The Week That Was at the Aerie

Last Sunday, Terry and I drove into New Jersey to attend a surprise 40th Anniversary party for my sister Ruthann and her husband Al. Her daughters had set this up with family and a couple of friends. A quiet little backyard barbecue is what it was. Ruthann and Al had no idea and were completely surprised. A good time was had by all.

Monday and Tuesday were lovely days of little activity except for a few mundane things. Terry had a meeting with one of her embroidery groups. I think this one was up in Corning. Then she had to take the Aveo in to have some warranty/recall work done and get the sir filters replaced. (Smelled like something died in one of them!) I ran around on Monday to get a new battery for the RV's engine. I had let the old one sit int he vehicle too long last December and it lost charge and froze apparently cracking one of the cells inside and creating a short. Tuesday Joe came up--although I told him he didn't have to--to help me put that new battery (which I had already put in) and the axillary batteries into the RV.

Wednesday was a blah day with drizzle and rain showers all day long and temperatures in the low 60s. Compared to the sunny 80s of the previous days, it was a real downer. So I made some chocolate chip cookies.

Thursday it was back up to the 80s with a forecast of even higher temperatures on the way. Terry and I put the AC in the bedroom window just in case. Then we went down to Lowe's to purchase some perennials and some vegetable plants which I, of course, had to then put in the ground. (Terry did put the peppermint Joe brought up and the couple of herbs she purchased into the garden, but I did the rest.

I noticed the radishes, lettuce, carrots, some of the beets and snap peas that I had planted as seeds were finally popping up out of the soil. There's going to be a lot of thinning in the very near future!

Friday afternoon, I drove Terry up to the Corning-Elmira airport so she could catch a flight to Portland, Oregon to visit Rick, Sandy and our new granddaughter, Chelsea Rose. Terry will be there until the 19th or 20th and will do some cooking, teaching about the cooking of certain dishes and a lot of cooing over Chelsea Rose. I cut the lawn for the first time this year when I got back from the airport.

Saturday I attended the morning bird walk at Hills Creek State Park (I listed 36 species), did a brief walk over at Darling Run (another 17 species but many of them overlapped the morning list) and then went back to HCSP for the annual Audubon picnic. I'll put the bird lists in the next post.

Baked Babka!

Terry baked some fresh babka today. I helped a little when she went down to church. She did all the hard work including making sure I understood what I had to do. (Punch it down one more time. Let it raise again for 45 minutes and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it. What did you say?") It was still baking when she got back so it was her responsibility to take it out of the oven.

Baked Babka

This is the first time we have successfully had a bread rise properly. Normally the house is so cool that the yeast just won't do what it's supposed to do and we end up with something that's very,very dense. Like dwarf battle bread dense. I made sourdough one time that I could have used as a discus in the Greek tradition. Or driven a nail with the flat sides. Even the birds and squirrels passed it up. Probably didn't want a bent beak or a chipped tooth.

This time Terry put the dough in the microwave with two cups of warm water and the yeast did its thing the way it was supposed to do it. (We had tried the "heat the oven and then turn it off" trick once. Didn't work.) It didn't hurt that the house was a toasty 68-70 degrees.

I may just have to start a batch of sourdough again.

Unfortunately, I have to wait until after she gets the Easter food blessed tomorrow at noon. (Unless I can realy, really fake sleep walking....)

I blame Mayor Bloomberg and Michelle Obama!

Twinkies Maker Preparing for Chapter 11 Filing

Hostess Brands Inc. is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as this week, said people familiar with the matter, a move that would mark the second significant court restructuring for the Twinkies and Wonder Bread baker in the past several years.

Hostess Brands is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection. Shira Ovide joins Markets Hub to discuss a brief history of the company that gave the world Twinkies and Wonder Bread.

The privately held Irving, Texas, company, which employs roughly 19,000 people and carries more than $860 million in debt, has been facing a cash squeeze amid high labor costs and rising prices for sugar, flour and other ingredients, according to people familiar with the matter. Those costs together have proved higher than the company's roughly $2.5 billion in annual sales, creating losses and cash shortfalls, the people said.

More jobs heading down the drain. This is the second time Hostess has been in bankruptcy. They reorganized between 2004 and 2008, emerged from bankruptcy in 2008 but are heading back to Chapter 11 in 2012. Why?

Once in bankruptcy court, Hostess will try to reduce debt and renegotiate labor contracts, many of them with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, the people said. Hostess plans to file court papers soon threatening to reject or modify labor contracts under applicable bankruptcy rules, the people said. Such moves provide troubled companies a bargaining chip to try and get concessions from unionized workers.

A Teamsters spokesman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Hostess's other main union didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
....
One sticking point for the baker: It pays about $100 million a year into so-called multi-employer pension plans that cover workers at a wide array of companies, the people said. Hostess, whose pension plan is underfunded by about $2 billion, wants to rescind its obligations to that plan and start paying into a plan that only covers its own workers, one of the people said.

Overall, Hostess carries hundreds of separate labor contracts that the company believes impose cost burdens, people familiar with the matter said; the company also wants to reduce benefits costs.

Aaah. Unions.Pensions. Anchors.

Then there's the Nanny State/Health Food Crazed:

Sales of Hostess's signature Twinkies have recently declined a bit while the overall bakery snacks category has been about flat. Nearly 36 million packages of Twinkies were sold in the year ended Dec. 25, down almost 2% from a year earlier, according to data from SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago-based market-research firm. The data captures sales from supermarkets, drugstores, mass-market retailers and convenience stores, but exclude sales from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and club stores.

Hostess also has had trouble attracting consumers who have migrated away from white bread to whole grains and other healthier foods. Hostess released a whole-grain bread called Nature's Pride, but it hasn't sold well compared with some rivals amid a small presence on shelves, according to Mitchell Pinheiro, a Janney Montgomery Scott analyst. Still, Nature's Pride's overall sales have ticked up, increasing 12.3% over the past year or so, said a Hostess spokesman.

The Zucchini Verdict

Joe's zucchini bread recipe produced a bread that's denser, a little drier, less sweet, and less spicy. Not surprising since it contains less oil, sugar and cinnamon but more flour and zucchini. More of a bread than a cake like Terry's. Still, it' s quite good as a light snack or breakfast with a cup of coffee or tea. A schmeer of cream cheese would improve the flavor. (In contrast, Terry's bread requires a glass of cold milk and a napkin to wipe your fingers from the oil. Not that that's a bad thing!)

I give Joe's 4-1/2 stars to Terry's 5 stars. Then again, Terry's is what I'm used to. (And I have to live with her.)

Zucchini Bread

Terry tried out a new recipe for zucchini bread this morning. She got it from her cousin Joe as we were picking blueberries on Monday. His recipe calls for two cups of shredded zuke for every loaf instead of just one cup as per Terry's recipe. (I think she's trying to use up the zukes without filling up the freezer with too many bricks of bread.) She mixed up a batch this morning and ended up with three loaves instead of two. (She said she didn't want to fill the pans to the brim afraid that they might rise too much and run over.) There's some ginger and lemon zest in these that Terry normally doesn't use. There's also about half the cinnamon. They cooked faster than Joe said they would (probably because of the under-filling of the pans) but look great. The taste test will come later today.

Zucchini breads cooling on the rack.

I've said it before: Zucchini bread is like manna from heaven. It's difficult to imagine how much is too much. (At least until you start adding up the cost of flour, sugar, cinnamon, etc.)

Oh Well....

Not having learned from the past, Terry attempted to make some babka tonight. It's a yeast bread. The house temperatures are not conducive to the growth/activation of yeast. At least not during the cool time of the year--you know, when heating the house up with the oven baking bread would be okay.

I had tried this several times right after we moved in with some sourdough bread and ended up with doughy bricks for my troubles.

Well, we learned that even Fleischman's can't do the job.

Back to using the bread machine for any home baked goodness.