Tasty Baking

I love to bake. Unfortunately, I am generally more successful at other sorts of cooking due to my apparent inability to avoid tinkering with recipes. Baking does not lend itself to this as easily. I therefore appreciate recipes that are simple enough that my inner urge to invent new variations is either unaroused or, if awakened, not detrimental. My scone recipe is a notable example.

This recipe for whole wheat bread, courtesy of a friend, will be familiar to most of my readers but this is a fabulous bread recipe which meets these requirements.

1/2 cup honey
1 cup milk
2 cups boiling water
2 tbsp yeast
2 tbsp oil
4 cups whole wheat flour
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt

Mix together honey, milk and water until dissolved. Sprinkle yeast on top and let sit until bubbly. Add oil, salt and half of the flour. Gradually mix in the remaining flour. Knead and let rise 1 hour. Punch down and reshape into pans. Let rise until double. Bake at 350 degrees 30-35 minutes.

I make this in my bread machine so I halve the recipe and bake it in the oven. So if some of the instructions don't make sense to some of the more experienced bread makers out there, that is why. I plan on adding wheat germ or cooked barley next.

Autumn Beauty

I love asters.

Man's Best Friend

Since the beginning of our marriage, Jonathan has been our dishwasher. Most of the time this is not too onerous a job but, like every other chore, it can build up into a real mess if not taken care of every day.
So now Jonathan has a new best friend.



And I have a (nearly) clean kitchen.

Office Prank

This post talks about how to change the readout on HP printers. While I am not endorsing the kinds of pranks that can get you fired, the stories here sounded really funny.

Progress

An afghan that I am making for my younger nephew.

Big Ball of Yarn from Joanns. Missy was hanging around hoping that some of the yarn was for her.

I don't always roll the yarn for projects but as the only way to make the skein small enough to carry around with me (which is the only way I ever get anything done) was to roll it into three balls. The yarn is also variegated so the next challenge was to remember to use the balls in the right sequence in order to maintain the striping that started developing. It hasn't turned out perfectly as I have switched skeins but
no one seems to be able to tell but me.

Work in progress. And the cat.

PSMS Annual Mushroom Show

We don't do dates like normal people.

Some weeks ago, we went to the Puget Sound Mycological Society's annual mushroom show. There were hundreds of specimens, all neatly categorized by spore type and species, which were collected with an 150-mile radius of Seattle.



There was a table to touch and smell some of the more interesting types, including one that had a strong potato scent and another that was reminiscent of almonds, vanilla and maraschino cherries. There was also one that is so strongly scented of caramel and maple that is used to flavor desserts.


These are edible mushrooms that are quite flavorful when young but as they age turn into a black goo--earning them the name inky caps. This goo can be used as paint or ink.


I expressed interest in this phenomenon and was given a box of leftovers from the cooking demonstration to take home. They are now nicely deliquesed and sitting in the fridge waiting to be played with.


This photo doesn't do justice to the exquisite range of color in the interior of the cap and stem--from delicate pink to greying purple to chocolately brown to charcoal.

Update:

Well, I waited too long to deal with the mushrooms. They became a horrible, stinky goo which did not thicken properly when heated and were useless. Out to the compost pile!

Pumpkin Pi

We decided to carve the pumpkin that we grew this year for display on Hallowe'en. There was much discussion over what sort of design would be both appropriate and feasible. In the end we chose to memorialize one of our favorite things.

This is the first time that I have used one of those pumpkin carving tools. It is remarkable how much easier it made the process-especially since there were curves involved.

We took turns in order to share the fun of getting goopy hands while pulling out the innards.



Carving:



Nearly finished:



Of course, we needed to include another favorite (and appropriate) part of fall in our area. I think that Jonathan would be pleased if they offered these all year.