A walking bundle of frequencies

Seen at a tavern.

 After seeing this I had to fight the urge to get a kitten ASAP.

 

 

I have a home! And I'd bet Piper would get into the mothering routine by keeping a kitten clean and showing it around the place.

My latest bit of home decor

It's Grabby!

Isn't she lovely? It's a metal print and so it has this glossy finish and it looks wonderful in my living room.

I ♥ Enrique's

My bread machine keeps churning out the staff of life unabated.

A loaf of herb bread turned out well.

The recipe called for tarragon but I had none so I threw in rosemary instead. 

I don't dislike tarragon, but I prefer rosemary. Tarragon has an anise/licorice thing to it which is not my favorite whereas rosemary is more like mint. The brot made for some tasty sandwiches at a friend's place.

Most recently I tried my hand at challah.

It turned out well except I misread the recipe and attempted to decorate the top of the loaf with poppy seed at the wrong time. Oops. 

I was pleased with how it turned out beyond a paucity of poppy. Light, fluffy. Eggy. This stuff makes some fine toast.

Earlier this month I got the craving for Italian food. I suspect I just didn't get enough at my Italian uncle's home over Christmas. A stop at the Willy Street Coop yielded some smoked mozzerella tortelloni from RP's Pasta. Next I made a trek to Fraboni's as I had a hankering for their XX hot sausage.

It had been a while since I'd had their sausage as my wife doesn't care for it. The grind is too coarse for her taste. Fair enough. Now that I am no longer cooking for her, I indulged myself. Also, I bought a quart of their marinara and voila! It was a fairly quick and easy dinner.

While at Fraboni's it was brought to my attention that they now offer Mystery Sausage Coils. 

Who knows what lurks in the heart of mystery sausages? The Fraboni knows...

When dining out, it's been Mexican lately.

It had been a while since I'd been to El Pastor. The fajitas were fine. Grilled jalapenos are da bomb. 

Is there a 12-step program for choco-flan addiction?

I love this stuff!

More recently I ate at Enrique's Market for the first time. It features a small selection of groceries, including a brand of salt & vinegar potato chips that I'd never encountered, as well as a kitchen offering a smattering of Mexican staples. 

My asada torta was simple yet very delicious.

I really like Enrique's. The food was good, the staff friendly, and it had a wholly unpretentious, hole-in-the-wall vibe that I adore. It's a neighborhood joint, not a Michelin starred destination for the well-heeled. As Douglas MacArthur once said, I shall return.

Book, cat, and rain

My new book arrived.

It's a neat tome and has an entry per day so I can get a microdose of nature every morning to start my day.

Here's Piper this afternoon catching some rays on my clean comforter.

Finally, here's a shot of the rain from a morning earlier this week. I eschewed the auto settings which brighten everything into unreality.

Urban Driftwood is here

My Yasmin Williams CD has arrived. Since I bought it from her directly, she autographed it.

I am looking forward to seeing her this spring at the Stoughton Opera House.

First perambulations of 2026

New Year's Day was relatively temperate and snowy which meant I got to start 2026 with a morning walk without having to bundle up too much.

The sky poured generally large flakes down on me but, since it was only around 22, most were quickly blown off my coat and hat by the gentle breezes. Highway 30 provided its usual annoying automobilic ambience but it wasn't too busy as many people were still at home sleeping or nursing hangovers. Starkweather Creek was frozen over in some spots. 

Once on the north side of the highway, I again pondered how to photograph a bike trail bridge. Their mixes of curves and Wrightian straight lines seem full of potential but I still haven't discovered a way to take a good photograph of them that somehow captures the way they fit into their environment.

A nearby oak tree had decided not to shed its leaves and the brown & tan hues added a slight hint of color to the otherwise white and grey landscape.

I took the creekside path where I saw one woodpecker plying its trade and heard another. On a tree that had fallen into the creek I spied a blue jay taking a break from bullying the other birds in the area.

By this time the din of the highway was inaudible and it was only the occasional plane that disturbed the serenity of the scene.

Once onto the bike path again I hoofed it for a little while before deciding to veer into the woods and follow the off-road bike path, something I hadn't done in 5 years or so.

Immediately I saw that I was not alone as there were bike tire tracks from those big, knobby winter bike tires in the snow. This meant that A) I was not alone and B) that I could avoid any "To Build a Fire" incidents by simply following them. I eventually made my way east to try to find that Blair Witch area with all the Barbie dolls in the trees that I ran into last time I was in these woods.

As I was walking along the trail at one point I heard a squeal from behind me. Turning to look, I found that the sound was from bicycle brakes and that there was an intrepid rider back at the last curve. It turned out to be a gentleman in his late 20s, methinks, who proved to be quite amiable as we ended up chatting for a few minutes.

He explained that his New Year's resolution was to get out on his bike more often and he figured he'd start on day 1. In addition, he told me that there was another biker out as well and I surmised it was this person's tracks that I had followed into the woods. Before long my interlocutor was off and I continued my trek down the path.

It wasn't long before I ran into ruins from the Truax air base. 

I cannot remember what these fire hydrant-like things are called - they are to open or close valves that are underground.

Bits that were off the path and shrouded in leaves the last time I was in these parts were now revealed.

Some Norwegian had visited since the last time I was here as there were trolls at a couple spots where the trail split.

I eventually found the area that had had dolls, a beer bottle, and so on hanging from branches. Barbie had fled and all that was left was the head of a turtle from a plush thingy that had been whole on my last visit.

With my mission accomplished, I continued along the trail until I reached the paved bike path and headed home. There I heated up some coffee and reclined on the couch where Piper curled up on my lap. 

A splendid way to begin 2026. Quality time amongst the trees as the snow crunched beneath my feet and the chilly breeze licking my cheeks. And I got to chat with someone new. Walks like this are a big reason why I adore winter.

Cozy cat, 4 January 2026

A lavender loaf

Lavenders blue, dilly dilly, lavenders green
When I am baking, dilly dilly
You will be eating

I baked more bread yesterday. With a mostly full bottle of buttermilk in my refrigerator, I opted for a loaf of buttermilk lavender bread. It turned out well.

I ate a bit simply with butter but think that honey would be very tasty as would making French toast with it. That bread machine cookbook I took out from the library explained the various types of yeast so I went out and bought some of the instant stuff. My hope is that this will help my next loaf of rye to rise correctly.

Addendum: this bread goes very well with tuna salad. 

Baking a loaf

For some reason I thought it was be a good idea to get a bread machine cookbook from the library. A witchy librarian checked me out yesterday and today I baked my first loaf from the book. Hours after it had finished, my kitchen and living room still smelled of cardamom for I had baked some cardamom tea bread.

Sitting in the pan it looked and smelled delicious. Unlike my bundt cake, I managed to get the loaf out of the pan without a hitch. I was rather surprised at this point because after I had put the ingredients into the pan, the directions said to select the "Quick bread/cake" setting on the bread machine.

Well, my machine has no such setting. Some internet site helpfully explained that not all bread machines are built to accommodate recipes that use baking powder and soda as leavening agents. Yeast only, please.

After reading a bit more at this website about the experience of one gentleman with this type of bread machine, I made my best guess and selected a setting that I hoped would get me into the ballpark. 

Cutting into it, I found that it looked properly risen and not dense like a neutron star.

How did it taste? 

Marvelous!

A bit sweet and every bite was loaded with luscious cardamom. With a cup of sour cream and no small amount of oil, it was very moist.

To the librarian at Hawthorne today who was clad in shorts, fishnet stockings, and a witch's hat

I like the cut of your jib.

o\i

Peter Gabriel has a new album due soon. Well, soonish. Early next year, I suppose. It's to be called o\i. As with i\o, he'll be releasing a track every month on the full moon. Here's the announcement.

Achtung! Seltsamer Hund

Seen today.

How do you use a sous vide?

A friend and I went to Thai Noodles on New Year's Eve before going to see Genzhi Town to close out our cinema going for 2025. The movie was fun. Being a Chinese movie, the denizens of Chiang Kai-shek's China were heroic and patriotic while the minions of Emperor Hirohito were a bunch of sadistic barbarians.

For dinner I had some tasty cucumber salad

to accompany chicken larb. 

Both were very tasty. I used the sticky rice to soak up the larby juices.

My dining companion had the fried rice where they threw in everything but the kitchen sink. Every kind of meat they had on offer, broccoli, peas, etc. I like how they piled it up into a mound on the plate giving it a Close Encounters of the Third Kind vibe.

I am told it too was very tasty.

Someone generously gave me a sous vide cooker for Christmas. 

I haven't used it yet but am contemplating the purchase of a nice steak from Meat People and giving it a go.

A couple weeks or so ago I went out to UW Provision where I didn't find any venison for a batch of bigos.* But I did find this pasty:

It was eaten last night.

The filling was a giant ball of brat. 

It tasted fine and I dipped tender nuggets of bratwurst into Düsseldorf senf and some HP sauce which tastes more and more like Heinz 57 upon subsequent tastings.

*A co-worker heard of my plight and will be donating some venison to the bigos cause.

2 January 2026

The Shimmer is just down the block

My neighbor's deer decorations give me the chills, make me feel a bit of the unheimlich. Cage match Santa helps too.

New Hmong market

Sun Prairie is now to home to a Nolan's Hmong Market. I believe it opened a couple months ago, ish. I stopped in last week on the strength of the sign not knowing it was a Hmong store.

I walked out with some sausage as well as a bag of meatballs.

I believe I've had sausage from Mekong previously though I don't recall if it was the pork ginger variety. Now that I look at this blog's archives, I find that I indeed had the pork ginger stuff a few years back. Probably from Viet Hoa. My plan is to put the meatballs, at least half of them, into a big bowl of ramen.

Ringing in the new year with Katzen

I must start the new year with cats.

Pipey!

A classic photo of Grabby. 

18/00 softness

For Christmas I was given an assortment of Dungeons & Dragons themed beard moisturizers, including several sample sized oils and a cream.

It even comes with the pogonophilic equivalent of the Player's Handbook. I've been trying to get into the habit of using the cream. While I haven't gotten into the routine of applying it everyday, I do most days. It doesn't smell bad.