Snobs

Mr. Aitch and I are snobs.

Bread snobs.

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We can barely eat mass-produced bread from the store.  Most of it feels gummy and tastes, well, tasteless.

The texture of bread is known as the crumb and it can be open or close.  Open has a lot of texture and close doesn’t.  Most store-bought mass-produced breads have a close crumb. IMHO that equates to the gumminess.  That’s all I know about bread baking but it’s enough for me to know.

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In my experience most store-bought mass-produced bread is full of preservatives which can be good as the bread doesn’t mold as quickly.  Locally baked breads from our local bakers tend not to use preservatives in their bread.  Their bread has more texture like what my grandmother used to bake.  One problem is that it molds quickly.  Unrefrigerated and you’ve got maybe 2-3 days before it gets fuzzy.

We don’t eat a like of sliced bread in our house so the solution we came up with involves frozen bread dough.  Yes, it still has preservative in it but we get the texture we like and can have freshly baked bread and rolls every day or two.

Our oven stays off during the summer.  It’s the Mr. Aitch Law in our house.  So how do we get freshly baked bread and rolls?

The gas grill.

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We only bake enough that the two of us can eat within a few days.

Rolls

Since we grill almost every day, it’s not a problem to do bread, or rolls, or hamburger buns, or pepperoni rolls, or cinnamon rolls when we need/want them.

bread

The smell of freshly baked bread just makes me hungry.  🙂

 

Identity

Do you have an unusual luggage tag?

Or do you tie a brightly colored cloth or ribbon on your handle to help find your luggage easily?

I made a bright removable cover for one of my suitcases a few years ago and I’ve always been able to identify it immediately when traveling.

My carry-on luggage needed a special ID tag and I just happened to get a very personalized one.

I found the “medical device” clip art on-line for one side.

Front

Then I made my own QR code with my contact info on the other side.  So my identity is kind of protected.  One just needs a QR reader app to actually read it.  (Of course a real QR Code doesn’t have a big blank circle in the middle of it…)

Back

Try this one:

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More for you

I’ve tried.

I’ve really tried.

I’ve tried it on toast.  No thank you.

I’ve tried it on ice cream.  Didn’t work out for me.  Just how does one get this to hot fudge consistency?

I’ve eaten it right out of the jar.

I add hazelnut flavored creamer to my hot chocolate but I don’t like this.

I wanted to like it.

But I just don’t.

Maybe I’m not eating it right.

So now there’s more for you to enjoy. What’s your favorite way to eat this stuff?  Do tell…

nutella

 

Deck redo

Mr. Aitch and I needed to do a major overhaul of our deck.  I don’t remember how long it had been since we really, really, really cleaned it.  Yeah, Mr. Aitch would power wash it every couple of years but it was in pretty sad shape.

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So we decided to get to work.

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We cleaned it.

 

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We scrubbed it.  I’m not affiliated with Sherwin Williams.  This stuff is just fantastic for removing old sealer and stain.

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We stripped it.

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We neutralized the stripper.  Don’t I look “neutralized”?

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We stained it.

Post-cap

We replaced the old wooden algae-covered post caps (as seen above) with these sleek copper ones.

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The entire process took about eight days as we had to work around the heat and humidity but it was worth it.

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We are enjoying it.