Tasty Treats

POPPING: On Wednesday morning, we delivered our latest Birthday Dreams creation. The birthday teen reported liking music and movies. We went with the movie theme, deciding to make a big tub of popcorn. Out of cake.

It required some carving and a little engineering. We doubled and already-big cake recipe to give us plenty of layers to work with. We built the thing upside down. First two layers were 9-inch cake pans. Atop that, we put a cake board. This would be necessary later, to help support the weight, after we flipped the cake.

After the 9-inch rounds and the cake board, we put another 9-inch layer, and then a couple of 7-or so inch layers, These bottom three layers got three wooden dowels inserted in them, so that they were touching the bottom of the cake board resting atop the two biggest layers. There was also one long dowel running top to bottom through all five layers. 

We crumb coated the whole cake and then wrapped it in white marshmallow fondant. We dyed leftover white fondant red, and cut tapered stripes out for the cake's sides. Putting those on was tricky. Fondant likes to stretch as you lift it. From time to time we stuck it in the fridge or freezer to help it keep its shape.

Once the stripes were applied, it was time to flip. I put the silver cake board on top (well, really, the bottom) of the cake, which was resting on a metal cake lifter tool, held my breath and flipped it. Mercifully, nothing bad happened.

Once the cake was upright, Annabelle applied the circle on its front, and cut out letters for the teen's name (altered in the photo above). We then cut another cake board to match the size of the top of the cake, and made a kettle corn mount atop it (sticking that stuff together with melted marshmallow). It fit nicely atop the 'tub.' 

We used an extra big cake board to give room to surround the cake with movie-theater-style boxes of classic candy.

Pretty darn cute, if we do say so ourselves. Hoped the birthday person enjoyed it!

BATTY: I follow lots of local branches of King County Library System on Facebook. A couple of days ago, one of them posted an even, "Bats of the Pacific Northwest." It was billed as a one hour Zoom session. I signed the kids up, of course.  We know almost nothing about our local bat friends.

Can you spy CJ and Annabelle on the Zoom screen?

I didn't get to hear most of the program, but what I did hear was absolutely fascinating. I asked CeeJ and Bee to make me a list of seven things they learned about bats today.

Here's CJ's list. ...

Early this afternoon, I attended a virtual seminar about bat conservation in the Pacific Northwest, especially Washington state. Here are seven facts I learned about bats during the meeting:

Contrary to popular belief, the majority of bats tested do not have rabies. Approximately 1% of tested bats have rabies.

Megabats were formerly classified as primates. While bat species are currently classified as composing the order Chiroptera, bats do share Boreoeutheria, a clade or magnorder, with bats.

The smallest known mammal species (and, by extension, bat species) in the world is the bumblebee bat, which typically has a forearm length just over one inch long. Bumblebee bats, which are native to Thailand, are named such because of their size similarity to bumblebees.

Likewise, the largest known bat species is the giant golden-crowned flying fox, native to the Philippines. Giant golden-crowned flying foxes have an average forearm length of about eight and a half inches.

Bats are nocturnal creatures, often opting to travel at nighttime. This is part of the reason why they are seen less often by humans than common birds.

Bats have flight more flexible than that of birds, because they have membranes instead of feathers.

Bats are the only known mammal species capable of "true" flight, as opposed to the falling-with-style of "flying" squirrels.

And here's what Annabelle learned ...

1/5th of all mammals in the world are bats.
There are approximately 1411 different species of bat.
Bats are necessary for the pollination of over 300 species of fruit, including avocados, mangos, figs, and even some non-fruits like agave or nuts.
The Bumblebee Bat is the world's smallest mammal.
Not all bats use echolocation - some fruit bat species have larger and sharper eyes for better sight.
Pteropus bats - also known as Flying Foxes - are the largest species of bat, with wingspans of up to 6'.
Bats can live for more than 20 years, with the longest documented bat living 41 years!

One thing I learned - the saying 'blind as a bat' is a misnomer. Bats aren't blind. Not at all. They have eyesight as good as ours during the day, and much better than ours at night.  

PRE-FEED: Today, when I wasn't helping a couple hundred or so people get ballots for this November's election, I toiled in the kitchen to get ready for tomorrow's Teen Feed. By 8 a.m., I'd cooked up 30 cups of macaroni.

I also peeled, sliced and cooked up 20+ pounds of caramelized onions today. Can you imagine how our house and I smell right about now? 

Tomorrow, we just need to turn the cooked pasta into mac salad, and make cobbler to feed about 30 or so. No biggie. ... 

Baking It

 

CAKE DAY: Pretty much from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., we three worked on the beginnings of a cake project for Birthday Dreams. The cake is for a 17-year-old who loves movies. She wanted a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. Kinda boring as cakes go, but we give the people what they want.

We decided to make a cake in the shape of a big tub of popcorn like you get at the movie theater (remember those?).  For that, we had to double the recipe and make six cake layers.

CJ cut parchment circles for the bottoms of the pans.

He also helped sift the powdered sugar for the marshmallow fondant.

We did get the cake all baked, stacked and filled, crumb coated and covered in fondant yesterday. Today, while I work, the kids will have to stripe it and put the birthday girl's name on it. Oh, and top it with popcorn, of course!

ALL TOGETHER NOW: The kids have been working a puzzle the last couple of days, and finished it yesterday afternoon. 

While they were puzzling with that, I was mulling over our kitchen floor. I have been looking for flooring for months/years now and really didn't find anything I loved for that space. It's definitely going to have a retro look - we just got a 'new' (to us) white fridge, and we have an Imperial Flair stove we're going to install. 

I kept looking at new stuff, by my mind always wandered back to the vintage VCT (vinyl composite tiles). I ordered samples last week, and they showed up a few days ago. I really do like these colors, and I did some research online about potential patterns.

Last night, I finally ordered the tile, so stay tuned - this ugly floor is gonna be going away within a month, I'd say. 

Slice of Life

WINGING IT: On Friday, we joined Kennedy for an outing to the Seatac Disc Golf Course. 

The property is right under the flight path for Seatac airport, so it's a good place to do some plane spotting while you stroll the grounds. 

It's a good place to play on a sunny day, as there's lots of shade from a variety of evergreens. There is also the occasional something blooming to be seen,

 

CUT IT OUT: Recently, we found ourselves with a couple of extra watermelon on our hands. I have always considered my watermelon slicing skills lacking, so I asked CJ to find me a 'life hack' type tutorial about how to cut up a watermelon.

He sent me a link to a page with clear, step-by-step instructions, and even a short video. After reading and watching those, I felt ready to take on my own watermelon.

First you cut it in half length-wise. Then you cut that half in half. You now have a quarter of a watermelon to work with.

You insert your knife and slice horizontally, from end to end, making sure the tip of your knife is touching the rind on the other side from where you're cutting. You repeat those horizontal slice lines on the other face of the quartered watermelon. 

Now, you're ready to make the vertical cuts. You slice from the peak to the bottom rind.

Once that's done, you trace along the rind of the watermelon with your knife (on both sides of the quartered melon). This step is kind of like when you cut grapefruit from the rind. 

Once that's done, the cubed watermelon just falls out into the bowl. So easy! 

Wish I'd known this decades ago.

Summer Schooling

CLASSY: All this week, Annabelle is involved in a "Girls Who Code" summer 'camp.' It's online, of course (%#$@ pandemic). 

The organization works to close the gender gap in computer science careers. 

According to their website, "In 1995, 37% of computer scientists were women. Today, it’s only 24%. The percent will continue to decline if we do nothing. We know that the biggest drop off of girls in computer science is between the ages of 13 and 17." They report serving over 300,000 girls to date through their Summer Immersion Program, clubs, and college loops.

Girls who Code lists bravery, sisterhood and activism as goals that define their organization.

Annabelle has been learning about HTML and JavaScript. Her homework today included watching this video.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1Wi2A8la3VQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

CJ had a class on Monday morning. I'll have him tell you about it.  

Monday morning, I took part in a brief virtual workshop hosted by the Japan-America Society of the State of Washington.The 45-minute event  went over some of the customs and traditions of Japanese shopping and malls.

For example, we were taught about how in Japan, it's advised against giving cashiers large amounts of change (for example, $20). This can make it difficult for a cashier to give you change back. Another feature of Japanese markets is the vending machines, which often contain "seasonal products" like soup during winter and cold drinks during summer, and items not typically seen in Western vending machines, like toys. Japanese malls, in comparison to Western malls, are usually vertically-oriented instead of horizontally-oriented, and often have movie theaters at the top.

McMUSSELS: CJ also has a short report about an article he read yesterday in Science News. 

Yesterday afternoon, my grandfather gave me a magazine. He urged me to read To Save Appalachia’s Endangered Mussels, Scientists Hatched a Bold Plan, an article about a mussel conservation effort in the state of Kentucky. To begin, the article starts with an offbeat description of an emergency mussel rescue/surgery operation in a rural McDonald's parking lot in Kentucky. This seems like an odd spot to be doing important conservation work, but the researchers don't seem to mind. According to the article, "a single mussel can filter more than 50 liters of water per day, removing algae and pollution, including toxic substances dumped into rivers as industrial waste." This ability to clean up toxic waste is possibly the single most important reason for the presence of mussels, as well as a potential cause of them being an endangered species.

Finders Creepers

HIDDEN 'GEMS': As reported here recently, we finally tore down the wall between the kitchen and this view (photo taken from the kitchen on Monday).

At this point in our lives, we have torn down too many walls to count. And you know how you hear neat-o stories about people finding trea$ure$ or great mementos in their walls when remodeling? Yeah, we're not those people, unfortunately.

The former kitchen wall yielded a couple of curiosities. One was a beat up old Heidelberg beer box part, being used as a baffle of some sorts.  

The other surprise? ... Hey, what's that? ...

Oh HELL no! It's a petrified reptilian creature staring lifelessly out at us. >SHUDDER<

Wonder how long he'd been there - two weeks or 50 years? Not a pleasant place or way to die, that's for sure.

MUSIC MATTERS: Over the past week CJ has had the opportunity to visit two record stores, much to his pleasure. It was his first visit to one in months, due to damn COVID. And while the Novel Coronavirus 19 isn't going anywhere anytime soon in the States, CJ masked up and socially distance shopped at each place. 

He can tell you a bit about his recent acquisitions. 

In the past three days, I've bought two albums that I've wanted in my record collection for a long time. In the midst of this global pandemic, I opted to support local businesses by buying them from brick-and-mortar stores.

The first album was Bleach, the debut album of iconic Seattle band Nirvana. Bleach arguably serves as one of the foundational albums of the Grunge genre, and was the first recorded and widely-available showcase of Nirvana's songwriting and performance chops. The cashier at Silver Platters, the store I purchased Bleach at, told me that he had seen me pick up the album at least three or four times before during previous visits.

Also worth noting is that the issue of Bleach I purchased contains a recording of a full performance by Nirvana on February 9, 1990 at the Pine Street Theatre in Portland, Oregon. The recording demonstrates Nirvana's live show pre-Nevermind.

This morning, my mother and I went to Easy Street Records in Seattle to get breakfast and purchase an album. In haste, I picked out Surfer Rosa by the Pixies. Surfer Rosa was the Pixies' first full-length album, and included Where Is My Mind?, their most famous song. The Pixies were a major influence on several major bands to follow, including Nirvana, Weezer, and Radiohead.

Also, shout out to Nonnie and Bops for CJ's Silver Platters gift certificate. You can see he put it to good use. 

Here's an exterior shot of Easy Street from my vantage point while waiting on CJ this morning. 

HOPPY DAYS: While most of our garden underwhelms, we do have to give props to the hops. They are growing like gangbusters. 

Looks like brewing with home grown hops is in Christian's future!

            

Fun and Games

LAKESIDE: On Friday, we took advantage of sunshine and a break in my work schedule and met Kennedy at a park. Specifically, Gasworks Park on the north shore of Lake Union. 

We brought along a couple of tabletop games, but nothing too elaborate, because we had to carry them a way, and we didn't want anything that had a bunch of cards that would blow away. That's how CJ and Kennedy wound up playing Pass the Pigs.

The photo above is what playing games with someone outside of your household looks like - outside, both masked and a tub of bleach wipes in the foreground.

While CJ and Ken played with plastic pigs. Annabelle managed to put together a rather complicated pirate ship kite. We brought it along because the park has a spot called Kite Hill.

Here's a far-away photo of the kids atop the hill. Unfortunately, the winds were uncharacteristically nonexistent on Friday, so they didn't catch any good air. 

But they did catch a *little* air.

HOME WRECKERS: In other news, the hole in the wall has grown substantially. On Friday, the kids and I removed several square feet of Sheetrock. 

Annabelle was still wearing her robe during the demo. 

GREENERY: Well, we finally have a couple dozen tomatoes growing on our rather pathetic plants. 

The ones on the 'chocolate' tomato plant have gotten color the quickest. 

PRINT VERSION: As previously chronicled in the blog a couple of days back, CJ and Annabelle recently won a cooking contest held by The Seattle Times. The story was online a few days ago, but on Friday the print version came out. So, we had to go buy a newspaper. I can't remember the last time we did that. 

The photo of the kids' creation was the biggest one on the cover of the "Weekend Plus" section. The story was on the pages inside.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

TOP SPOT: As chronicled in our blog several days back, CJ and Annabelle recently entered a cooking contest hosted by The Seattle Times.

During the pandemic, there has been a 12-week long The Seattle Times Pantry Kitchen Challenge, where people were encouraged to cook something up and send in a photo and their recipe. The contest was clearly modeled after the Food Network show "Chopped," where in each round you have to use four ingredients to produce a creative, tasty dish. When that contest concluded, The Times announced a special one-week contest for young chefs in an article back on July 14. The must-use ingredients were buttermilk, blueberries, maple syrup and any kind of cereal. 

The deadline for the contest was Friday, July 24. CJ and Annabelle brainstormed ideas and quickly settled on the idea of chicken and waffles as a way to include those ingredients in a tasty meal. Annabelle worked on coming up with the chicken portion of the recipe, while CJ considered the waffle possibilities. 

Annabelle struck upon the idea of using crunchy Cap'n Crunch as breading for the homemade chicken nuggets portion of the dish. At that, it was decided that the waffle should be savory instead of sweet, so CJ pitched a waffle with a bountiful amount of bacon and some chopped up almonds for crunch.

On the evening of July 23, they made their dinner. First, they made the dipping sauce. Using rhubarb from our garden and organic blueberries, plus the must-use ingredient maple syrup as a sweetener, they made a sauce on the stove top. The process was much like making a jam. 

Annabelle coated and fried the nuggets, while CJ whipped up the waffled (using our Death Star waffle iron). Once his waffles were done, a 2-inch circle cookie cutter was used to make the waffles more bite sized. They took short skewers and put one chicken nugget and one mini waffle on each skewer, with a side of the dipping sauce. 

It looked great and actually tasted terrific.

Annabelle emailed a photo of the finished meal and a little write up to the Seattle Times. She wrote: 

My brother and I are submitting this recipe for The Seattle Times Pantry Kitchen Challenge! This recipe flips the script. The chicken is coated in a sweet cereal, while the waffles are savory, with an earthy Ethiopian spice. A summery blueberry and rhubarb dipping sauce is the perfect companion. We thought it was an interesting twist on a staple food combo, and we hope you enjoy it as much as our family did! We had a lot of fun figuring out this pandemic pantry puzzle.

Imagine how thrilled they were yesterday when they found out their creation took top honors via an article posted on The Seattle Times' site!

Another nice line for their resumes - which already include a number of culinary-related honors.

SPLASHDOWN SUCCESS!: Sunday morning through early afternoon, we had NASA TV on, as we wanted to monitor the action regarding the return to Earth of the SpaceX Dragon capsule and its two human inhabitants. 

Annabelle can tell you a bit more about it.

NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken recently returned to Earth in Dragon Endeavor. Their capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico after having spent 2 months in space. The return flight from the International Space Station only took 19 hours overnight. Reportedly, the astronauts said that the reentry was remarkably similar to what they had been trained for in the SpaceX simulations. This was the first manned spacecraft splashdown in 45 years, and the first manned spaceflight from American soil in several years as well! This launch, flight, and splashdown were the finals test for SpaceX's astronaut capsule before it can be cleared for regular spaceflight. The capsule will be thoroughly inspected and refurbished before it can hopefully make the grade and be used again!

It was super exciting watching the capsule's descent Sunday morning. We tracked their descent. The re-entry burn was scary, but successful, thankfully. The drogue chutes deployed as planned, and then the four big chutes came out just as planned.

The capsule had a safe splashdown and bobbed beautifully in the Gulf of Mexico.

A specially-equipped barge came and plucked the capsule and its inhabitants from the water.

It looked a little worse for the wear, but it was intact and the astronauts were safe, so mission accomplished! 

 SODO SCENES:  Below are a couple bonus more shots from my hours spent in the Stadium District from Saturday through Tuesday morning while working at the Vote Center at CenturyLink Field Event Center.  

I sure wish this marquee's promise were true.

               

And here's the left field entrance sign, as seen through the jumbo copper glove sculpture on the corner of Royal Brougham and First Avenue.