Our Dough-Boy-Gus (December 5, 2010-December 11, 2020); May he rise in peace...

It's a sad, sad day at Kasa Kecky. Gus was buried at sea this morning at 8:00am.



Okay, enough of that, he smelled really bad anyway! Meet Baby-Gus, II...shhh, he's sleeping.



Well, I'm feeling much better and Dad is here. I picked him up yesterday afternoon. According to Dad, he had no idea he was coming to stay with us. I know we talked about it last weekend when we saw him, but that was a long time ago in his world. I know Kathy told him more than once too. It's funny cause he's actually angry that nobody told him. Well, not funny but you know what I mean. At least he said he didn't mind coming to our house so that's a plus.

Lots to do today. Bro-In-Law-Darryll gave me a turkey carcass so I'll be making more stock and turkey soup for the dinna tonight. Dad likes soup! He also enjoyed his apple wood smoked BLT last night. So did we! That was the first meal I'd had in a day or so.

I'm also going to be making my little stocking stuffers for our Wichita Christmas. I'd tell you what I'm doing, only some of you are going to get the stuffer in your stocking so never mind.

Smokin-Hot-Poppy will be smoking some fish today for our Donner Party party we're having tomorrow. The Donner-Maes will be coming for a little holiday cheer, some smoked tid-bits and to discuss our Donner Party Expedition set for late January. We'll be discussing menus. Shouldn't be hard...she who doesn't pull her weight ends up on the plate! Ha, I just made that up. Actually, we Donner-Mae's are a bunch of foodies so we'll be eating good on this trip!

That's all I have for you. Check in with you on Monday!

Have a great weekend!

I think I might have killed Gus...

The next step in growing Gus was to discard 80% of him and replace with fresh food. I am to do this every twenty-four hours. While he still stinks to high, high Heaven, I don't think he looks like he should.



I have a Food 911 into Sensei-John so we'll see what he says.

The other night I woke up with horrible stomach cramps. Not a good sign. I've been out of commission with some stomach bug. Probably has something to do with Gus. Anyhow, last night we were to attend Pinot & Bubbles with Friends, Jeanette and Jeff. While they were trying to scalp our tickets and enjoying hundreds of bubblies and pinots from around the world, I was eating rice and drinking Gatorade. Sucked.



I'm still out of commission, but at least the rumbly-tumbly in my stomach has stopped. Good thing too cause this is my Dad weekend and I need to pick him up a little later. Speaking of which, Poppy-Shoppy went to the store for me and picked up all the staples that Dad will need:

Pinwheels
Microwave popcorn
raisinettes
soda
peanuts in the shell

That's all I've got for you. Time for a nap.

Have a great weekend.

IT'S ALIVE, IT'S ALIVE!!

Fartagus-Maximus (Gus) lives! Not only that, man does he stink!! Fermentation is one stinky hobby! My reading tells me that Gus will go between smelling like stinky cheese and sweet milk. Now, I loves the stinky cheese, but that's an understatement! Haven't gotten to the sweet milk part...



Wedgie-The-Oven decided it needed a break so she stopped working...again. Mike, my new best friend and oven-guy came out to pay her a vissy. He thinks it's the sensor that detects the heat of the pilot light. So he turned up the pilot light and all was good, until he left and then Wedgie took another break. She's a tired old girl! So I called Mike-The-Oven-Guy back. He said "This is serious problem." Did I also mention that Mike-The-Oven-Guy has a very thick Russian accent? I enjoy listening to him talk. He said he would try to find a refurbished sensor. Oddly enough, they don't make parts for my 1920's Wedgie any longer. If he can't find one, then one will need to be fabricated. He said "I have other customer waiting for same thing...after two month, she give up."

Let it be known, I will not give up on Wedgie. So let it be written, so let it be done. Besides, I've got the convection oven. Speaking of which, I made more bread yesterday. Depression-Era-Poppy really likes the denseness of the bread. I suppose it reminds her of the old days before electricity and Active Dry Yeast were invented.

Anyhow, in the original recipe for the bread, I read it wrong...it called for baking soda. I used baking powder. Oopsie! But after talking to MomJean-The-Chemist, she told me that since I used the beer instead of the buttermilk that I achieved the same results had I used soda. By the way, if you add a tablespoon to and enough milk to equal a cup, you have buttermilk. Who knew? MomJean, that's who!

So I decided I'd make a loaf with baking powder; one with baking soda; one with the 50/50 mix of flour and some rye flour; one with 50/50 mixture, rye flour and some polenta. Is this the proper use of a semi-colon?



They all turned out dense; I think loaf #2 was the best. Loaf #4 should be given to the National Hockey League. They can market is as a sustainable hockey puck.

Alright, let's move on. Monday, Typhoid-Poppy wasn't feeling well and stayed home from work. While I was working, she decided she wanted to install the last of the two light fixtures we bought. We had discussed this before and I really didn't want her playing with electricity; besides this is why we hired Thomas-Not-Tomas-The-Electrician. But, Depression-Era-Poppy likes to save a buck (and a paper towel) wherever she can so when I came home on Monday, she'd put the lights in. I'm very proud of her and her work...and that she's still alive!

This is the light in the landing:



This is the light in the bedroom:



I guess this means I have to finish the touch-up work in the dining room and touch-up the rest of the rooms in the house so we can hang some art work and call this place done.

Well, time for Sleeping-Poppy-Beauty to rise and shine and for us to get to work. Bye bye.

I'm not afraid of baking...

Even though Fartacus-Maximus is still maturing, I wanted to play around with some dough. I found a recipe out of the Prairie Home Cookbook. It called for bread flour or whole wheat flower, baking powder, salt and buttermilk. I was too lazy to go get buttermilk so here's what happened...

I mixed bread flour and organic whole wheat flour (1 1/2 cups)
1/4 tsp of baking powder
1 tsp Kecky's Herb Salt
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup or so of a strong beer (I used Sierra Nevada)
2 TBS millet
2 TBS wheat berries

Sift all the dry ingredients into a bowl, add the millet and wheat berries, then the liquid. Mix it all up. Form it into a ball. Put it on a lightly floured cookie sheet. Get a sharp knife and score the top with an X. Take a piece of foil and oil once side of it and put it on the top of the bread. Throw it in the oven for 30 minutes on 375. Remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes until golden on the top.

VOILA!

A Day Of Shopping...aka, Ho, Ho F__king Ho!

Even though Poppy-The-Adventurer is lame, she was still able to go shopping...much to my disappointment. Depression-Era-Poppy can shop like nobody I've ever known. Like a kid in the candy store!

We arrived at the mall around 12:00pm. We finished and were headed to the truck at 5:00pm and that was only because we were having dinner at Seester's. Had we not had a dinner plan, I'm afraid we would have been there until the place closed down for the night. I will say in Shop-Till-Kelly-Drops-Poppy's defense, I hate shopping. This is why I do all my shopping on the internet. But then again, Shoppy-Poppy can aimlessly walk around a store for hours. She'd kill me for telling you this, but she's the only person I know who tries on underwear! We are not simpatico this way. At one point Shoppy looked at me and said "You're miserable." The only treat during the say was lunch.

Poppy with her shopping glow:



See Kelly trying to get blotto to make it through the rest of the day:



Enough of that torture, let's move on to an episode of KEEPING UP WITH THE KECKY'S! While I was at that work function last week (yeah, that was the function where Poppy-The-Adventurer slid down the hill), Friend Laurie and I were talking to John-The-Bread-Maker. He was telling us all about his bread making. In fact, that next day, he brought us each a piece of one of his loaves. INFINITY-NOM X 10. John told us that the basic recipe for his bread is over 100 pages long; but insists it's easy to do. He directed me to the book. I bought it on Amazon so it should be here by Tuesday. Note, I bought that book on Amazon from the comfort of my Laz-A-Boy and not at some stupid mall!!

Now, you know I love a challenge and you know I'm no baker so I'm over the top excited about this. John-My-Bread-Making-Sensei then told me he would give me some of his starter that he's had for 20 years. He also told me not to be afraid of bread making.

While John-The-Leavan-Lover is going to give me some of his starter, I'm very interested to see how this process works from scratch. So, I've acquired the first few pages of the book on how to do the starter.

Meet the newest member of the Kecky family, Fartacus-Maximus:





This is Fartacus-Maximus' new home. He will stay here for 2-3 days and then I'll check to make sure he's farting up a storm and then we'll go to step two.



It's like having a new baby, only different. Hope I don't kill Fartacus-Maximus.

Have a great week!

Poppy takes a header...

Remember I wrote a few days ago about what a great weekend we were going to have...dinner at Iluna and walking around North Beach Friday night, shopping on Saturday and roller skating on Sunday? Well, Thursday night Popppy-The-Adventurer and I had a work function. When we returned to the truck afterwards, instead of taking the asphalt path, Poppy-The-Adventurer wanted to take a "shortcut" down the hill...in the pitch black. Mmmm hmmm, Poppy went boom-boom and landed somehow on her bad knee and has been limping ever since. We cancelled our dinner reservation and will be laying low this weekend.

Say, let's check in with A DAY IN THE LIFE OF DAD! I was at work yesterday and went to visit Seester in her cube. Dad called while I was there and said he'd been up all night with a toothache. This is the same tooth that the crown came off while he was staying with us last month. So, Seester had to go in search of a dentist. She found one and he can see Dad at 12:15. Seester had just taken Wednesday off to take Dad to his doctor's appointment so she asked if I could take him to the dentist. Off I went to pick him up.

Now, before all of our turning of life's events last year, Dad had been in the process of having a bunch of his teeth removed to ready him for dentures, I guess. On the ride to the dentist, Dad said he wanted the tooth extracted. This will leave him pretty well toothless on one side of his mouth.

Okay, we arrive at the dental office. It's very nice and clean. The receptionists is also very nice...and clean. I fill out all the paperwork and I tell her that Dad is hard of hearing and vision impaired so folks will have to speak up so he can hear. She tells me I can come back with him. Of course I'll do this, but part of me just wants to pass out cause I hate all things dentist.

The assistant came out to fetch us and we go back to the xray area. Lucky for me, this is an open floor plan dental office so you can see each and every patient getting worked on. Just writing this, I'd like to pass out!





Enough about me...The dental assistant took some xrays and then mentioned that since Dad is on the Cumadin (blood thinner) they might not be able to do anything because they'll usually have the patient go off the Cumadin for the procedure. We then met with Mr. Dentist. I wish I could pronounce his name, but I can't. Not like you can hear me anyway. Mr. Dentist took a look and told Dad that he'd love to take the tooth for him, but because of the Cumadin Dad will have to see the oral surgeon. The tooth is also infected, by the way.

So Mr. Dentist sent us away with a referral to the oral surgeon and prescriptions for Vicodine and Amoxicillin. Yay!

Last night, we still wanted to go have some fun, so we went to dinner at La Playa in Pacifica. We'd been hearing some good things about it. We had a great time! Very local hangout and the food was darn NOM!

I had the Steak Rancheros:



Poppy had the Chicken Espawhatever:



That's it. See ya!

Bacon, Bacon, Bacon...

Last night we fried up some of the INFINITY NOM bacon that Poppy cured and smoked. I tried to take a couple of pictures so you could see it...





Perhaps she needs a name change: Jax-The-Bacon-Connesewer!

Okay, so what do you do with the last of the leftovers? Thought I'd make mashed potato pancakes. I drizzled a little of the gravy on top then served them with the bacon, some greens and a wee bit of the cranberry sauce. NOM!!



I really have no idea why Fatass and LuvBacon need to buy fat pants!

Well, that'll do it for Thanksgiving, but I could still eat more turkey!

Bye Bye!