With the wind it is hard to tell, but it looks like we’ve gotten at least a foot, perhaps even 18 inches.
The Darling Hubby and the Princess ventured out near nightfall and had a glorious time in the snow. The drifts are high, the wind is cold, and I’m staying inside and keeping busy in a warm, well-lighted kitchen!
Here are the adventurous duo in the snow…
Meanwhile…in the kitchen…
First I put together the Apricot-Ginger Banana Bread (from the “Gifts Cook Love” book) and started that to baking.
The directions in the book only called for 45 minutes total baking. Not enough. The middle was still gooey! In the end I baked it a total of 65 minutes, but I think in the future I will cut it down to 60. Although I did not have the full amount of dried apricots, it turned out well. Dave said it was the first time he had ever had crystallized ginger in a baked product and actually liked it. I wrote it down in my recipe book, it’s definitely a keeper!
While the bread was baking I put together eight pounds of onions and the last of my fresh thyme with two sticks of butter in the slow cooker. It will slowly cook the onions overnight and then I will add the onions, some seasonings and chicken broth, top it with cheese and make french onion soup, Dave’s favorite. This is also out of the “Gifts Cooks Love” book.
As I was paging through one of my favorite bread books, “Artisan Breads in Just Five Minutes A Day” looking for the perfect bread to pair with the onion soup for tomorrow’s dinner I ran across a recipe for granola (which you can then use to make granola bread). It sounded so yummy, and easy, that I just had to put it together. Forty minutes of baking later, and I have six cups of tasty granola. I think it may have cost $1.00 to make. Knowing me, I’ll probably be doing a cost analysis in Excel later! Here it is…
Yum…it also got a stamp of approval from the Darling Hubby. I might use some of it tomorrow for a quick bite before hitting the treadmill, but I’m definitely going to try out the granola bread recipe. It has me intrigued!
And finally, I did manage to put together a simple boule bread recipe. I didn’t bother taking a picture of the dough, but I’ll try to remember to post tomorrow with a picture that shows the French onion soup and fresh baked bread in all of its pre-consumption glory.
I can’t think of a better way to spend a cold and wintry day then baking. Who knows what tomorrow’s adventures will bring!
