So, spent the day baking cookies (two kinds) and making beef stock for demi-glace from scratch. Plus I made two batches of kolacki* dough, as well as the no-sugar added apricot jam for the kolacki filling. Did not have time to make the third kind of cookie, but the kolackis will be better anyway. Finished dipping truffles Wednesday night, so at ( Read more... )

Easter weekend had terrific weather, but I was down in Jersey so didn't get a chance to ride at all. I did get to play a little wiffle ball with a niece and a couple of nephews. It's the first time I've swung any kind of bat in almost a decade, yet I'm the only one of the crew who actually hit the ball. Apparently none of them have their uncle's ( Read more... )

Back in the mid-sixties, my father flew for Aer Lingus on the New York to Shannon route. Shannon was the first duty-free airport, and my father took advantage of this by bringing us home various Irish and British foodstuffs, like Cadbury's chocolate (long before it became available here) and this weird rose hip syrup that was supposedly high in ( Read more... )

Happy Thanksgiving ( Read more... )

Previously in the Plentiful Vintage: It rained for forty days and forty nights, and our hero had to shell out a lot of (fairly moldy) dough to get new tires and a battery for the Machinamobile. Also, it was air show week.

( Two weeks... )

The air show is this weekend, and the performers have started to drift in. Team Oracle was the first in, doing a practice run yesterday at lunch in miserable weather. Today they were moving some corporate jets from their usual parking places to spots away from the expected throngs of people who'll be wandering around on the tarmac. I also noticed ( Read more... )

My 14 year-old nephew requested and received a chain saw for Christmas.

Am home. Christmas was fine, relaxing even. Traffic on the trip down was negligible, especially since the work that was being done on the Tappan Zee seems to be done. Coming back last night was a little trickier, because it was foggy in spots, especially along the Palisades, and there was more traffic. The traffic thinned out around 10 pm, about ( Read more... )

It's truffle time at Casa Machina. I picked up most of my supplies Friday night. It's apparently my lucky week for making them, as Walmart had Hershey chips for $1.50 a bag, AC Moore has candy melts for a $1.69 a bag, and Dave's has Philly cream cheese buy one (@ $2.49) get one free! For the bean counters amongst you, that's basically $3 per 1 lb ( Read more... )

Am in NJ where it is sunny this Easter morning. Plans include dinner at sis #2's house this afternoon ( Read more... )