I made pretzels this afternoon, following the King Arthur recipe as usual. I always need two baking sheets to hold the entire batch, and the pretzels on the top sheet always cook faster than the ones on the bottom sheet.

Today, the pretzels on the top sheet were completely baked to a nice dark color in 14 minutes. After I took them out, I moved the bottom sheet to the top rack and baked them for three more minutes, but they were still not nearly as dark as the ones that had been on the top rack the whole time, as you can see in the photo below.

Baking friends, any suggestions on ways to get the two batches to cook more evenly? I guess I could bake the two batches serially – if I did that, would I have to wait to boil the second batch, too?

Today was the last Silver Tongued Cats meeting for the year, followed by a get-together at Panera Bread. I left the house a little later than I planned, so I was walking very briskly (and listening to a podcast) when I noticed a woman across the street gesturing to get my attention.

I removed my headphones; she pointed behind me and asked “what are those birds called?”

I hadn’t noticed any birds. I turned around and saw that there was a committee (more than a dozen, in fact) of vultures (thanks for the ID, Google!) on the roof of the house next to me.

Neither of us had seen anything like that in the neighborhood before. We chatted for a couple of minutes and I resumed my power walk to Panera.

An hour later, I was going home. I stopped at the same place; there were still a lot of vultures waiting at the same house.

There were also a lot more ducks in Ross Creek (next to the house) than usual, and they were pretty active.

Diane and I went back to Ross Creek this evening; there were still a lot of ducks there, which is unusual that late in the day.

I didn’t see any vultures this evening, but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.