Perfect cinnamon twists

This is a great recipe for beginning bakers. They come out light and fluffy. If I can make them, so can you.

Bring to boil in large saucepan:

• 1 cup sour cream

Remove from heat. Stir in until well blended:

• 3 tbsp shortening
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

Cool to lukewarm. Add:

• 1 large unbeaten egg
• 1 package of dry yeast

Stir until yeast is dissolved. (At this point you could also throw in a dash of vanilla, almond, or orange extract, but I didn't and they were great. The sour cream alone gives them plenty of flavor.) Mix in with spoon:

• 3 cups sifted plain flour

Turn out onto a lightly floured board. Knead slightly a few seconds to form a smooth ball. Cover with a damp cloth and let stand five minutes to firm up. Meanwhile, in a small bowl mix:

• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup finely chopped nuts (pecans work fine)

Roll dough 1/4 inch thick in a rectangle 6"×24". Spread the entire surface with

• 2 tbsp soft butter or margarine

Sprinkle half of the dough (the long way) with the sugar-cinnamon mixture. Bring the unsugared half of the dough over the sugared half, pressing the top surface lightly to seal in the sugar mixture. Cut in strips 1/2 to 1 inch.

Grease 2 cookie sheets. Take each strip of dough, give each end a half twist (in opposite directions of course), and place on the cookie sheets about 2" apart, pressing both ends firmly and flatly to the baking sheet. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise at 85° or so until very light, about 1 hour 15 minutes.

Bake 12-15 minutes at 375°. While baking, mix in another bowl:

• 1-2 tbsp milk
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar

to make a fairly thick icing. Drizzle over the twists.

Makes about 2 dozen.

Handlebars

Hey, listen to this song:

Listening to the first 15 seconds, I didn't think I was going to like it. The reasons I like this song are interesting enough to write about at length, but... oh, just hit the button.

This week I learned...

• A chipotle is a jalapeño that has been smoked.

• There are lots of ways to tile a regular dodecagon with sides of length s using only rhombi with sides of length s. My favorite so far:

  

  I speculate all such tilings use exactly this many rhombi of each shape—six skinny diamonds, six fat ones, and three squares. It would be really cool if I were wrong. Calculate the area of each shape to see why I think this.

  (Pictured: Melissa & Doug pattern blocks. Great toy.)

• Basic stuff about the Erlang programming language. If you set aside the concurrency features for a second, Erlang looks like ML without static typing or refs. In a word, yuck.

• Haskell has concurrency libraries that I should look at (while I'm learning about language-level approaches to concurrent programming).

  Incidentally, if you're a Haskell programmer, see if you can spot the unintentional self-parody in that blog post. Hint: it's in the sentence “So let's do something useful with this, how about a little program that computes primes and fibonacci numbers?”

This week I started looking for elementary school curriculum materials. My son is four years old. We will probably homeschool him, and I want a head start on this one. Not a lot of luck searching so far. There are a lot of individual lesson plans; for example, PBS has some science lessons. On the other end of the spectrum, I found the What your nth-grader needs to know books and ordered one. We'll see. I really want a variety of textbooks and workbooks.

Black-Eyed Pea Dip

Heat and drain:

• 1 can Bush's black-eyed peas

You can just zap them in the microwave for 2 minutes.

Mash them, then mix in:

• 1 tsp. seasoned salt
• 2 tbsp. chopped onions
• 1 tbsp. jalapeños (or salsa or diced tomatoes)
• 1½ cup grated cheddar
• ¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 3-oz. can of deviled ham

Pour the mixture into a 9-inch baking dish. Sprinkle on top:

• 3 oz. grated mozzarella cheese

Bake at 350° for 25 minutes. Serve with corn chips.

Where to eat in Nashua, NH

Every town has something just a little different to offer. Here are the places I would recommend if you had a day to spend in Nashua, New Hampshire, U.S.A.

Breakfast: The City Room Cafe. Try the Cajun sirloin crepes. (They're not what I expected; they should be called "crepes curry" and they're a treat.) Check out the specials; they're usually inventive and scrumptious. Or have a sausage-apple-cheddar omelette.

Lunch: Nashua Garden, a pub on Main Street, for the best sandwiches in town. Order a "Big Poppy", loaded, plus hummus and roasted red peppers.

Dinner: Brazilian BBQ on Main Street. If you've never had Brazilian barbecue before (I hadn't), this is a must. Alternatively, Lilac Blossom serves great Chinese. The Crispy Whole Fish is not to be missed. Lamb in Two Styles is almost as good, but is made of fluffy, innocent baby sheep, alas.

Now, if you spurn variety entirely, instead have a nice, conventional breakfast at Hollis Country Kitchen (way out west), lunch at Nashua House of Pizza (just a pizza place, but unusually good), and dinner at Michael Timothy's on Main Street.

P.S. Adventurous or not, if it happens to be Sunday morning when the urge strikes you, have a go at Michael Timothy's weekly jazz brunch. It features live music, an excellent buffet, roast beast and omelettes each to order, and a better grade of coffee. Desserts are included in the price of adm. Singularly pleasant.

On the Cape

If you happen to be on Cape Cod sometime, visit Scargo Pottery, just off route 6A. That whole stretch of 6A is like a sprawling crafts fair, but Scargo is something special. The little pictures on their web site don't do it justice.

We were on Cape Cod for my birthday. It's a few weeks yet before the tourist season, but the weather was cooperative. Breezy, cool, sunny. Buzz was on his best behavior all day.

First we went to the Cape Cod Potato Chip factory. There's not much there, but you get to see a real factory floor. And eat potato chips. So.

Then we went to a little clock shop on Route 6A. Buzz was entranced. We talked about the clocks for, I don't know, it must have been half an hour. His favorite part was the clocks that had their faces removed so you could see the works.

After that, we went back to the beach, flew kites, climbed around on some rocks, and cooked out. A lovely day. If kites hate you, what you want is a Pocket Parafoil (here's one on eBay). Fun and ridiculously easy.

Strawberry alert

If you happen to live in Nashua, NH, there's a small farmer's market on the Main Street bridge over the Nashua River. It's there every Sunday, all summer. A booth there is selling strawberries that were picked this morning.