I love bread. However, I’m not very good at making it. I don’t know if it’s the recipes or my technique but my breads never seem to turn out quite right.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was time to learn how to make good bread. Using a combination of the library’s catalog and Amazon, I determined that there were two books most people agreed were excellent bread books:

1. The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart and
2. Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.

Happily, Weld Library District owned one and Longmont Public Library owned the other. Unfortunately, they were both checked out. I put holds on both of them but impatience got the better of me so I also checked out from Weld The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum.

Last Thursday night, I read Beranbaum’s first chapter, “The Ten Essential Steps of Making Bread,” and then flipped through the rest of the book looking for a recipe that wanted to be made. A hearth bread, the “Tyrolean Ten-Grain Torpedo,” caught my attention. I decided that I’d make the bread and serve it Monday night with a Artichoke and Cheese Sandwich topping.

It seems like most of the breads in The Bread Bible require quite a bit of work. The Tyrolean bread is no exception First, you must start the sponge the night before. The next day you finish making the dough and let it rise two times. After the second rising, you shape the dough into the “torpedo” loaf shape and let it rise for a final time while you preheat the oven (Beranbaum suggests preheating the oven an hour ahead of putting the bread in).

Late morning Monday everything was going according to plan. The bread was almost ready to be put in the oven. It looked perfect. I was putting an 8 X 8 glass pan away when it slipped out of my hands and crashed, spraying shattered glass all over my kitchen and onto my beautiful bread dough.

For a couple of insane minutes I contemplated picking the glass out and pretending nothing had happened. Fortunately, my common sense asserted itself and I came to the conclusion that bread dough and glass shards don’t combine to make healthy eating Unfortunately, that ruined my supper plans. I didn’t have enough time to make another bread loaf. I could have run to the store and grabbed some french bread. However, I was too depressed by the whole incident (hours wasted!) and so convinced Jaeger we should eat out instead.

However, I still really wanted to make the bread. So, Tuesday night I started the process again. Wednesday night there was a “Friends of the Longmont Public Library” meeting that I wanted to attend. I hadn’t been to one before and I thought it would be a good chance to meet other people. I dashed home Wednesday night to start the second part of the bread process, whipped up dinner and scarfed it down in time for bread preparation part three. Then I set it up to raise and dashed off to the library getting there just a couple of minutes late.

The flyer had mentioned that there would be a book sale afterwards and as a result the meeting would be brief. However, I didn’t realize how brief the meeting would be. It lasted a total of 15 minutes. It was obvious that everyone suffered through the meeting just to be first to the book sale. Ever time the masses thought the meeting was over, they leapt to their feet. This happened several times before the meeting actually ended. It was most amusing to watch.

Finally, the meeting was over and there was a stampede to the books. I continued sitting in my chair for a couple of minutes bemused by the enthusiastic crowd. It was almost like store sales the day after Thanksgiving. Eventually, since I was already there, I decided to look and see what was available. Nothing in Fiction looked terribly interesting but I did find three cookbooks and one sex book that looked interesting.

I made it back home 2 minutes before the timer started beeping indicating that my bread was finished with its first rising. The bread making process continued until I finally took the bread out of the oven at 10:30 (for once Jaeger actually made it to bed before me).

This evening is hacking society so Jaeger wasn’t around. However, I made my Artichoke & Cheese sandwhich on the 10 grain bread for supper. It was very good. I’m impressed by how well the bread recipe turned out (especially considering a couple minor mishaps that occurred along the way).

I’m definitely going to make this bread again. However, I’ll probably start trying to replace the bread flour with whole wheat flour. I realize that this will be a complicated process but Jaeger has rubbed off on me enough so now I always feel slightly guilty when eating white bread

My next epic bread undertaking? Either pizza dough or bagels.

This week I made my very first cheesecake. It was somewhat successful. I’ve been interested in making cheesecake for a while but never think about it enough ahead of time. Also, the calories per serving for many cheesecake recipes is staggering. However, as I was looking through Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts I saw that there was a recipe for cheesecake that had only 200 calories/serving. I was excited and decided to make it. However, it was just a plain cheesecake recipe. There weren’t any suggestions on what to serve with it. I was browsing allrecipes.com when I came across a recipe for Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake. Unable to avoid changing recipes, I immediately stuck the two cheesecake recipes together with a couple of other modifications .

I made the batter for the traditional cheesecake and then added 1/2 cup melted chocolate chips and 2 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder. It turned out very good. To add the caramel part of the Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake, I used 1/2 of my mother’s caramel recipe instead of melting caramel candy and poured it into the springform pan. I then put the nut on top of the caramel and poured the cheesecake batter on top of everything.

I had read that I should bake the cheesecake in a water bath. However, I didn’t have many pans that were big enough to fit around my 9″ spring form pan. Finally, I decided that the cheap roasting pans I use for granola would have to work. I put the roasting pan in the oven, placed my spring form pan in the middle and then filled the space in between up with boiling water. I then gently shut the oven door and thought good thoughts.

About a half hour later, Jaeger comes into the kitchen and asks, “why is there water dripping from the oven?” Turns out my granola roasting pans had holes in them. After panicking for a couple of minutes, I discovered that my large frying pan would also fit around the spring form pan (it’s oven safe up to 350 degrees). I wasn’t sure if the cheesecake would survive the trauma but it didn’t appear to have suffered any lasting harm.

Finally the cheesecake was ready to take out of the oven. I let it cool and then stuck it in the fridge for the mandatory 12 hour cool down.

The next night, I got the cheesecake out and attempted to cut it. Unfortunately, the caramel had become brick hard. A war ensued between the caramel and I. I won but chocolate cheesecake ended up smeared all over my kitchen counters.

While the cheesecake was very good, I think it would be better not to include the caramel next time. Next time, I plan to use the main Chocolate Cheesecake recipe and then maybe top it with a raspberry whip cream topping of some sort.

My mom came to us this weekend. She’s tends to eat vegan so I thought it would be fun to try making a couple of vegan recipes. Friday night, I made Beet & 3 Bean Soup. This soup was very nutrient filled but was strange and didn’t taste terribly good. On the upside, I had concocted a vegan Lemon and Raspberry Muffin recipe that turned out remarkably good for just throwing ingredients together

Saturday I tried another experiment, a apple-pear pie in a low fat crust. The filling part turned out okay (though I had fewer pears in it than I originally planned) but the low fat crust was not good.

Sunday, I made Hummus with Roasted Vegetables. I originally got the idea from a meal we had in London at Hummus Bros. It’s pretty good but I think I should add some more vegetables (maybe onions and tomatoes?) next time.

As some of you may know, I’ve been working on losing weight. Last summer I finally noticed that I was officially in the “overweight” category according to the height/weight charts. This surprised me since I didn’t feel overweight. However, while I know that numbers lie, if the height and weight charts claimed I was overweight I figured it was probably right. I probably should also have noticed that my clothing was starting to be a little snug

I love food so I initially started trying to lose weight by just exercising and keeping my eating habits the same. Unfortunately, this didn’t really help much. Eventually, I decided that I really needed to start paying attention to how many calories I was eating each day. It was really shocking. I eat fairly balanced meals (though I do make a fair amount of dessert from scratch). Using various diet websites I learned that it wasn’t what I was eating that was the problem. It was how much I was eating. What I considered a “serving size” was actually closer to two or three serving sizes.

It was hard making my body relearn how much food was reasonable to eat. Fortunately, I was able to extend my obsession with spreadsheets to an obsession with recording everything I ate. This helped me stay on track. My main calorie counter website for the first couple of months was SparkPeople. It’s a really nice website. However, it isn’t designed for people that cook a lot. You can create “recipes” but once created you couldn’t change them. If you decided to modify a recipe, you had to reenter the entire recipe with the added modifications (they’ve recently changed this so it works much better now).

Eventually, I decided that to get all the features I wanted in a nutrition program, I would probably need to use a desktop application. I don’t like desktop applications since they tie me to using one computer. However, none of the free nutrition websites had the features I needed. I downloaded trial versions of several different nutrition programs. My favorite, and the one I decided to buy, is called Nutribase Personal Plus.

Nutribase is really an amazing program. It has all the normal features that most nutrition software has and also some added features. For instance, it lets me add a recipe to a recipe. I have a basic Cuban Black Bean recipe that sometimes I use as a burrito filling and sometimes I serve over rice. This program allows me to create the basic Black Bean recipe and then add that recipe to my “Burrito” or “Rice” recipe. It’s really wonderful. Nutribase also comes with meal plans for Vegetarians and Vegans for a variety of calorie needs (1000 to 2800). I think the meal plan feature is a nice idea but I’m too independent to want to use premade meal ideas The program also allows me to create my own monthly meal plans so someday I’ll probably get ambitious and try that feature out.

Since around September I’ve lost about 15 lbs. I’m now within an acceptable weight range for my height. I’m planning to lose 5 more lbs. Why? Jaeger and I plan to have children within the next 3-4 years. I want to get on the lower side of my healthy weight range before becoming pregnant because I suspect I’m the ballooning type It’s not that I’m afraid of gaining weight when I’m pregnant, that’s obviously a natural process. However, I am concerned that I’ll have trouble losing it once the baby comes. I’m hoping that by starting with a healthy weight and good eating habits my pregnancy and weight loss afterwards will not be as challenging.

My family has a history of obesity. As a result, I suspect that I’ll need to continue counting calories in some form my whole life. Once I meet my last 5 lb goal, I’m going to start ratcheting up the number of calories I eat each day until I appear to have hit my calorie equilibrium. This is the part I’m least certain about. Of course, I don’t need to worry about this for at least a couple more months

I have no business having a blog. I don’t update it nearly enough to be worthwhile. Anyway . . .

Several weeks Blue died. I was actually a little relived. She’d been dying ever since I first got her. I started saving for a new notebook last year and the practical side of me hoped that Blue could hang on long enough for me to afford a new computer. The other side of me wanted a new computer that worked. By early March I only had about half the money I thought I needed to replace Blue. However, Jaeger generously allowed me to borrow from the general fund assuming I pay it back in regular increments each month. It may sound a little odd saying that I borrowed from the general fund. However, Jaeger and I each have separate “expenditure allocations” that we use to buy most personal items.

Anyway, my new computer is a Dell Latitude D620 named Adara. She’s much cuter than I expected. Once of the reasons I bought her is that Jaeger has a D810 for work which he is pretty happy with. Also Dells seem to be in ascendancy at BLUG which implied to me that it should work decently with Linux (the previous favorite was IBM Thinkpads but rumor implies that Lenova may not be as Linux friendly). I keep buying notebook computers because I tend to drag my computer with me around the house.

Jaeger installed Ubuntu on her (after “accidentally” deleting the original Windows partition). Once Jaeger installed Ubuntu he also set up XP to run under VMWare and he was successfully able to transfer all the files I needed from Blue’s old hard drive so I didn’t lose any data. On Blue, Jaeger set up Windows to run under VMWare and I quickly decided this was the best way to run Linux and Windows on the same computer. Most things I do in Linux. However, I still use a couple of Windows only applications. It’s really nice to avoid restarting Adara every time I want to sync my iPod

I now have a favorite vegan cookbook, The Voluptuous Vegan by Myra Kornfeld and George Minot (library). In general, I haven’t had much luck with Vegan cookbooks. I’ve tried several and all the recipes turn out uninspiring or awful.

I’ve only tried a couple of recipes from this book but so far everything has turned out great. I’ve made the Amaranth-Studded Cornbread (p. 102), Chocolate Pudding Tart (p. 246) and the Chickpea Crepes (p. 80). I think the Chocolate Pudding Tart could have used a bit more chocolate but that’s probably just because I’m obsessed with Chocolate

Last week, Jaeger asked me to explore buying a variety of cereal grains so we could try to diversify our morning breakfast a little bit. When I went shopping at Vitamin cottage yesterday I picked up a smattering of new cereals.

Today I decided to try the “Guisto’s Brand Nine Grain Cereal.” It includes cracked wheat, barley, corn, millet, oats, rye, triticale, brown rice, soy and flax seeds. I was dubious when I calculated that with my normal add-ins for oatmeal (fruit, soy milk and sugar) this mixture would have about 100 more calories than my normal oatmeal (though significantly more iron and protein). However, by excluding one of my normal fruits, chopping the sugar by 1/3 and not including soy milk, I got it fairly close to my oatmeal. Thus, my breakfast consisted of a ½ cup of nine grain cereal with 50 grams of frozen peaches (it’s too hard to try to measure frozen peaches by the cup), ½ cup sweetened frozen raspberries (I can’t find unsweetened at a reasonable price) and 2 packed teaspoons of brown sugar.

For oatmeal (old fashioned, not instant), I can usually stick it into the microwave for 5 minutes and come out with a decent consistency. (Those who know Jaeger will probably not be surprised to learn he considers the microwave method of cooking grains to be sacrilege.) Thus, when I saw that the directions stated the nine grain cereal needed to be cooked for 10 minutes, I was hoping that my normal 5 minute microwave time would be sufficient. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. I ended up microwaving it about 9 minutes before it reached the right consistency.

The cereal tasted . . . okay. I still prefer the oatmeal because the soy milk adds more creaminess. However, I might be willing to include it in my weekly rotation. Tomorrow, I’m contemplating trying Quinoa.

I think I need another hobby. My life seems to revolve around either cooking or books

Last week I checked out the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book. I was familiar with the King Arthur Flour company since they are the only company I’ve seen that carries white whole wheat flour (lovely stuff, whole wheat nutrition without all the whole wheat taste).

Friday it took me 1 ½ hrs to get home due to an accident. Jaeger had called me and I told him he could find leftovers in the fridge. For some reason, when I’m tired, I start craving waffles with lots of peanut butter and fake maple syrup on top (no, I don’t like the real stuff, I don’t know why). When I got home, I decided to try channeling this unhealthy craving into something a smidgen more healthy. I flipped through the King Arthur cookbook and found an interesting recipe called “Peanut-Butter—Chocolate Chip Waffles with Banana Cream” (p. 17). I made the waffles but forgot to add the chocolate chips at the appropriate time. So, I melted the chocolate chips down and added them to the Banana Cream recipe instead. The waffles were decent. The resulting Chocolate Banana Cream recipe was quite good. I’m not exactly sure what I can use it with in the future. Maybe scones. Scones with Chocolate Banana Cream sounds good

The other recipe I’ve tried in the King Arthur cookbook was “Granola Bread” (p. 199). In my first attempt, I tried making it by hand. However, I couldn’t get consistency right, it was too wet. I added quite a bit more flour than it said and the results were okay. I tried the same recipe again the next day except this time instead of making it by hand, I put it in my bread machine and tried not worrying about how wet/dry the dough was going to turn out. This time the results were much better. I’m hoping I’ll be able to replicate my success again because it’s the perfect bread for the toasted peanut butter jelly sandwiches I’ve been taking to work recently.

Midweek, I decided that Jaeger and I weren’t eating enough vegetables. So, I checked out several vegetable cookbooks to try. My favorite so far is The Roasted Vegetable by Andrea Chesman. Last night I tried the “Glazed Carrot Coins” (p. 19) which was pretty good. The other recipes that look interesting include “Zucchini Chips with Feta and Herbs,” “Spicy Sweet Potato Wedges,” “Stacked Roasted Vegetabl Enchiladas,” and “Artichoke and Leek Stuffed Pizza.”

My new goal is to serve at least 2 vegetables every night. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly I give up on this goal I’m also going to start posting my menus each week so I can remember what I’ve tried and liked/disliked.

Normally Jaeger’s and my house is perfectly sized for our needs. It’s even big enough for a couple of children when they are young. However, our living room is not appropriately sized for Christmas. It simply can’t fit both my piano and a Christmas tree. Moving my piano isn’t an option since it takes two good sized, experienced men and a sturdy dolly to move. For now I’ve resigned myself to the lack of a tree. However, I’m not sure what we’ll do when we have children. I think a lot of the magic of Christmas is created by a glittery Christmas tree. It’d be horrible to cheat our children of that experience.

This year I compensated for the lack of a Christmas tree by buying a fake wreath and decorating it with the ornaments that would normally go on a tree. I’m not very artistic so I was pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out. Yes, it did take me 6 tries before I got the bow right but my persistance paid off

Our holday plans included flying to Washington state on December 20, arriving back on the 25th. During this time we were planning to visit my brother up in Seattle, spend a couple days at the beach and then attend the Stone family Christmas celebration. After arriving back in Colorado we planned to fest from December 27 through New Years Day. Unfortunately, the recent Denver snow storm messed that all up. A day before we were suppose to leave for Washington I heard that a major snow storm was predicted. However, I shrugged off concerned librarians’ suggestions to try to reschedule our flight for that night sure that the weather forecasters were exagerating the situtaion (besides, I didn’t have an extra vacation day to spend).

Wednesday morning it started snowing but the commute to work was fairly uneventful. When I walked in to work I was informed that the District had just decided to close for the day. I was surprised because the snow didn’t seem too bad but wasn’t going to complain about an extra day off I stuck around for about an hour to make sure I had taken care of everything before leaving for vacation and then started my commute home. Driving home took longer than going to Greeley. However, the roads were still okay. Around 11:00 Jaeger called and informed me that our flight for later that evening had been canceled. By this time the snow was coming down much thicker. From around 11:00 to 4:30 I kept redialing Frontier trying to get through (kept getting a “we are unable to process your call” message). At one point, I had managed to connect but was disconnected (accidentally?) right as I was being transferred to a real person. Eventually I did get through but by that time the soonest we could get our flight rescheduled was for Christmas afternoon. I was distressed since we were suppose to fly back on Christmas but it’s hard to argue with the weather. We ended up reschedling to fly out on Christmas day and back the following Wednesday, a couple of hours before the Fest began. I really have no right to complain since we were “stuck” comfortably at home instead of the airport and we were still able to spend at least some time with my family over Christmas.

The library ended up closing Thursday also and didn’t open till noon on Friday. I spent most of Sunday doing “winter cleaning.” Not surprisingly, cleaning isn’t my favorite activity. As a result I sometimes um . . . skimp certain areas such as the top of the refrigerator. However, since all Jaeger’s friends coming for the Fest seem to be ridicously tall I decided it was a good time to glance at the refrigerator top. Yup, it was dirty

Much to my relief we did successufully arrive in Portland the following day. We arrived at the Stone celebration after everyone had finished eating and just a bit before it was time to open presents. They had saved food for us but we had eaten in the airport and so mainly consumed too much dessert We had to leave fairly quickly after opening presents since my brother had to be at work by 3 AM the next day and needed to get back home.

Today we left Washington. PDX is one of my favorite airports. It has an small Powell’s Book outlet inside security. Even though the outlet is minature compared with the main store it is still vastly superior to the normal chain bookstores one find within airports. In addition to new books they have also have a small selection of used books. I didn’t find anything intriguing enough to buy (Normally I don’t buy books unless I’ve read them several times already. There’s just too much risk buying books without having read them first). However, I spent a contented 45 minutes browsing their excellent selection. The only qualm I have with their airport store is the lack of a section for romance books. However, I was surprised to discover they had an erotica section (only about 4 books but it was still impressive they had shelf space for it).

I’m currently in the air flying back to Denver (which is why this entry is so long). Assuming all goes well we should arrive a couple of hours before the Fest begins. I haven’t been able to come up with any new computer projects for the Fest. I probably should refine my website a bit (the blog search seems to mess up the formatting). However, maintaning the website doesn’t sound nearly as interesting as creating it. At this point, I’m planning to use part of the time to look at my retirement allocation and make some adjustments. I might see if there’s anything fun I can do with LibraryThing (if anyone’s curious I’ve just recently entered all my cookbooks).

Due to Thanksgiving vacation messing up my normal shopping routine, I didn’t go food shopping last week. So, we subsisted on whatever food was currently in the house. This week I over-compensated.

I just finished making my first batch of Paneer. I was amazed how easy it was to make (once I finally found cheesecloth). I also made a Spinach Cheesecake though I won’t know how well that turns out till tonight (much easier to pick off bits of Paneer than Cheesecake ). Next up, crepes that include ground yellow split peas. Should be interesting.

Last night I watched I Capture the Castle. I’ve been thinking about watching it for a while; I even Netflixed it once but found more compelling things to do so I returned it unwatched. Last Thursday one of the Farr Library reference librarians recorded a book talk about the book which spurred me to try the movie again.

It was a very good movie. If certain Festing members haven’t already seen it, I recommend they watch it. However, through no fault of its own, I didn’t like the movie. I’d say more but I’m afraid it would spoil the movie for some people

To recover from my disappointment with I Capture the Castle, I followed up with Absolute Power. Fortunately, I was in the perfect mood for this movie and enjoyed it immensely.

Today Jaeger and I hiked a 7.5 mile trail. It was snowing a little as we walked but the snow wasn’t too obnoxious and just made our surroundings look a little magical Both Jaeger and I thought that it was too easy for a 7.5 mile hike but Jaeger attributes that to gaining less elevation than we normally do when hiking.