Everthing, All Together

I've been so busy preparing for my first craft/art show of the season (Chilicraft -- hope to have the flyer posted soon), I haven't had time to get anything posted up here. I have now made my third loaf of the magical artisan bread, this time with walnuts and dried cranberries. It's still cooling, so I don't know how it turned out. It looks good...It turns out that my brother got the recipe from the Oregonian in Portland, which in turn was inspired by a Mark Bittman article in the New York Times last fall. The actual going nomenclature for this bread is "no-knead" and that is entirely true except for one moment of work which doesn't even really count as kneading. As I said before, this bread has the teensiest amount of work for the biggest flavor/texture/visual appeal. For the loaf below I experimented with using only half bread flour and half regular stuff.

For the next one, I'm going to go all regular flour (and add kalamata olives!), just to see what happens. Anyway, when I was a kid I started making challah for the big holidays and it was an impressive looking loaf of bread, all braided and shiny with it's egg wash baked on. It tasted good too, but it was a LOT of work, what with all the kneading and raising and kneading and raising and braiding and coating, blah blah blah. Plus is has a relatively large ingredient list. More recently I've made many loaves of a King Arthur Flour recipe for a whole wheat bread made with either honey or molasses. It's delicious, great for dense little sandwiches and good on its own. But man, it just doesn't have the eye appeal of this no-knead stuff. Really, if you have the teensiest inclination to bake bread, bake *this* bread.

OK, moving on. Cool objects are continuing to avoid me on my daily walks. I just don't understand. The night before Big Trash Day this week I was heartbroken that I couldn't take home the tall, narrow, metal free-standing cabinet and the two-tiered metal rolly cart waiting in the alley, but Steve frowned at my whining. Here's the best small thing I found all week, and that's not saying much. Yes, a Juwanna Mann DVD. Not even that scratched up. I threw it away soon after photographing it though.

I neglected to photograph the grilled chicken, asparagus (we eat a lot of asparagus in the spring and summer) and potatoes we had for dinner last night, but I did manage to take a photo of the leftovers of a chunky tomato fish chowder we had the other night. I had it for lunch yesterday and I wish I had some more today.
And just for good measure, how about a picture of a tiny wool bunny I needlefelted a few months ago?