Over at The Red Wren I’m challenging myself to pick three pins I’ve pinned on Pinterest each week and begin the projects. This week I decided to undertake the 5 minute Artisan Bread it was A-MAZ-ING. This bread is deliciously crusty on the outside and soft on the inside.
I made my dough to the recipe specifications but only had enough for two loaves. It was still much cheaper than purchasing artisan bread and it’s such a wonderful feeling to slice and eat bread you’ve baked yourself.
If you look at the photos you’ll notice the loaf at bottom left is considerably smaller than the one on the right. I followed the recipe and pulled off a ‘grapefruit’ sized chunk, but I suspect we have different ideas as to the size of grapefruit. Interestingly, the first loaf was a lot fluffier than the second and kept better overnight. I’m not sure if that’s a characteristic of the dough or the fact that I had to keep punching the remainder of the dough down as it kept escaping from the container in the fridge. The second loaf was still fantastic and toasted up nicely for this morning’s breakfast of poached eggs and bacon.
This recipe is definitely on the repeat list. Next week I’m going to see how it turns out with the addition of grains and my husband would love to try a spelt load. I’ll report back.
My husband is rather partial to the chimichanga. I’d pinned a recipe on Pinterest a while back and thought it was time to give it a go as part of my ‘Stop Pinning, Start Doing’ feature that I’m undertaking on The Red Wren. The recipe calls for ground beef (‘mince’ to us here in Australia), I didn’t have mince so I put my Kitchen Aid grinder attachment to work and made my own. It was a slow process but it did produce a nice mince without the worm like quality of supermarket mince.
The recipe itself was very straightforward. The only changes I made were to add half a jar of tomato pasta sauce as I only had plain kidney beans and it looked rather bland and the use The recipe calls for Chilli Beans which to my knowledge aren’t a commonly found in supermarkets here.
Mine don’t look as pretty as the ones in the original recipe, but they tasted fantastic and will be on the ‘make again’ list.
A major part of Christmas when you aren’t of religious inclination is food and decorating. You can see my decorations over at The Red Wren and below are some photos of tables and food from various functions.
From top-left:
My table set for our annual parent’s dinner.
My table set for our annual friend’s do.
My mother in law’s table set for Christmas day Brunch
My parent’s table laden with food on Christmas night.
I have a couple of things from Christmas to show you before we move on to the New Year.
Over a month ago I attended a cookie swap hosted by Siobhan. The idea is that everyone brings cookies along and you swap! I made spiced ice box cookies in two flavours; cranberry and citrus, and hazelnut and chocolate. Some very yummy treats were received in return.
Of the cookies pictured, favourites were the scotty dog shortbread, the lemon slice, the loft house cookies with the sprinkles on them, and the sandwiched pink one with the cherry on top (who’s name I have forgotten – bad me!).
For the second year running we decided to give handmade goodies to our extended family. This year they received:
Embroidery hoop decorations – a last minute idea after I ran out of time to complete option A, then option B was a big fail. I was really pleased with how they looked.
Peppermint Fudge – a delicious layered fudge; one layer of dark chocolate, one layer of white chocolate and crushed candy canes pressed on top while unset.
Strawberry and vanilla bean jam- I sourced some beautiful jam jars this year from The Redback Trading Company. The picture doesn’t show them well; the glass is quilted and looks gorgeous.
I look forward to choosing things to make next year.
Each year I set myself some goals. Not resolutions, the very term ‘New Years Resolutions’ seems to spell failure. Here’s my goals relevant to the subject matter on this blog;
- Meal plan, buy local food, cook more. Pretty simple! It’s just a matter of being organised to achieve this one.
- Get the weeds in the garden under control and keep them that way. This is a huge one. Given how many pictures I post of the nice parts of the garden I do have to admit that I’d be ashamed to show you the garden in its entirety. Some of the beds have been swallowed altogether. Lots of work to be done!
- Keep the house organised and clean and be mindful of what comes in the door. I spent a lot of time last year decluttering some of the things I no longer had room or love for from the house. I’m going to be mindful this year of what new stuff gets bought as I don’t want to find myself living among too much stuff again. This is especially important now we have Elijah.
- Get back on the bike! I’m really excited about this. Two more months and Elijah can travel in a baby seat on the back!
- Exercise more and spend more time outdoors on family outings such as BBQ’s and picnics instead of heading to cafes and shopping centres. We’ve all got very fair skin in this family so it isn’t always sensible to spend time outside, however there is such a thing as shade.
I’m trying not to get too carried away. If I think of anything else that is significant I’ll add it, but this should be enough to keep me nice and busy! You can see my creative goals here. I have some other goals of a more personal nature, but I won’t be publishing them on the internet. Neither blog feels appropriate and some goals are quite personal.
I’m testing an iPhone app to see if I can publish reasonable looking photos to here straight from my phone. It will make things do much faster if I don’t have to upload everything to my computer before blogging!
I’ve been hacked. If you happen to visit me this week things will look a bit messy as I rebuild and use the opportunity to have a small facelift. Regular posting will resume once I’ve fixed this mess!
I neglected to wrap-up Blogtoberfest on the 31st. A cranky baby got the better of me and that was the end of that. I had said pretty much all I wanted to on Sunday’s post though. So there goes another October.
I had a mild panic about it being November already last night. It’s more relevant to crafting though so I’ll post about it there.
What is relevant here on Renvironement is this gorgeous dragon fly adorning my climbing rose. He was a very lucky dragon fly; I was snipping away deheading roses and spotted him just as I was about to snip him in half thinking he was a dead stem! I’d never have forgiven myself; such beautiful insects.
I was quite pleased with my efforts for Blogtoberfest on this blog; I had kept up, and the content was relevant to my blog’s themes. Somehow despite having a whole week of posts planned, life got in the way and I fell behind. I feel a little disappointed, however I have managed to post many more posts than last year and when I combine this years’ total posts with those one The Red Wren, I have posted more than 31 which is a big achievement for me!
When things don’t go entirely as planned I like to use them as a learning experience. The biggest thing I learned from this years’ Blogtoberfest is that I need to plan what I’m going to post. I can’t just sit at the computer at 8pm and come up with a relevant post. I read on a blog recently that the author uses a calendar to plan out what they’re going to post each week. I think this is a great idea and I’m going to do something similar. I have folders on my computer called ‘to blog’ which is were all photos that will appear on the blog go once they are edited, but I need more than this – I need something hard copy to jot ideas down on as they come to me. Soooo… Blogtoberfest isn’t over and before tomorrow I’m going to design a printable blogging calendar.
Stay tuned!
ETA: I just stumbled on this great post by Indie Pretty Projects that lists some cute blogging calendars. I think I’ll try out one of these!
{Blogtoberfest Day Thirty} Post 21
I’m participating in Blogtoberfest. Click here for more information.
