Today's activities include: bubble machine, soaking in the tub, all the laundry in the house

T. spotted the bubble machine today on a top shelf in the garage. He bugged me until I got it down for him. Then we had to clean it, because it had sat on top of the cabinets in the kitchen at the previous house for months, collecting grease and dust. Yuck. Then we had to find a screwdriver to extract the batteries and replace them. And _then_ we could finally make bubbles. The design kinda sucks, since you have to return the handle which operates it all the way to the top to do another round of bubbles and this is apparently not obvious to T., even now. Also, we didn't have the bubbles that came with it, even tho I _think_ I saved the container, nor could I find any of the small funnels, so I had to refill it the hard way. But a fun toy.

Earlier, I read part of _Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in the American Century_ while soaking in the tub.

Picked T. up on the bike, even tho it was getting cold and starting to drizzle.

And did all the laundry I could find, then started packing for T-day.

zucchini bread

I _bought_ zucchini the last time I was at Idylwilde. That was weird; normally zucchini is something one resists, but I paid money for a bag of the stuff. I figured some could go in hash, and I could make bread, which might make for a somewhat healthier snack than the (dairy free!) danish that Roche Bros. has been carrying and that turn out to be very, very hard for me to resist.

I use the recipe out of Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. I am apparently unable to avoid modifying recipes, because I tried to type that I use it unmodified, then that I only made a single change, then only two changes. Then I gave up. Here's what I changed this time:

replaced the all purpose flour with a combination of whole grain hard red, soft white and spelt flours (yep, ran all of them through the mill. together)

left out the salt and the nuts

used a food processor to grate the zucchini, resulting in this case in a coarser grate than I would ordinary use

left out the nutmeg, increased the cinnamon and added some cardamom and ginger

Those are the changes I can think of offhand. And this is an example of me basically leaving a recipe alone.

It turned out well. The wonderful thing about BH&G recipes is you really can mangle them to almost unrecognizable and they still turn out great.

I put some zucchini in vegetable hash tonight, and that turned out well, too. I had been putting summer squash in, and it seemed like it wouldn't be that different and it was not.