The Grand Duchess Hits Another Home Run

Here is a photo of the wonderful Rosca de Reyes (next to a fresh pot of coffee) that the Grand Duchess Sonja prepared yesterday afternoon. It’s basically a sweet eggbread that is similar to Stollen but lighter and moister. It’s sort of the Mexican version of Stollen, typically enjoyed around January 6^th, to celebrate the coming of the Three Kings, following the birth of Jesus.

Bakeries all over Mexico sell Rosca de Reyes in different sizes, and many Latino groceries in the USA take orders in early January. Fortunately, we neglected to place an order with our local Latino grocery store, so Sonja whipped out her new Latin American and Caribbean cookbook and got busy. Both of us remarked later that the result was even nicer than what we’ve had previously in Mexico.

And the humorous side to all of this is. . . While we enjoyed the first pieces with coffee in the living room, ‘Rannveig’ the cat suddenly appeared with frosting on her whiskers and face. I suspect that she was closely inspecting (and perhaps sampling?) the Rosca, which was left to cool on the kitchen table after the photo was taken. Needless to say, poor Sonja will not be having any more of her Rosca. As for me, well, you know. It just looks too good to throw away, so. . . ;-)

Comments

tradgardmastare said…

Any chance of the receipe for this Mexican Stollen - sounds fascinating !
I read your E v E message more carefully (whoops!) and now realise where to send my thoughts.

1:18 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

It does look delicious.

-- Jeff

1:21 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Stokes,

I showed the photo to my wife . . . and she too would like the recipe.

Would the Grand Duchess consent to your posting her recipe? I'm sure that my bride would not be the only one to appreciate it.

-- Jeff

9:26 PM

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century. And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed. The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area. Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are. Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors. Grrrr. As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered. For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

Search This Blog