Lots of ideas for food I can’t eat, but I can make for Katy when she comes home from school.

I worked on a baked apple recipe today with granola as the filling for a cored out apple.

I make my own granola. It is baked without oil or sugar. Everyone at the office makes fun of my food, but they like the granola.

I will post that recipe next time.

My top three are the James Beard book, and Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and “The Way to Cook.”

The cool thing about Beard’s book is whomever owned it prior to me made copious notes on nearly every page.

This person was a very good writer and cook. I believe it was a woman and a very interesting person. I would love to know who it was.

Beard’s book has some of the best basic techniques for sauces and virtually everything else, and his clear opinions on food and cooking are the best.

Julia Child is simply a stable. I also TIVO all  her shows. I just can’t get enough of her.

Letting it rise over night in the refrigerator works very well for me.

My technique of using a bread machine to do the initial mixing and kneading and doing the final kneading on the board before putting it in the refrigerator saves me a lot of time and the texture comes out perfect for me.

I’ve learned not to mix in hardly any flour when I knead it myself. I just use my dough scraper to plop it around and let it be a very loose.

While I was waiting for it to knead in the machine I put together a quick fudge brownie batch.

I picked up the best book from the Enumlaw Friends of the Library book sale – “Rosie’s All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed Baking Book.”

I never eat what I make out of it but my kids and everyone at the office really likes the stuff.

Of course as usual I can’t seem to follow a recipe. I threw in some marshmallows and chocolate chips. They haven’t set up yet but my son didn’t mind.

I have never liked French toast very much, but my kids love it and when I was young my dad loved mom’s French toast.

Since I don’t eat real food thanks to a tortuous medical establishment, it will be  fun (or as close as I get to fun) for me to try a different twist on the classic bread in egg mixture.

(The other image that comes to mind with French toast is the movie “Kramer vs. Kramer” where Dustin Hoffman makes French toast with his son.)

The angel food cake French toast recipe on recipe.com looks interesting, but next weekend my daughter will be home and I thought I would try something different.

I think I will pipe a cream cheese mixture of some sort into the center of angel food logs then deep fry them. I’ll top with a raspberry sauce and sour cream.

Might be a good idea to dip the cake in a batter and freeze them for about 30 minutes or so to set everything before deep frying. Similar to chicken Kiev techniques I have used.

What do you think?

The driver of the dark SUV exited to eastbound N.E 85th at a high rate of speed. The vehicle lost
control and traveled across the eastbound lanes striking a grey BMW traveling westbound on N.E. 85th.

The driver of the BMW, who was not involved in the road rage incident, was killed by the impact of the collision.

The driver of the black Hyundai was placed under arrest and is being investigated on vehicular
homicide charges.

Any witnesses to this incident are urged to get in contact with the Washington State Patrol.

Next was the Maple Valley Farmers Market. It got serious with the rain when I drove up, but there were a lot of people there despite the cold — and it was cold — apparently it is the first day of winter. Got soaked again –

I headed down to the Kent International Festival after that. The rain stopped for a part of the afternoon and the festival was as much fun as I thought it would be. Great food booths and entertainment.

Tonight I am making brioche for cinnamon/sticky rolls. I just finished the dough and put it in the refrigerator to rise over night — make the rolls in the morning — I am thinking about putting white chocolate chips in them with a cream cheese glaze. Bring them to the Maple Valley office and Kent Monday. I don’t get to eat them, but I live vicariously through my friends at work.

I  have been working on Charles Olson’s projective verse essay (1950) — the heart, the breath, the line –  Well worth reading for anyone interested in the lineage of modern poetry.

Talked to Malorie Spreen and Ed Corrigan about it at the farmers market today — two of the best poets around — catch their performances sometime at the Maple Valley Creative Arts Center Open Mic on Saturday evenings –

Olson spent time in the late 40s visiting Ezra Pound when he was in the psychiatric institution. Pound to Olson to Ferlinghetti –

Nothing like living through your kids. After I watched him eat the cookies I don’t get to touch thanks to my evil physician, Dr. Neverhavefun, I decided a batch of roasted vegetables would satisfy.

Oil, lemon juice, basil, thyme, oregano and garlic with about a tablespoon of butter just to show my doctor who’s the boss.

I cut up whatever I have in the refrigerator that doesn’t have some growth on it, throw it in a bowl and pour the oil dressing over it.

Toss it in a roasting pan for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

It’s not cookies, but the small amount of butter make me feel like a rebel.

In the early 90s Ginny and I were stuck in Seattle during a horrendous snow storm that hit suddenly in the afternoon. My office was in Queen Anne and Ginny was at Seattle U.

I remember we left Seattle around 3 or 4 and both got home after midnight. It was such a relief when we made it. We sat up for hours talking about our adventure. That was fun.

This time I I decided to stay at the office. I don’t have young kids now, and I guess less courage.

Also, I have to send pages tomorrow. I felt confident I could get home OK, but the morning could be a serious problem, and pages still need to be sent.

Enumclaw, where I live, has more than 8-inches of snow and the roads are challenging at best.

My son is taking care of the house and making sure the water is dripping so the pipes do not freeze.

I wish I had an oven and stove top here. I need to do some prep work for Thanksgiving. Tonight I was planning  to make turkey stock  and I was going to start the pie crusts.

This year I am making brioche bread for Thanksgiving rather than rolls.

I make a cheesecake for the kids with 5 pounds of cream cheese and a cherry topping. I taught Katy, my daughter, how to make it and she has mastered it. She has been making it the last two years, but because of the storm she may not make it home from Spokane.

I will probably make my cherry-carmel pie (this is a recipe I developed a month or so ago from a mistake) and a pumpkin pie — that is if I make it home by Thursday.

Thanks to the wonderful world of medical science I am allowed to bake it, and then live through my son’s stomach.

Brioche is my base for sticky buns and other sweet rolls, but it makes a very good loaf-pan sandwich bread, principally because of the bucket of butter used in the dough.

I use a bread machine to mix it when I am in a hurry like I was this weekend.  There was a lot to cover Saturday.

I put the ingredients in the machine and let it do the mixing and one rise. I usually don’t  just put everything in and leave. I mix the dry ingredients and butter, then the wet. I watch it and scrape the sides to make sure it is coming together in a ball.

I use a short four cups of flour, a nearly a half pound of butter and salt.

I switch between white and brown sugar depending on the flavor I want.  I use four eggs and either buttermilk or milk.

After my bread machine mixes it and cycles through one rise, I take it out, knead it and let it rise in the pan.

Careful when baking, it browns quickly because of the butter. I use foil for most of the baking time.

It has a very rich and a delicate texture, according to my son.

I hate to admit I peak the fun meter on Sundays by making bread of some sort.

Bagels are very quick to make compared to sandwich bread or French bread or cinnamon rolls, which calls for brioche.

I make bagels with about 3 to 3 1/2 cups of white flour, 1 cup of warm water, 1 package of yeast, sugar, salt and both oil and butter.

Proof the yeast in the water with a couple of teaspoons of sugar.

Mix about 2 1/2 cups of flour with the salt and add a tablespoon or two of cold butter in a food processor.

Add a tablespoon or so of oil to the water and pour it slowly into the flour with the food processor running. Add enough flour so it balls up.

Let it rest for 5 minutes and run the processor again for about 10 turns or so, then turn it out onto a floured surface.

Add enough flour to make a stiff dough and knead until smooth.

I let it rise for an hour or so (about double whatever that means). I punch it down and knead it and roll into a log shape. I cut it into to 9 or 10 even pieces, and roll into little logs with my hand and shape it into a bagel with a  hole in the middle (use your finger to make it big enough).

I put the bagels on a greased sheet pan and cover with a towel. While the bagels are rising in the pan I fill a large kettle with water and bring it to a boil. Also preheat the oven to 400. By the time the water is boiling the bagels are ready to take a boiling bath.

I drop them in for about a minute or two ( a couple at a time) then back to the pan and into the oven. Flip them after about 5 minutes or so and cook another 20 minutes. Probably about a 200 degree internal temperature, or until they are nicely browned and thunky.

Brush some melted butter on the bagels when you take them out of the oven.

About 3 1/4 cups of white flour, 1/4 of cornmeal, 1 cup of buttermilk and 1/2 cup warm water, teaspoon or so of salt and three tablespoons of butter.

Proof a package of rapid rise yeast in the water.

I do the mixing in a food processor, then knead by hand with two rises in a bowl and one in the loaf pan.

To make it like sandwich bread I put a baking pan on top of the loaf pan with a heavy bottom pan of water inside it. After about 30 minutes or so I take off the pan and let the top brown. I want an internal temperature of 200 degrees.

I don’t get to eat bread because it tastes too good. My doctor has a special blood test to check if I have had any fun or enjoyment between visits.

My son said it was great.

Always good to live through others.

Buttermilk sandwich bread – I think I’ve become my grandmother.

So good and so bad, but I must find some way to live my life through my children. He said the buns were great.

I spent two days making the buns, and I changed the process this time.

First I made brioche dough, around 3 to 4 cups of flour, couple sticks of butter and yeast. This time I used brown sugar for the molasses content and buttermilk for the complexity of flavor. I added a small amount of cinnamon and nutmeg.

After a couple of rises, I refrigerated overnight.

In the morning I rolled it out, put sugar and cinnamon with a small amount of all spice, rolled it up and cut into buns. I spread a butter and brown sugar caramel sauce on the bottom of the pan, placed the buns closely together. One more rise and cooked for 20 minutes.

Nuts, raisin and all sorts of things can be added.

A terrible beauty was born.

April 24, 1916 marks the date of the Irish rebellion. The day inspired W.B. Yeats’ poem “Easter 1916″ - and the line, “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”

My wife Ginny used to get after me for my sauces.  I would come up with reasons to pour hollandaise, Béarnaise and velouté over almost anything.  That was before I met up with Dr. Killyasoon.

Now I eat peas and tofu — and I hear voices –

I put together a quick casserole yesterday for my son. He finished it because I had to drive to the office and cover the McDonald’s crash story.

Alton Brown made a version of this and I lifted it from him.

I crisped fried about a pound of bacon and steamed a couple of chicken thighs — I cooked a quick tomato sauce with garlic, red peppers, whole canned tomatoes and other tomato sauce stuff and reduced it with red wine.

At this point I got the call and had my son finish  the dish.

He put sauce in a casserole pan and layered flour and corn tortillas, cheese, bacon, chicken and more tomato sauce. I wanted him to put cottage cheese and tortilla chips on top then a final layer of cheese, but I was in a hurry and forgot to tell him.

He built it without the chips and said it was good.

I ate green olives and yoghurt — I need a doctor who skipped about two or three years of that pesky medical school.

My version of Croque Madam was to first caramelize an onion with a red pepper in olive oil, butter and white wine.

Next I took two slices of bread, buttered them and grilled them enough to get the grill marks.

Instead of ham I cooked bacon. I loaded the bacon and onion mixture on the bread and topped with cheddar cheese, which is all I had in the refrigerator.

I broiled that to get the cheese bubbly, then put the other piece of bread on top and some more cheese and broiled until bubbly.

I topped it with an egg fried in butter. I made hollandaise sauces and poured it over the  top. Béarnaise is more traditional, but hollandaise sounded right to me this morning for some reason.

Every pathetic male on earth has faced this riddle, and a good answer has never been discovered.

The general pattern is how I finally stumbled upon a girlfriend and wife, which was Ginny had a moment of blind weakness. Even I get lucky once in while.

My moment of enlightenment on solving the world’s darkest secret came a few weeks back while I was covering a Black Diamond City Council meeting.

Unlike some meetings I cover, this one was very quiet and polite, until a woman approached the microphone to address the Council and mayor.

She requested permission for her group to search for ghosts in the Black Diamond cemetery. Suddenly the sleepy City Council chambers broke into a clamor with nearly everyone offering their ghost encounters past and present. We were all having a pile more fun than five minutes earlier.

This started me thinking and a light went on, which is never good, but I couldn’t help myself.

I recalled an advertisement I saw on TV where pathetic guys find girlfriends by entering a bunch of lies about themselves on the Internet, which is a very good business plan.

But it occurred to me a new path was needed. How about ghost girlfriends? That seemed the perfect fit.

I have a friend who does fine with his imaginary girlfriends, but the ones who use real words and can move their arms and legs at the same time are nothing but trouble for him.

I immediately called him with my brilliant brainstorm.

“What would you think of a ghost girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. How do I find one?” he asked.

“I’ve heard you can rent a machine to find them. How great is that? It’s a lot easier than the usual methods that never work.”

“Where do I rent one? Can we get it tonight?”

I told him there may be a few details to work out, but he was very excited about the concept.

Think of the advantages. Lots of transparency in the relationship and no expensive dinners to worry about.

If you forget to open the car door for your girlfriend it’s no problem. She goes right through it, and you never get in trouble for making the wrong comment about her hair or makeup…. I don’t think.

Admittedly there are a few kinks to work out.

If the boyfriend does get in trouble, which has always been an issue with me, the downside could be troubling. A mad ghost girlfriend might be a little scary, and she could be somewhat hard to hide from, which is another small problem.

But think about it. If your girlfriend or wife is mad there is no hiding.

How much worse can it be with a ghost girlfriend?

I may have stumbled upon the answer to the most vexing riddle facing mankind – ghost girlfriends.

Have a happy Halloween.