Lawn Pirates

I dug some bandannas out of my sock drawer--and Cole insists on referring to them as 'pirate hats'. Cole has wanted an eye patch for a few months and I have failed to get him one. This was the only way I could think of to assuage his need to look like a pirate. If only I could get him this excited about ninjas.

Nasal Napalm

We have been conducting a little research in our house and I think we have found a new weapon of mass destruction.

I just changed my daughter's diaper. I think the government would like to have a chat with me if they had any idea what my daughter unleashed on our house. They don't need to enrich uranium any more. They don't need to sink money into chemical weapons. They just need to recruit toddlers with a high diet of pineapple and offer free diaper pick-up.

Birthday ruminations

This is what a slice of heaven looks like.

Normally, I would opt for angel food cake for my birthday because that is what my mom always made me (I think we can all read the obvious subtext of why she never made it for my other siblings, so lets move on.) As it happens, they do not have angel food cake mix here in the lonely south pacific. My lovely wife made it from scratch last year, which was a real treat. This year, however, I thought I would branch out a bit and asked her to make me a chocolate cake. She delivered.

What you see above is something like a mud cake with a layer of chocolate truffle through the middle, just to prove she could transcend any chocolate craving I could throw down before her. And if that wasn't enough, she slathered on chocolate frosting just to throw all subtlety and caution to the wind. I think my body started pumping out insulin just from smelling it.


Cora thoughtfully contemplating chocolate yummyness



It was a good day. I was able to talk with my mom and sister on the phone. I received some lovely cards, a few books and a new cast iron pan that I can't wait to try out.



A few years ago, my friend O'Steven told me to take stock in my life and see what was important to me. I wrote him a list and I look back on it every once in a while. Most years, on my birthday, I write another list (trying not to look at previous lists) to see what was important to me through the past year. They usually have common themes - food, pop culture...

What do I need in life?

time with my wife
smiling kids
a good game of Scrabulous
hot cocoa and Tim Tams
warm bread
acceleration
quality wool socks
sunglasses
packing tape
a hammer, a socket set and a phillips screw driver
e-mail
6-inch subway sub, medium drink and 2 cookies
butter
a good book
witty banter
a thesaurus
time to reflect
pocket knife
family photos
international phone cards
saturday morning with my family
blueberry pancakes
100 cuts with my bokken each night
work mentors and life mentors
black 0.4 mm felt tip pen and grid paper
IT support
grace
old friends
pain pills
mixed cd's
staying centered

Yeah, I know it reads like one of those lame "everything I learned in kindergarten" books. Once I go down the road of writing about sentimental things it always looks like that. This list isn't that comprehensive. I may add to it in the next few days. I think it is one of those things that may not mean much to anyone else but the person who wrote it.

Another trip around the sun.

Cinnamon Rolls

It is winter here and I was feeling a little homesick, so the only effective way I know to cope with that is through food.

Wednesday night I came home and Mary had recently pulled a homemade loaf of white bread out of the oven. It was magnificent. We buy wheat or wheat with grain bread at the store, so the combination of fresh baked bread and the sinfulness of white bread was pure heaven.

This weekend, I thought I would follow her lead and try to make cinnamon rolls.

It is at these times, I search through my recipe box and find it lacking. I never really paid attention when my mom and sisters were making the cinnamon rolls when I was growing up. I remember watching them do parts of the process, but I wasn't directly involved. So, I had to go back to my compendium of all classic recipes--Irma S. Rombauer's "The Joy of Cooking".

I searched through her tome and found she didn't have a specific cinnamon roll recipe either; but for rolls, she suggested using a milk bread dough so I went with that.

The only missing element at this point was the gooey caramel my sisters used to put on the bottom of the pan to really jack-up the calorie load of the roll. The rolls would bake in the pan and the caramel would bubble up, infusing the bottom of the roll with a chewy sugary saturation that goes perfectly with the buttery icing on top.

It was Friday night on this side of the planet, which meant it was Thursday morning back in Wisconsin and everyone I called was off to work. I couldn't get in touch with anyone to ask how to make the caramel. I was finally able to reach my Aunt JoAnn in Idaho and she gave me some pointers, but as I suspected, she told me there was no real recipe for it. You just have to know the right proportions of butter, sugar and cream to add, then how long to boil them for--as if this is some magical substance that if written down would fall into the hands of someone dangerous and upset the natural balance of the bread world.

I tried my hand at the caramel thing. After an initial failed attempt, my second batch was actually some pretty good caramel--but it wasn't the stuff that my sisters used to make. I still muddled onward, undeterred and made the rolls anyway with my second-rate caramel bottom.

Everything else was lovely. The rolls were light and fluffy, the icing melted perfectly; it was just the thing to start off a Saturday morning. I won't be putting Cinnabon out of business though.