This can refer to a style of music characterized by a heavy beat and sweaty bass guitar licks, a malodorous airborne cloud, or a contagious bad mood. Last night I encountered the third definition.
Baby Harbat was in a good mood when we got home. As usual she stopped to say hello to the concrete owl near our front door, then came inside to march around the house calling out, “Dolly! Dolly?” We found dolly and I prepared dinner, a cheese and veggie chili quesadilla. She enjoyed the first two bites, then spit it out with extreme prejudice. Fail.
At this point my wife came home and made dinner #2, Asian fried rice. This was rejected. There was another rejected item—my mind has blanked this out for some reason. Dinner four was macaroni and cheese. She ate this then requested crackers. Crackers were not given and tears followed. Then I gave her a bath and we played the Most Funnest Game in the World: Everything Tears!!!!
Thus: funk. Then I made dinner: testicles on a bed of exploded squirrel carcass.
It looked at lot worse than this in person.
The rest of the night, I ruminated on the oven situation. I’ve come to the conclusion that the least expensive thing is to buy another relatively new oven. As much as I want a vintage oven, for various reasons it isn’t the right thing now. With a new oven, I’m going to have to drastically scale back my bread baking because new ovens aren’t actually supposed to be used. This I’ve learned after ruining our last oven. On a baking forum I frequent, I was accused of “abusing” my oven by using steam to bake. Ahh, but of course. Ovens are meant to be left in the plastic wrap, placed in a climate-controlled bunker, and dusted once a year.
[funk]
Writer, architect, father, husband.
Hmmm….so does that mean that the other bread bakers on the forum are not using steam to bake their bread, or are they just not baking as much as you do?
No but yeah. Other bakers are using just as much steam, they've just somehow avoided ruining their ovens. Or it's possible the steam didn't cause the failure. Either way, anything in an oven is going to create some steam, that's why there are vents.
the oven that failed you was new?
AAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHA! That looks like the squirrel that I ran over yesterday (on my bike). EW! Why are those "meat" "balls" shaped like balls? EW!! PS: you may want to check with patti-they had a really cool old vintage oven in their summer kitchen-they may have sold it but you should check because that thing was pretty rad.
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Doug – it was a newer (less than 5 years old) oven we bought used last fall. I think I'd rather have the Wedgewood, though we'll likely end up with another newer oven. And no more bread baking
Samantha – When I first put the meatballs in the sauce, they were grey and shiny. And that is horrendous that you smooshed a squirrel with a bike. Maybe he was okay, he was just pausing on the road to eat some of that strawberry jam.
EWWWW! Squirrel roadkill. I'm pretty sure squirrels don't eat strawberry jam–ha,ha. Ok–so Patti's oven may require a Mac truck to remove and use lots of firewood to keep it running. Samanthropos wasn't kidding about "vintage", but it is awesome! I think more research is in order.
Well, let's just say it wasn't the first time he had been run over that week. He was kind of leathery but not so much that he didn't squish a little under my tires and cause me to dry heave, swerve, and then shiver uncontrollably for 30 seconds.
peter, you must continue to bake bread, it's your passion…