TWD/BWJ: Bagels

RESOLVED: I will seek out the Baking With Julia videos before attempting all further recipes in this project!

Do you think that'll help me remember? The printed recipe seems SO much more complicated than the video version. Especially 4 pages of printed recipe. Especially for a visual person.

I considered skipping this recipe altogether because in general bagels aren't my favorite food. Too hard to eat without feeling like you might pull out a tooth or OD your jaw muscles. But then I started to read the links. Several people used the word "fun". Who am I to argue with that? Why should I care about the finished product if I have fun along the way? And you know what? It WAS fun! And you know what else? They're good!














The second debate was on while I was making the dough.  Which explains the wine...  I'm terribly exhausted by what passes as politics in this country anymore. It's disintegrated into an ugly bitterness that has infiltrated even my own friends. The fear- and hate-mongerers aren't going to let up, are they? A sense of hopelessness has taken hold of me. There. I've named it.

And so I welcome the unexpectedly "fun" recipe. And try not to think about the way people are treating one another over an election. When all else fails, I'll make bagels.

The recipe can be found here, and links to other Tuesdays With Dorie bakers who made this recipe are here.

And now for a shoe. How about a hopelessly bad picture of one?  It's not easy to get them in focus when you're driving 45 mph and there's a car on your tail.

TWD/BWJ: Cranberry-Walnut Pumpkin Loaves

Seems like EONS ago that I made this bread. Picture dates say Oct 6 and 7 which was a few days late to begin with. So I'm only 2 weeks past the "official" baking date posting this.

Guess I'm not one of those competitive bakers waiting for midnight to hit so I can be first to post my link, LOL!

At least I'm trying to keep up.




Life's been a little overwhelming lately, so I count this as an accomplishment. Yesterday was my husband's second chemo treatment.

So far, so good. Let's get this done.

Truth be told, I don't think I'll make this bread again. Must confess that I have an intense affection for nice, sweet, easy pumpkin nut quick breads. Held hostage to my unrefined palate. And after a week-long search for fresh cranberries, I didn't like them in the bread. Too sour for me. The Craisins that I used were good though.  So I'll probably add them to my next quick bread...

The recipe for this 2-day yeasted bread can be found here, and other baker's links are here.

Now I can share the other shoe we saw just outside Tuskegee, Alabama this summer... a loafer!

TWD/BWJ: Whole Wheat Loaves

If you're lucky, there are very few times in life when the world turns upside down. But that's exactly what happened to us on Sept 17th. I'd just eaten the first bite of a fried egg on toast when the phone rang. Two minutes later, the egg was in the trash and I was headed out the door. "They think it's cancer," he'd said.

Eight years ago my husband had surgery for colon cancer. There have been annual colonoscopies, and CT scans with every abdominal pain. Nothing indicated cause for concern. 

It was chest pain that took him to the ER this time. His heart is fine, thank God, but the cancer has returned and spread. And so we take the next step.

He had his first chemo treatment last week. It went pretty well. There'll be many more. I am grateful for miracle drugs and insurance. 

For the first week I had to remind myself to breathe. Repeatedly. 

It's coming a little easier now. 

Babysteps.

I made the bread a week late. Then took another two weeks to post it. Better late than never. 

Comfort food, literally.

The bread recipe can be found here or here, and links to the other Tuesdays With Dorie bakers are here. 

We actually saw THREE shoes in the road on our way home from the hospital. I take that as a sign that all will be well. Here's a picture of one of them.

TWD/BWJ: Nectarine Chiffon Cake

Of all times for me to decide to bake early...

Well, it was Labor Day. The King of the Castle and the Prince were both home. I blame them. TOTAL DISASTER! First, I should say that I was already making a pecan pie.  The King ordered a 6 pound box of the most beautiful, delicious pecans last week.  I think it was a Groupon or something. I've been nibbling them and dreaming of a pie. Today was pecan pie day.

I figured as long as the oven was hot I might as well bake the Nectarine Chiffon Cake. And could send at least half of each dessert back to school with the Prince. You know how much sugar college boys need.

Let me rewind for a second and tell you about Labor Day weekend in Atlanta. There's something for everyone. One of my favorite events is the Decatur Book Festival, the nation's largest independent book festival. Oh the joy of it! You wander from building to building, hearing authors talk about their books.  For two days you can do this, and it's totally free. Mind-boggling really.  This year, I could only make it on Sunday having previously signed up for a full-day quilt workshop on Saturday (which was awesome - some years there are just too many wonderful things). Still, on Sunday alone, I heard presentations about the dangers of prescriptions drugs, the development of the Lithium Ion battery , the stories held in our DNA, the similarities between writing a book and making music, and how creativity works. It doesn't matter who you listen to. When someone writes a book, they're passionate about the subject. It's always interesting!

And then there's DragonCon. Legions of people converge on downtown Atlanta dressed as everything from videogame characters to zombies to superheroes. My daughter's good friend said "I tripped on the steps and Captain America caught me!" Personally, I'm not interested in the convention activities, but one of these years, I WILL make it to the DragonCon parade on Saturday morning.

Oh yes, there were a few other events too.  Braves games (with Lynard Skynard afterward on Friday), a NASCAR race, a Hot Air Balloon Festival, and a Whiskey and Beer Fest. Like I said, something for everyone. And too much for any one person.

Back to the cake, er, disaster.  All went relatively well until the timer went off. Testing the cake with a toothpick, I determined that it was nowhere near done. Set the timer for 5 more minutes, twice. All the while my husband, the King of All Things Olfactory, announced repeatedly (and emphatically) that something was burning. The cake did look dark. I finally got tired of listening to him and removed the thing from the oven even though the toothpick never did test clean. Thought maybe it'd firm up as it cooled. NOT. More like some kind of lava cake.  The prince and I had a little piece anyway, with ice cream of course. But it wasn't good. I didn't care for the flavors or the streusel. Not even gonna try this one again.  On a brighter note, the pecan pie came out great! Oh, if you'd like to prove to me that the cake is wonderful, feel free to find the recipe here or here, and the blogs of other bakers here.  Good Luck!

This week's shoe showed up right down the street from my house. Not really a disaster, but it IS ominously black. 

TWD/BWJ: Popovers

Yet again, I baked on the proper day. I really did. After driving six hours to Kentucky and stopping in north Georgia to buy a popover pan, I baked. And I failed. For the first time, I totally blew a BWJ recipe.  Here's the sad evidence...

Eggy and dense. Nothing like all the other bloggers reported. Everyone else seemed to have a fabulous experience. Easy! Wonderful! Amazing!

So here's the thing - I arrived at my sister's house and we immediately began chatting, you know - sister talk. Honestly, I wasn't really paying that much attention to the "easy" recipe. I think I added too much butter. And maybe not enough flour. Certainly the eggs and milk were still a little cool. And no blender. Oh well. It was late, I was tired, and we were busy talking. So I invented egg muffins.  I do not recommend them.

Thursday morning I had time to try again.  Having invested in a pan, I was NOT going to let this recipe beat me. This time I used a blender. Bro-in-law had to dig it out of the back of a cabinet over the fridge. Warmed the eggs in hot water and heated the milk in the microwave.


Discovered that the flour I'd used previously was "self-rising"! Seriously, who hides self-rising flour in the flour tin? One of the hazards of baking in an unfamiliar kitchen, I guess. This time I concentrated, checked the recipe, and - voila!- success!  Even so, as I was pulling the popovers out of the oven, bro-in-law says "Did she tell you the oven's 25 degrees off?"

Happily, all's well that ends well.














The recipe can be found here or here. And the links to all the successful bakers' blogs are here.


In honor of my first BWJ failure, what else? A flip-FLOP! Spotted just before I left town. Perfect timing. Or prophesy? Is it possible that the shoes are trying to tell me something? Hmmm.

TWD/BWJ: Berry Galette

I made this galette last Tuesday. The right day for Tuesdays With Dorie. Really I did. But it never got posted.  The recipe can be found here or here, other blogs about it here.

We have an ancient apple tree in the corner of our backyard that's loaded this year.  The branches hang down so low to the ground that one of our dogs picks apples off the tree. She loves them.

Our galette was filled with apples and a handful of blueberries. It was small and we gobbled it up in one sitting. The humans, not the dogs. And there was homemade vanilla bean ice cream. It was good.

Decided to use the other half of the dough to make another the next day. This time we bravely took on the swarm of bees on the fig trees and picked enough to make a fig galette. Fruit, crust, ice cream. What's not to like? Gone in a minute.

I spent the rest of the week on a little road trip with my son, since he didn't get to go on the earlier one and will be starting back to school this week.  Just a little jaunt through Alabama and Mississippi.  Oh, the things we saw! Among them, the world's largest gallstone and the courthouse where "To Kill A Mockingbird" was filmed. We stuck our feet in the Gulf of Mexico and saw the very first dorm I ever lived in.

And we saw a great many shoes in the road.  Very few I actually got pictures of.  But here's a double. Just outside of Tuskegee, Alabama.  A white boot (how many of those do you see?!?) and a brown maryjane.  Hmmm.  There was another nearby, but I'm saving it for another time.

TWD/BWJ: Blueberry Nectarine Pie

I was doing quite well on the wheat-free diet. And then Blueberry Nectarine Pie came along. The recipe can be found here or here, and other bloggers are here. I honestly did intend to only eat the filling, and in fact made the filling wheat-free by substituting cornstarch and tapioca for the flour.

I made the crust by hand because I like using a pastry blender. It reminds me of my mother, who used one to make the crumbs for her famous peach crumb pie. She died when I was 15 and it's one of the few things I learned from her about baking.

Notice the tea towel?
The-Best-Neighbor-In-The-World moved back from
London and brought it to me.

An Olympic Pie! Sprinkled with a little purple sugar.
Probably not the best decision - it looked like freckles.

Because I felt so bad about not eating the crust (and was SO sure that I wouldn't), I made a little ice cream to go with the pie. It was strawberry-buttermilk ice cream from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams At Home. I heard Jeni being interviewed on The Splendid Table last week, and then the book fell into my hands at the library so I didn't really feel like I had a choice.  Sometimes the universe conspires. 

                    

In the end, I ate the crust! Took one bite just to test it out and couldn't stop myself from eating the rest. Which means I've totally blown the scientific wheat-free experiment. But it was worth it. I tend to believe that the most sensible way of eating is governed by two rules: "Eat real food" and "Everything in moderation". Of course, I'm on the library waiting list now for The China Study. Why do I do this to myself? 

There was one other way that the universe conspired on my behalf this week. It's a long story that you don't want to hear, but I ended up with an amazing Singer treadle sewing machine "born" on May 27, 1898 (according to the Singer company after only 1 1/2 hours on hold).  It's gorgeous and in fantastic condition!  I took the entire thing apart, cleaned and oiled it up, and it sews beautifully. Can't tell you how long I've wanted one of these. My heart overflows. ♥

A shoe?  Let's see what I can come up with. How about another one from our road trip? It was York, SC.