The Day in Cornmeal Usage: I may have bought too big of a bag of cornmeal. Even last week’s corn bread bonanza barely put a dent in my supply. Cue the Google machine to find cornmeal recipes. What I needed to make was my dessert of the week and I found this: Bolo de Fubá – Brazilian Cornmeal Cake. I’d never heard of it before, but it is a traditional cake served with breakfast or an afternoon snack. In other words, it’s a Brazilian coffee cake. I’m a huge fan of lightly sweet, moist cakes and this one is a very simple one to make and gave me an excuse to find some other sweetness in the sounds of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66.
The Day in Bundt Pan Usage: Without going too deep, Bundt is the name of the pan, not the cake, and Bundt Pans are still trademarked by Nordic Ware. Fluted pans hail from Germany and France for a variety of yeast cakes that are baked in tube pans. The German cake is Gugelhupf is also known as Bundkuchen. Bund is loosely translated as bundle and kuchen is cake. It’s the Bund with a ‘T’ added for marketing that we know as Bundt cake. Of the pans shown below, I usually use the round pan with swirls but today I decided to use the most challenging of my four pans. All those ridges mean more possibility of stick-age. It’s always a hold my breath moment when I turn over the bundt pan to release the cake…but it worked beautifully today.
The Day in Pompeii IPA: Once a week Liberty’s Bar and Bottle opens its doors to sell beer and wine. In non-Covid times they are what I call a ‘chalk board’ bar. They have a rotating selection of beer and wine on tap that changes so frequently the menu is on a chalk board. Liberty’s specialized in hard to find brews and the are also know for their selection of rosé wine. The bar is run by people who know what they are doing and it’s a great spot to try new beer and wine products. I miss going in and learning from the staff.
When I went in this weekend of course I couldn’t taste so I just had to trust. I wanted an IPA. The dude who has waited on me frequently in the past didn’t hesitate to recommend Toppling Goliath Brewing Company’s hazy IPA Pompeii. I grabbed a four pack without question. Per the brewery: “[Pompeii] features mango and pineapple hop flavors with a medium-body feel to tantalize the senses.” My senses may not have been tantalized, but I really liked the beer. And I really like beer-snob talk. I really do. I don’t always agree or understand it, but I love reading it.
The Day in TV Viewing: Watching TV is awesome especially with the amount of content available, but I never watch it at home. I will go to your house and watch TV all day, but I cannot sit down in my apartment and watch. Well, in non-Covid times, that’s true, but during the Covid being stuck at home has shifted my TV viewing habits. Sort of.
On my daily to-do list I always plan to watch 1 hour of TV a day. That one hour task is not meant to keep me down to one hour of viewing, it’s to get me up to one hour of viewing. To help out, I subscribed to Netflix to give myself the best show to watch but I still forget to turn on the TV on most days. I’m so sporadic Netflix keeps sending me emails reminding me to finish watching Shitt’s Creek. I want to respond telling them how much I’m trying!
The Day in Weather: The angel side of my brain has been studiously watching the weather this afternoon to see if I can fit in a walk. The devil side of my brain is looking for a clearing so I can take that walk directly down the street to pick up a pizza.
Nothing Ever Happens on My Street 