Building Arduinos
Tonight was Sam’s second time to go to North Branch Library and their meet-up group for Arduino. Sam says there’s a lot to explain about Arduino. “The possibilities are endless,” he says. “You can build drones. But today, it was mostly about building electronic musical instruments.”
For example, he built this little theremin today.
He calls it a light theremin because it changes its sound frequency based on different levels of light.
He also built this little keyboard. “It’s not exactly a keyboard,” Sam says. “It’s just buttons.”
Summer Slushie
So refreshing! My dad made these for us once years ago. When I realized I had both strawberries and watermelon in the kitchen, I tried to remember what he did. After I was finished, I recalled that he tossed in a few ice cubes to help the blender along, but I didn’t do that today.
(When you have fruit this way — so concentrated — its doubly important that you use organically grown.)
Summer Slushie
1 quart strawberries
1/2 small seedless watermelon
1 T. sugar (optional)Top the strawberries and rinse lightly. Place on a cookie sheet and freeze for at least 2 hours.
Remove from freezer and let thaw slightly as you cut the watermelon in chunks. Put both in blender and pulse until a smooth slush. Taste and sweeten with more sugar, if desired.
Serves 4.
Blueberry Pie
Rita Pooler won a wild blueberry pie contest in Maine with this recipe. I pulled it off the Martha Stewart website in the 1990s. It’s still there, if you search “Rita’s Simply Blueberry Pie” there or on just about every other major foodie web site.
We don’t have wild blueberries in North Texas, but every year, I try to make a run to East Texas to pick some up. Lately, Blueberry Hill Farms in Edom has been the place to go.
I’m posting it now for Sarah Junek, whose birthday is today. Sarah went picking at farm near Houston and made a pie she was disappointed with.
When you work that hard for your berries, you should always be able to count on the pie. So, here you go, Sarah. Happy Birthday! This pie is awesome.
Rita’s Simply Blueberry Pie
Crust:
2 1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup cake flour
1 T. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup ice waterFilling:
5 cups blueberries
1 cup sugar
2 T. flour
2 T. cornstarch
1 T. lemon juice
1 T. butterGlaze:
1 egg white
2 T. white sugar
1 tsp. brown sugarSprinkle lemon juice on berries. Mix flour, sugar, cornstarch and add to berries. Toss lightly. Set aside while you make the crust.
Mix flour, sugar, salt. Cut in shortening and butter. Add water and mix gently until moist. Divide into two balls and roll out one into pie plate. Spoon in filling and dot with butter. Roll out second to cover the top. Fold top edges under the bottom and flute. Slit the top to vent.
Beat the egg white with the water and brush on top of the pie. Sprinkle with sugars. Bake at 425 F for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 F and bake 45 minutes or until done.
PDG Caramel Ice Cream
When an etude or solo went well in my weekly lesson, my music teacher at the Eastman School, Cherry Beauregard, would so clearly enunciate his compliment — “that was pretty damn good” — I’d almost not notice how inappropriate it was.
Of course, times were a little different then, too.
Mark had never been a student of Cherry’s, but when he finally met him, he’d heard me repeat the compliment for more than five years. After he met Cherry, Mark could parrot him almost perfectly.
It was one of the great private jokes between us.
After I made this ice cream this weekend and took my first bite, I wished Mark was nearby to hear, because it’s Pretty Damn Good.
Caramel Ice Cream
1 1/4 cup sugar, divided
2 cup cream, divided
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1 milk
In a wide, heavy bottom saucepan, melt 1 cup of the sugar until it turns amber. Stir until it begins melting, and then swirl to keep it from burning. Add 1 cup of the cream (careful, it can splatter), then remove from heat and stir until caramel dissolves.* Stir in salt and vanilla and allow to cool to room temperature. Whisk eggs with remaining 1/4 cup sugar until frothy, stir in milk and remaining cream. Fold in caramel and freeze.
*Don’t worry if it doesn’t all dissolve at first. It will keep dissolving as it cools. And if a few bits are still there when you start churning they will melt into cool little pockets of caramel in the ice cream.
Random Thoughts on the Crazy Coyote Trail Run
Texas is crazy hot. You can drink water at the aid station, but you may also find it’s better applied directly to your head. Water bottles dropped on the trail can be used as cooling devices. A still-warm-in-its-wrapper bacon McMuffin dropped on the trail likely makes the strangest item you’ll ever turn into the lost-and-found table. You can run as fast as your friend’s 14-year-old son through the wildflowers, but he’s still getting the nifty burnished birch coaster. Wearing a fake coyote tail is cool, but make sure all the kids get their tails before you ask for one.”Watch your paws” means the new trail on high ground away from floodwaters goes over freshly mowed prickly pear. Crazy Texas showers bring crazy gorgeous Texas flowers.
Wildflowers at Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center. Photo by Runner Susan Sullivan.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #296
Peggy: How was work? Long day?
Sam: I’m taking a nap. If I had a ‘do not disturb’ sign, I would hang it on my door right now.
I Really Want to Like The Kitchen
Trouble started the day we realized my best baking sheet wouldn’t fit into the oven.
An old shop on the Denton Square, Country Kitchen City Cooks, carried the Doughmakers brand. I don’t remember which baking pan I bought first, but it impressed me. I collected a pizza pan, a sheet cake pan, round cake pans, a muffin tin and the extra-large cookie sheet.
Do your cakes come out uneven, or do some of your cookies get too dark while others on the pan barely brown? I used to blame the ingredients, or the mixing or my oven. Then I learned most of the blame belonged to the pans. Doughmakers are to baking what cast iron is to the stove-top.
That big sheet pan was so versatile. I could make the cake for a jelly roll or bakery-sized recipes for pecan bars or brownies when the kids were little and had hollow legs. These days, it’s been Sam’s go-to pan for kolaches. We still make bakery quantities of sausage-filled kolaches.
I tried to tell myself I was going to love the kitchen in the new house. It has a cook top! A double oven! A standing freezer! A wet bar!
The galley design would be more efficient, I told myself. Fewer steps around the workspace. Don’t worry that you don’t have a second pantry. You’re not that hot of a cook, I reminded myself. Don’t worry that the dining room furniture now hides a mountain of seasonal kitchen gear. No one will know that you filled the big hutch with cookie cutters and the little hutch with processing equipment. Use the breakfast table when you need more workspace, I coached myself.
The afternoon Sam couldn’t get a batch of kolaches in the oven because it was too small for the cookie sheet, I had to admit it.
I had my dream kitchen. And I sold it.
Mark and I studied a lot of house plans before choosing the house we built nearly 20 years ago. Dog trot to help keep the house cool, big farm kitchen, wrap-around porch for Sam to pace when he was little, and an interior bathroom.
(People who live in tornado alley understand that last requirement.)
After I sold it, I made sure I could still check some of those boxes at the new house: interior bathroom, apartment for Sam (who paces a little differently now), a covered front porch, big trees on the west side of the house to help stay cool (I have yet to run the air conditioning this year.)
I’ve even figured out how to make up for the loss of a farmhouse garden, but it will take a few years of (enjoyable) work to terrace the back of the property and amend the soil.
But the kitchen. It’s a net loss. Even my son, Michael, notices its shortcomings on his brief visits.
I was in Argyle earlier this week. I didn’t go by the farm. But I couldn’t avoid its reach. I saw enough and felt enough and remembered enough and imagined enough that regret snuck in.
Stupid kitchen.
One of the Denton City Council members often tries to steer deliberations with an axiom he says he got from his father, “Let the reason be the reason.”
I listen even more carefully when he calls for it. It’s an elegant way to describe intellectual honesty, and to push for the more robust discussions that often come afterward. (Although, a person has to be careful. Oftentimes there is more than one reason. And you might need to be skeptical of your skepticism if you are thinking someone isn’t stating their reason.) When the regrets and the second-guessing come, I remind myself that I sold the farm for good reasons.
I need to let the reasons be the reasons.
I remind myself that we used to regret and second-guess our decision to leave California. And New York. And then we remembered what was important to us and we try to gather up those quality-of-life makers in order to keep moving forward. Very few of those things are truly tied to one place.
I don’t know what it will take with this stupid kitchen, but I really need to like it.
Sam and I are still building our new lives here in the central city. Yesterday, he bought a bicycle. It was fun watching him in the bike shop. He hadn’t been on a bicycle in more than 10 years.
He hopped on and pedaled away. Time hadn’t worn away anything at all.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #295
Sam (to the dog, on the anxiety triggered by aging eyesight): Gus, you’re a ‘shadow of a doubt’ dog now.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #294
Peggy (in the new house, having a childhood flashback): Do you think this laundry room would be scary to little kids?
Sam: Yes. Most all of them. 
Tale of two clocks
It’s been long enough in the new house that the second bill for internet service arrived in the mail this week. I count it a personal achievement that I have left work brain-drained and exhausted more than once these past four weeks and never pointed the truck the wrong way home.
That’s 20 years of driving habits undone, just like that.
Sam felt comfortable enough with the set-up of his apartment, completely separate yet conveniently located behind the house, to post a triumphant photo on Facebook this week. He had all his boxes and bags unpacked within a week. That included filling a wall of shelves with books and games. But, in true-t0-Sam fashion, he didn’t consider it all done until the wifi, Chromecast and a new clock got installed.
This Monday was the first time he was able to watch one of his favorite shows, Dancing with the Stars, in a long time.
Sunday his clock arrived. He had ordered it a few days before on Amazon. All his mobile devices display the current time, but he still wanted a big, traditional clock on the wall.
Well, almost traditional.
I bought a clock on Sunday, too. We were at the Denton Arts and Jazz Fest. An artist there built clocks in sturdy oak frames and printed out clock faces filled with inside jokes. Sam was still reading clock faces by the time I finished my purchase of a “writer’s clock,” with hours and hours of “write” or “revise” and the end of the “writer’s block” hour coming with the “adult beverage” hour.
I chuckled when I got it home and read the insert on how to power up and set the time on the clock. The artist may have set up shop for the weekend in Denton, but he lives just down the road from my family in Colorado.
Sam’s clock required no effort on his part to set. That was all taken care of by the satellite it signaled.
Of course.