The Dailiness of it All

Since the birth of Little C, our third, and our return to New Jersey, our lives have taken on a pretty regular rhythym again. We make bread on Mondays after the naps, I do laundry on Wednesdays and Sundays, paperwork on Thursdays, we eat soup on Sundays (and have recently returned to the church, we paint or craft on Tuesdays, etc... Most of the time I relish in the regularity. I love knowing what each day is going to bring and, too, love the flexibility it affords us as a family.
Recently, though, I am weary of the tasks that comprise our days. Maybe it is the winter (February is such a tough month), or the sickness (we seem to be through it now), or the fact that our 6 month old has decided not to sleep, or knowing that we are moving into a house in less than four weeks that currently has no kitchen, or a toxic combination of all of the above...
Today as I was kneading bread (which is usually such a calming task for me), I found myself almost fighting with it. Grabbing in, holding on--not the easy folding and flowing of weeks past. We need a change of scenery. Tomorrow night we will spend with my husband's parents. Hopefully we will return on Thursday with slightly fresher eyes.

Breadmaking and Home

After two happy weeks spent with family in Texas, we returned home this weekend. Most of it was spent unpacking and rediscovering the wonders of our house. Today we dug in and enjoyed. We played, we knitted, we slept, and, perhaps most homey of all, we made bread. Generally we bake bread on Fridays--a day when everyone is home from school and we have nothing planned. We made the bread today instead so that we could enjoy the fruits of our labor our first week back.

We mixed, we kneaded, we rolled, and we shaped. There is something so therapeutic about kneading bread, so truly relaxing. There are many times throughout my days that I struggle to be in the moment. I have to remind myself to stay present, to stay awake to my environment. Not when I am kneading bread. In fact, it is almost impossible for me to think about anything other than the feeling of the dough between my fingers, the warmly yeasty smell that it is releasing all around. I would make bread for this experience alone.

I use the basic bread recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book. The sweeteners that I add vary--today we added blueberry honey, the last time brown sugar. Tomorrow morning we will enjoy...

Baking Bread

I used to bake bread as a child with my dad's mother while visiting California. We got to customize our bread with chocolate chips or raisins or really whatever we wanted. My brother and I would make mini-loafs while my grandmother baked loaves of white bread for she and my grandfather. I do not think she ever ever had store-bought bread in the house.

I have been re-introduced to the wonders of bread making through the book Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair. My brother also has some experience with it so he has helped me along a bit. I don't know why it has just occurred to me to try baking our bread--I LOVE bread, love it more than any other food and a piece of warm bread just out of the oven could make my whole week. I made the recipe for Whole Grain Bread out of Lair's book a couple of weeks ago and it came out tasting more like a brick then it did bread. I decided to give that same recipe another shot this week. I need to make a couple of changes but, overall, not too bad.

AND our whole house smells like fresh baked bread. What a way to fall asleep...

I think I might be turning into Martha Stewart...

and I am VERY very scared.



Today I made blondies. I have never made these before but YUM, yum, YUM. Instead of pure chocolate for brownies, you add walnuts and chocolate chips, some flour sugar and vanilla, bake them for 45 minutes and out comes this hybrid chocolate chip cookie/ brownie concoction that is the yummiest.



I made them with Norah this morning while Harvey was sleeping. She whisked the batter for me and them licked the spoon.

Harvey woke up in time to enjoy them after lunch. He loved them. After finishing one, he grunted and pointed to another and another. This is fast becoming a very successful form of communicating for him--pointing and whining until he gets the object he desires.

Moving on, today Norah found my knitting--the picot edging on a dress I am making for her. She grabbed it and holding onto the wire of the circular needles, she said, "This is a dinosaur!" and, after looking for only a moment, I realized that it did rather look like a dinosaur. Then, she held the string above her head and said it was an umbrella. Wow. WOW. wow. Brian swears that their imaginations would flourish if we took away their toys and I do wonder about this. I really wonder.