When I arrived, Lilli announced that she'd gotten
me a special present, which turned out to be the
Full Circle Market "In Season Year Round" organic
garlic & chili pepper grinder. What could be bad?
Even slightly stale garlic and chile peppers are
good to eat. Well, I ground some over my dinner,
and guess what? The mixture is mostly salt! There
is no mention of that on the label, so one could
be forgiven for imagining that the contents were
just garlic and chile peppers.

Kodiak Cakes Mountain Berry Superberry syrup -
so being on a carb kick (bad for me, because
she gives me little portions of everything that
she makes, and I feel obligated to accept them),
she made another waffle in her shiny new iron,
which I've described. She gave me a quarter of
it, which I figured I wouldn't die from; it was
good. She also had warmed a ramekin of this
syrup, which was of the appropriate texture and
with a pleasant balance of sweet and tart. A
dominating flavor of blueberries, with little if
any other. Ingredients - sugar, marionberry puree,
red raspberry puree water, blueberry juice
concentrate, pectin, xanthan gum, citric acid.

You'd think there was some connection with Alaska,
wouldn't you. No - the company is located in Park
City UT. It's unclear where the product is made
or where the raw materials are from.

The Mormons do know their sweets. Lilli didn't
care for this, finding it not saccharine enough;
I thought it was fine. She finished her three
quarters drowning them in maple syrup, which she
also said wasn't sweet enough.

--

Lilli decided to be a domestic goddess and bake
a loaf of bread using her KitchenAid mixer and
a recipe from the (lowly) esteemed Genius Kitchen.

It didn't work - it says to proof the yeast at a
temperature guaranteed to weaken or kill lt and
also contains a glaring misprint - 3/4 c water
instead of 1/4 c. Anyhow, her dough came out more
a batter - a liquidy mess. Yelps of outrage brought
me to the kitchen, where I added another couple
cups of flour and kneaded the mass to a semblance
of doughiness. Lilli put it in the oven on the
proof cycle but, as it turns out, didn't turn it
on, so after the canonic time nothing had happened.
No worries, punch down, shove it back in, and let
it sit overnight in a cold oven, letting whatever
outraged yeasties cavort to their hearts' delight.

Next day after quartets (Mendelssohn Op. 12,
Mendelssohn Op. 13, Schubert Op. 29, Dvorak Op. 80
(first and second movements only, then the consensus
was that it was too hard to continue), Shostakovich
#3 (first movement only, then the consensus was that
it was too hard to continue), and the first and last
movements of Mendelssohn Op. 44 #1 (after the first
movement, the cellist's wife called to see where the
heck he was, so we skipped to the last movement to
end on something jolly)) we went to Stater Bros. to
pick up fixings for pizza, which we'd agreed was the
most likely aalvage for the dough.

So off to the store, where we saw Dr. Pepper for .99
for 2 liters, a decent price, so we picked one up for
me and seedless watermelon at .25/lb, giving the lie
to my assertion to Weller that they didn't do that sort
of barbarism down here.

There was a stand in the store offering root beer
floats for a buck, all proceeds to the children's
hospital. I got one, as I was really thirsty. The kid
asked, one scoop or two, and in the fond delusion that
one scoop wou;d get me more liquid, I said one. My
pint cup ended up with 1/4 headspace where the second
scoop would have been. It was house brand ice cream
(okay) and Shasta root beer (less than okay - tasted
like root beer Kool-Aid, if you remember that.

Stuff we got for pizza:

Galbani low-moisture whole-milk mozzaarella, which
actually is not so bad, except that their idea of
whole milk and mine differ considerably;

Fiorucci pepperoni, decent-tasting but with only the
faintest hint of chile; and

the house brand mild Italian sausage, which is made
with star anise extract instead of fennel seed; this
turned out to be terrible on pizza but not so horrid
by itself. In addition, it was surprisingly not
overbearingly salty.

Back at home I rolled the barely-survived dough out
into two pizza crusts and made a quick sauce - a half
can of leftover tomato paste, a quarter onion, about
4 cloves of garlic, some rendered suet, and oregano ad
lib. (she's out of thyme and basil). A layering of sauce,
the meats in question, the mozz, and a bit of shredded
leftover cheese found in the fridge. Though the oven
lets you select 550, it hits a wall at 525 and will go no
hotter, so the pies cooked at 525 for 10 minutes or until
bubbly. They were pretty decent, better than Domino's but
not as good as competent artisanal ones.

A second try at the bread. This time Lilli tried to follow
the Epicurious recipe for that same KitchenAid bread,
which was almost identical to the Genius Kitchen recipe,
only doubled, with an appropriate amount of water and the
yeast proofed at a normal temperature. But she kneaded the
heck out of it using the mixer, and what turned out was a
nice-smelling loaf with a crust brittle like pottery and a
dense crumb like cake. I mourned the yeasts that had given
their lives in this futile endeavor.
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