Yum!

I finally got around to trying out the master recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and it's pretty spectacular. I've been baking our bread for (6+) years and I've never managed to produce anything like these loaves. Here's the dough resting before baking:

I keep intending to take a picture of the loaf fresh from the oven, but I'm so distracted by eating it that this is the best we've managed. The little heel leftover from dinner that Todd ate for dessert:

And it's not an exaggeration; it took maybe 5 minutes to make the dough, and maybe 1 minute to shape it, and 30 seconds combined to flour the baking sheet, turn on the oven, and pour water in the steam tray.

Perfect crispy crust, delicious soft light interior. I want to try aging the dough more than 2 days to see where the flavor goes, but even the first batch was lovely.

Mad props. Whoo!

Winter

Here's some of my art from late 2006; our back slope at sunset.

It lives in our bedroom on my side of the bed. Drawing like this made me finally appreciate the beauty of Iowa's seasons.

Chore

If there is one chore around the house I am very bad about attending to, it would be the ironing. (Let's not even talk about mopping, because I haven't done that since we moved in.) I'm a terrible procrastinator when it comes to washed and wrinkly shirts, maybe because I don't know how to iron 'correctly,' maybe because I have one of those small table-top ironing boards that aren't terribly useful, maybe because ironing seems especially futile against the reality of entropy. They're just going to get wrinkly again, and sooner rather than later. I keep a collection in the laundry room for a month or two until I finally address them.

Monday's sun inspired me to another attempt. Six shirts back into the rotation.

Also, here's bloom number two in full sunlit splendor.

Looong Day

So just a picture.

Maybe more time tomorrow.

Another FO

Another knitted present has made its way into a new home, so I can share a picture. More Maine Morning Mitts, this time sent off to Lenora mostly just for fun.

I'm finally now getting around to knitting myself a pair, too, but mine are going to be all stripey from using up everyone else's leftover yarn. So mine will be super special that way.

Tea

When you're sick, tea is good. Very very wonderfully good. Especially with lots of milk and sugar.

[Our cream jug and sugar bowl were purchased at a farmers' market in Kirkland, Washington in 2006. The spoon is a silver and porcelain souvenir spoon from Kassel, W. Germany that my parents purchased while stationed near there in the early 1970's.]

Sun

Thank goodness for the sun. It's pulled me right out of my blahs just as I'm coming down with a cold, so I'm dancing around the house with a sore throat and sniffles.

The second bloom on my cactus is opening!

And the view out at the snow-covered slope, crossed with deer tracks and afternoon shadows.

Sauced

This morning Roo and I took a cold walk to the mailbox to mail a letter. Then a friend came over for lunch. Then Roo had a nap while I folded laundry. And then I made more applepearsauce. I also played with Todd's tripod.

The view from our back deck across the ravine to the neighbors' house.

It's always beautiful catching the new moon. Especially paired with Venus, the evening star, high in the first picture.

I obviously still need to work on focusing, but you get the idea.

Tired

I'm suddenly fighting the winter blahs. We haven't had much sun lately, it's been so cold -only in the teens at most- that we've been housebound, and it's hard to get good pictures in the gloom. Roo's still napping wacky, and I've got a project that's been on hold seemingly forever that's giving me the grumps. So here's Todd's favorite fish bowl full of dried homegrown peppers to warm and cheer.

On the agenda for this afternoon: Irish soda bread and hopefully a batch of basic dough from this book. Ed: I ended up making a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies instead, because it's Wednesday and they're Todd's favorite. Yum.

Stew

This morning we ran downtown to the post office to mail off a few small packages, then to the grocery store to buy potatoes. The one thing that didn't make it on the shopping list on Monday was the essential thing I needed Tuesday to make dinner.

For a moment we had some weak sunshine in the kitchen this afternoon, but mostly it was gray gray gray out. My window stars have been up for over a year now, and they're starting to get tired.

Roo enjoys the houseplants by the big window, too. Occasionally she pretends to water them for me.

Dinner

This afternoon I made: wheat/white bread + beef and barley soup.

This time 1 1/2 C whole wheat, 4 1/2 C white. Also used brown sugar instead of granulated. I use the basic white bread recipe from Todd's Joy of Cooking.

Soup based on the recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, but heavily veggie laden, with added sweet potato, yellow summer squash, and green beans.

Then I rushed off to orchestra.

Wood

Dining table, highchair, jungle gym slide, front door.

That's my old tan-corduroy-with-rainbow-straps toddler-sized backpack hanging from the jungle gym. Roo hasn't really discovered it yet, but I am sure its time will come.

Sun and Shadow

This morning I made more applesauce and played violin duets with a friend.

Molly basking on our bed, 3:00pm.

Elsewhere, softer light, 3:04pm.

Fancy Pants

As promised, here are pictures of Roo's new flannel lined corduroy pants.

A bit wrinkled from being folded in her drawer, but so soft, comfy, and warm. Let me show you what I made them on...

Here's my machine, a 1948 Eldredge Electric with a knee pedal, in its own pretty cabinet. I think that this was my Grandmother Rosemary's first sewing machine purchased after she was married. Todd did a wonderful job of cleaning and oiling it for me so I could try to use it again.

She still had the original instruction book tucked inside, along with a holiday card box full of wound bobbins and extra needles, and she had the full set of attachments for the machine, including a button hole finisher!

I'm just learning, so I didn't use any of the fancy gadgets and gizmos. Just straight leg seams, a casing for the elastic with a bit of the flannel up over the top, and hems that can be cuffed to show more of the big-eyed-owl print.

The fabrics on the left are more of the chocolate corduroy and a yellow farm-with-pink-pigs flannel; just enough to make her one more, larger, pair.

Now to get a picture of the pants in action...