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Archive for March, 2010

little victories

fresh bread

Brace yourself: this is kind of a bad story. Well, it starts off bad and then it gets good but then, it turns bad again. I’m going to tell it anyway because (a) it’s honest and (b) it involves bread (and don’t you think all stories that involve bread should be told? I do).

So. I’ll start by saying, there was a week back in early January, a dark week, when I must have tried at least four different bread recipes. Four different recipes. And thing was, whether I used bread flour or regular flour, made rolls or loaves—heck, even when I used a bread maker, which requires you to, I kid you not, dump things inside and press GO—the results were the same: failure.

Big, fat failure.

Thankfully, that awful week culminated in a near success or, if you had talked to me the night I made them, SWEET! VICTORY! by way of no-knead baguettes, not to mention a vacation away from here, both of which helped me to forget about bread for a while.

bread from farther away

But, as is often the case with things you distract yourself from, eventually bread came back to mind. (Cue good part of story!) Two months seemed like a long enough separation, it was time to try again and, by serendipity maybe, my old friend Jennifer, who’s known me since preschool (or longer?), posted her favorite bread recipe on Facebook.
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to give it a shot (flourless monster cookies)

flourless cookies

I made these cookies because they don’t have flour in them, which I realize is a little like saying I made my own homemade deodorant this weekend (which, yes, I did—recipe here), in that I’ve probably lost about half of you who are now thinking, what is with this girl? why make cookies without flour in them?

Well, I’ll tell you why.

flourless monster cookies on plate

1. I hadn’t done it before. Generally speaking, if I haven’t done something before, it’s a good idea to give it a shot (cue sweet potato brownies, whole wheat pastry flour, homemade deodorant again). And it’s not just true with food of course. What would my life be like now if I’d never tried starting a blog? Or throwing a party? Or going antiquing with my mom like she likes to do? I’ll tell you how it’d be: less. Less than it is.

Also, 2. I love cookies (you know I love cookies) and so naturally, now that I’m staying away from white sugar and white flour, I wanted to make a cookie without all-purpose flour, but the version I’d tried with spelt flour had been a bust (flat as pancakes), and therefore a cookie sans flour, especially one that closely resembles my favorite, favorite cookies of all time, well, it had my attention.
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how we are waiting (homemade nutella)

nutella on toast

These days, I wake up naturally an hour before my alarm. Every morning.

My eyes open, I blink in the early sunlight and I reach for my alarm clock, hoping against reason that it won’t be what it always is: bright blinking numbers signaling 6:30 (or worse, 6:15). Understand, it is not the time that bothers me, but the timing, a full hour or more before I need to wake up, a full hour or more before I need to have my eyes open or my arms reaching for the alarm clock. It’s a matter of waste, really, a waste of precious sleep. At this point, I have two basic choices: I can get up, and I do sometimes, or I can try to go back to sleep, laying there, awake, beneath the giant white cloud that is my down comforter, and I can close my eyes and wait—for sleep to come or for a more decent hour to arrive. In either case, when I do eventually rise, I’ll have to wait for other things. I will go to the shower, waiting for the hot water to come; to the kitchen, waiting for the bread to toast, for the water to boil; out on the roads, waiting for the light to turn green while I drive to work.

hazelnuts

A lot of life is waiting, have you noticed that? And I don’t just mean with the small stuff of alarm clocks and commuting and morning kettles. We wait for graduations. We wait for job offers. We wait for proposals to be made and babies to be born. We wait, many times, for people. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and here is what I want to know: If so much of life is waiting, how can I get better at it?

You hear people say things all the time about enjoying the journey, and I think that’s good. I want to enjoy the hour I have to relax before getting up, especially since there are a lot of tired moms who would wish for exactly that (am I right?). I want to redeem my morning commutes, with the radio, with talking to the One who never leaves me or forsakes me, and when I drive home, with gratitude for the way the sun streaks across the sky at 5:45 PM.

nutella on toast

And, on those mornings when I end up dressed and ready to go a good 30 minutes before I should head out the door, I want to sit at the table, and I want to eat toast with homemade Nutella® on top. It is a simple pleasure, but trust me: it’s one worth savoring. Read more…