Muffin Surprise!

Up in Chicago, there’s a place called Dokil Bakery that ships goodies all over the place. My local Korean groceries carry their chestnut bread, sweet bean bread, and castella cakes, and it’s good stuff.

So I saw a new castella muffin/cupcake at the Korean grocery. It had big red splotches and some stringy stuff, and it looked interesting. Of course I bought it.

Heh. Surprise!

1. It was a savory muffin/popover.

2. The red blotches were chili peppers.

3. The filling was some kind of grated cabbage.

So… yeah… it was tasty tasty tasty, and I don’t regret buying it. But the packaging and ingredient list were totally incorrect!

Literally, “the cake was a lie” ….

A Tool Chest That Lasts Several Lifetimes

Today I happened to tune into a PBS show called “A Craftman’s Legacy,” which visits various craft businesses.

I was shocked to hear that they were visiting a famous toolbox manufacturer in Dayton. I didn’t know there was such a thing.

But sure enough, when they showed the factory premises, I saw a familiar building, up on the other side of the Great Miami from downtown Dayton, close to the old railroad bridge, and between Sinclair and old St. Elizabeth’s. I’ve passed that building plenty of times, and it’s one of the few factories and warehouses in that area that hasn’t been torn down.

It’s called H. Gerstner & Sons, and they make beautiful, durable wooden tool chests, toolboxes, liquor cabinets, bottle stands, knife holders, jewelry boxes, collectible keepers, and pretty much anything else of that nature that you could want. They will even make you a stylish wooden purse or attache case.

They have a set of bookends that double as firearms storage. And they look darned nice. They also make more conventional firearms cases.

They will also fix and restore any of their old products that you happen to have around the house. Yep, Great-Grandpa’s toolbox can be your toolbox, too.

Finally, if you take a look at their stuff and want to make one just like it — you can buy a kit!

This stuff kills me. It is gorgeous. It looks like some of this stuff would be perfect for wedding presents, for instance.

But yup, apparently they are famous among people in the skilled trades, even if the rest of us don’t know about them. They should be famous with everybody!

The other interesting thing is that they are doing the work with a blend of century-old specialty tools, age-old hand tools, and super-new programmed tool machines. They have improved the processes they can, and left alone the ones that were already best.

So check out their website. Even if just to drool. And keep in mind that they have a warehouse sale every spring!

Also, if you have a lot of gaming miniatures or other knickknacks, and you want to organize and protect them while making your house look nice… they have a lot of stuff for you!

Purple Yam Ice Cream. With Cheese.

I woke up Sunday feeling cruddy, but I thought it was just sinus headache from air pressure. So I went to church anyway. (Sorry, choir folks. Hope I didn’t pass anything along.)

For the rest of the day, I continued to feel cruddy, and gradually accepted that I either had some kind of evil flu or a sinus infection. I still don’t know which. But headache and fever are apparently flu this season, the headache is partially outside my sinus area, and nothing gross is coming out of my nose; so I’m assuming it’s flu. (I would go to the doctor, but we’re kinda snow and ice heavy at the moment, and the county buses aren’t running. I’m not about to walk and get sicker.)

The fever broke last evening, my lymph nodes have shrunk today, and my scratchy throat is responsive to all that liquid-drinking, but the stupid headache has hung on. (My tummy has been fine all along and there’s no drippage to speak of. So yeah, that doesn’t usually happen with flu, colds, or sinus junk. I have no idea what I’ve got.)

So given that I don’t have any Tamiflu around the house, I did a little research. It turns out that, if you think you have a virus (like flu), doctors now advise eating your head off (so your body has energy to fight with) and getting a lot of Vitamin A (as well as lots of fluids and lots of Vitamin C).

And thus, I decided last night that it was time to break out the Filipino ice cream.

Ube and keso flavor is purple yam (lots of Vitamin A!) and cheese (cheddar). The yam was pretty good, like any sweet flavor of ice cream. The orange cheese inclusions were odd but likeable enough. (And there was some kind of sugar syrup along with the cheese.) It was good stuff. The main thing is that purple ice cream will create purple stains, so be careful how you eat it!

I ate about 3/4 gallon. It was very soothing to my throat. And my immune system seems to have used just about all of it for fuel, rather than turning it into fat and bloating me up. Hahahah! Nutritional victory!

I am resting today, continuing to eat, and continuing to keep up the vitamin and fluid barrage. Whatever this junk is, I want it gone.