Easter dessert decided

I'm going with a sort of ice cream/sorbet hybrid. Unless it totally sucks, in which case I'll go to the (delicious) standby of apple pie. :)

hmm...

I am in need of a good Easter dessert.... I'm shopping around now. :)

perfect pizza topping

Okay, so the absolute BEST cheese combination to put on a pizza is mozzarella, sharp cheddar and a sprinkling of Parmesan over the top. I am not kidding--it's to DIE for!

yummy, yummy bread

I've been having some trouble with my bread: Every time I got to the kneading part, the dough would end up tough, with holes busting out all over it, and yet seemingly under-kneaded rather than over-kneaded (because the bread wouldn't hold a rise properly).

It was a BIG mystery, and no matter what I tried, I kept getting the same weird, unhappy result.

I finally pulled out the big guns by asking my mom to make bread with me and show me what I'm doing wrong. Yaay, mommie!

It turns out that in the beginning, when you first mix together the yeast with some sugar and flour, there is some heavy stirring to be done, to activate the gluten right then.

There is also a very successful family kneading technique, but it can't really be explained in writing--you just have to watch someone do it. I can say that it involves leaning on the dough from the shoulder rather than trying to knead it with the wrists.

Needless to say, these two elements have greatly improved my breadmaking!

The next development is that now, with these two elements in, I find that I can add much less flour to the dough before going on to kneading, which handles a lot of the toughness that I was encountering.

Woo!

beautiful new bowl :)

My mommie got me a gorgeous big dark brown ceramic bowl for making things like bread and pie in. I'm breaking it in with a batch of bread tonight!

food today

I had some extra time today so I did some cooking.

YUM, as it turns out. :)

I started with potato soup, since Starbucks had some whole milk that was expiring, so I took it home to cook with. Don't worry, I made sure it hadn't actually spoiled before I threw it in the soup.

Alex and I ate the whole pot of soup in maybe half an hour. :) AND I am thinking about making a whole extra batch tomorrow. I made it from a recipe that was pretty bad, so I wrote in my changes for next time (more potatos, add cayenne pepper, things like that...).

I am really happy because in Oregon you could pull cans of potato soup off ANY grocery shelf, and in New England you just can't find potato soup without YUCK CLAMS. AKA clam chowder, which people around here are crazy about despite the presence of, well.... clams.

And then, I was having such a good time cooking that I made a chocolate cake. But chocolate cake is so much better with fruit sauce! So I made some sauce out of a bunch of mixed berries, and the cake soaked up a bunch of it really nicely. It was deeeelicious.

Just when I was running out of steam and couldn't face cooking for myself, Alex made TWO grilled cheese sandwiches for me in the knick of time. :)

epic project :)

Somewhere along the line I noticed that I have collected up about a million (conservative estimate) handwritten/magazine clipped/mail order/etc. recipes that hang out with my cookbooks.

Their main function in life seems to be "look messy and be really hard to sort out". They have been sitting on the counter in a pile with my cookbooks, looking like crap and basically hindering everything.

Well, well, well. What is a girl to do?

I don't remember if it was my idea or Alex's, but the idea came from somewhere that these loose recipes need to be captured and put in a binder between those neat-o plastic sheets (which I love because I spill egg on EVERYTHING when I cook).

Well, I'm doing it and I'm actually almost done. AND everything is getting sorted by category, so my seventy five bread recipes, for instance, are all actually hanging out together!

This project has been a long time coming, and I'm so glad to finally be doing it!