Very wise indeed Marian

Marian, that sounds like my grandfather!

*Drac sneaks into the break room because it's so quiet*

Oh, yeah, everyone is either in a food coma, enjoying their time off or visiting with friends after Thanksgiving! I think this morning needs one of the coffee pod makers so we can just make a quick single cup and sneak back out!

Happy Saturday!

Good morning and Happy Saturday everyone! Drac, I think you hit the nail squarely on the head

Green Mountain Dark Roast coffee pods, Scottish Breakfast tea and bottled Fiji water in the Break Room.

Take care all!

It's cleaning day around here, plus maybe putting up a couple of pictures. My sister and her partner are visiting tonight. I was going to wash the windows but it's a dark and gloomy day so the dirt and cobwebs aren't visible. I think I'll leave them for another day.

I was getting ready for some therapeutic leaf raking after all the mentions on here, but the wind has actually cleared most of the leaves, leaving a couple of small neat piles in corners of a paved area: I have never seen nature dealing with falling leaves so tidily!

Wish our wind would push the leaves into nice piles. Mostly the wind blew leaves into my pond and all over the lawn. I'm steadfastly ignoring the fact that my leaves are all over the road, too.

Once they're on the road, they're not yours any more! They "ran away from home!"

I'm with Drac on that one!

Hope you all have a restful day to continue to recover from all that over indulgence...

... and on the subject of food and drink you may find this article of interest https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#i...LLjWwZqxcWtkChCgLJDPMgbjTmwVJXzmmWMcspZQ

Good morning everyone and Happy Sunday to one and all.

Lex, your link is not to an article but to Google Mail

Dark roast Kona coffee, English breakfast tea, bottled Fiji water and an assortment of Panera Bread bagels this morning.

Have a wondereful Sunday

Good morning!

Lex, that link just took me to my Gmail account.

Cold and drizzly outside here. Good day to stay inside and do some gaming! Having a video chat with our family in Germany at noon.

Happy Sunday!

Good morning, Danish, Donuts and Bagels in the Break Room. I had a wonderful time with my son and his wife. We went to an Alpaca farm, they used to show them. Now they are a rescue. The Alpacas come right up and nudge you looking for treats, you can go right in with them. Enjoy your day and hug someone.

Good morning everyone. Double dark roast, breakfast tea and bottled Fiji water in the Break Room. Connie, glad you had a wonderful trip. Enjoying another day off today. Have a great Connie, Draclvr and everyone else who drops in.

I had big plans for today but woke up feeling completely worn out. I might struggle down to the store later for food. Otherwise, I feel a day of TV coming on.

Enjoy the time off Hagatha ... you earned it

Nothing wrong with a day off, hagatha. And have more than one if you feel the need

I rather enjoy what I call a "slug day" for myself now and then! Just catching up on laundry here today. Had to venture out into the cold to pick up the horse Ranch caretaker's step-daughter from the bus. It's just 3/4 mile down the road and another 1 1/2 miles back to the Ranch, so it only takes me a few minutes. I usually get to hear all the 2nd grade chatter about her day! She's such a sweet little kid.

One more venture out into the cold to feed the barn cats later and I'm in for the night.

I've spent much of the day on the couch with Willow. Dude will sit with us, but not for very long. He's still pining to go outside.

I just got some terrible news from a couple I've known for 48 years, since I was in university. He has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She tells me he has chosen not to get treatment and has opted for MAID. And last week another old friend told me her cancer had returned. I was hoping I'd get a chance to visit them in Winnipeg once my life calmed down a bit more. I'm really sick of cancer.

Good morning, Danish, Donuts and Bagels in the Break Room, Hagatha, I'm so sorry about your friend's cancer. I"m really sick of cancer too. Bowling at the Eagles tonight. Enjoy the day and hug someone.

Count me in as sick of cancer. I've buried a husband, a father and far too many close friends.

I've got time to put on a pot of Kenyan Special Reserve before I head in town to the grocery store. Doing the shopping for my cooking marathon Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning. I cater a breakfast for the volunteers at the horse rescue Ranch every December. This makes my 10th year doing it and we have over 40 people signed up - the most ever! I pretty much have it down to a science and do everything ahead of time. On Saturday morning I just bake - luckily I have a stove out in the garage too. New recipe this year - Strawberry Cheesecake French Toast!

Happy Tuesday!

This is the article for foodies to which I tried to provide a link a couple of days ago, but for more you have to subscribe to her Spectator newsletter (or at least take up there free trial...)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-doughnuts-took-over-my-life/?

Doughnuts, butter cows and cafe culture

Sat, 25 Nov, 10:30 (3 days ago)

Spectator Life
The Take Away
Food, drink and recipes
By Olivia Potts


Welcome to The Take Away, The Spectator’s food and drink newsletter. Every fortnight I’ll bring you recommendations straight to your inbox, focusing on the best things to eat, drink, try, read and listen to from The Spectator and beyond.

My most recent Vintage Chef recipe is all about doughnuts. Proper doughnuts: dough stamped into rings, fried and then coated in sugar or dunked in a simple vanilla glaze. It’s made me think about the kind of places you find these doughnuts. It’s impossible to smell a freshly fried doughnut, or bite into one, the soft glaze cracking and giving way to the plump, sweet dough beneath, and not be transported to a funfair. Like roasted chestnuts and Christmas markets, or vinegary chips and the seaside, doughnuts and the fair are inextricably linked.

I am not a little obsessed with US state fairs, which feel like the doughnut’s spiritual home. These started as agricultural fairs (a little like our county shows) designed to showcase and boost the economies of local farms and dairies, but they soon grew into enormous tourist attractions, must-stops on would-be politicians’ baby-kissing tours.

Dan Solomon’s piece from 2017, ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of the State Fair Food Finalists’, gives a taste of some of the most common edible offerings, while Meghan McCarron examines the food at Iowa’s state fair in this brilliant article for Eater.

Fairs may provide more than than classic fried dough now, but deep-frying remains the king of the cooking techniques: the Texas State fair is the domain of Abel Gonzales Jr, sometimes called ‘fried Jesus’. Gonzales made his name with a fried PB&J sandwich, but since then has also come up with fried cola, fried beer, and fried butter.

The latter may be the most remarkable, but in a way, it’s a logical conclusion to state fair excess: like the fairs themselves, butter sculptures of cows originated as a celebration of the dairy industry, but soon morphed into a celebration of Americana, getting bigger and wilder every year. For Norma ‘Duffy’ Lyon, butter sculpture was a lifelong vocation. She has created butter Elvis, butter Harry Potter, butter ‘American Gothic’, butter ‘Last Supper’ – alongside the classic butter cow that tradition demands. Lyon died in 2017, but her legacy lives on in the form of her apprentice, Sarah Pratt. Pratt revealed that the sculptures are broken down at the end of the fair, and the butter is reused year-on-year, meaning that it smells rather like blue cheese when she’s working with it. So it’s probably for the best that we have people like Gonzales ensuring that the millions of state fair visitors have something more palatable to eat while they’re there.

Each newsletter, I ask Jonathan Ray for the perfect wine match for my recipe. For doughnuts, he recommends Shepherd Neame Double Stout, 5.2% vol, (£4.50 per 50cl; Noble Green Wines):

‘I reckon that doughnuts as tasty as these are best enjoyed warm from the rack just as the glaze sets but is still a bit gooey. I’m thinking mid-morning, a bit too early for wine but a bit too late for yet another coffee. I toyed seriously with the idea of a rum-infused hot chocolate as the best match but opted instead for what I crave most come 11 a.m.: a fine beer. Having grown up in God’s chosen county of Kent, I was weaned on the beers and ales of Shepherd Neame, Britain’s oldest brewer, founded in 1698 and still family owned. There isn’t a dud in their range, with Bishop’s Finger Kentish Strong Ale and Spitfire Amber Ale probably the best-known. This immaculately crafted stout, though, based on a long-hidden coded recipe from the 19th century, is probably my favourite. With a wonderful, complex malty character – think Ovaltine with a kick – decent alcohol and plenty of mocha, roast coffee and bitter chocolate notes and a rich burnt caramel sweetness to it, it might be a surprising match for these scrumptious doughnuts but (trust me) it works a treat!’

Thanks, Lex! I've been curious about this since you first tried to post it. There can be a box of donuts in the kitchen at the Ranch and I will walk right by it. The only donuts I like are warm fresh cake donuts with NO glaze or sprinkles!

I am now curious about those beers from Kent!

I agree; doughnuts are meant to be eaten straight out of the oven. John had a craving for jelly doughnuts in his last months and I had a standing order with the local bakery for a half dozen every two days. I'd pick them up still warm. I don't often eat them, but those were delicious.

The first time I lived in Ireland, the nearest town had a truly fabulous baker’s shop which served up 21 different types of fresh bread daily AND in the main window had a working machine which prepared and cooked fresh “American Doughnuts” whilst you watched

So you could walk in and wait for a few to be ready and then take them away to eat - piping hot - and they were extremely delicious !!

Needless to say my little Daughter and I were frequent customers

Good morning, Danish, Donuts and Bagels in the Break Room. Chilly here this morning. Music Bingo at the Eagles tonight. Enjoy your day and hug someone.