I made bread!

I made bread!!! White bread!!! Real loafy white bread! I can't believe it actually turned out so well.

Now, I've been making bread for a while.. but it was of the no-knead variety. SUPER easy. Extremely delicious! I love no-knead bread, and I'm not going to stop making it EVER. But, I was at the grocery store a couple weeks ago and picked up another cruddy loaf of white sandwich bread with a sour look on my face. I'm so sick of buying this junk. It's nasty. It's full of junk, and we never even finish it! I hate throwing out soured, moldy partially eaten bread. It's such a waste! So, I said "I've been making my no-knead bread for a while now.. it's time. It's time to quite buying this junk and just bake a loaf of sandwich bread." And I'm so glad I did!! I really tried hard and I got such a great pay off!!!

Look at my little stand mixer ^^. Adding the water/yeast/sugar/flour.

I was freaking out a little right here... are mixers supposed to spin?! I still don't have an answer..

The dough after the first rise. (I forgot the pictures of kneading it...) I had to knead in nearly 2 cups extra of flour to get it to stop being sticky. I thought I was adding too much flour, and the bread would end up too dense.

Getting ready for a second rise in their loaf pans.

Rising!

About to pop 'em in the oven!

Just out of the oven. I thought I'd over cooked it. They felt so hard when I popped them out.

After they rested a while they softened up a bit.

The crumb!

Oh my gosh. SO EASY! Just a lot of patience. I am so glad I gave this a try. I feel like I will definitely be making this often. Below is a link to the recipe, if anyone is interested. I found it on Pinterest! By the way, I used regular white AP flour--nothing fancy. No bread flour.

http://stories.savvymom.ca/jCd9

Dreaming of a Beautiful Kitchen

We used to have a lovely kitchen, when we lived in the old house. Dark cherry stained tall cabinets, granite countertops, hardwood floors. Ahh. It was beautiful. But it wasn't functional. I didn't feel like the space was laid out very well, but it was very pretty to look at! Now, this new kitchen is ugly. Butt ugly. However, it functions muuuuch better. There's a cohesive workspace, there's a better flow, there's so much natural light. I love it. I love our new kitchen, and I love our new house. But it's old and outdated and needs tons of love (and money.. mostly money) to make it beautiful. Now, I have a little plan working on how I'd like to tackle making our kitchen beautiful and I wanted to share it with you!

Let's take a tour..

Looking into the kitchen from the formal dining room, that we use as a sort of home office. Notice the barf-worthy linoleum floors, and the orange-y oak cabinets. My cat can actually blend into the cabinets they're so orange.

Here is the stove area, opposite the sink. I had just made some rolls when I took this picture, ignore the food!

Beautiful kitchen window, which I have always wanted. Short, stubby orange cabinets :/ I'm going with a pumpkin and teapots theme, can you tell? Actually I want to just do teapots and stuff, but I had to put my pumpkin somewhere.

Looking at the kitchen from the breakfast area. More ugly orange-y cabinets. And can you see the TERRIBLE floors??? See how they aren't even covering some of the subfloor and it's rippling?? Ugh.

Well, that is how the kitchen looks right now. Orange. And horrible floors. And AWFUL counters. Yeah, I haven't even gotten into the countertops. They're stained, and by the sink they are separating and leaking.. It's a dang mess.

Better view of peeling back linoleum floor. Yuck! And it's so stained that I could soak it in bleach for HOURS and it still looks dingy.

Leaky area of the countertop. Can you see that gungy mess? I have to clean that up every time I wash dishes. It just seeps pond scum looking stuff :( Ew.

So, I have a grand vision! Which starts off with dropping a ton of money unfortunately :( But, first things first I NEED to replace those floors! I want tile. Tile please tile. We had hardwoods in the last house and I really think, at least for me, they're a bad idea in the kitchen. I'm not very good at maintaining high maintenance things.

Now, I started writing this blog post... weeks ago? Oh man. I'm so sorry but I got very lazy. Anyway, in the meantime, our lights in our master bathroom stopped working.. well, not just the lights. The outlets! So, I put a plea on facebook for someone to recommend an electrician, when an old buddy from high school responded that he has a handyman business and could come check it out. What a dream! Someone I know, and trust?? HECK YES! So, he came over and fixed it in about 30 seconds haha. We had a lose wire, and then a couple of days later he came and replaced the outlets because they're old and not so great. Anyway, I asked if he could do flooring and he can! So we're going to be getting our tile floors and well within our budget! Whoo hooo!!

I also mentioned to him that I wanted granite countertops again... soooo beautiful! He said "Do you know how costly they are?" "er... no?" Try over $25/square foot. "Oh really :(" he said he can do butcherblock countertops so I'm giving it a serious thinking!

Anyway, gonna go ahead and publish this long overdue post!

Okay, here we go!

So, guys. Matt got a new job a couple of weeks ago and now he has actual WEEKENDS off! You know, Saturday and Sunday instead of Monday and Tuesday... the secret is that I actually liked him having Monday and Tuesday off :/ because we could go anywhere anytime and it wasn't packed to the brim with human bodies. But, Matt is soooooo-o-o happy to have weekends off and plus he's got a way better job and he's very very happy so I'm happy. I just miss our weekday-weekends.

So this real weekend we had to run around town to get a gift for Matt's cousin's baby shower that we had completely forgotten about! Whoops! And a gift for his other cousin's daughter's first birthday which we are like....3-ish months late for... oopsie! Well, anyway, his cousin Abby who is having a little boy requested that instead of cards for people to buy a children's book and write something to her new baby inside and I thought that was the BEST idea ever!! So we went up to the bookstore and got this little Frog and Toad book that is so cute, I remember reading it as a child. Well, the whooooole point of this paragraph is to tell you that I twisted Matt's arm and got him to go to Goodwill with me just for fun. I love to look at the plates and bakeware and stuff and the books.. oh who am I kidding, I just love thrifting! lol. Well, anyway so we go up there looking for nothing in particular when I find  CAST IRON SKILLET!!! And not a mini one which seems to be the only kind I EVER find, but a 12 inch, smooth bottom, 3 notch actual factual skillet! So exciting! So I bought it of course! I already have a 12 inch, but I just couldn't pass it up. And my 12 inch that I had before is one of the newer Lodge that you can just go grab at Wal-Mart. I took a side-by-side picture so you could see...

The Goodwill find is on the left and my old one is on the right. You can tell the one on the right is a newer make because of the nice little helper handle at the bottom :)

And here you can see the 3 notches (sorta..) on the left one and the new Lodge logo on the right one

So excited about the new skillet! Anyway, I also think it's time to share some food with you :} So, I am sharing first my take on the classic dish Toad-in-the-Hole with Onion Gravy and my easy peasy quiche.

Toad-in-the-Hole is a very savory dish that is basically a Yorkshire pudding with sausage links in it. But, I never buy sausage links so I just sauteed some onions and ground sausage and did it that way. Then, the onion gravy is soooooooooooooooo good!! It's almost like how you would start off making a French onion soup, but it's gravy. Sautee your onions for like 30 minutes or something insane and then add flour and red wine, Worcestershire sauce, beef broth and seasonings. But, when I make my Toad-in-the-Hole I usually don't want to waste 30-40 minutes making gravy so I just use onion powder and it tastes great! Picture time... (and I promise things will be more organized in my future posts..)

 I didn't have any before pictures but I'll do those for another post I promise... I'm not crossing my fingers, either! But you have no proof because you can't see me ;)

Also, my easy peasy quiche which I usually make with bacon but instead used sausage. My secret to great quiche is to mix in powdered mustard, garlic salt and hot sauce into the egg mixture. It really helps make the quiche NOT BLAND. So, I recommend trying it if you find you end up with a slightly bland quiche. Anyway, it's just basically sausage and onions and tons of cheese.

A before! Huzzah!

My recipe, which I got somewhere off of Pinterest

Ready to dig in! This makes a great lunch for Matt to take to work, too :)

Well, anyway, I'm thinking next post I will share with all of you my plans for my kitchen. We bought this house in January and it needs a little work. So, now that I've got the time and a little money to make improvements I am formulating a plan! I'd love any feedback.

I love cooking

I love cooking. Seriously. And I'm only sorta good at it... and I don't really measure stuff all of the time. But, anyway... my friends are really sick of my constantly emailing them pictures of my food so I decided to start this little blog so I can share my food pictures without being a little overbearing with my friends.

Here's just a few things I've made in the past.. :D

This is a skillet dish that is basically chili below, and cornbread cooked right on top. It's suuuuuper easy and very delicious. And you can see I added some diced jalapenos to the cornbread.

In the bowl so you can see the yummy-ness!

Chicken broccoli alfredo. yum

Dutch baby. So easy, so good. I promise not everything I make is in the cast iron skillet. 

Anyway, I hope you (anonymous internet) enjoy my food posts :)