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At this rate, soon I’ll be rich!

A zillion cups later…

I’m a sucker for rationalizing an expensive purchase. I do it more than I care to admit, but I have to say that I think the math usually works out in my favour.

For instance, I just re-did a bunch of stuff in my backyard. New back fence, new roof on the garage, new flagstone patio. As far as I’m concerned, the money I saved by doing the work myself more than covers the rather expensive cedar I used in the fence and also covers the rather needless ridge vent that I installed in the garage. The garage is cooler in the summer, for sure, but it was by no means necessary. A building inspector wouldn’t have failed the work without it and the fence would have been fine if I had bought some pre-made panels.

The more I think about it, the more I can find these rationales in my life. Make dinner at home? Rationalize a decent bottle of wine. (but not a super expensive one because I just can’t quite get there)

However, for coffee I can spend into oblivion without even thinking about it. To wit, my current setup: A Rocket R58 and a Eureka Atom grinder. The coffee machine dealer had a deal on – 20% off or something like that and although it was more than I wanted to pay, I knew a couple of things:

Coffee is like $5 a cup at a coffee shop.

I like coffee and I drink a lot of it.

Oh, and my kids have started drinking coffee from time to time, as well.

The Eureka grinder keeps track of how many double shots of espresso it has ground. A few days ago we passed 1000 double shots.

At $5 per coffee, the machine has more than paid for itself. Of course, I’m leaving out inputs and the fact that if there is a coffee machine nearby I drink a lot more coffee.

Regardless, even if we cut it in half I’m well on my way to paying the system off in a few short months.

Then I’ll have to find another purchase to rationalize. I have been eyeing a new gas range…

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Who knew? It works!

Simple, yet effective.

We were at a summer evening party a couple of years ago. The purpose of the party was to welcome a new staff member to the group my wife works with. Unfortunately, he didn’t last long, but the dinner was lovely.

As we sat down for dinner, I noticed a small bowl with some cloves floating in what turned out to be white vinegar. Puzzled, I went through a mental list of possible reasons as to why the bowls would be on the table. I even dipped my finger in (carefully) and gave it a quick sniff to see what it was.

I was flummoxed.

Finger bath of some sort? Even though dinner was a buffet and there wasn’t any seafood or artichokes, or even bacon. (all of which you can eat with your hands)

Did you dip your bread into it? I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around that one.

We asked the server – she said, “Oh, it’s for the wasps. They hate the smell of cloves.”

I couldn’t believe it. I’m allergic to wasp stings and they seem to love me more than anyone else. I had never heard of this.

Dinner was delightful. No wasps of any consequence.

I tried it at home the next time we ate outside. We always have a few yellow jackets buzzing around our dinner. In a couple of minutes they seemed to have just sort of… disappeared.

Amazing. A few cloves in a bowl with a bit of vinegar or water. Worked like a charm.

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Pizza Dough

I finally managed to make a decent dough for my pizza. Took a few tries to get it right. A friend of mine told me to write this down. Few thoughts:

The recipe often leaves things out. I remember chatting with a friend not that long ago and she commented that the biggest problem that chefs have with cookbooks is trying to make their recipes work for the home cook. It’s easy to do a pizza dough if you’re making 100 pies. Lot harder if you’re making 2 and trying to describe a process that you do every single day by memory into a few lines that the home cook can pick up and understand.

But here’s the trick: You have to proof the yeast. The dough I was making is an overnight in the fridge slow-rise dough and I had trouble getting a good rise ever since I started using this recipe. Sometimes it worked better than others, but generally it was pretty unimpressive. The recipe called for traditional yeast but neglected to remind you to let the yeast proof before you mix the whole works together.

What is proofing? Well, you need to make it active in water before you continue the recipe. Often it takes quite some time. Like 10 minutes or so. As in, mix water, sugar, yeast, oil together and then let it sit until you see activity. In my case it looked like someone was stirring the water, but the water was still.

At that point I mixed everything together and hey-presto, it worked like a charm. It rose overnight in the fridge and it rolled out and make a superior pie.

It was lucky, but it was also the product of making the dough at least a dozen times – including a particularly disastrous situation with the in-laws where the dough didn’t rise at all. Still tasted pretty good, and I wasn’t asking for the youngest daughter’s hand in marriage (thankfully that happened more than two decades previously) but still it was a bit embarrassing. Won’t let that happen again.

Soon.

Unless I’m rushing things.

Which I almost always do in the kitchen.

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