Crusty Bread

This is our second loaf. The first one turned out just a little better... I wasn't there for the prepping stages of this one and a few steps were forgotten...

Mainly the baking stone was not in the oven as it was warming up. We used a fairly old stone (at least 10 years)... Needless to say, when you put a very moist dough in the oven with a room temp pizza stone and a tray of water for steam... Well, it's not a good mix. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of the shattered stone. Yes, it shattered. We heard a mild "thunk" so I opened the oven and lo and behold, it was broken.

The bread tasted good anyways. Check it out.


Check out the steam coming off that baby!

Good Bread

Currently Reading: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

Made bread today. It was fantastic. Best part? Only took me about 5 minutes of actually working time. Yes, there was 40 minutes of "rest" and 30 minutes of baking. But the actual effort was only 5 minutes. And I guess maybe the 15 minutes it took me to mix up the batch on Sunday afternoon.

Anyways, the bread was fantastic. I'll have to make it for you sometime.

Welcome to Holland

Check out this video. My dad is in it.

Emptying my Camera

This morning started out with baking some Amish Friendship Bread. It took a lot of ingredients - not a lot as in "many" but a lot as in "quantity." But Chris and I successfully made two loaves. Now I need to give away my starters.

I spent some time copying some pictures off of my camera and came across a few that I felt like sharing.

Below are the dogs. My parents are out of town visiting Sean, so the dogs are currently ours. We've successfully taught them to sit and stay while we open doors to let them out and while we're getting their food ready. Now the trick is to get them to sit and stay when people come in the door...

Below is Emma. At some point I tried to take a picture of her and she must have blinked.

Below is Chris' plow truck. You can see my bumble sitting up on his dash. He velcroed the little guy in to keep him company on all those snowy nights.

That's about all I've got. Chris and I have slowly been working on the worm bin. I need to put together the lid and then order the worms. Once it's finished I'll put up some pictures, because I'm sure everyone is dying to see my worm bin... We'll see how this all works out! (I know y'all think I'm nuts...)

Ladies Night

Chris was out having a guys night tonight, so I invited some ladies over that I went to high school with. We had fun catching up on each others lives, drinking strawberry smoothies, and going through old yearbooks and laughing at ourselves in high school.

It was a good time.

We also are attempting to inspire eachother to do a 5K. Chris and I were planning on doing the River Bank Run. One of the other girls was planning on doing it too, and another wants to "train" with us. So we talked about starting a running group.

One of them mentioned the "Couch-to-5K" training program. I'll have to check it out. The link is: http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml

Other than that... my worm bin is built. I need to post pictures of it and then I need to actually get some worms for it. It will be an interesting experiment. Some people say a lot of work is involved... I'm not sure. I think once I get the hang of it, it won't be too bad. But the only way to figure it out is to try. And once it gets warmer out, I can always move the worm box outside.

Laters.