I bought a jar of Fleischmann’s Instant Yeast in 2020 for my first foray into pretzel making. The “Best Before” date on the jar was September 2022, but I kept using it and the pretzels tasted just fine.

I ran out of that yeast today and bought a new jar; I guess the old yeast had gotten rather feeble, because the pretzels I made today rose at least an inch higher than the ones I’d made a few weeks ago (though you’ll have to take my word for it; I don’t photograph every batch of pretzels I make!).

It’s restful being home!

We spent the morning at the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum. It’s a museum where the audio tour makes a big difference; not only is the audio commentary a little different than what’s on the signs, but there are a few dozen songs available for you to hear if you have the time. We didn’t, but they also make it available on Spotify and Apple Music for listening at your leisure. The playlist covers at least six decades of music and includes more than 80 songs, some familiar and some new to me.

I’m typing this blog entry in the DFW airport; boarding our flight to San Jose is only a few minutes away, so I’m going to upload some of the photos I took at the museum with minimal commentary.

I remember listening to the King Biscuit Flower Hour during college; I didn’t know until today that King Biscuit Flour was a real thing and that they sponsored King Biscuit Time, a blues broadcast which (according to Wikipedia) is still on the air today.

The museum was a good finish to our trip; I’d still like to visit Sun and Stax Records sometime, but Memphis is blessed with more attractions than we had time to see.

We had a choice between having lunch downtown or eating at the airport; I looked at the Yelp reviews of airport restaurants and decided that eating downtown was the better choice, even though we’d get to the airport a little later than I prefer. We had a great lunch at McEwen’s, a couple of blocks from our hotel…and it wasn’t even barbecue (we’ve been eating a lot of barbecue in Memphis!). It was freshly-flown-in yellowfin tuna, and it was delicious. I mentioned that we were in a bit of a rush, and they gave us terrific service, too. Highly recommended if you find yourself in Memphis.

Weather in DFW delayed our flight from Memphis to DFW; if American hadn’t rescheduled our flight to SJC, we might not have made our connection, but as it was, we had nearly two hours on the ground. We’re on the plane now, waiting for the door to close. With any luck, the next blog post will be from home…or on our next trip. :-)