The Dog Days

Unlike the song, the dog days are not over here (aside: I saw Florence during the Lungs tour and that was easily one of if not the best live performance I’ve ever attended). It’s been too hot to think here at the Dragon’s Roost, which has severely reduced my productivity. The New House™ does not have central air but instead has the splits for each zone of the house. They are attached to two different main units. Unfortunately, one of them seems to have a coolant leak so the part of the house with the main bedroom has been sweltering. We spent a few days sleeping in the TV room as that room has a door and can be cooled quite nicely.

A note on the phrase “dog days”: Tesla is smart enough to always position herself in the area which she finds most comfortable. She is currently sleeping in front of a fan.

On the plus side, the pool is the perfect temperature for cooling off. My daily exercise routine involves playing the First Wave channel through a floating speaker while walking/running laps around the pool. I do two songs worth of laps in one direction, then turn around and fight against my own wake for the next two.

Another method of cooling off has been to enjoy a nice glass (or three) of mead in the evening. I currently have three different variants bottled from which I can choose. The best is the blueberry mead. I have others in various stages of fermentation right now including a mulberry one made with fruits from our own tree. I’m not going to lie to you, the color on that one is not appealing. I’m hoping it tastes better than it looks when done. I have an order of bulk honey arriving soon which will allow me to back-sweeten the big batch which is currently sitting in secondary fermentation. I average four to five 750 ml bottles per gallon so far. The one that is waiting is around five gallons to I’ll soon have a whole rack full to choose from.

Yesterday I discovered that our oven is not heating properly (more on that below). This totally threw off my plans. I was going to make a couple loaves of bread today, but that has been put off until the weekend.

Listening To: As mentioned above, the First Wave Radio on Sirius XM. I generally switch between this station, Marky Ramone’s Punk Rock Blitzkrieg, and the Clash station.

Currently Reading: The submissions for this year’s Erie Tales anthology all of which have to do with cursed objects. Look for the book around Halloween.

Current Obsession: We just binged Ballard on Prime. We didn’t know going in that it was a spin off of Bosch, that was just a happy coincidence. It’s been a while since I read any, but I’ve always enjoyed the works of Michael Connelly. I’m glad to see that his characters are getting the series treatment on various networks.

Almost all of the Kickstarter rewards for the Nightmerica campaign have been fulfilled. We are currently waiting on the hardcovers to arrive (delayed after we found an omission which caused us to have to reprint the ones we had already received). There are still a few people who have yet to fill out their Backerkit surveys. If you are one of them, please reach out so we can get your orders completed.

Work continues on our upcoming titles, albeit slowly due to the lag caused by our inability to process coherent thought. Hopefully the better weather will allow us to move forward more smoothly.

I have a theory about cooking which may no longer be valid. When I was a wee lad I was, like many of Generation X (the actual age cohort, not the band with Billy Idol), a latchkey kid. I suspect that most of us learned to cook at an early age. In our family, my sister and I were in charge of at least one dinner per week.

Part of being alone in the house for a couple hours after school meant that if you were hungry, you had better learn how to cook. There was a progression from simple food which required little prep and no heat (think sandwiches or cold cereal), to pre-made items (Banquet chicken and boil-in-the-bag Salisbury steak—ugh), to actual meals. I used to joke that making Mac and Cheese was a rite of passage for those of my age. Another staple was the chocolate chip cookie.

My family has an ancient recipe which has been handed down throughout the generations (on the back of the chocolate chip bag). I remember being at my Aunt’s house when the cousins all decided that we wanted cookie dough—not cookies, just the dough. None of us had to consult a recipe book. We all knew that recipe by heart.

Over the decades I have perfected the baking of the chocolate chip cookie to the point where they always come out just right: soft but with slightly browned edges which allow milk dunking. So you can imagine my horror when the batch of cookies I made this week came out too soft for lactic immersion. They were chewy, but too chewy. Soft to the point where they would fall apart easily.

I know that this can occasionally happen if the butter is melted before mixing. The butter had been soft, it is a billion degrees in the kitchen, but the stuff was still in stick form. Definitely not a liquid. The Mrs suggested that I may have not put in enough flour. This is possible, but unlikely as I usually add an additional 1/4 cup of flour to insure against this issue.

I should note that we prefer warm cookies. Instead of baking the entire batch at once, I make just enough for dessert each night, placing the remaining dough in the fridge (where I will hopefully forget about it, otherwise I’m likely to snitch little bites here and there until it’s all gone). The first batch was flat and disappointing. The next night, the same thing happened. Then last night I turned on the oven, dropped in the dough, and went to watch a YouTube video. Ten minutes later the timer had gone off, but the oven hadn’t reached temperature. In fact, it was still sitting at 100 degrees (the lowest it reads). I set the timer for another five minutes and picked up my book. I returned to find that the cookies had softened, but not baked. The oven was stone cold.

The cookies, I suspect, were only soft because of how hot the house still was.

After some tinkering around and online research, it appears that the problem could be a failed igniter, some regulatory thing in the back, or even a problem with the control panel. The burners on the range all work so they are getting gas, but it doesn’t appear that the oven is.

At this point I should mention that I cooked on the same stove until we moved into The New House™. Long time readers may remember that I grew up with an electric range. When we moved into our first house, we took the range from my childhood home with us. The thing was close to half a century old, but it still worked like a charm. I had replaced various heating elements over the years. The finish was chipped in a few places. Every couple of months one of use would have to draw the numbers back on the dials with a Sharpie. Still, it worked. Well, everything but the clock, but every other piece of electronics in the house had a clock so that wasn’t an issue. I knew all of its quirks (like how long it took to heat up and to set it 25 degrees higher than recommended when cooking at a temp over 350). It pained me to leave it behind when we moved.

Seriously, I thought about taking it with us. I just couldn’t figure out where I could actually put it where it would be of use.

The oven which came with this house is much newer, quite pretty. It’s also gas, which has taken me a while to get used to. Two plus years in and I still tend to crank the range too high and my liquids boil over. It does have its benefits. It’s nice to know that if the power goes out and I don’t feel like starting the generator, I can still make dinner without breaking out the camp stove. As far as I can tell, the oven actually heats up to the temperature it is set for AND it lets you know when it reaches it.

Still, it runs on gas which is not something that I feel comfortable fucking around with. I’ll run the risk of electrocuting myself and maybe causing a small fire, but I’m not going to risk a house destroying explosion.

The repair people will be out tomorrow. Hopefully it will be an easy fix.

Fortunately, we have plenty of leftovers in the fridge until then.

And even more importantly, I know that those failed cookies weren’t my fault.