or not, or or or or. 

Or that you used too much sugar, 

Or not enough.  

Or that you didn't use enough yeast, 

Or that you used enough but didn't allow enough time for the rise - 

AND THEN WE COME TO THE SOURDOUGH COMPONENT which is like FUCK.

JUST FUCK. 

I have been having an excellent time and I am happy.

I am creating a recipe and using exacting standards, and I am winning the battle.  I've been narrowing the gap between expectation and reality bit by bit, every single loaf, detail by detail.  God there is a lot of writing involved. I do research. I read. I get to fuck around in the kitchen, and FRESH BAKED BREAD.  

 

In other news, I just found out that there's a lesbian bar in Bellingham. Dare me to visit.

Requesting Blue Planet Waves

Well, it's Nov. 5th, and shit's beginning to look mighty red as of 8 P.M.

Here's hoping against hope.

ROCK OF THE WESTIES

I have excellent news but I'm gonna make you wait for it. HA!

_______________________

We have had the most gorgeous, gradual Autumn here, warm and full of color.  We get windstorms and  rain, of course, this being Washington; but it isn't as utterly out of control as it was back in Sumas.  I am not seeing peoples' roofs go cartwheeling past my house every Fall and Winter, in other words. Nor have I lost all my belongings to high floodwaters recently. *ahem*

Last week, though, was that one wild, stormy week that always comes at the end of Fall.  We live on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound, in what is essentially a forest full of tall cottonwoods, the leaves of which turn a pure, saturated Canary yellow in Autumn. I wish you could have seen it!  The rain was hitting the windows in slashes and raising a fog as it hit the ground. The high winds  came ashore in enormous waves. All the yellow leaves went flying off the trees like billowing clouds of smoke, and then suddenly they went fountaining straight up into the black sky at the edge of the cliff!  This was huge weather.  Man I love a good storm! I sat here with my coffee and my Pat Metheny and was cozy and snug and watched it. 

I had soup too. It was seafood chowder.

_________________________________

OK OK OK OK I AM SO STOKED!

Honestly I can't remember being this stoked in years! Decades! Several decades, even!

Here's why:

   IT'S OFFICIAL!!  

WE ARE NOT MOVING TO THE SOUTH!!!!

         

People, you have no idea how hard I've been sweating this.   

  

I'm going to indulge in a little whining here. It isn't punitive whining; I've blocked everyone in my family from this space. It's only "Wah wah poor me" whining. 

To continue. 

My Biker has always had a (big ol' inbred) bee in his bonnet about the South. It comes from a song that was popular back when he was growing up in Alaska. 

That song is

GREEN RIVER 

        grr rend tear argh        

Now I like Creedence. I do!  I like this song! I like their music! I do not, however, like what this song has done to my marriage. 

I get it. The Biker grew up in Alaska, so far North that he lived a good third of the year buried under 15 feet of snow, not seeing sunlight for three months at a time, in sub-zero cold, in a region so remote it could only be accessed by plane, with his entire dysfunctional family all crammed into one Quonset Hut. That is ROUGH. I get it. I do.  You'd need to have a dream limned in gold to look forward to, and for him, it was this 'Born on the bayou, barefoot girls dancin' in the moonlight, dootin' doo-doo' stuff. Images of warm weather all year 'round, sunny and lazy.  No walruses.   

I mean shit, I had my happy fantasy future too, all hippies and sitar music, backpacking through Europe and smoking pot braless and hobnobbing with Ram Dass and so forth. 

Ah, but then, you see, I was no longer 13.  I grew out of it.

NOT SO SOME PEOPLE.

Anyway, as soon as retirement began to loom on the horizon, suddenly We Were Moving To The South. 

Gonna happen, done deal, no argument brooked.   

And Lord, the fights we have had since then. 

Since we have lived here, though, all that changed.

I gave up and gave in. Fine, the man had a dream. I'd make myself like it.

Meanwhile, he was slowly coming to the realization that yes, it's hard to move to an area when it's being obliterated by hailstones the size of grapefruit, generational inbreeding, tornado clusters, an utter lack of giving a fuck, record hurricanes, or has completely washed off the side of a mountain...

 

...which is what happened to the town that was first on his list. I mean, all of the above issues plagued the place, but that last thing kinda...yeah. 

And this has held true over the past three years. Every single area he's been looking at (which, Lord love him, have been all the depopulated backwood slums where the median age is 72) have been flamboyantly destroyed by natural catastrophes, social catastrophes, or both.

A few days ago he sat me down and told me gently "We have to start looking at places on this side of the Rocky Mountains," which I took well.*  

I also marked the day down on the calendar: October 22.

________________________________________________

**I may have said "If you think that's a good idea," in a doubtful tone. 

Nothing hardens this man's resolve like anything that can possibly, possibly be construed as questioning his judgement. Was that manipulative on my part?  

Yes it was.        

Debunking the Fly Rotato

 I just saw a black squirrel go past my window carrying a bloody squirrel head in its mouth. 

like this only a squirrel head

I thought you should know. 

Prongfrites Wayward Phlossbottomus

 

Welcome to psychedelic Thursday!  Same sound, different letter! 

I know what I mean!

When your mind goes a-wheelin' and a-walkin'

     

I broke a tooth last week. Out of nowhere. No reason. So I go to the dentist and find out that I broke two teeth. 

Of course, going to the dentist is not my favorite thing to do. This time was particularly extra crappy, though. Why? Because midway through the exam I was suddenly subjected to a hard, hard sales press about a 'special' cosmetic process that takes four sessions. It was, in fact, strongly hinted at by Hard Sell Nurse that I could not proceed with my exam until I had scheduled this procedure, so up up up, let's scoot along to the receptionist and do that little thing!  

Now I was born at night, but it was not last night. 

   

When you search 'elderly babies getting high' there are no actual images of elderly babies getting high, for which I am grateful but by which I am also perplexed, the Internet being as it is

   

I remained civil. I said 'No.' The jacking continued, though. I got interrupted twice more with repetitions of the 'hurry hurry let's go schedule eight hours of unnecessary dentistry' fandango until I finally brought up INSURANCE PRE-AUTHORIZATION. 

   WHOOSH    

Ms. Hard Sell disappeared and did not return, to which I said 'Huzzah' only silently because imagine how that would go over in a dental clinic ffs, some random old broad exclaiming 'Huzzah' aloud while you're in the middle of getting your teeth filed, or whatever bullshit, unnecessary thing Hard Sell nurse has talked you into. 

The good news is that I get two new crowns which our insurance will fund, and also that my bone structure is that of a firm and healthy young goddess, and I will not need false teeth or bridgework in the future, unless I get kung fu'd in the face. Watch this space.

_________________________________

My ex-sister-in-law was a nice little dumpling girl who grew up into a dumpling woman, and during those years in-between she found time to go live in Minneapolis and PARTY WITH PRINCE.  

Here I am the worlds coolest person and no. I did not get to party with PRINCE.  She did. 

From the way she told it, the scene was all very casual. He'd throw potlucks. He'd be outside grilling on the Weber. Kids would run in and out and folks would holler into their phones. You'd think Prince would always be doing flips and twirls and jamming on his guitar, looking fly, wearing eyeliner and maybe a bolero jacket, but no. Apparently he was like real folks and wore t-shirts and whatever, and partied with my ex-sister-in-law, and ate potato salad off a paper plate. 

It was only this year that I bothered to check the timeline on that.

...yup.

__________________________________

Fall has fallen or whatever it does, and everything looks very Autumnal. 

Why what's this?  It's one fine day in Autumn. Do continue.

This guy is so very, very Bellingham that he might as well be called Mr. Bellinghamasaurus Rex. I mean LOOK AT THIS DUDE.

Welcome to Goods, our local, excellent in all respects

Of course it's in an old gas station. Where did you think you were, Utah??

The stores here have been set up for Halloween since September, and the shelves abound with Squishy Brains and skeletal armadillos and giant honkin' bags of candy.  The woods are filled with color. It is Bushmills and a cigar weather.

It is also Chicken Livers on Toast For Breakfast weather.

You will not find a simpler, better, more sustaining breakfast for a chilly morning that Chicken Livers on Toast. You should have some quickly. Here's how:

Two large slices of toast (white bread)

About 1 1/2 to 2 cups (volume) of raw chicken livers, rinsed

1/4 to 1/3 cup of unsalted butter

Lawry's Garlic salt

Method:  

-Melt the butter in a small, warm frying pan. Do not allow to sizzle. When it is too hot to touch, place the chicken livers in the pan.

-Sprinkle a goodly amount of Lawry's Garlic Salt over all.

-Partially cover the pan with a lid.  You are poaching the livers, not frying them. Poaching in butter prevents the livers from developing a metallic flavor, and makes them smooth and rich.

-When livers are set and no longer bleed when pressed (oh ew ick GET OVER IT) lift and place aside. 

-Reduce pan drippings if necessary. 

-Chop livers - not too fine! - and add back into butter drippings, toss to combine, and cool in pan until temperate enough to put on toast.

You will bless my name and the rails I run on. You will. This is really good.

_______________________________

I'm going to go put in some laundry.

                                                You need to go put on your scary underpants.

Where Are The Gentle Gar Avast, This Goomy Preakness Keen?

WOO HOO OLD COOKBOOKS!!!!

Man, I lucked onto a doozy:  The One Pot Dinner by Hannah G. Scheel! 

Ze front cover, mon sewer

WHOOSH FLASHBACK It is 1970, and I am A Kid. I actually remember seeing this book shrink-wrapped with three bars of Dove soap, sitting there on the grocery store shelf.  I lived in an Ivory Soap household, though, so we passed on this incredible one-dollar value at the time. 

OK WHOOSH FLASH FOREWARD WE'RE BACK IN 2024 whew. 

Ze detail du la back cover, el monsieur von dude

Why am I using the sophisticated Fronsh Ag Scent? you ask. Well I will tell you. Shit calm down. See, this cookbook is all class, just like Dove soap, which was and is the classiest of all the soaps.

See? I told you.

 Only the classiest of the cookbook writers could write this special Dove Soap edition, in fact, and so they found a classy broad for the job. 

How do we know that Ms. Scheel was a classy broad? 

She gives us an intro that begins with a quote from Samuel Johnson and goes on to include Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys, Alexander Woollcott, Byron, Alexander Dumas, the Apostle Paul, Thomas Moore, Aristophanes, Chesterson, Cervantes, George Meredith, and back to Byron again.  

This ^^^ kind of adorable horseshittery continues all through the book.

Our first section, SOUPS, begins with a quote (surprise!) from H. L. Mencken, and another from Napoleon, and another from Thackeray.

  No I was not fucking with you.   

And what's up first?  This:

Come on Hannah. That's 'We Need To Defrost The Freezer' soup. Quote Mencken all you want. 

This aside, Ms. Scheels recipes are surprisingly solid. The book is divided into 'Soups' and 'Meats', and, you know...everything fits into one pot, and you cook it. Written before the day of the Crockpot, thank God, hence no 'dump and go' ten-hour atrocities (I'm looking at you, Julie Pachenko),  you are ensured a tasty, if Americanized, meal. 

-no really I mean it. You can take a good, even inspired, meal out of here!  Is it fine food?  Well geeze no it's not, this is a soap premium ffs. But you might like it, you won't die, and nobody will hate you.

_____________

Deep breath.

Whole new ballgame, if baseball were played in the kitchen and the umpire was Richard Nixon, risen from the dead, with stuff all falling off him.

Here we have The Quick and Easy Cookbook.

The Quick and Easy Cookbook is one of those check stand 'impulse buy' publications, Much like The Weekly World News with which it shared space on the rack, it features the strange, the bizarre, and the outright disgusting, although without any of the attention to accuracy, editorial pride or professional standards of The Weekly World News. 

Whatsoever. At all. None.

So listen. As I go through my latest haul of cookbooks, I put little bookmarks in all the places I'd like to highlight, as per figure a. and b.

fig. a

El figuro B      

And see, this^^^ is an aerial shot, and we're looking down at all the wacky bookmarks I have stuck in. Note also the dogeared pages.  Mere slips of paper did not suffice to aid this tiptoe through the culinary tulips, which were all dead.   

Let's just rip off the bandaid and get this over with:

If you didn't know already, the difference between 'Russian' and 'Persian' is the color of the caviar.

Feeling OK?  Got your water wings? That was a first quick dunking. M. Arcati, avert your eyes. Here we go.

This is their idea of a fucking meat loaf, people.

Oh, the substitutions. Oh Lordy. 

If suicidal ideation were edible

Just...

What did the teenagers do to deserve this?  Why is it specifically for teenagers?

...and then come runnin' up to bustin' we got BEEF MOTHERFUCKING WELLINGTON because why not dammit. Why not bend Beef Wellington over a chair too?  

........and because I'm feeling sadistic:  

   Not lying - this recipe made me speechless with rage. I had to get up and roam around for a bit, pretending to harangue an audience on why this^^^ is an affront to the whole idea of food (they hung on every word btw.) I mean, to take one of Gods' most innocent and blessed creatures from the ocean and subject it to...?

    

  GAAAAAAAAH  

I need to go drink now.

 

You better go check on your dog.