snow day!

yeah yeah, i know i know...it's just some snow, get over it already. but this is nashville and we don't do snow here, at least not that often and generally not this much.

photo #1, 11am on friday

photo #2, 1pm on friday

photo #3, 6pm on friday

photo #4, my crazy husband shoveling the snow as it still falls around 8pm on friday.

the view this morning at 8am and it is still falling! so far we have about 6 inches which may not seem like much to many but really, we just don't get much snow here. that 6 inches is probably equal to all of the snow we have had since we moved into this house 6 years ago! if we are lucky, we will be able to get out of the house later today when some other brave nutjobs have driven around on our street and cleared a path for us-we do not have four wheel drive or a snow plow handy!

birthday bread baking party

with everything i have going on, i found time to make some bread for this month's bread baking day, #26. the theme is to bake a loaf of bread to take to a birthday party. well, what kind of bread does one take to a birthday party? being a mom, i can see that this would not go over well with the kids; what kid wants a loaf of bread rather than cake or cookies? however, i can see making a couple of loaves of good sourdough bread, grilling a steak or some fish, tossing a salad, opening a nice bottle of wine, sharing it with friends and calling that a birthday party. add a few presents and some cake and i'm set and ready to par-tee. but this is a party for jamie of lifes a feast and i can only hope she approves of the menu!

with this challenge in mind, i decided to multi task. a coworker, stevo, has taken an interest in baking bread and he has been asking me questions, lots of questions in an effort to learn as much as he can. a week or so ago, i gave him some of my starter and a list of websites and cookbook titles but this week we had the opportunity to work together for two consecutive days. out of the fridge came the starter, we fed it and started two separate batches of sourdough bread. today we made two loaves of bread so that stevo could see just how easy it is to do.

on the left, a whole grain loaf and on the right, one with some semolina. i was looking in the fridge where i store all of my flour and discovered that i had more than a dozen varieties of flour so we could have made any number of combinations. we also started some rye sour so that we could make rye bread at some point.

here are the two loaves rising in bowls on my work table. since this is such an easy recipe to use, i was able to do this as i worked on stocking the restaurant for the day.

here they are in the oven

the finished loaves, this is the whole grain which is really only about 35% whole wheat and a few tablespoons of multigrain hot cereal mix. it was a good combination and a great learning experience for stevo since he wants to make whole grain breads at home.

the semolina loaf. both were wonderful while they were warm.

pretty loaves!

thanks to jamie for inviting us to this wonderful birthday party, we had fun!

and for those of you wanting the recipe, it is actually up on my blog already because i love this recipe and when something works, why change it!

ammurica's dumbest crimnals

we are lucky to live in a great neighborhood. there are lots of families here and we have met many of them while out working in the yard or when walking the mutt around. unfortunately, we also have a few apartment complexes and rental homes nearby that generally are fine but can house what you might refer to as undesirables. in the 6 years here, we haven't had much trouble but recently, we had an incident. late at night, someone ransacked darry's car. he was leaving for work about 5am when he noticed that things were laying on the passenger seat that are normally in the glove compartment. he put them back and in the process checked to see that the valuables were still there-his fancy laser pointer in its fancy case, his swiss army knife and his little leatherman tool were all present and accounted for as was all of the important car documents and a collection of coins. the only thing missing, his keys for the kitchen and his security pass for the building...what could anyone possibly do with them? wait, i know, we are idiots and we always leave a full set of house keys in the unlocked car in the carport!!! this is where you say DUH!!! of course i couldn't let it go unnoticed and i quickly put a note up on every door to the house just in case the crimnal returned to the scene of the crime.

and because i am who i am, i went house to house and passed out about 50 of these notes. best to be proactive and maybe we can prevent any more incidents. happy new year everyone!