Living on the Texas Gulf Coast, hurricane season is a big deal around my house. Over the past few days, Hurricane Ida slamming into Louisiana as a power category 4 storm, with winds of 150mph, kind of renewed my sense of urgency in making sure that my house is set up for storms.
Over the summer, I canned up quite a few things (everything from chicken to squash, to jam to cherries) to augment some of my non-perishable supplies. Which, okay, let’s be honest, non-perishable foods are not in fact infinitely non-perishable. They eventually go bad; they just stay good months longer than they would otherwise.
If we are talking tropical storms that juts dump a bunch of rain for a couple of days, I’m fairly well prepared. But, Hurricane Ida was a monster storm. A storm like that would require a whole different level of ready than what my readiness level is now.
The other day, I had a few minutes, and I decided to put together a basic hurricane readiness checklist. This is not an official recommendation. I am not employed by any of the offices of emergency management, nor do I work for any official agencies like the National Weather Service, or the National Hurricane Center (although seriously, I don’t think I would turn down a job at the National Hurricane Center. That would be freakin’ awesome).
Anyway, I decided to share my list with you so that you can check it out and then tweak it to work for you.
Feel free to download this. I put it in pdf format so that you can open it on any device. Again, this is based on my personal needs, but you can change this to fit your situation. For example, I don’t have any small kids in my house. So, if you have small kids, you would want to make sure you had diapers, wipes, bottles, etc..
To all of our neighbors to the east in Louisiana, our hearts and prayers are with you. There are already several organizations around our area that are taking up donations of supplies and equipment to take over there as soon as the roads are open again. We have been there ourselves (through Ike and Harvey most recently). We understand what you are going through and wish you all of the best.
Okay. I just made that up. But, it kind of does say Fall, or at least the weekend.
Sometimes, you find yourself with a loaf of homemade bread that is starting to lose its freshness. Or sometimes, you just feel like something a little more exciting for breakfast. Either way, French Toast is definitely the answer.
I love baking bread, but I usually don’t eat it up fast enough to keep it from going bad, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s good bread gone bad. (Insert dirty look with raised eyebrow). The picture above is a Basic French Loaf. I think I probably posted about it before, but I am a little too lazy to go look for the post to link it. Anyway, if you would like to try baking it yourself, here is the recipe. It is one of the best recipes for beginning bread makers because it doesn’t require a lot of kneading or special steps, but it’s also great for more advanced bakers because it is really pleasant. If you are new to baking bread, pay really close attention to the temperatures when they are telling you to heat liquid before adding yeast. Yeast has a low heat tolerance and will die really quickly if your liquid is too hot. Trust me on that one.
So, I had this loaf sitting on my counter, and I had an amazing idea. I could make French Toast. Better yet, I could make French Toast and then post a how to on the blog. It was a miracle. Normally, I have bright ideas but then forget to take pictures so that I blog about it. Not exactly a recipe for blogging success. For once, though, I remembered about posting before I started. The result….
A Step by step guide to French Toast.
Okay. You are going to need some stuff.
Bread. For this one, I used a basic French Bread. Day old baguettes work great for French Toast, but in a pinch, even normal store-bought bread will work. Personally, if I am going to buy store bought bread, I prefer the artisan kind from the bakery section. A drier, firmer bread works better than the soft spongy types, but even those will work.
Eggs. How many eggs you use depends on how much toast you are making. I usually use 2 or 3 if it is just me because I scramble the left overs to each with my toast.
Milk. I usually just use plain old dairy milk, but you could probably substitute this for non-dairy if you need to.
Toppings. I usual go with the standard powdered sugar sprinkled on top, but some people prefer syrup or even jam. This is kind of just a personal preference thing.
How do you do it? Good question. Here’s what you do:
First, you slice the bread if it isn’t sliced already. I make mine a little thicker than a sandwich slice but not super thick. Somewhere around half an inch or slightly more seems to work well. If I am using baguettes, I usually slice it a little thicker.
Next you put the eggs into a flat dish or container of some kind that is big enough for your bread to lay flat in so that you can soak the bread. You lightly whisk the eggs so that the yolks are broken. I use a fork. Then you add milk just until it is a little creamy. You don’t have to use much. I don’t actually measure, I just pour a little in. Then whisk the eggs and milk until kind of smooth.
Soak your first piece(s) of bread in the egg mixture while you heat your pan.
When the pan is hot, add a little bit of butter (or a tiny bit of neutral oil like avocado) and add the first piece(s) of bread. While the first batch is cooking, soak the next slice(s) of bread.
Cook the toast on the first side until the egg that has squished out from the bottom looks like it is ready to turn. It should start to get white and opaque. Once that seems done, flip it and cook it on the other side. Do this in batches until all of the toast is done.
Remove from pan and put directly onto the individual plates. Immediately top with desired toppings.
Once the bread has cooked, scramble the remaining egg mixture. This can be served to anyone who wants it.
Here’s a progression in pictures.
I used milk, but if you want it to be really rich, you can use half and half.
Add just enough milk to the eggs that it looks a little creamy.
Slice your bread to the desired thickness.
Soak it in the egg mixture. Make sure to turn it over so that both sides are wet.
Cook in the pan on both sides. Egg mixture will spill out. That’s okay.
I prefer powdered sugar, but syrup or jam (like this blueberry jam) are also options for topping.
And that’s it. Your French Toast is finished. Much easier than the name suggests, and well worth the effort. This is a great way to impress company, but there’s no need to invite people over unnecessarily just to make it. It works great just because as well.
When I was a kid, I always looked forward to the day that I would be a grownup and not have to go to bed so early. Even in high school, I had a 9:30 bed time. Nobody ever told me that there was a possibility of having to go to bed early as a grown up. My parents weren’t a normal example. My dad was a merchant marine (a.k.a. sailor). He would be gone for a month or two at a time (longer after he switched o a different company), and then he would be home for that same amount of time (less with the second company). My mom was a stay-at-home-mom. So, neither one of them had an early bedtime at home. I guess other kids whose parents worked more normal jobs probably saw their parents go to bed earlier, but I never really thought about it because mine didn’t have to. I figured I would get to stay up as late as I wanted as an adult.
Then I became an adult.
My bedtime now is earlier than it was in high school. Not even exaggerating. Full disclosure, I hardly ever get to bed as early as I need to for 8 hours of sleep, and I usually end up with quite a bit less than the recommended 7-8 hours. Consequently, I am usually really tired by the end of the week. Plus, I’m not entirely a morning person. Although, I still insist that if the sun is not up, it shouldn’t count as morning even though technically anything after midnight is morning. For example, 2am is 2 in the morning. But really, that’s just the middle of the night. So, it shouldn’t count against me as not being a morning person if I am not personable but the sun isn’t up yet. Just saying.
One of the only benefits I can see in getting up as early as I have to for work is that I get to see the sunrise.
This was before school started. Notice my cat photobombing.
Sunrises and sunsets are both amazing, but for shear beauty, I prefer sunrises. It is usually quieter, and depending on where you are, there are fewer people around. The day is still crisp and new and hasn’t been sullied by whatever happened during the day. I would really like to take sunrise pictures at the beach. The only problem is that I would have to get up even earlier than I do during the week to get down there in time, and that just sounds like cruel and unusual punishment.
In the meantime, I have to just be satisfied with the occasional sunrise picture on my way to work. I’m getting pretty good at taking a picture with my phone while looking at the road and not the screen. I got a couple of weird blurry shots, but I’m getting better.
Pretty good for just pushing the shutter button on the phone while not actually looking at the screen.This was in the parking lot. Never fear, my car was not in gear.
Also from the parking lot on a different day.
I like taking pictures of clouds and weather. I like weather in general. I’m not quite hot enough to be a weather girl, but I think that if I were ever going to go back for my PhD, I would do it in either meteorology or oceanography. Both of those are super interesting.
Right now, I am a high school math teacher. I like it in general, but I don’t like having to get up so early, and the pay is a bit underwhelming. My background is engineering, so I was a little shocked when I was given and Algebra 2 position to start with instead of calculus. It turns out that most people (or at least the ones who are relatively comfortable with math) prefer calculus because those kids are motivated and actually do their work. I taught Algebra 2 for several years, but then I branched out. I have been teaching Advanced Quantitative Reasoning for a few years now, which is a project based, real-life type problem solving class. We do a lot of different things, including a really long unit on finances, but because I am a little obsessed with weather, and because it is hurricane season and we live in a hurricane prone area, my students end up spending some time with hurricanes. I usually make them track storms, calculate how far away they are and then how long it would take to get here if they came straight here. I enjoy it a lot. I’m not sure if the kids enjoy it, but at least it is interesting.
So, the past week, we have been tracking Hurricane Grace, which made landfall in Mexico earlier today. We’ve also been watching Henri. Henri has developed into a hurricane and is supposed to make landfall in New England over the next few days. I guess that’s fitting that a hurricane would go into New England instead of making landfall in Texas or Louisiana in a year where even Seattle was hotter than here. I guess I’m okay with New England getting our hurricanes, as long as they don’t give us their winters. We are not prepared for that.
This is the satellite view of the Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center website has a lot of cool tools, and the satellite views are probably the coolest.
I know it’s Saturday and that TBT (throw back Thursday) posts are supposed to be on Thursdays, hence the name, but I was looking through my Google Photos. Okay, really, I was procrastinating, but let’s not split hairs here. Anyway, I was looking back through the photos, and I decided to post a throw back picture. I was going to call it something snappy or cool, but I couldn’t really think of a good name with Saturday in it. So, it is a Throw Back non-Thursday post.
Without further rambling, here is the picture I wanted to post. I just liked it because it was cool. I may have already posted this previously, but that’s okay. I still like it. This was just on the mainland side of the causeway to Galveston.
It’s the beginning of August. We aren’t into the hottest part of summer yet. We aren’t even at the peak of hurricane season yet. Why is this post called the end of summer? Because we are already back at school! Seriously.
A few years ago, my school district decided to go back earlier so that we could have a week off in October and then another week off in February. The February one is nice, but not as necessary in my opinion since out spring break is about a month after that. The October one however, is definitely worth going back a little early. But seriously, though. The first week in August? It’s a little depressing. I haven’t had to set my alarm in a while. I wasn’t even sure it would still work. My dogs did not understand what was going on when the alarm went off.
To add insult to injury, my car battery started acting up this week. It went dead last weekend. I though maybe I just didn’t lock it, and the emergency fan that cools the cabin in the event that you leave a kid or dog in the car (it’s a Volvo thing), ran down the battery. It hasn’t fully cooperated since then though. I took it to Auto Zone because they test batteries for free. The little guy (I say little because he is probably the same age as a lot of my students) was shocked. It registered as being good, but the sticker said that it was over 5 years old. He said he had never seen a battery that old before. (Also a Volvo thing).
It started sluggishly the past few days, and I decided that having my car not start early in the morning or after school wasn’t something I wanted to deal with. So, today, I left school for a little while, drove across town to the Volvo place and got a new battery. I know I could have gotten a replacement battery at Auto Zone or O’Reilley’s, but hello. Volvo’s batteries are guaranteed for like 5 years and cost about the same. Trust me, I’m a math teacher. I can usually count. If you pay the same amount but your battery lasts twice as long, it’s worth driving across town.
Anyway… I’m tired from waking up early again. I’m not ready for school to start. Like, actually not ready. My classroom isn’t fully set up yet. Really, I just want to be at the beach- or on a sailboat with my dogs and cats. Probably I just need a nap and possibly some coffee…
On a different subject, my niece schooled me a couple of weeks ago. Apparently doodle bugs (a.k.a. rolly pollies) are nice bugs. You can pet them. But the red ones are not nice. They sting you if you try to pet them. (She means wasps). She told all about how big her thumb got when she tried to pet one of the red bugs. You’re welcome for this public service announcement.
invisiblecompass 