So. We love fresh bread. When we went to Montreal, there was a bakery every few blocks so we had baguette. (and cheese, because it was everywhere – even gas stations. Viva Quebec! *ahem*) After we got home, Ron got to hinting at me to see if I could make baguettes. The lovely Margaret Roach even sent me her unused and languishing baguette pan.

I googled for recipes, I adjusted, I followed tips. Then one day on twitter, I saw a company having a contest where the winner got a preview copy of this new cookbook.
Ironically, I won because of my flaming loaves of bread story. And in 140 characters, no less.

In the cookbook was a recipe for artisan bread, adapted from that artisinal bread cookbook everyone raved about but I failed at making properly.

And? With my own further adjustments? We have bread perfection.

Lazy Bread

3 cups warm water
1 1/2 TBSP yeast
1 TBSP salt (yes, a tablespoon – trust me)
6 1/2 cups flour

Pop the water in the microwave for 30 seconds. That usually makes it lukewarm. You want it warm, like baby bathwater warm. Put the yeast in the water. I have a big steel bowl I mix this all up in.

Measure out the flour in another large container or huge glass measuring cup. Mix the salt in with the flour NOT the water. This amount of salt causes the yeast to grow slower than usual and adding it to the water with the yeast will hurt it.

Dump the flour/salt in the bowl with the water/yeast and mix it. I have a sturdy wooden spoon. Keep stirring. Or not, depending on if you are tired. The dough will be really sticky and quite a mess. It you don’t stir it much, the flour will soak in anyway, especially if you are going to leave it.

Now you can cover all the dough up and toss it in the fridge to use whenever you want. It will keep. It will also not rise & fall (remember the salt?). The flavor will also mellow.

Or, you can use all the dough now and make 4 loaves.

Or, cut off half the dough.

Either way, let the dough site for a couple hours. Or so. It should look like it rose, but don’t angst about how much unless your house is really cold. You can’t leave it so long it will fall, unless you completely leave it out all day.

Divide the dough in 4 if you used all of it, or two if you hacked off half a chunk. Resist the urge to knead it, tho you can lightly oil or flour it. If you left the dough in the fridge, you start here.

Stretch out a bit of dough in the baguette pan or on a stoneware pan. Or dump it on a stoneware pan so it’s round. Or oval. Or whatever floats your boat. In a regular loaf pan, it is disappointing. Pretend you are a farm wife and you can’t afford a loaf pan but your love (and bread) makes you happy. If you use a nice fancy metal baguette pan with tiny holes in it, line it with parchment paper. Letting it rise in the pan without it will make it really hard to slide the cooked loaf out of all those teeny little holes.

Come back in an hour and a half. It should look puffy and you will see air bubbles under the surface. Put the stove on the preheat at 450. If your oven runs hot, 425 will do. Go away for 15 minutes.

Come back and toss the pan with the dough on it in the oven for 25 minutes.

If you want to get really fancy and do the crusty crust thing, when the oven is preheating put a cookie sheet on the bottom rack and boil some water, about a cup or so. When the over is preheated, place the dough & pan on the middle rack, and just when you close the door, pour the boiling water on the pan on the bottom rack and quickly close the door. This will make a crunchy crust.

But this one time? Like, last week? There was oil on the bottom pan and the water rushing onto it made it WHOOSH up and the parchment paper lining the top pan caught on fire. And then your husband will give you That Look and sigh and you’ll be all, “WHAT? THe loaves themselves are not burning and.. look, see? The edges of the paper are all done burning now,” and when they are cooked he will only gently shake his head at you when brushing soot off the finished (and PERFECT!) loaves.

So there. Have butter ready. Resist the urge to slice it right away as it’s difficult and kinda hot. These go stale after a couple days, but it’s so easy to toss some dough in a pan and have the rest waiting in the fridge, why the heck not?

Baguette fights may break out if you make two at once.

It’s not even birthday time.

We’ll celebrate anyway.

***

Use any white cake, divide it in six bowls. Add gel or paste food coloring to each. Meaghan baked hers in a smaller round pan, one layer at a time. Two pans would go even faster.

Edit: Meaghan blogged it.

It’s adapted slightly from Looney Spoons.

Take a couple chicken breast and slice ‘em up. While they are sauteing, start the fettuccine noodles. Don’t have those? Use spaghetti. Any long and thin noodle is great. I break mine in half so we’re not twirling all night.

And now for the sauce:

Sautee 1 or 2 cloves of garlic in 2 tblspoons butter. C’mon, it’s only two.

Mix 1 1/2 cups 2% milk with 1 1/2 tablespoons flour. Add to the above after one minute. Don’t let the garlic brown.

Whisk this on medium till it starts to thicken. Reduce heat to low, and stir in 1/3 c parmesan cheese. Good Parmesan, not the stuff in the cardboard shaker thingy. You can halve this if you’re not a huge parm fan.

Simmer that for a minute or two till your cheese is melted. You’ve been stirring noodles and flipping chicken, too right?

Back to the sauce – stir in 1/4 cup low fat sour cream. Heat for another minute or two, maybe drain them noodles.

Serve immediately. you can toss everything together in the pot, or add things to each person’s plate like we do.

Me: everything
Rom: chicken, noodles, light on the sauce
Meg: noodles & sauce
Emma: noodles with some grated cheese on top.

Can you see me now? Basically the blog was down because of spam. And I get hit hard with spam because my email address is on an old domain with the same address for quite a few years. It’s been a persistent issue, and you may have noticed any one of our sites blipping or glitching in the early morning hours. So it finally took a big hard nosedive yesterday morning.

The short version, was I had to “unhook” the atypicalife.net part from the rest of the site. It kept my blog down, but the rest of the sites could come back up. Considering the part I needed to get to kept going down while trying to get in there, it was an interesting two hours. I also had to figure out how to get my site back up while sending my mail elsewhere.

Seems to be working, although I will be phasing out my old email address and using a new one.

Mom and Carl are here and we’ve unloaded the truck, sorted through all the stuff (sent back what we don’t want…) taken Mom into town shopping, chopped all the veggies, made fabric pumpkins for the centerpiece, and… I dunno. I think they are playing on the Wii and watching Shrek 3.

The pots are bubbling away on the stove, and I just glazed the ham. I’m at the spot where I have a ten to fifteen minute lull and then I can drain, mash, and present. The menu? Well, I know you are on the edge of your seat waiting.

A boneless cooked ham
Apricot glaze

Take 1/2 cup apricot jam, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1.5 tablespoons vinegar (cider if you have it), 1 tsp mustard power and 1/2 tsp cloves. Mix and heat in saucepan. Pour over ham 15 minutes before it is done and finish baking uncovered

Carrots and turnips, cooked together and mashed
Mashed potatoes
fresh green beans
brown sugar baked squash

quarter and gut a buttercup squash, place in baking pan. bake for a half hour or so. add a small knob of butter and a couple spoons of brown sugar to hollowed out bits. Finish baking. when done, use a large spoon to scrape it all off into a bowl, squash included, leaving skins behind.

Mom also brought potato stuffing (which I have to get the recipe for AGAIN and put it in my blog this time) and pumpkin pie for dessert.

Edit: pics!

For now, here’s a meme I saw at both Meg’s and Carrie’s.

Bold those you have tried.
Strike through those you wouldn’t eat on a bet.
Italicize any item you’ll never eat again.
*Asterisk any items you’d be interested in trying but have not yet.
Underline anything you eat regularly (more than once a month-ish).
?Questionisk any items you’ve never heard of (there will be a lot of these!)

1. Venison
2. *Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. *Borscht
10. Baba ghanouj
11. Calamari – too rubbery
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. ?Aloo gobi
15. *Hot dog from a street cart
16. ?Epoisses
17. Black truffle  – can’t make up my mind
18. *Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese (my mom loves it though)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. ?Bagna cauda
31. *Wasabi peas – they are right next to the spicy ‘singapore mix” I’ve been addicted to lately
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. ?Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. *Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. *Oxtail
41. *Curried goat – wouldn’t be far off from lamb would it?
42. Whole insects
43. ?Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. ?Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49.*Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. ?Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. *Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. *Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8 ABV
59. Poutine – c’mon, it’s a CANADIAN STAPLE.
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. *Kaolin – last time I was pregnant it sounded really interesting
64. Currywurst
65. ?Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho – we all broke out in a rash
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. ?Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. ?Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong it was meh.
80. Bellini
81. ?Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky – this HAS been a regualr lately
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. *Soft shell crab
93. ?Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. *Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox – not a fan of lox
97. *Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Huh. I’m a foodie. Also it just occured to me they could have put dulse on the list.

Like Paula Dean. I love her, Sarah can’t stand her, and we count the number of times she mentions a loved one. Can y’all tell me if southerners really do put that much butter on every single thing? Seriously, if we watch later today and she deep-fries a butter-mayo mixture wrapped in bacon I would not be in the least bit surprised.

But we pick on Canadians too. Like Chef at Home. Yesterday, he said flavour THIRTY-SIX times in one episode. Love his food, LOVE his kitchen in P.E.I., especially the pantry. But dude, back off on the “flavour” and the hand gestures. We DO love his cooking though.

We keep threatening to play non-alcoholic drinking games. Loser is the first one who has to run to the bathroom.

One of the most jaw-droppingly bad shows we ever saw was This Food, That Wine. I know people use phrases like “food porn” or “wine porn” to describe really vivid and excruciatingly detailed events, but in this show’s case, it really is like watching porn. The close-ups of mouths, the moans, the bow-chicka-wow-wah soundtrack. Complete with cheesy lines.

We also used to watch a lot of Ricardo and friends because he is hysterical. Probably unintentionally. Then they moved his time slot. Later at night we watch Restaurant Makeover, and we all love Igor the handyman. Maybe this is a sign of Canadian television, because I know if it were an American show, it wouldn’t be Igor with an eastern-European accent and he’d have huge muscles, a tan, white smiley teeth and tight tshirts.

Nah. Igor gets mad at the designer, yells at them, rolls his eyes and stomps off with a few BEEPS in heavily accented English. Usually wearing long sleeves, gloves, huge overalls and maybe a toque. After that, if we’re still up we might watch Iron Chef America. At the very least, Emma and I hang on long enough to find out the “secret” ingredient before we head up to bed.

Last night while we watched, the big girls had Iron Chef Lakeville, and they both made carrot soup in two variations. I think we have to judge later. One was creamy, one was more potato-ey.

My life is so hard. (Why yes, it IS nice to have two teenage daughters cooking in the kitchen without one bit of help or supervision from me.)

One cracker (I think you ‘mericans call ‘em saltines)
A hunk of cheese – I used a really good mozarella
a half slice of pepperoni
one or two slices of bread n butter pickle

You can top that with another cracker or not. Mmm.. mmmphh.. oh … yeah. That’s good. Lemme have another or six.

Edit: Oh I really should make another. For the Flick pics. Yeah, that’s it.

No pics, we ate ‘em too fast.