Sandwich Bread

Sandwich bread. Go to the store, half of an entire aisle is devoted to the American staple. So many varieties, so little time. Speaking of little time, do not start reading ingredient labels - you could be at the store an entire day, tediously typing in your smart phone, looking up explanations and pronunciations of sandwich bread ingredients. With so many unheard of ingredients, no wonder everyone buys their bread instead of making it. Where could I even find sodium stearoyl lactylate?

Alas, my friends, all you really need to make sandwich bread are things you likely already have in your pantry. Flour. Yeast. Milk. Honey. Salt. Water. Vegetable oil. Yes, that is all you need, even if you are sans bread machine. No sodium stearoyl lactylate required.

Every time I make my bread, it turns out better than the time before. There is something about the time spent kneading the dough that is therapeutic and relaxing. My heart always skips a beat or two, however, until I actually see the dough rising. Nothing is more disappointing than kneading your hands off to then discover inactivated yeast, or, *gasp*, dead yeast. After all of it's time spent rising, the recipe I use (from the CIA Baking at Home), instructs on an odd folding pattern that has often resulted in creating large holes in the center of my loaves.

Except for this time.

As I said, my bread always turns out better than the time before. Which makes me even more excited to bake sandwich bread, and all of it's glorious simpleness, all over again . . .

You can only imagine my excitement when I sliced into my first loaf and . . . perfection!

Close up. Why? Why not!

Guinness Chocolate Cake with Bailey's Buttercream

I will keep this post short and sweet. Mainly because all I can do is think about this cake and how much I want to go into the fridge and finish it. I don't even like Guinness, but apparently I will fall in love with anything involving chocolate.

My husband was definitely a lucky man on Valentine's Day.

Guinness and sugar, patiently waiting to combine with melted butter and chocolate.

Little brown spots = whole wheat goodness

Egg whites - whip it good. Darkish color is due to an entire tablespoon of vanilla extract. Expensive, but worth every penny.

After 40 long minutes, it finally emerges from the oven. I never thought I would have enough self control to actually not attempt to cut some out for "quality control."

Completed cake with Bailey's Buttercream (not the same icing recipe as you will find on the link). I was a little short on decorating time . . .

but definitely do NOT judge a book by it's cover.

Reward for a Good Deed

Today was supposed to be my first day of work at the hospital. Emphasis on supposed to be. I attempted to take a brand new route to my neighbor town. I had high hopes a greater amount of the 4" of snow we received overnight would be plowed from this new route compared to my usual curvy, hilly road. The following is a conversation that occurred around 7am this morning.

Me: "But what if I get lost? What if I don't see the sign for 54?"

Husband: "You'll see it, you'll be fine."

After clarifying directions from the husband, I was off.

Sure enough, the way we both agreed on to take was horribly incorrect, resulting in me being stuck in literally the middle of nowhere.

Needless to say I did not make it to work. Emphasis on not.

Thank goodness for small town people with kind hearts and big trucks who love pulling their coworker's wives out of excessive amounts of snow. Husband, coworker and coworker's truck all arrived to my rescue. An action to show my immense gratitude was certainly in order. Considering I now had the day off . . . I baked!

I had been sitting on this recipe for Texas Sheet Cake for quite awhile. Since said hero would not inform us of his favorite dessert, I decided to give this recipe a try. And though I cannot taste the finished product before it is destroyed at the factory . . . the batter did taste quite good, if I say so myself.

Boiling the water, butter, cocoa powder and instant coffee (personal addition). Proof that life gets messy.

Combining buttery chocolate goodness with batter. How could you not want to capture this moment?

Always sift your powdered sugar. Not optional.

I had to decorate with Valentine's sprinkles. Just the finishing touch on showing my love for truck man's kindness!

Stuffed Mushers

Okay, so maybe it's been a year and a half since the last post . . . but a lovely birthday card from a friend, who suggested I start blogging about my food adventures, inspired me to begin again. Thanks, Ameena!

As my husband creatively titled our meal last night, may I present to you stuffed mushers. To those of you who may be unable to translate Rusty language, we had stuffed portobello mushrooms with sun-dried tomato couscous. The meal was in honor of national stuffed mushroom day, which was Friday. . . I may have been a day late, but definitely was not a dollar short. The meal was amazing and will be printed out for permanent record. If a recipe I find online turns out well, only then do I deem it worthy of my printer ink and binder storage space.

I chose a recipe from www.bbcgoodfood.com. It was the first time I ever used a recipe from this website. There was something unique in the manner the instructions were presented: instead of stating "Bake the mushrooms for 20 minutes," the baking time was presented as . . .

5. 10 minutes into the cooking of the mushrooms start cooking the orzo, after seven minutes steam or boil the sugarsnaps for two minutes. Drain orzo and mix with tomato sauce. Take mushrooms out of oven and serve it all up and enjoy!

I definitely am a fan of this instructional method! Even though I was substituting couscous for the orzo, presenting the instructions this way helped me organize my time in the kitchen so that everything finished at the exact time it was supposed to, serving the entire meal nice and warm. Props to BBC - I will definitely be looking to you again!