Oh my, it must be Giant Wasp Season.  Hadn't you heard?  I started noticing giant wasps over the weekend.  Not just regular wasps, I'm accustomed to (for example) mud dauber wasps.  I'm talking GIANT wasps, about the size of my pinkie finger, no lie.

The first thing I did was Google these monsters.  I mean, after the part where I ran inside squealing in terror, obviously.  The bad news: there are several kinds of giant wasps you might encounter.  The good news: most of them don't sting.


Read more >

Amish Friendship Bread is sort of a cross between a coffee cake and a chain letter.  The bread is based on a sourdough starter, albeit one that is fed with flour, sugar, and milk instead of a "regular" starter fed only with flour and water.  

The idea behind Amish Friendship Bread is that you bake two loaves, give one to a friend, along with a portion of the starter.  Frankly this is the kind of obligation-heavy gifting that I frown upon.  I don't know many people who would be grateful to receive the gift of sourdough starter unasked.  

Starter takes a fair amount of work.  Yes, it makes a better bread than what you can find in the stores.  But I think it's instructive to consider why we all started buying bread from the store in the first place.  And I say this as someone who has been baking my own bread exclusively for the last two years or so.

Read more >

Long ago, when I was new to the internet, I fell in with a batch of Canadians. 

No one is really sure how it happened, but this one particular role-playing/fanfic USENET newsgroup was at least 50% Canadian.  Maybe more like 80% depending on who was active and who had gone away for a few months.

At the time, I knew virtually nothing about Canada, much less about Canadians.  But they schooled me, oh yes they did. 

Read more >