Month: June 2009

Kaiser Rolls – Failure to launch

Posted on by AuSable

Another bread recipe and another failed attempt. As you can probably tell from the texture shot toward the end, that there basically isn’t any texture inside the rolls. The crumbs from slicing have more texture then the finished kaiser roll. I can’t remember but I think I used bread flour instead of AP flour, so that might have been my downfall in these rolls.

Giving it a quick once over, it is remarkable that there are almost no air pockets in the interior of the bread. If I had made it flat, it probably would have made a better pita bread then kaiser roll. Well back to the drawing board as usual.

Making the Hershey’s Kitchens – Ranch Style Shrimp and Bacon Appetizers

Posted on by AuSable

Let me start by saying that this recipe despite the title has nothing to do with ranch dressing, unlike the whole salad with chicken thing. But more like “I’ll be spending the weekend at my ranch, branding cattle the whole time.” Continue reading →

Misha the Cat

Posted on by AuSable

You’ll never believe it, but my folks got a kitten while they were in town helping with my sisters garage sale a couple of weekends back. We were driving around town after the garage sale, collecting all the signs that my sister posted around town. As we were driving back home, my sister and mom wanted to stop at this garage sale to check it out. (I know it doesn’t make any sense, why would you go to a garage sale. If you were just done having one.)

While I was waiting in the truck with my sisters husband. Curiosity got the best of me, and I had to check out this garage sale (but it was more like a yard sale, since the sale was in there front yard and not the garage in the back of the house.) Well it turned out that not only were they sell junk in the front yard, but they were also giving away kittens on the front porch.

Turns out that my Mom just couldn’t resist a free kitten. She ended up picking out this 4 week old gray cat with blue eyes. There were a bunch of different cats, but the gray one was the youngest. Which is probably for the best, since mom wants her to be an inside only cat.

We sent quite a bit of time on Saturday, trying to come up with girl cat names. Since the cat is gray, I threw in my two cents to name her Kimball, but no one else was liking it as much as me. Turns out that the cat kind of named herself. During our brainstorming session we stumbled on Misha, and it just kind of worked for her. So here is Misha the cat.

Cinder block smoker or compost bin?

Posted on by AuSable

So I’ve got a dilemma.

When I bought my house a number of years back, for some reason the previous owner had left a pile of cinder blocks on the side of the house (as well as a bunch of past due water bills.) For the last couple of years they have just been stacked on the north side of the house, since I thought that it would be a waste to throw out perfectly good cinder blocks when I might need them some day. Say for instance stealing someones rims, this way I’m already prepared to put the car on blocks, but I digress. Continue reading →

Centennial cones are growing – Mid June 2009

Posted on by AuSable

Oh baby, do we have some cone production happening on the centennial hops. I had very low expectations for hop cones this year. But man is the centennial cranking out the cones. To the top 2′ of the centennial vines, there is copious amounts of cone production. As you get closer to the ground you start to get less and less cones. I am definitely going to have enough centennial hops this year for at least a couple of 5 gallon batches of beer. YES!!! Continue reading →

Chopped out half the rhubarb – First half of June 2009

Posted on by AuSable

Time to tame the beast, and I’m not talking about either Supa or Old Milwaukee. The main rhubarb plant in the backyard has reached the point of being unruly, so its time for a haircut. More or less before I headed out of town this past weekend. I pulled out all the monster rhubarb stalks and left the babies to fend for themselves. After chopping off all the leaves and tossing them on the compost pile, I had a plastic grocery bag full of trimmed stalks. And a rhubarb plant that is now about half the size of its former self. Continue reading →

Holding off on upgrading to WordPress 2.8

Posted on by AuSable

Well I tried to upgrade from 2.7.1 to 2.8 and it didn’t go well…..pages not loading, scripts not working, plug-ins stalling. I ended up having to re-install wordpress 2.7.1, just to get things working again.

It looks like they might not have gotten all the kinks out of the beta releases for 2.8 (which I thought about test installing for miia monthly, but now I’m glad that I didn’t) before shipping out the production release. I don’t mind working with software on the bleeding edge (Mozilla/Firefox in the early years), but not when it totally crashed right from the get go.

Potato Chip Review – Lay’s Monterey Pepper Jack

Posted on by AuSable

Now these chips were good! Part of it might be that I had very low expectations after the whole Wisconsin Cheddar debacle. But here is the lowdown.

Right when I opened the bag the first smell that hit my nose was peaches n’ cream corn topped with butter, with a very faint after hint of Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion. Just the main corn smell started to make my mouth water craving some Iowa sweet corn. It really wasn’t until about an hour later that I started to pick-up a hint of the sour cream and onion. But really it was so faint, that it was very easy to miss. Continue reading →

Picked up June/July 2009 Wine Club Shipment Monday from Domaine Carneros

Posted on by AuSable

So once again I had to hold my wine shipment for pickup at the UPS Depot, since I was out of town when the shipment was scheduled. As usual with the mixed club that I subscribe to, I got a bottle of sparkling and a bottle of red.

The sparkling this shipment is a 2003 Le Rêve Blanc de Blancs, which is a blend of 98% Chardonnay and 2% Pinot Blanc. And the red is a 2007 Domaine Carneros Estate Pinot Noir.

One interesting item that I noticed in this shipments newsletter, were all the large format bottles that they have available, at pretty reasonable prices compared to their range of 750ml bottles. For Vintage Brut they have a Magnum(1.5L), Jéroboam(3.0L) and Methuselah (6.0L). For reds, they only have a Pinot Noir as a Magnum. It would be pretty sweet to get the Methuselah, 8 normal sized bottles in one very large bottle. Now thats a party!