Dreams, Moments, Travels
It’s not a cactus, it is a succulent – well it looks like a cactus to me. Not the flower, of course, I know what a flower looks like, although on second thought this doesn’t much look like a flower – besides its bright colors. From the Aloe vera plant comes this springtime bloom. While not native of Arizona, the Aloe vera grows wonderfully here in our desert climate and as always, anything that adds color to our brown environment is a welcome addition.
Family is like chard: colorful, bright, and fluffy. Wrong, family is like wilted chard that has lost some of its appeal but it’s yours, so you deal with it. Come on, family is not like a vegetable at all; they are like ruminants chewing on old memories and passing a lot of gas. Just kidding, family are not like ruminants; they are like…
No, they are not like an assortment of berries.
Obviously, after the Santa Barbara routine, we stopped at the nearby farmers market, did some shopping, and then drove away from the sunset. This was looking back from where we came.
This is what happens when you have a bad head for names; on the left is Boyd. My uncle Woody is obviously in the middle, but I have no recollection of the guy’s name on the right. This is embarrassing.
It’s not very often I’m surprised, especially when it’s still 11 days before my birthday.
For the occasion of my upcoming 44th year, my aunt Ann and uncle Woody with their friend Boyd, brought out a cake on our visit to Santa Barbara this weekend.
It’s been since Christmas when we took my mother-in-law Jutta over to Santa Barbara since we last saw Uncle Woody and Tata, and now feeling a bit recovered from all the travel we did with her, it’s time to drive ourselves the 507 miles over to their front door.
In six days spring will officially be here. Today it was more like summer and the weekend promises more record-breaking high temperatures. We almost hit 100 degrees here in Phoenix, 99 though was a surefire record – and it is still winter (smack my forehead). I, unlike the flowers, am wilting from the early bake. I do not look forward to the hell this summer is sure to deliver.
With a wide range of help from the books Classic Sourdoughs, The Village Baker, Great Whole Grain Breads, along with King Arthur Flour and their wonderful The Baker’s Store and the various blogs and websites for bakers on the internet, I have finally tackled my first bread baking in years and the results were almost perfect. I shouldn’t have scored the tops of the bread and the recipe called for baking the loaves on a greased and cornmeal-dusted cookie sheet, I used a baking stone. This was hard enough, but now I want to tackle baguettes and multi-grain bread.
Finally made the 49-mile drive from North Phoenix to Queen Creek to visit the Save Your Dairy folks and meet the cows who give us the raw milk we use for making cheese. This small operation needs to find new acreage as new homes with greater capacity to generate property taxes are squeezing the dairy from its land. I think it is likely we will lose the services of these ladies as finding comparable land near Phoenix is either cost-prohibitive or simply not available. Next week I will pick up a gallon of cream and churn it into butter – a new challenge in my culinary endeavors.