BATARDED!

In my continuing pursuit of yummy bread I’ve been going through the book, Local Breads by Daniel Leader. It’s been a fun read and an education on how serious many people take their loaves.

I went through the chapter about baguettes, moved on to croissants and boules and came upon a chapter about batards. I’d never heard of batards.

 The book had a photo of a beautiful loaf of whole grain bread fatter and wider than a baguette. 

My mind went back to a phrase I remembered from my one semester of college Shakespeare, Hamlet to be specific, in which the Great Dane suspects his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are laying a trap for him and he plans his own preemptive strike.

He said something about the sport of them being hoisted with their own petard; a petard being some kind of bomb and they being damaged by their own explosion.

This led me to check out the actual meaning of the word petard--thus straying ever farther from bread making.

 

With a little internet research I discovered that the word petard comes from Middle French peter, to break wind; and petard is a modern French word for firecracker. 

Which has nothing to do with bread.

Then I found another site which told me some breads  are named after places, but the majority of loaves are named after their shape.  Baguette translates to mean “rod,” and boule means “ball.”

 Batard can mean either bastard or hybrid as its shape is a cross between the baguette and the boule. Another reference said that batard in bread circles refers to an inferior baguette, half the length and much wider.  But although bread from a batard does not have the maximum crust of the classic baguette, its fat shape and doughy middle makes it ideal for sandwiches.

I guess I had farted around long enough and decided to try my luck at making a batard or two myself.

I tried the recipe for whole wheat and rye sour dough bread.  It came out not bad.

 So now I know the difference between a petard and a batard and a baguette and a boule.  But since the guys in my house are not fans of crusty bread I may have to find someone who appreciates this latest creation or buy bigger pants.

TROGDOR THE BURNINATOR!

I was looking for video instructions on art and drawing and re-discovered this one.  It reminded me of a time only a few years ago when I had a house full of fuzzy-faced sons, YouTube was new and Strong Bad was King.  I really miss you BeeRonie and Bobert. Way to escape into the mountains.  Thank goodness I still have Beavis to leave underwear in the laundry room and science experiments under the bed.  I still have The Cheat sticker in the back window of my Subaru. Long live Trogdor the Burninator!

MAN CAVE OVERHAUL

Two or three years ago Beavis got an X-Box with the Kinect feature. The games respond to players as they move, without the need for controllers.  Soon the whole family was running and jumping in place, bowling without a ball and dancing like a bunch of weirdoes while avatars on the screen reproduce the actions.  Watching the players was even more fun than participating.

Then there was the night we had extra kids in the basement and they were going through a decathlon.  The whole event came to a halt during the javelin throw. During her toss, one granddaughter’s hand clipped the light fixture on the ceiling and it came crashing to the floor.  Fortunately no one was hurt although the games were brought to a standstill while the glass was cleaned up.

The reason this is important is because we decided to just remove the ceiling fixture instead of replacing it since this wasn’t the first time it had been damaged by too much energy.

Soon there was a hole in the ceiling and then plaster and paint, but the paint didn’t match.

 The reason this is important is because after we painted the window frames in the kitchen there was a lot of left-over paint.

So we went through all the hassle of pulling things off the family room walls, moving furniture, draping drop cloths and so forth.  We found antique food chunks, odd toys, coins, and a bug trap filled to the edges with dead hobo spider carcasses. Yikes!

Of course we ran out of paint before we ran out of wall, resulting in another trip to the store for more paint, plus more rollers and brushes.

 When the guys finally put everything back together the room was much brighter…

…the smoke from the fireplace was gone from the walls and the man cave was rearranged and  back in business.