Unscheduled day=happiness

I try to have one every month—one day with NOTHING on the calendar. Today was that day. It's not that I had nothing to do, but no place that we had to be at a specific time. I could (and did) stay in my pajamas until 11:00 (until someone dropped by and I was embarrassed so I finally took a shower). I caught up on my e-mail and feeds, and did laundry.
I also made bread. I've been doing this January 16th and it is SO much easier than I thought it would be! My first attempt was with a recipe from the local Bosch store, and it was good, but then my neighbor, who has been baking bread for 20 years, came over and taught me how to make her recipe. I forgot to take photos—you can read about that here. Since then, I've only purchased a few loaves at the store. Everyone except Ainsley prefers the homemade bread. It's best to see a demo rather than read a recipe, because you can get a better sense of how sticky the dough should be, and what the yeast bubbles should look like before adding all the other ingredients, but if anyone is feeling adventurous, here is the recipe. It's dangerously addictive for such a healthy food!
If you click on the recipe you can see a larger version. And if you want any of my recipes in a PDF (which is a much higher resolution) just leave me a message and I'll e-mail it.

I still forget to take photos

I thought about pulling out my camera and setting it on the counter several times before Peggy came over, but didn't do it, and it wasn't until she was backing out of the driveway that I turned to Melissa and said "Shoot, I forgot to take pictures!" Peggy's been baking homemade wheat bread for twenty years and offered to teach us how, even coming to my house to do it, and grinding fresh wheat flour for both of us. I don't even deserve the title of photo nazi after this. Seriously.

So instead, here's my photo-of-the-day:
Our joint YM/YW activity tonight was a speaker. He's a retired prison warden, and had a powerful message about how we allow ourselves to become bound, and the key to escaping our bonds. He could have benefitted from some organized notes, but I think the kids got the point. Handcuffs are a memorable object lesson.

Mmmm...

It has been approximately 23 days, 13 hours and 40 minutes since I opened my new Bosch Universal Mixer for Christmas (Rob's been keeping track). And I have FINALLY made my first attempt at homemade bread (at least the kind that requires kneading). It turned out pretty darn good too. There were four loaves, and one disappeared within minutes. I used the recipe from John and Jennie's Bosch Kitchen Center, called "Foolproof Bread." I'm happy to report that it was, in fact, fool proof.

Zucchini Bread

I have to admit that I'm multi-tasking. I've been wanting to organize my favorite recipes into a cookbook with photos, so every time I make one I'm trying to take photos and type it out. I figure I might as well post them. This one gets made fairly regularly, since it literally the only vegetable (or fruit) that Ellie eats. Thank goodness for vitamin supplements, or she'd probably have scurvy or something. I switched the white flour for whole wheat and I add ground flaxseed and wheat germ too. It sounds super healthy, but still tastes great, I promise. This recipe makes three loaves, so you can give one away or freeze a couple, or just eat all three, like we usually manage to do.