D’oh!Mestic

Okay, aside from Kate Hepburn’s crap brownies, the yellow book can do no wrong. Here, for example, is my first run at Irish Soda Bread, in honor of the Capt’n’s tribute month.

Yeah, tribute month. For as long as I’ve known him, the Capt’n has demanded tribute — very similar to a Roman Emperor demanding a triumph — in honor of his birthday. I am more than happy to acquiesce; after all, if he hadn’t been born, where would I be? I’ll tell you where I’d be. I’d be in a concrete box somewhere in the scary part of town, alone and unloved, rounder than I was tall, because I’d be subsisting on a diet of Bisquick and mercury-laced tap water, and I wouldn’t think I’d deserve any better.

If the Capt’n wants bread because he was born, by golly, I’m going to make some for him.

So, getting back to the bread. This was a stupid easy recipe. Most bread is, but this was especially quick and painless — and I do mean that. A bum knee has me hobbling around on crutches, and this was my first big kitchen project in more than a week. In terms of time from mise en place to into the oven, it took from the opening strains of “Where the Streets Have No Name” to the end of “With or Without You,” because why measure time in with numbers when I have a perfectly awesome iPod and The Joshua Tree?

(I also have appalling taste in music for being an aspirational hipster, but that’s another post.)

The bread’s cooling now. The yellow book demands at least two hours, but knowing the Capt’n, the first loaf will be gone within the next twenty minutes.

Happy birthday, my fine fellow.