And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky

 

…a human being that was given to fly.

We lost a good one today. Neil Armstrong decided to check out for the last time this afternoon.

Sadly his death isn’t completely  shocking to me. At the age of 81 earlier this month Dr. Armstrong underwent heart surgery. His family has indicated he succumbed to complications from the cardiovascular procedures.

Living in Florida most of my life and living in the vicinity of the Kennedy Space Center during the closing years of the Apollo and later Space Lab missions, I can tell you the significance of NASA and space exploration had on me as a young boy. Every kid wanted to be an astronaut. Mr. Rogers had Apollo astronauts on his program. Sesame Street had astronauts on the program next to Ernie and Bert. However for me it was The Six Million Dollar Man. Col. Steve Austin the NASA pilot who crashes the x-plane and gets bionics. I ate that shit up.

As a small kid I got to go to Kennedy space center in its heyday. However the biggest impact was when NASA launched Sky Lab. We live about fifteen miles south of Kennedy/Patrick AFB in those days. Shy lab was launched on one of the remaining Saturn V boosters that was intended to take an Apollo crew to the moon before the program was shut down. I may have been all of five or six years old. We were on the beach living in Satellite Beach at the time. If you never saw an actual Saturn V launch in person I doubt I can put into  words the description of the events. I can however tell you from a five or six year olds perspective that it must be something incredible because we were at the beach fifteen miles or so away and I can clearly remember the surf was very calm that day. When the rocket took off, there was literally ripples in the Atlantic ocean as far as a six year old could see from the vibration of the launch. That day has stuck with me all my life. Neil Armstrong rode in one of those machines. What a lucky SOB. What balls that man must have had.

In honor of Neil’s death and the passing of a truly great American, I made my special Stuffed Bread for dinner. Check it below.

 

This is a recipe that I have been working on for about a year. Think a loaf of bread with the  ham and swiss cheese built in. Astronauts in the early days had to eat a lot of compact and freeze dried food. This is essentially a ham and swiss cheese sandwich loaf of bread right down to the mustard. Its all baked together. The bread is a simple cross between a stromboli and italian bread dough. I may have boosted the base recipe for the dough from King Arthurs cook book a couple years ago. You can pretty much do anything with it. I figured what the hell, why make a loaf of bread to make a sandwich when I can make it all at the same time. Im hardly the inventor of this as I have noted some similar recipes for this around the internet.

Simple really. Make the dough, let rise. Roll it out and spread on mustard, ham, and swiss cheese. Roll up, form into a loaf like shape, pinch edges of dough closed and let rise again. Bake 375 degrees for 35 minutes. Cool, slice then stuff face.

This is not on par with strapping ones ass to 7.5 million pounds of thrust heading to the moon, but I am proud of this none the less. Without Neil Armstrong and the early NASA astronauts fueling an entire generation of kids like myself to build and explore who knows, tonight I could have been blogging about opening up a can of beans and discussing the fart capacity between Campbell’s and Bush’s.

If theres interest in the recipe, make a note in the comments and I’ll post a print friendly version for you.

So long and happy journey Neil Armstrong. Buzz wont be bitching about you going first on this one.

 

4 thoughts on “And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky

  1. Geeeezz Brock your cooking skills really impress me. Please share this recipe Matt would LOVE it.

  2. That looks so freakin good but you lost me at …make your dough…nice tribute to Neil Armstrong!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *