I’ve been wanting to try a cloche bread baker, and lucky me, I happened to get one for Christmas! I tried it out on New Years Eve, and it tasted great, except I didn’t oil and cornmeal the bottom enough. So the crusty bottom stuck to the baker. Never ones to be defeated by kitchen gadgets, we decided to make french toast out of hacked up bread, as the saying goes.
Right now, I have bread baking in the bread machine, so when I look at these cookie pictures, its like I can smell them.
These are some of the prettiest cookies I have ever made. I don’t usually have the best luck with cookie molds, but I followed the directions on this one exactly, and they came out perfectly the first time! Perfect for Christmas, and even pretty enough to give as a gift.
Something about holiday season makes me want to do puzzles. So instead of a dining table right now, we have a puzzle table.
We munched on a loaf of pumpkin bread all weekend. It made the house smell like a holiday. We also spent a lot of weekend time simmering chili, eating cookie dough, and watching football. What have you been up to?
I’ve been saving the seeds from our Halloween pumpkins in the fridge, and we decided to roast them up the other day. Then we couldn’t stop eating them!
We half used this recipe. I am sure they would have been great in salads, or trail mix or something fancy, but we ate them all just like this. Now off to make some pumpkin bread!
We grew our very first eggplant! And its a beauty.
Our wee little eggplant wasn’t quite big enough for a fancy recipe, so we settled on making some eggplant “chips” to share. We loosely used this recipe, but made up our own spice mixture. Then we ate them up with a side of tacos! Hope the plant grows another one soon!
I didn’t spend a whole lot of time reading on screens this week, due to my cold. I did read To Kill A Mockingbird, which is one of my very very favorites. So my recommendations for the weekend are to drink lots of water, read a good book, and try a new recipe. Have a good one, my friends.
In our extra hour last weekend, we planted our winter garden, which we could also call our future salad garden. Lots of lettuce, kale, broccoli, onions, and cauliflower type veggies.
We interspersed the veggies with complimentary herbs and flowers. We had a bit of trouble with bugs last winter, so we are hoping the smell of the herbs confuses the bugs and they leave peacefully. And the flowers are for our friends the bees.
You know sometimes plants are a little wilty when you first plant them? I checked on them the next morning, and they all looked crispy and happy! It just rained for 2 days straight, so I hope they are off to a good start in their new home.
There was an epic search for a pumpkin the other evening. I guess central Austin is almost out of pumpkins? But we managed to find a few to bring home, and we are planning on carving them tonight. And you can’t carve a pumpkin without pumpkin shaped cookies.
Bundt cakes are one of the scariest cakes, because of the pan. Mixing it up just requires you to follow the directions. Easy enough. But you can follow every direction for preparing the pan, and there is still the heart stopping moment when you turn it over, praying out loud that the sucker will just slide right out.
I flipped this one over, took a time out before I got too frustrated, and I would say 98% finally came out perfectly. The 2% was thankfully more cosmetic than structural, so you can’t even notice. Going into the win column.
What is your favorite afternoon snack? Lately, I’ve been munching on hamburger pickle chips. Pickles have always been a favorite of mine, and these ones are fun to eat.
I like to show my love with baked goods. For our first birthday weekend of the season, we started with some fluffy biscuits for breakfast.
Next, we had some chocolate chip cookies for snacking.
And then we had our showstopper, a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.
And now we need to stock up on Halloween candy.
guy and his girl 