Fishing Expedition

And not even the evil internet kind. William and I drove up to visit Francesca over the weekend, where we were able to enjoy the benefits of her 5-acre lake by canoeing about it with fishing poles, searching for bass and catfish. We didn't get any catfish, but we overloaded on bass. The general consensus is that the bass are a little over-populated and exceedingly bored, so they'll even bite down on a bare hook just for a change of pace.

Consequently, we came off the lake with almost 30 "keepers" and had a fish fry that night on the back porch of Francesca's hobbit hole. I don't suppose there's much reason to post the whole procedure twice, so I'll just direct you all over to my LiveJournal post, in which I have more pictures and assorted details of the catching, cleaning, cooking, and consuming of a whole bunch of bass.

Archaeology is Good

Danish archaeologists say they have found a well-preserved Viking shield that is more than 1,000 years old.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Raglan Faire

I found a link to pictures of an SCA event in Wales through a LiveJournal group this morning.

I so want to go to an event in Europe now (as if I didn't already).

What is Abiogenesis?

Every now and then, somebody describes a scientific principle in a surprisingly easy way.

An easily escapable situation...

... involving an overly elaborate and exotic death. Yes, that's what happens to intruders who wake me up at 3:30am two nights running by gnawing on rigid objects. I am not eager to kill, but I don't hesitate when something threatens my sleep.

The weapon of choice was a standard snap-trap. Beats the heck out of a glue trap -- I don't want the little vermin to die slowly of thirst. Let me assure you that the snap trap killed the little beggar instantly; I saw the damage.

The bait? Chocolate syrup. It's like mouse crack, and there's no way for them to get it without disturbing the trigger.

Past-Due Food Porn

Just a couple of cooking efforts from the past couple of weeks. William only downloaded the pictures from his camera last night.

Thai Steak Salad (Yum Nua)

Schweine Schnitzel with Spaetzle and Red Cabbage

Substitute pork chops for the veal specified in the Schnitzel recipe. It's not bad as-is, but if we'd been thinking, we would have made a hunter sauce or something for it.

Sorry, but no one thought to take pictures of last night's Grecian Braised Chicken.

Preparing for Coronation

I spent some of the weekend helping to prepare for the upcoming Meridies Coronation. In particular, we'll be serving some fried fruit pies for breakfast Saturday morning, and we put those together this afternoon.

Highly unperiod kneading methodology.	William, Juliana, and Constanza work the dough.
Rectangular pies are apple.	Rolling, rolling, rolling.
Triangles are blueberry.	Triangles with folded corners are cherry.

Make the dough, roll the dough, fill with fruit, fold, crimp, freeze. That was the plan for the day. The actual frying will occur on site. As noted above, the contents are coded by shape.

The lurking puppy is Randy, who was fervently hoping we would get clumsy and drop something good. He got lucky occasionally.

Ah... Failblog

This is extra funny because I used to work for Shop at Home...



Other people's misfortune: is there anything funnier?

I'm assuming the host wasn't seriously hurt. That would make it not funny. He doesn't seem to be seriously hurt, though. Mostly pain.