Harl Delos is dead, the victim of trusting a son of a bitch.

Just thought you had a right to know.

I don't know why I wanted to go to the state fair.

I suppose it had something to do with all the other kids going to the state fair. Our county fair was pretty darned wonderful, a highlight of the summer, and the state fair was even more so. My friends were in 4H clubs or in FFA later on, and their projects would do well at the county level, and they'd take them on to the state fair. When they came back, they couldn't really say why the state fair was so wonderful. There was a lot of the "Oh, WOW" factor, stories about how everything there was so big, but I can't recall them describing anything that wasn't at the county fair as well.

And I didn't think of us as poor when I was growing up. Other kids got things I didn't get, like fashionable clothes, and so forth, but that was because their dads worked in a factory and didn't need the kids to do work like a farmer did. And nobody ever told me I was poor.

And Then Indiana

When I was in my early 20s, I was moving about, and I ended up finding myself in Indianapolis. I had no more than arrived when he first state fair hit, and so I didn't have time to go, and when the second state fair hit, I had a couple of people quit, and I had to work a whole slew of hours to cover for them. and by the time the third one hit, I had already moved out of Indianapolis. And I still didn't know why I wanted to go to the state fair, but I really wanted to, and I felt disappointed.

And then, when I was older, much older, I moved to Columbus. Em, my first wife, was dead, and I was dating. The state fair runs about ten days, and I went about three times, with at least two dates. We went on rides, and I won prizes on the midway for my date, and we watched the clogging competition, and went past this guy who was hawking the Super Slicer. He was something to watch, a genuine performer, slicing this vegetable and that, and talking about how you could slice tomatoes so thin, one tomato would last a whole season.

We laughed and walked on, but I came back the next day mostly to buy a Super Slicer.

The Stuff Is Junque

And you know how it is when you buy something like this. Positive junk, right? Except that when I got it home and started to use it, it turned out to do a pretty good job. In fact, it did everything the guy said it would do, and maybe a bit more. I made a big pot of vegetable soup, and wished I had more veggies, because it was fun to slice veggies. I ended up using that Super Slicer 6 or 7 days a week for a couple of years, then ended up moving, and in the new location, using it 6 or 7 days a week for a couple of years, and I was thinking that I really wished I could buy another one, because this one was getting to be pretty worn out. It was made of pretty thin plastic, and as time went on, it showed signs of stress, and it wouldn't be long before it would break into a kazillion pieces.

But I couldn't find it online. And when I made my hejira to Pennsylvania a dozen years ago, it got left behind. I've been looking and looking and looking, and I have seen a dozen different slicing doodads, none of which were as desirable as my SuperSlicer.

Well, that is, except for the mandoline at the Restaurant Store. I've been looking at it for five years. The thing is, my original SuperSlicer was $25, and so the idea of paying $135 for a similar device seemed obscene. Except, you know, the original one was plastic, and the one at the Restaurant Store was stainless steel. Of course, in my fox-and-grapes manner, I decided that the mandoline at the restaurant store was too big to store (even though I'd rarely ever put away my plastic SuperSlicer; I'd rinse it, put it in the drainer, and used it the next time before I put away the rest of the stuff in the drainer.

Closer, My Dear, To Thee

And each year, I got closer and closer to buying a mandoline from the Restaurant Store. The heart wants what the heart wants, and there's no logic involved. A mandoline makes it possible to cut a lot of produce in no time flat, every slice precisely the same thickness, so pretty it hurts, and you don't cut yourself. And when slicing becomes so easy, one makes things that otherwise, he'd pass on.

About a month ago, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to make french onion soup. To do that, you need to cut up about 5 or 6 pounds of onions. I bought more onions than I would need, and tried to slice them, but the onions were so hard, it was hard to cut them to an even thickness.

Finally, yesterday, I reached the decision point. I found a mandoline online, and tried to order it. The page said that they accepted Paypal - but when I went through the checkout, it got to the "how do you want to pay for this?" page, it demanded a credit card number. I could have phoned in the order, I suppose, but Blondie was across the room, and I wasn't sure I wanted to tell her I was ordering the mandoline. I imagined that she was going to say, "Why don't we just go to such-and-so restaurant and have a bowl of onion soup?" That is, after all, a good question, except that I have this conceit that if I make it myself, I can produce a richer soup than what they will have. Most restaurants have onion soup that is awfully watery and insipid.

Blondie Has Cabin Fever

But it turns out this morning that Blondie wants to go shopping. I mention that I want to go to the Restaurant Store and get a mandoline. What's a mandoline? I explain to her about the state fair and the other state fair, and the Ohio state fair, and the SuperSlicer. She said, "You've talked about this before, haven't you?" I said I probably had. She nodded. I went in, and she helped me look, but I couldn't find the mandolines.

"I see where you got a lot of your stuff." I told her that the Restaurant Store has really good quality stuff, and most of it is cheaper than you'd pay in other stores. Pie tins, for instance, cost $5 or more any place you go, but they're $3 here. "Yeah," she said, "I can see. These are good prices."

She announced she was really hungry, and would wait in the car. Finally, I found the mandolines, way off to the left, and there was a mandoline model there that was a little smaller than the one I'd seen before, and it was $70 or $80. Did I really have the balls to spend that much money just to slice vegetables? I didn't. My mother raised a real cheapskate, after all. But if I closed my eyes, maybe I could make a rush for it, and my mother, looking down from heaven, would not notice. So I closed my eyes, and made a made rush for the, no, not for the door, for the cash register.

The folks in the Restaurant Store are so personable. They act like they want my business, which seems pretty rare among stores.

When I got it home, I sat at the dining table, took it out of the box, and examined how it worked. "So how much did it cost?" Blondie asked.

I mumbled.

Mumbling On

"About $175?"

I spoke up a little. "Not that much."

"About $135?" she asked.

"Less."

"How much less?"

I told her it was about $80. I was thinking that was $64, and that way when I checked the cash register tape, it would be good news, not bad.

Happy Birthday

Blondie asked me if I remembered what I got for my birthday. I couldn't remember. "You told me that you couldn't think of anything you wanted," Blondie said, "And do you remember what you got for Christmas, last Christmas?" I shook my head no. "Same thing then. You said you'd tell me when you figured out what you wanted. And you know the birthday before? You said the same thing then." She walked up to me, and started kneading the muscles in my neck. "Happy Merry BirthChrisDayMas, honey!"

Funny, how you grow up poor without realizing it, and end up rich without realizing it....

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Birthday - cheapskate - Christmas] - Columbus - french onion soup - Indiana State Fair - Indianapolis - kitchen gadgets - mandoline cutter - marital discord - Ohio State Fair - pitch men - poverty - Restaurant Store - SuperSlicer

If you listen to competitors on the top chef type shows, they talk about baking requiring such precise recipes. That's a bunch of malarky. If you have a general idea of where you are going, you can fly by the seat of your pants, adding water, shortening, and flour as needed to get the right consistency and "feel" for your dough. If the feel is right, you'll probably do OK.

There are exceptions, of course. Six weeks ago, I made a couple of loaves of bread that were real disappointments. The next day, it came to me. I forgot to include salt. And you really need to add salt before the dough rises. Salting the bread after it's been baked just doesn't cut the mustard.

You Can't Trust Recipes

What they don't say on the top chef type shows is that you can't trust recipes, because if you change brands of ingredient, you often need to adjust quantities in order to make things turn out right. I've been baking with a generic bread flour from the bulk foods department of Glenwood Foods. It's not bad flour - but when it ran short, I ran to Costco to buy a bag of Con Agra Harvest Bread ST flour.

There might be better bread flour out there, but I've not found it. It seems to make all my baking easier and result in better baked goods. Maybe there are better flours out there that I haven't discovered, or maybe it's just that the Con Agra better suits my baking habits, but in any case, it's what works for me.

The problem with buying that flour is that it comes in a 50-pound bag. I use flour quickly enough that it doesn't go bad on me, but I really need something to keep partial bags of flour in. I used to have several huge tupperware containers, ones that held 2 or 3 gallons, but they are long gone, and they cost about $12 each two decades ago. I found a small storage bin with a snap-on lid at Kmart, it looks like it might keep insects out, but when I opened the bag of flour, I used 5 cups for a batch of bread, filled my extra-large flour canister, filled the bin, and I had about 2 cups of flour left over.

What To Do With The Extra?

What to do with 2 cups of flour? I decided to make a cake. Em loved to make Texas sheet cake, but it's been too many years, and I don't remember the recipe too well, so I modified a standard yellow cake recipe.

I don't make cake very often, because Blondie isn't a big fan of cake unless it's iced heavily, and I don't care very much for cake if it is iced heavily. And Blondie likes to use my half-sheet pans for organizing things, like the fresh fruit, or the condiments, or whatever. I whined a little about that, and Blondie agreed to free up a half-sheet pan for me.

Cakes call for cake flour. It has very little gluten in it, making it more tender. I had bread flour, which had a lot of gluten in it, which helps bread stand tall, but it makes for tough cake. It's important to exercise the flour as little as possible to avoid stretching the gluten.

Mixing The Batter

I put 2 1/4 cups of the flour in the mixing bowl along with 1.33 cups of sugar, 3 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. I figured it was OK to stir those up at this point. It won't stretch the gluten if the gluten isn't set. Then I added 0.50 cup of lard, and it was mostly the lard at the top which had liquified. I started mixing, slowly. I added a cup of warm water, a teaspoon of vanilla, and on a whim, I added about 2/3 of a teaspoon of peppermint extract.

I pulled a couple eggs out of the refrigerator, which is a mistake. You should always cook and bake with room-temperature eggs, unless the recipe specifies otherwise, and I can't think of any reason why the recipe would specify otherwise. When you try to cook cold eggs, they get rubbery and tough, while starting from a room-temperature egg leads to a more tender product.

Giving It Some Lift

I had the Kitchenaid Artisan mixer on the slowest setting, but I sped it up to the 6 setting for about a minute while I greased the half-sheet pan. (A half-sheet pan is 13"x18" by 1" tall - twice as big as a 9x13 pan, but half as tall.) This pumped a lot of air into the batter. I poured the batter into the half-sheet pan and tried to spread it out level and even. With all that air in the batter, it didn't want to flow too easily, but eventually, I got it fairly level - and by then, the oven announced that it had reached 350.

I baked it for 30 minutes before pulling it out. It was just starting to turn brown on the top crust. You may prefer that it bake for 33 or 35 minutes. After 15-20 minutes of cooling, I sprinkled the top of the cake with powdered sugar, and after another 15 minutes, I cut a couple of pieces and gave one to Blondie.

It Pained Blondie

You could tell it was paining her to praise a cake that wasn't hidden under a 12" layer of buttercream, but she couldn't really come up with the courage to complain. I thought it was daggoned good. The peppermint really made the cake special. If I'd had to put a coating of chocolate frosting on it, I could have tolerated it, and although Blondie prefers any flavor other than Chocolate, that peppermint flavor would have gone well most flavors of buttercream frosting. I think that it'd be interesting to make this cake and pour a good half cup of crusted peppermint candy cane into this cake better, but even without, this was pretty nice.

And having used up that little bit of flour, the flour bin and the flour canister both closed nicely.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
buttercream frosting - cake flour - candy canes - ConAgra - half-sheet pans - Harvest Bread flour - home baking - peppermint extract - storage bins

I've written before about Mephistopheles, the evil mother of my first wife, Em. Her sister, Mildred, was her partner in crime growing up, and even as an adult.

Mamma always told me that what a person looks like when he is 20 is the result of the genes he got from his parents, but by the time someone is 40, their face is their own damned fault. People kid that their parents told them not to make faces, because what if your face froze that way, and they laugh about it, but in fact, people who grimace and frown and scowl a lot tend to develop the musculature that makes those faces easy and comfortable to maintain, while those who mostly smile tend to develop their faces in an entirely different manner. The bumper sticker "Smile! Increase your face value!" is actually true, in the long run.

Em Grew More And More Beautiful

Em was constantly upbeat. She loved people, and loved life, and as a result, even though the SLE ravaged her body, and even though Em spent a lot of years in discomfort and outright pain, she always smiled - and she grew more and more beautiful as she aged. Mephistopheles would try to smile at a baby or at a puppy, and the smile just didn't "fit" on her face any more, after so many years of looking sour. The baby would cry. The puppy would yelp and run away. And if anything, Mildred made Mephistopheles look like a model for a cosmetics company.

When they'd get together, I'd yelp and run away. Anything you need at the store, babe? If Em said no, I'd tell her I was going to take a walk, or if it was bad weather, I was going to take a little ride, and I'd drive away. If all else failed, I'd try to remove myself to the next room. But sometimes, that didn't work, and I'd end up in the same room, listening to the two of them cackling, plotting, and gloating about the evil they'd inflicted on others.

Mephistopheles loved to hear stories of the ways that Mildred punished her husband, Eddie, for real and imagined slights. When my father in law and I were alone, we'd express sympathy for Eddie. He was, to be fair, a simpering little worm, but that's the best that Mildred had ever attracted, and he probably could have done far better. And in any case, he didn't deserve to be treated as he was.

Eddie And The Boozers

Eddie was an alcoholic. My father-in-law knew, just as I did, that alcoholism is a disease that can't be helped. On one hand, being an alcoholic doesn't mean you have to drink; it means you shouldn't drink. On the other hand, coming home to Mildred each night would make one want to drink.

Eddie was a gin drinker, and Mildred would just cackle about how she bought the gin and brought it home for Eddie, just as he requested, but she would open the bottle when she got it home, pour out half of the bottle, and refill it with water. She was fooling Eddie, and keeping him from getting so drunk.

Except, realistically, was she? Don't you suppose that his body knew how much alcohol was in the gin he drank? If he'd only been in the habit of drinking, yeah, he might be satisfied with 2 drinks containing gin-flavored water, but if you're an alcoholic, wouldn't your body have a craving that would take 4 drinks to satisfy the need for alcohol that ought to be in 2 of them? Mildred was just pouring money down the drain. She should have saved those empty bottles and turned one bottle of full-strength gin into two bottles of the watered stuff.

Cherishing Our Stupid Ways

I'm sure we all are stupid in similar ways. We fool ourselves into thinking we're getting over on the system, when we really aren't. I was thinking about that this morning as I was bottling shampoo.

When I was in engineering school, Jeremy was in a dorm room down the hall. His mother was a hairdresser, and Jeremy shared some shampoo with me one day when I ran out. It was strange shampoo, watery, and in an odd bottle. He told me that hairdressers use thin shampoo because it penetrates the hair better. The shampoo companies add thickening agents to shampoo to make you think their shampoo is more powerful, when actually, that makes the shampoo less effective. This shampoo comes in a gallon jug only sold to hair salons, and it's diluted to make 8 gallons of shampoo.

I ended up buying a gallon of that concentrate through him, for about the price of two bottles of the high-priced stuff I had been using; it lasted me for about two years, and I was very pleased with it, but since I couldn't buy any more of the concentrate, I had to stop. Years later, I worked in the research labs of Drackett, where they developed Windex, Drano, Mr. Muscle Oven Cleaner, Vanish, endust, Behold, Renuzit, and other household cleaners.

Gary Rolled His Own

The magazines I got at work also served the personal products industry, and the various suppliers published "recipes" for various household cleaners and personal products, using their chemicals, which you could use as a starting point for developing new products. I mentioned what Jeremy had told me about shampoos to Gary, who verified every word of it. He reached into his desk and handed me a pint bottle. Here, try this shampoo, he said. You can grab the ingredients out of the supplies closet and make yourself up a gallon of concentrate; most everyone in the lab does that.

That was a nice tax-free benefit. I ended up making a dozen tubs of a detergent gel as well, years before SoftSoap hit the market, and I loved it. But a couple of years after I left Drackett, I was again without shampoo concentrate.

About a decade ago, I discovered that Sally sells to consumers. It was the first I'd seen a shop that didn't demand to see a license to buy there. Since then, I've been buying shampoo concentrate there. And then The Argument arose.

Here It Is. The Argument

Blondie didn't like the shampoo, she said. It was too runny. I tried explaining the facts to her, but this isn't the kind of argument that you win with facts. (Come to think of it, I don't think any argument between husband and wife ever is.) She wanted to use the shampoo without diluting it. "You're not saving anything by diluting it, anyway. I use a lot less of the concentrate than I use of the diluted shampoo."

And in the name of domestic tranquility, I surrendered. It's not like cost is a big factor, anyway. It was on sale last month, for $4 a gallon. That's like getting 16-ounce bottles of shampoo for 50c. You can repackage it in old shampoo bottles if you want to, but I funnel it into empty spring water bottles. There's no need to label it; the conditioner is a milky pastel color while the shampoo is a richer one.

They're also very handy to take to the dog wash. Yeah, you can turn the switch, and the water comes out with shampoo or conditioner already mixed in it, but it seems to take quite a while to flush out the one chemistry and switch to the other, and two people, each with their own bottle, can apply shampoo or conditioner much more quickly. You're on a timer, and it's expensive to wait for the water to switch!

Breaking The Habit

In any case, I was thinking about making a bottle or so of diluted shampoo for my own use. I ran out before, so I started using the concentrate from the bottle that Blondie was using, and, well, I kinda like the thick stuff. When I use the runny stuff, a lot of it runs through my fingers and lands in the bottom of the shower instead of my deriving any benefit from it.

So, Eddie is a drunkard, and I'm a wastrel. True confessions.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
dog wash - Drackett - Drano - fooling ourselves - Mephistopheles - shampoo - wastrel - watered gin - Windex - wrinkles

Blondie called me on the intercom, and told me that they've declared an emergency at Turkey Hill. They're afraid that the power will go out, so everybody is supposed to go buy five gallons of ice cream and eat it quickly.

Myself, I'm thinking that it's inappropriate in Pennsylvania Dutch country to buy out the supermarket's supply of bread and milk. Instead, I oughta be baking like crazy, and buying a cow. I wonder if the neighbors would object to the cow on the front lawn, or if I need to figure out a way to get it to the rear lawn.

I haven't made bread for a couple of years, because arthritis was really bothering me, and kneading it really tore up my hands. I had a bread machine, but frankly, bread machine bread sucks. If you vary the recipe even a bit, it gets really dense, or else it overflows and makes a mess and the top burns.

I Got A Deal

I got a "deal" on a KitchenAid stand mixer a couple of years ago. It was a really low price because it was supposed to have been factory-reconditioned. I felt guilty for a while, thinking that it might simply have fallen off the back of a truck, this being Pennsylvania, but then I tried using it, and started wondering if it was cheap because it hadn't been reconditioned. It doesn't have as much power I expected it to have.

In any case, I made Blondie a couple of loaves of whole wheat bread this week. She loves whole wheat. In the 1970s, when I made all my own bread for about five years, I came up with a light honey rye that I loved, and I wasn't too impressed with the flavor of this whole wheat. I found it a lot easier to make bread than I'd anticipated, and although I have a problem with standing up very long, I think I'm going to be making mostly my own bread for the immediate present.

Occupational Therapy

It's not that it's cheaper, although it is, and it's not that it's better, although it is, but it's occupational therapy. It's not that I don't have plenty of other things to do, but they're mostly mental projects, and I need some physical things to do instead, things where I can see the results, and see that what I've created is good. Cooking would work, except that I have to do too much searching in high cupboards and low shelves in the refrigerator, and I have a lot of trouble with that right now. Maybe the baking will limber me up, though and I will be able to do more cooking.

They use malt in the bread at Alfred & Sam's. I've never added it to bread when I was making it. According to one website, malt powder is the all-natural "secret ingredient" savvy bread bakers use to promote a strong rise, great texture, lovely brown crust, and extended shelf life. Vitamins and active enzymes in diastatic malt help yeast grow fully and efficiently throughout the fermentation period, yielding a good, strong rise and great oven-spring. Malt also converts starch to sugar, enhancing bread's browning.

It's not the Carnation stuff for milkshakes. You're supposed to get it from a beer supply house, or specialty baking supply house.