And Then There Was Bread!!

With a bit of time on my hands yesterday, I decided to tackle my my desire to improve my bread making skills. Remember this January post? After digging through my always growing recipe stash, I finally decided on a simple loaf of good old white sandwich bread. My line of thinking...simple is best and now that I've eaten a few slices of this delicious bread, simple is FANTASTIC! The recipe is simple and the dough is extremely easy to work with. I had bread in a couple of hours and was eating my first slice (with butter), within minutes of removing it from the pan. I do apologize, my hands were a little too buttery to take a photo, but I THOUGHT about it. I really did, but it just didn't happen.

I have a few more loaf recipes to try, but this one is in the top spot...for now and I highly recommend you give it a shot.

Take the time and use a couple of hours to go from this:

to this:

Do you have a favorite bread recipe that you'd like to share? I'd love to try it.

Sheila Denise

Recipe Source: American Sandwich Bread - Brown Eyed Baker

Things I Want to Master

Happy New Year y'all!! I hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful (but quite chilly) Sunday morning.

As I sit at my breakfast table and look at the gazillion leaves in my backyard, my mind quickly turned to anything that didn't require manual labor outside. No, seriously, I can't address the leaves until they ALL fall off. What's the point of raking leaves several times when you can do it have someone do it just once? Anywho...now back to my distracted thoughts.

I'm a sucker for trying new things and I have absolutely no fear jumping in head first and excitedly awaiting the outcome. Well I began thinking about a few things I really want to master and oddly, they all involved food, so for good measure, I threw in a couple of okay, one non-food related to-do. These are in no particular order, but simply things I'd like to tackle.

1. Breadmaking (especially rolls)

I do an okay job in this area, but I want to do an OMG job with breads. Aunt Maxine continues to advise me that technique and patience are the key combinations, along with not overworking the dough. I'm going for that smooth-as-a-babies-bottom kinda finish and I'm definitely not there yet.

The lower left roll is what I'm aspiring for:

2. Making Madeleines

This one isn't so much as mastering, but just taking the time to make them in efforts to avoid driving all over Atlanta to purchase them and getting home to realize I've eaten waaaay too many on the drive back. Ridiculous I know, but I'd rather reserve my driving for more important things, like a lamb shank, a steak, perfume or shoes. ;-) I'm obsessed with these delicate beauties.

Love these!!

3. Piping Frosting

My great niece Briana is cupcake-obsessed and of course it's Aunt Sheila's duty to spoil her rotten by turning our play dates into cupcake baking sessions. Although she's impressed by anything I do, I'm not quite where I want to be with adorning her favorite treat. We've enjoyed creating quite a few things in her soon-to-be four years. At two, she made biscuits, at three, snickerdoodles & spaghetti sauce (her request), and she's been the official family "pancake flipping" coach for a couple of years, by yelling, "It's time to flip 'em!" She's already great in the kitchen and truly enjoys creating and experimenting.

I did this a few months ago:

4. Keeping Just One Plant Alive (longer than a week)

I simply have NOT managed to do this and I'm not so sure I really want to, other than to ease my conscience about killing so many beautiful living things. The routine is, buy it, bring it home, kill it, take it to my sister Riley, let her nurse it back to health, visit it often and wonder in amazement how she managed to make it beautiful again. *sigh* This is really going to be a tough one. I simply REFUSE to post a picture of a dead plant.

I'll make every effort to keep you posted, but I'm not so sure about my green thumb journey. I hope to have a grin as big as Briana's when my mastery is complete.

Stay tuned.

Sheila Denise

Pet Peeves: Episode 1 - Kitchen Counters

Okay, these pet peeve entries may not make a lickasense (Southern term) to anyone, but I have to purge this stuff from my overtaxed brain

I'll be the first to admit that I'm filled to my eyeballs in pet peeves, so I thought I'd vent a little at a time, I mean share some of them periodically with you.

Today my focus is on kitchen counters. As an admitted neat freak, I have a thing about how kitchen counters, and everything else, should look. Kitchen counters should look like no one ever cooks there. As I dragged myself into the kitchen this morning for coffee (one of many addictions), I glanced at my counters and realized that I have only one functional item on my counters--my trusty coffeemaker. All other items on the counter are simply there for the "cute" factor and I rather like it that way. I decided I wanted toast, plain, square, cheap, thin-sliced white bread toast with butter (I indulge every now an again with this childhood memory). Of course the toaster isn't on the counter, it isn't even IN THE KITCHEN!! It's upstairs in my quasi butler's pantry. I didn't feel like going up to get it so I used the broiler. As I toasted my bread, I thought of all the items I use in the kitchen that aren't housed in the kitchen and the list is long, long, long.

Here's a partial list: my beloved Kitchen-Aid mixer, blender, food processor (large and mini chopper), waffle irons (all 4), deep fryer, bread maker, ice cream maker, the ice cream maker attachment for the Kitchen-Aid, the meat grinder attachment for the Kitchen-Aid, various bundt pans, round and square cake pans, cupcake pans, pie pans, tart pans, egg trays for deviled eggs, serving bowls and platters, cookbooks, even my little blow torch. I decided not to bore you with the complete list, so I'll stop here, but you get the idea.

I sat drinking my coffee, eating my toast and multitasking with the Sunday paper and syncing/synching my iPod, I wondered if my aversion to things on the counters made me a weirdo in some sort of way. Well, if it does, so be it...I'll readily accept my weirdo title.

Thanks for listening and please feel free to share your pet peeves.

Sheila Denise