Za

Been way too long since I made pizzas. When it was hot out this summer, I basically avoided using the oven most of the time, but the weather moderated and I kept fixin' to make pizza instead of actually making it.





I made a little less dough this time. The recipe I copped from Cooking Light calls for 3/4 cup water and 2-1/2 cups flour (along with the requisite 2 tsp. yeast, and in their recipe honey, though I use a couple teaspoons white sugar—honey sounds nice, but I know from my zymurgical adventures that honey can be tricky to ferment. I suppose the dilution of the dough makes it work, but white sugar produces plenty of CO2 to raise your crust, too.)




Last few times I'd doubled their batch, because it produces way too thin a crust for my taste. I like those big, pillowy handles, and I've even experimented with stuffed crusts. But I didn't want a fargon loaf of bread rimming the pies this time, so I tried to come up with about half again, a splash over a cup, maybe 1-1/8 to 1-1/4 cup of water, 3-ish cups flour, etc.



About right, but no pillows, just enough dough to cover the pan and ramp up the edges. I need to split the difference between this and the überpillows version.



I made an Alfredo-black olive for the girls, and some sort of supremo thing for me.





The supremo was topped with Alfredo sauce, minced garlic, sautéed onions, fresh sliced mushrooms, green bell pepper, whole black olives, and anchovies. Majorly comestible.

Sneakers

Em's been complaining that she needs new shoes for awhile. Partly, I think, fueled by her fixation on this one pair she'd seen at the Stuff-Mart.

Both girls' shoes were looking pretty care worn, so I decided to try getting them new ones. The model Em was set on was too expensive, except it wasn't. It was marked down for clearance.

Before we found the shoes Em wanted in her size, I'd found a couple others to try on Mo, but when I'd ask her if she liked them, she'd say 'no.' I eventually asked her if she liked any of the shoes in the store, and she said 'no' to that as well.

When we found these shoes Em wanted so badly in her size and on close-out, I spotted a pair in Mo's size, and got her to try it on. This time, when I asked her if she liked the shoes, she said 'yes,' so it was a done deal. She must have really, really, liked them to admit it like that.



But I could see headaches in the future when we go to get ready and they have identical shoes a half size apart. So I bought a set of laces and strung Mo's pair up with them so we can tell them apart at a glance. I am truly a genius.

HMS Beagle

Went to Parkville to the HMS Beagle shop, hoping to find the E30-4T motor that will launch Floyd the pink boob-cancer rocket next weekend.




They do have a great selection of rocketry stuff, far better than Hobby Haven and worth the drive to be sure, but they were out of the motor in question.




As long as we were there, I wanted to walk around Parkville, which is cute as a button and all decked out in falling leaves. It's a mini-Aspen, a place I could see myself living if I could figure a way to support myself there. Since I don't see myself owning an antique store or bed & breakfast, that would leave winery as my only option. Maybe I could launch my meadery in such a town as a retirement project one day.





The girls, however, were not having this walking the town business and we settled for leaving slowly in the car.

Hash

I had some leftover fries in the fridge, which I diced up, along with a half an onion, and sautéed until the onions were browning a bit. Added two beaten eggs with some black pepper and Tabasco, sprinkled with shredded cheddar after the eggs had cooked.



Some kinda hash, not sure what to call it. Good, though.

Panic

I woke this morning not to my alarm, but apparently on my own. I can't sack out like I could back when the human growth hormone still flowed and my body made plenty of melatonin, but I hadn't gone to bed early enough I'd reasonably expect to wake before the alarm.

Plus, it was light out side. It's just barely getting light when I leave the house for work, and before the switch to Standard Time, it was just plain dark when I set off on the odyssey that is my daily commute.

I look at my alarm clock, and it says 1:34.

I freak out a little, rolling from the bed and running to the kitchen. I wonder, did my boss leave a message on my machine? How badly is my bacon burned at this point? I've been late plenty of times, the various routes I've tried to find to work all having their weak spots, occasions of construction, gridlock, injury accidents and whatnot. But I've never been six or seven hours late.

No messages on my answering machine, but then I see the clock on the stove says 7:33. It's flashing, but the stove apparently didn't lose power long enough (this is when I realize the power must have blinked off, judging by the alarm clock, at about 6:00 a.m.) to forget the time. The living room clock (which runs on batteries) agrees with the stove's assessment, so I'm late (or will be before I can get my ass out the driveway, let alone all the way to Waldo), but I'm not an MIA.

$193 Budgie

My furnace wouldn't come on. At all.

I did everything I knew to do to fix a furnace, which is to say I cussed at it. I actually got the panel off to relight the pilot light, but I couldn't figure out where it was. Then I saw the warning to never, ever, try lighting the pilot on this furnace because it has an electronic ignition.

So I call the HVAC people. I can tolerate a 59ºF home, really, but I know it's a matter of time until that's a 39ºF house, and that's cold even for Lobsters.

So the guy comes and about thirty seconds after he gets here, he's found the problem. A bird got int he flu and died, falling into the fan.

$63 to come out to my house; $130 to remove a dead animal from the furnace (even though the guy was only here twenty minutes, so the flat rate book must assume we're talking about a bloated raccoon corpse).



One expensive bird.

Katy Trail (Just the Tip)

Headed to Clinton after church today, took on the beginning of the Katy Trail. Not that Em wanted to go. I don't think Mo's heart was in it either (judging from her asking to go home about ten steps into it).



Em even tried to block me from taking her picture at first, though she had waxed from describing it as a forced march to 'sounds like fun' several times over the past couple of days.



Once we got out and actually started walking, though, they both got into it. It was 70º, sunny, the fall colors showing, Marilyn Manson would have found a new spring in his step once he got out on the trail today.



After marveling at what a perfect rocket field the first farm we passed was, I spotted the remains of a lost rocket. Looks to have been lost awhile ago, but no question what it was.





We made it about two and a half miles up the trail, stopped for lunch and headed back. I didn't want to push it so far that they'd balk next time I suggested we hit the trail, but I felt like we'd barely made a down payment on the hike.





We drove up highway 50 after, scoped out some of what we failed to hike to. Calhoun had the most beautiful stretch of trail to start on, and I wished we'd gone ahead and driven the extra ten minutes to start there. Calhoun also had a bike rental outfit, though they appear closed for the season.









We took a scenic route back, winding through the hollers of the Ozarks, eventually reaching Warrensburg and coming back in from there. Hilly country, but gorgeous with the trees turning. Hilly enough you could feel it in your ears as you went up and down on the two-lane. Saw an Amish buggy, too.













The artist formerly known as Frau Lobster suggested I take the stuff along for Mo to make rubbings. But she didn't want to. Em, as it turned out, did want to do it. We didn't walk far enough to pass a grave yard, but we did pass three benches with rubbable signage.





Also passed a scrap yard I typeset business cards for. It's this huge conglomerate actually, and they have scrap metal yards all over the place. I picture these massive salvage yards, miles and miles of shredded cars and whatnot. The Clinton Yard turns out to be a scrap heap barely larger than my Mom's next door neighbor's home. Really, he's only missing the front-loader.

Trout

I grilled a couple of the trout from the Bennett trip last night. I had three thawed, but Em went to a pizza party and I only cooked two of them.



They grilled up perfectly. I tried to ask Mo if she wanted the head off or left on, but I could tell she didn't get the question. I opted for beheading because I feared she wouldn't eat a fish that looked at her.



Then I realized, she's not careful enough at eating to let her eat it straight off the bones. I'd have to pull the meat off anything I didn't want her to eat, so it really didn't matter.

I had de-boned the first fish and realized she had eaten the whole first fish and was still looking for more. I could probably have cooked all five fish int he freezer and been lucky to get more than the three bites I got before it was all over.



For afters, we had what will probably be the last watermelon of 2007: a puny little thing, though not bad, and the rind was thin so it actually had some edible flesh inside.

Defending the Faith (Trick or Treat)

Okay, I think I qualify as a Defender of the Faith when it comes to my pet holiday. I hear people talk about trick-or-treating in past tense, as in 'Remember when you could go trick-or-treating in your neighborhood?'

News flash: You still can. Well, maybe not in the neighborhood I used to live in, where some of the people who came to the door were old enough to legally drink and were likely as not to make a grab for the whole bowl of candy if you were chump enough to hold it out for them to pick.



I dressed up for work, my hippie-pirate getup, and I was the only one. I even heard, 'This is a place of business,' though from someone who is mainly known for honing her joylessness.



Here in Mayberry, life is good. I observe all the old conventions I remember from my own childhood: if the porch light isn't on, don't bother them; don't go too far from home, you want to mainly hit people you more or less know; teenagers are too old to go begging for candy; nobody is too old to dress up; the whole 'trick' thing is a joke, not backed up by any real threat of vandalism or violence...



Some of our neighbors really got the holiday spirit out. I'm jealous of people who have the whole Halloween decoration aisle in their front yard.



Mo had a cold, and I think it really slowed her down, though not so much that we didn't hit the houses. The Great Mall was next on the agenda, though, and when I asked her to go to the bathroom so we could head there, she stripped while on the throne and said, 'Tuck you in?' Translation: I've had fun, Dad, but I'm way too fagged out to do the mall.



We also had a good, legit startle for the girls. We were approaching the front door of a house and I thought to myself, They really did a good job on that scarecrow. It was a goblin-headed thing, but not lumpy and out of proportion like most scarecrows.



When we were about four steps from the porch, he turned his head to us and waved. Em about jumped out of her Rainbow Fairy wings. This was the same house that produced the Snow Punk, and this only made me happier to count them as neighbors.



I did hear at least one comment that 'we're getting all sizes,' which I take to mean my kids appear too old for the ritual. They're ten and eleven, at the old end of the range, I'll grant you, but not too old. Seventh Grade, that's the cut-off in my mind. It's not my fault that my daughters are Amazons, both over five feet tall. Okay, maybe it is my fault since I was six feet tall and shaving by the time I hit junior high. They didn't get those genes from the Artist Formerly Known as Frau Lobster.




Getting back to the whole question of defending the faith: I believe Halloween, and in particular trick-or-treating, is to important to give up out of paranoia. Which is what is working against it. Even when I was a kid (when the plains were black with buffalo), my parents felt the need to inspect my haul of candy for signs of razor blades and needles. They never found any, of course, because that was mostly an urban myth even then. Snopes claims there are about eighty cases of it since 1959, making it about as statistically likely as people handing out bundles of hundred dollar bills.

And why are people afraid to trick-or-treat with their kids? Because they don't know their neighbors. But this is exactly the kind of social ritual that puts you in contact with your neighbors.



I am, by the way, bummed that Daylight Savings Time got extended into November. I think it's supposed to save energy, but I'm not sure how. Most people seem to use artificial light indoors no matter the time of day. I know I do. It did get dark while we trick-or-treated, but it was weird heading out in broad daylight.

Now, what to do with all this freakin' candy?