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Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Baking Bread: Attempt Number One

I'm reading Sourdough by Robin Sloan and it makes me want to bake bread. But as I've mentioned many times before, I'm not exactly a natural in the kitchen. I found several recipes proclaiming to be easy! or simple! on Pinterest and decided to try one last night since Little Man is always down for some measuring and mixing.

As it turned out the recipe that printed was bare bones and didn't include some of the more useful info available on the website. I suspect the bread would have come out better had I had the full description. But alas, what I have now is an incredibly dense, chewy, almost doughy lump.

Things I might try if I do it again: warmer water for the yeast (it was warm coming out of the tap, but the glass bowl was cold, aka room temperature), more flour (?), warmer spot for the bread to rise (Grammy used to place her dough in front of the baseboard heat, but my heat wasn't running last night), and shaping it into a loaf before letting it rise (I just left it on the bowl. The printed recipe didn't mention forming the loaf shape first, or at all actually). Live and learn. And try again, I guess.


Monday, February 12, 2018

Two Demands

The first thing my son says upon coming downstairs after nap or in the morning or after getting home is "put dishes away." On one hand this is awesome because I hate putting dishes away, but on the other hand this is not entirely awesome because he doesn't understand that the dishwasher is not always full of clean dishes. He will demand to put dishes away 800 times a day and sometimes melts down when there are still no dishes to put away. Toddlers, wow.


His second demand is to "bake something." He likes to sit on the counter and measure ingredients and mix them. Oddly enough he never shows any interest in eating the finished product, aside from one cupcake he nibbled at and never finished. Yesterday we made peanut butter fudge with a super simple recipe (pb, butter, vanilla extract, powdered sugar). I cut the recipe in half because that's a lot of fudge, even for me.


Friday, February 02, 2018

2018 To Do List: January

  1. Rearrange/clean the family room to make it a more usable space
  2. Read at least 28 books - Two books read in January (2/28)
  3. Hang snow shoes
  4. Hang rabbit art (x2) in my son's room
  5. Acquire a hammer
  6. Get rid of clothes my son has outgrown
  7. Get rid of clothes I don't wear/like
  8. Go swimming, preferably in a natural body of water
  9. Go to the Adirondacks
  10. Take my son camping in a tent in the woods for at least one night
  11. Frame 2017 school pictures
  12. Spend less money on weekly groceries 
  13. Try shopping at Aldi ✅
  14. Eat more veggies
  15. Eat more fruits
  16. Journal more
  17. Complete 365 Mile Challenge - 21.9 miles for January (21.9/365)
  18. Refinance my mortgage
  19. Make my own kombucha
  20. Get my son to use the potty
  21. Get new glasses
  22. Decorate the house in some way for smaller holidays (Valentine's Day, Easter)
  23. Grow some sort of veggie this summer (zucchini? tomatoes?)
  24. Have the driveway sealed
  25. Take down the baby gate at the top of the stairs to the family room ✅
Aldi: I've now done my weekly shopping at Aldi twice. They do not carry everything I need/want, so I've started alternating weeks with my regular trips to Wegmans. I spend significantly less on the weeks I shop at Aldi, but if I end up spending significantly more on my Wegmans weeks to compensate then it won't be worth it. That remains to be seen. One major point of contention is their yogurt selection. They ONLY carry low fat or non-fat. No, no, no, people. Your body needs fat. Fat in dairy is better for you than the reduced fat kind that is loaded with extra sugar or god-forbid, sugar substitutes. I will not feed my son that garbage.

Baby gate: My dad took the gate down on Sunday and there have been absolutely no issues since then. And man, doing the laundry is SO much easier now. Why didn't I do this sooner?

I have also been eating more veggies and journaling more.