What the heck is this? I heard a sound like the vacuum makes when you use the tool to clean narrow spaces. Or a sound like a air can makes when you blow the dust out of a computer. It came from the kitchen.

Watch on YouTube (iPhone/iPad)

Of course Fritzi doesn’t pose for the camera when he is trying to suck a chewey through the crack. He is too embarrassed. So I had to substitute a facsimile of him and of the sounds he makes. Too much time on my hands? So what if I did…

Picture this:

Fritzi posing as a bump on a stump.

plus

Frog, dressed in camouflage

meet

What's that?

OOOOPS, when the wet nose touches the tiny frog, it jumps! Great fun!

It’s a duck. We were not sure. Might have been a goose. A red faced Muskovy duck. First it waddled up to the beautiful lawn of the Gages and had a little snooze right in the middle of it. Then it waddled further down the beach and started preening itself on a driftwood log in front of my place.

Not shy, but a stranger here...

Stretching and displaying…

Having a little workout on the log...

No wonder Muskovy is so skinny, all that waddling, stretching, preening and fluttering. Later, after dinner, it had waddled down to my neighbour’s yard, feeding on some yummy flowers! Really?

It’s a mystery. I think Muskovy had taken a little vacation got too adventurous and got marooned on our beach. It seemed to know people and wasn’t afraid of them, not even of dogs. I was curious if it could fly and wanted to let Fritzi loose… Oh well, I guess not.

On yet another walk with Fritzi on the beach, at the end of a beautiful new fence a neighbour built, there is an old, rotting trunk, driftwood, held together with some wire wound around it. It’s still useful, nurturing a healthy new tree with berries for the birds. Fritzi couldn’t care less, but I thought I’d take a picture with my phone.

Had it for dinner. It’s a Swiss dish that you create with stale bread, haven’t had this since I was a kid and it is AWESOME!

• Take stale bread, (artisan type farm white bread with a crust.)
• Cut thin wedges off it, always with some crust.
• Melt butter in a pan, enough to toast the bread wedges golden brown on both sides on relatively low (45%) heat.
• Whisk together an egg and milk mixture, use slightly less milk than eggs, add some salt and a bit of sugar, to make it not too sweet. Keep some milk aside.
• When the bread is roasted golden, drizzle some milk over it (don’t drown it).
• Pour the egg/milk mixture over the bread and cover for about a minute, still on low (45%) heat.
• Uncover and turn the bread. It’s ready when the egg/milk mixture has set.
• Eat with fruit salad, fruit preserves, or stir some cherries or other fruit into the mixture in the last few minutes.

I guess it’s part bread pudding and part french toast. Why haven’t I done this dish before? You need good old fashioned bread, not the mushy, squeezy, sliced wonder loafs that are disguised as bread in Canada.

We are lucky, we have incredibly good bakeries here in the Comox Valley, so something that I enjoyed and cherished in my youth (waaay back), is actually, finally available again; great breads, made from scratch, by real bakers. Hence Fotzelheu!