After the storms, anniversary, birthday and Misfits

The storms caused flooding locally, not my street, and damage to trees and shrubs. Gary's hydrangea was destroyed, and he salvaged branches for me to put in water.

So something good came from the storm. 

Today's an emotional day. Handsome Son has his birthday. And it's the anniversary of Handsome Partner's death, at home in hospice care. He went home in the early evening of our son's birthday, with only Handsome Son present. I'd stepped out for a minute.

We'll celebrate the birthday when HS is free to come over. I expect to make a chocolate cake. Maybe there will be takeout pizza, his choice of toppings.

Misfits box arrived,  reminding me that daily life comes crowding in anyway

with the ingredients for a Yeung Man Cooking recipe involving oyster mushrooms, miso tofu, soy sauce, and other ingredients I already have.

Lovely fruit, cherries, peaches, plums,

this is a good year for stone fruit. 

With berries and salad greens, as well as the yogurt I just made, can't go far wrong. And the plant based sausage goes with a lot of ideas, mostly quick ones.

I wonder if today's events are the reason I was struggling recently? Your body knows even when you don't.

Anyway happy day everyone, especially people with August birthdays, powerful Leos.

Photo AC 

Humidity drops, and bread returns

So the humidity has dropped, you can breathe, the temps are still hot, but manageable, and bread baking has returned.  I will be making a birthday dinner for Handsome Son tomorrow, and needed homemade bread rolls as part of the deal.  I plan to make a couple of rolls into garlic bread, to go with homemade spaghetti sauce with meat balls made from farm sausage, good mozzarella shredded over, then home baked chocolate cake with cherry sauce in, sort of rustic Black Forest cake, and ice cream. Not too shabby, and not too hot to eat this way, either.

So I hauled out the breadmakings, and made one small batch of rolls for instant use.  

Today since something that was to happen isn't after all, illness, someone else's that is, caused cancellation, I have a slot of time to make another, bigger, batch of bread rolls for the freezer.  

The same old wholewhat bread recipe as always, from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, easy, makes good bread with a lovely crust, and you just shape the dough however you want it -- loaves, flat cakes, breadsticks, rolls, it's as adaptable as clay.  

I love a handy roll to stuff with cheese when I can't be bothered fixing anything more complicated, and I will have a nice supply in the freezer by this evening.  If you bake bread in or on a nonstick pan or tray, it makes a great crust, better, I find than the regular metal pans.

Officially the birthday is Monday, which also happens to be Handsome Partner's anniversary, so Handsome Son tactfully opted to have Friday night, as well as better fitting his schedule.  

It's an annual very mixed day, August 8, because of the major birthday coinciding with the major death, so we handle it each year one way or another.  We have sometimes celebrated HP on his birthday in late June, but what with weather and work schedules, that hasn't happened yet this year, is still to be decided. 

Monday will be a plein air art morning, and I think of going to the labyrinth after that to walk it in memory of Handsome Partner.