Die Stollenzeit Ist Da!!!

Fresh from the oven and newly dusted with confectioner's sugar, the 2021 stollen baked by my wonderful wife, The Grand Duchess!

Christmastime is still in full swing here at Totliegh-in-the-Wold.

Yesterday afternoon, on the 26th, The Grand Duchess got out one of her German language cookbooks, and set about putting together the dough for this year's stollen. A little later, I had to make a quick trip down the road to the supermarket to pick up some additional butter and yeast packets for her, but things were already well underway when I returned.

The entire preparation and baking process takes a while, but the end result is what you see above. Apparently, stollen is something that had its start in the areas of Germany where there was mining. In this case, the Saxony region. The most famous variety is the Dresdner Stollen, which is what The Grand Duchess whips up for us each year, using an authentic German recipe and ingredients.

Apparently, Germans bake their stollen in early December and let them age for a couple of weeks before eating it. But there is simply no way I could contemplate waiting that long to enjoy ours. My willpower is pretty good with many things, but not, I am afraid, when there is fresh stollen in the kitchen. The yeasty aroma that fills the house is to die for.

Anyway, The Grand Duchess and I sat down with some coffee following The Young Master's bedtime yesterday evening to sample a couple of small slices by the hearth. And it is as delicious as it looks. Not exactly sweet and not gloppy with moisture, but buttery, fairly dry, with a hint of almond, lemon, and sweetness plus raisins and dried fruit that have been kneaded into the dough before setting aside to rise before the actual baking takes place.

Which brings us to the morning of December 27th. In a little while, The Young Master and I will dig in at the breakfast table with glasses of eggnog and some fresh, strong coffee for yours truly. We have even had two or three inches of new snow in the night. Not a bad start to the day.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Classic Style

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