Happy Kinkling Day!

'Kinklings' are special raised, deep-fried doughnuts, and are made practically as many different ways as there are different cooks. There seem to be different varieties of them all over Europe. I have experienced them as a German/Dutch tradition that has come across the Pond to Pennsylvania (Amish Country) and Maryland (Frederick), where I grew up.

I believe that the term Kinkling is actually a Frederickism and that the more recognized term is
Fasnacht (a.k.a. Fastnacht, Faschtnacht, or Fassenacht)

The story: Fastnacht means 'Night before the Fast' in German. These tasty treats are made the day before Lent starts; i.e., the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday (a.k.a. Fastnacht Day, Kinkling Day, Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras). Lent is traditionally a time of fasting, and the idea is that the day before should be spent eating a rich feast before the coming fast. Thus Kinklings/Fasnachts.

I worked to make them for the first time, today, with my Dad (who hasn't made them for about 20 years). It was quite the experience.

Here is what I can share for any other aspiring bakers out there:
Read the Bread 101 site for information on how to make sure the dough rises and that you don't screw it up. Once you master this part of the baking process, everything else is proverbial cake.

Presto! Longer Onesies

As silly as I thought the baby legwarmers were, the garment extenders are awesome. My 13-month old has a very, very long torso and he has been outgrowing his onesies very quickly. I want to use onesies, because they keep his 'shirt' tucked in (and thus his tummy and back warm), but they just weren't fitting long enough. These extenders really helped.

My only complaint is the one I've seen on all the sites with feedback areas: the pack is a 'variety pack' but there is really one size that works with everything. So you end up using two all the time, and the others sit in a drawer. I wish you could buy each size separately once you know which one you need.

Goodbye, weather.com! Hello, Underground!

I was wading through the jungle of crap on weather.com the other day, trying to dredge out a forecast for my friend Jim. He looks over my shoulder and says to me, "You need to go to weather underground. One visit and you'll never look back."

So, I linked over to Weather Underground (wunderground.com) and I was practically blown away with the utter magnificence of this weather website.

You aren't immediately attacked by multiple ad pop-ups. It is a clean, calm interface. As soon as you type in the zip code of the city you want, you are presented with a clear, concise, well-formatted page of all the info you want. I've always had trouble finding humidity on weather.com, but on wunderground.com it was right there in front of me. The 5-day forecast is clear, and they have a super-cool feature where they compare today with yesterday (e.g., Today will be colder than yesterday). And your last 5 city searches are remembered on the left, so you can quickly check the main places you want to know weather forecasts for.

In short, Jim was right. This site is fabulous. Double-thumbs up for weather underground!!!