Seafood Fest

My husband and I love seafood more than most other foods and since my in-laws made the long trip to NC from TX we decided to have a weekend filled with seafood.






Today, I finally finished the last of my artisan bread dough. This one is a circular version of a pain d'epi. There was so much extra crust compared to classic boule and every bit was crunchy and chewy. Everyone needs to try making this bread!!







The Spread.



Dessert: Homemade Taro Ice Cream




Happy weekend everyone!

Thursday Night Dinner

Classic Boule: Take 2

This time I was able to pour the full cup of hot water on the broiler pan. This resulted in a crunchier crust that turned a perfect golden brown.

Artisan Bread 2

Today, I came home from work and "gluten cloaked" the bread. Then let it rest for 40 minutes and then stuck it in the oven for 35 minutes.





Here is the final product!

The Classic Boule.





It was steamy, chewy and had a thin crispy crust all around it.

Looks pretty decent for someone who has never made a loaf of bread except for banana and beer breads, which are your classic stir and pour in loaf pan breads.


Next adventure: The Baguette.

Artisan Bread

I was super-excited when a friend sent me these 3 things:







All three are key ingredients to making artisan bread!


So, I'm going to begin chronicling my adventures learning how to make artisan breads. Today, I started off by making the "Master Recipe." This will hopefully yield the "Boule," which is the simplest form of artisan bread. I am dreaming of crunchy, crumbling crust accompanied by a moist, chewy dough center. You'll see that the only ingredients that I've used are unbleached all-purpose white flour, yeast, salt, and lukewarm water. It all started off as a small little ball of dough that was wet and loose and easily molded to my large dough box. Over the course of 2 hours, the yeast resulted in a tripling of dough that has taken over my dough box!









Tonight, my dough is going to rest in the fridge and cure until I'm ready to bake it tomorrow for dinner. Could it really be possible to have artisan bread without running to the nearest bakery? We shall see tomorrow...

DIY

Project of the month: floral hair clip!



So glad it's weekend.

omgimtootiredtocookafterwork

So, this week I decided to cook as many days as "working person" possible.

And while it was much more successful than my previous attempts to cook continuously, today I couldn't resist the urge to venture outside of the house for dinner. However, I've decided to use this blog to document my adventures with all things food, craft, and travel... and potentially many other categories that I've yet to think of.

This blog is dedicated to all of those who are blogilliterate. I am completely clueless about how to change elements of my theme to make it look the way that I want. I am equally clueless on how to get beautiful pictures of my favorite things on one webpage. In another life, I would have ditched this project already since there is no way I know how to make this thing "perfect." But, I'm blogging out to the blogless millions who feel too intimidated to blog because you have no idea what you are doing.

This blog's for you. ;)


On the positive, I figured out how to remove the ugly blue blogger bar! Blog = 0, Jenny = 1.

To see the world in a grain of sand

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

This is my general philosophy on life. 'nough said.


"I want to start a blog. But I'm not sure what to blog about."

Well, here's to giving it a shot.

Today's favorite item: Menu chalkboard



There have been days that I've literally thought of something to cook just to have something to write on this chalkboard. It makes our home feel more home-y and lived in. I love that dusty film of chalk that collects on the surface of the board with repeated use.

Tonight's meal: Smoked paprika chicken over saffron infused bulgar wheat with local farm eggplant

Can't have a meal without some vino, but in this case it was raspberry beer (Raspberry Lambic Framboise), which is to die for...