Back to Found Objects

I haven't been keeping up with Found Objects lately. In the past few weeks I have found a hi-tec pedometer and one of those things that power point presenters use to point out stuff on their presentations -- well I think that's what it is. It fits in the palm of the hand and has a teeny but very bright light beam. A few days later I saw a hi-tec looking woman power walking by my house and somehow I knew the pedometer belonged to her. Once I managed to gain her attention , (her head was plugged in to some sort of listening device) she gratefully repossessed the pedometer.

But today while looking for rocks for garden art in the desert, I came across these binoculars.They were in a dry wash, so they must have come down from the mountains. Probably they belonged to some hunter, but they look sort of ancient and military to me. I have therefore created a provenance for them. I have decided that some military observer of the Trinity bomb stationed in the mountains must have dropped them in surprise

Sorry about the underlining. I didn't ask for it and I cant turn it off .......

Googlescan jabberwock and merging chocolate.

I was just wasting time looking for a google map of a small village that I lived in when I was a child. Instead of the map I came up with a google scanned edition of a book about the area around that village. It was completely unreadable. Probably the print quality and font were not quite standard, but hey, I used to proof read for the Gutenberg Project, and they would never have released such crap. Gutenberg does do automated scanning now, and they warn that there will be illegibilities in the text. I'm not sure whether they still do the Old Hand Method as well. It must have been hard to get enough volunteers to do all that picky reading.

Another inconsequentiality that is nagging at me is the Cadbury thing. Cadbury chocolate that is produced in the US is not as good as the stuff from Canada or Britain, and perhaps I was hallucinating but I'm sure that I saw on a Cadbury Milk label the words 'Distributed by Hershey'. I was under the assumption that Cadbury's Milk had been eaten by the Hershey bar long ago, but I guess the wolverines are still circling.
I think the Cadbury's milk chocolate from Britain and Canada may have a lower melting point than stuff aimed at the US, and that's what makes it taste better.

Challah

I decided to make challah this holiday season. I hadn't made it since the sixties or seventies when my then husband brought home the recipe from a co-worker at Thrifty Drugstores in California. I remembered that challah as being rich and fragrant with honey and saffron, but when I scrounged around on the internet I could find no recipe that matched mine. Potato, honey, butter, eggs, saffron and of course yeast, salt and flour. I tried a version of my old recipe and it came out bland, dry and lifeless. I tried out an internet recipe that was also bland, dry and lifeless.

So then I said 'to heck with it' (so to speak) and launched out fearlessly on my own. My daughter had come from California with saffron, so at least I had that advantage. For the rest I just used a ton of the Good Stuff, that is strongly flavored honey from India that they have at Family Dollar, butter and eggs and of course saffron. Unfortunately I forgot the mashed potato and potato water, but even so I think I have produced a heavenly challah all fragrant with honey and saffron and with the crumb light gold in color and with a warm and feathery texture. The dogs and I agree that it is uncommon good. I have no idea of the amounts etc, because I used the Zen Method which fails me at least as often as it works, but this time ...........

2010

I never thought I'd see 2010. I never thought I'd see sixteen. Now I have more than half a century beyond sixteen. I blunder inconsequentially on. Happy New Year!