What is Chuckbert up to now?

Chuckbert's been up on the roof. The questions on everybody's minds are:

• Why did Chuckbert strap a Guinness can to his weather machine's tripod?

A closeup of the can:

• And why did he strap some paint cans to the chimney screen?

Only time will tell.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A herd of ironwood turtles.

Here's Lance!

A recent water bill had a note enclosed telling us that the intersection just to the north of our house was going to be closed today for an hour because the Amgen Tour of California was going to be passing through. Lance Armstrong was going to be in it!

Since it was just a two minute walk to the intersection we decided that we'd watch. It turned out to be a fairly popular spot to watch the racers. We watched from a little way up the hill so we had a view of the racers' approach and turn up Bear Valley Parkway. We just saw the mass of bikers so we couldn't pick out Lance from the rest of the main pack.

There's not much to see but I made a movie of the event. After all, how many times does a major bike race pass through your neighborhood?




Here's the line of cars leaving our little street (and some parked ones).

And here are the cars parked in front of our house. Notice the pickup parked beyond our mailbox.
The driver of the pickup is the person on the phone in front of the SUV on the left. He's asking somebody for help getting unstuck from the mud. He decided that the spot where our water pipes were replaced would be a great place to park. Unfortunately, it wasn't. He sank into the mud.

He got out of the mud. We have new depressions for water to fill when it rains again.


Here's a Google Map of the part of the race we saw.  We watched from the red pointer and the bikes travelled along the blue line (in the direction of the arrows).

View Larger Map

Seriously, if we couldn't laugh we would all go insane

Back when Sirius and XM's programming was combined, I said that I was looking forward to listening to the channel that plays music from the 1940s. The music that was popular before the Rock-and-Roll era is interesting, varied, and sometimes very silly. I am enjoying that addition to my satellite radio's programming.

There seems to have been a need for happy, silly songs back then. I guess with a war going on that was taking a terrible toll on the world, perhaps people got to have their spirits raised a bit by hearing these novelty songs.

Recently, I fell asleep while listening to the '40s channel. I woke up to a strange, silly song that started to sound familiar. It was "The Hut-Sut Song."

Why, you ask, would I be familiar with a silly song like that? Well, back at the turn of the millennium, there was a spate of obituaries of people who had written some of the World War II-era novelty songs. (This was at the real turn of the millennium, not that faux one when the whole, misled world, even the parts that don't use the Christian calendar, celebrated at the end of 1999. Fools!)

One of the obituaries that I remember was for Leo Killion, a co-author of "The Hut-Sut Song (A Swedish Serenade)."

Whenever I read about an obscure song like that I would head over to Napster and search for it. I miss Napster. I used it mostly as an on-demand radio service to listen to long out of print music. And my searches would find music I would never have encountered otherwise. For responsible people like me, Napster could have generated sales of recordings but it's gone. YouTube is mostly filling its role now.

I found several recordings of the song and smiled. I hadn't heard it since. Till that nap. And I got to smile again.

A few months after Mr. Killion's obituary ran, another novelty song's author's obituary came along. This one was for Jack McVea, the writer of "Open the Door, Richard." Off to Napster I went. There was The Merry Macs' version, a happy, cheerful story of somebody locked out of the apartment. And I found this version that includes the vaudeville routine that inspired the song. Not being part of the time, its appeal escapes me. I haven't heard it in any of its versions on Sirius XM.

By the way, did you know that the Andrews Sisters didn't realize that "Rum and Coca Cola" is a dirty song? And it was scandalous not just because of its celebration of prostitution but because it advocated drinking rum. And Coca Cola. And I thought that political correctness was a recent phenomenon.

While we're on the topic of laughing in lieu of insanity, here's a review of the latest Liō desk calendar: You should have bought the latest Liō desk calendar. It is full of wit and insight. This weekend's page fits the theme of this post.

But I digress...

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Malachite turtles (and a hippopotamus).

One more crack at this

I made the cheese crackers again. I did a few things differently:

• I used a different cheese (some Pecorino Romano left from our crack and cheese experiment)
  
• I rolled them thinner using KitchenAid Mixer's pasta roller attachment
• I cooked them on uninsulated sheets
• I took them off the parchment paper while they cooled on the rack
• I forgot to sprinkle the coarse salt on them :-(
  
• I MADE A MOVIE!

They're much crisper than the first batch. Some are browner. Much browner. (I was watching the videos of the process while they were baking and I should have been watching the crackers.)

The first, thicker crackers had more flavor. I don't know if that was because the cheese had more flavor or if I used more cheese or if the extra thickness and slight undercooking made them more flavorful. Or maybe it was the added coarse salt.

Much of the problem with the flavor is that I think I might have made them too thin. I ran the pasta rollers down to the fifth setting. That makes some pretty thin sheets of dough. Maybe I should have stopped at three or four. But I'd better stop making these things altogether. I just eat them up.

There are several people who have subscribed to my YouTube channel. I haven't made a movie since August. To give my subscribers (and you, I hope) a thrill, here is my latest movie. I made it with my new MacBook Air. It came with iMovie and that makes movie making easy and snappier. I hope you like it.

You crack me up!

I shouldn't read the New York Times' food articles. I don't look for them but when they show up in the list of most popular stories, I just have to check them out. This time it was Parmesan Cream Crackers. I made them tonight and they are tasty.

I should have rolled them out thinner and baked them longer. They're a bit soft. But that's not going to stop us from eating them. Once again we have a rich snack.

I need to learn how to roll the dough into a nice rectangle. I guess I could have rolled it out and cut the irregular edges off and rolled out the edge pieces again. (The article says that additional working of the dough makes them flakier.)

My first batch of crackers:
I should have scored them into smaller crackers. But then I would just eat a larger number of them.

An advantage to making these crackers with the Parmigiano-Reggiano we get at Costco is that I can cut off chunks and scarf them down while preparing the crackers. I can eat that stuff all day and not get tired of it.

Parmesan Cream Crackers

Time: About 20 minutes

1 cup all-purpose flour, more as needed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup finely grated fresh Parmesan cheese
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup cream or half-and-half, more as needed
Coarse salt, pepper, sesame or poppy seeds, minced garlic or whatever you like for sprinkling (optional)

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or lightly dust with flour. Put flour, salt, cheese and butter in bowl of a food processor. Pulse until flour and butter are combined. Add about 1/4 cup cream or half-and-half and let machine run for a bit; continue to add liquid a teaspoon at a time, until mixture holds together but is not sticky.

2. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface until 1/2-inch thick or even thinner, adding flour as needed. Transfer sheet of dough to prepared baking sheet (drape it over rolling pin to make it easier). Score lightly with a sharp knife, pizza cutter or a pastry wheel if you want to break crackers into squares or rectangles later on. Sprinkle with salt or other topping if you like.

3. Bake until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Cool on a rack; serve warm or at room temperature or store in a tin for a few days.

Yield: About 4 servings.

I'm not sure how thin they meant to say to roll out the dough. Half of an inch is definitely not right. Mine were about 1/8 inch and they were still too thick.