Bread

Ooops. I forgot to post on Wednesday. I was too busy chopping vegetables and baking. Now I've lost all three of you, my loyal readers. One of the best parts about the Thanksgiving holiday was skipping That Class to go to the Farmers Market. The funny thing about going to the Farmers Market two days before Thansgiving is that it is not any more crowded than it is any other time of year, but if you go to your usual grocery store the lines go all the way down the aisles and the wait is about an hour. You get to check out what other people have in their carts and spend a lot of time staring at the canned goods and thinking, "Huh, who knew you could get *that* canned....?" and that leads me to bread. I have to confess that I haven't made yeast bread for over a decade. The last experience was so bad I have been too scared: I was visiting my folks when in my twenties and decided to make a loaf of bread. Got it together, kneaded it by hand, and left it to rise on the back of the stove. Came back either minutes or hours later and it hadn't changed a bit so I threw it in the sink and shoved it into the garbage disposal and went home. Turns out, the warm pipes were the *perfect* place for the dough to rise. It did and required a price-y visit from a plumber. ooops. And last week I wanted to serve bread with a vegetable gratin for dinner and had only 3 slices left in the bag (and, well, besides, I've been disgruntled with the quality of sandwich bread available these days). I made the whole wheat walnut bread on the back of the King Arthur flour bag. There's the picture. It was very tasty. Next time I'll let it rise a little bit longer, but it made perect sandwiches the next day.

This quarter is almost finished. I'll be 1/8 of the way finished with nursing school. That sounds pretty crappy, but after next quarter I'll be 1/4 of the way there and, hey, well, shoot, that sounds pretty crappy, too. I haven't been studying. I'm daydreaming about baking bread and what kind of cake I'll make for my daughter's sixth birthday. And what's with the baking and the nursing school? I've never really been a big baker, more of a cook. A little of this and a little of that and -voila!- it's tasty on a plate. Baking, though, it's a science. A little too much flour and the wrong-sized pan and -sad violin music- all that work for nothing. They say that nursing is an art and a science. Maybe I'm working on the science part of my brain these days. I don't know.