Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Bread

Sunset in Cortona

Dale loves bread, so when he left the loaf of bread he picked out lying on the wall at Church on Sunday I offered to make some this week. Since we are here in CA our baking hardware is limited. We did bring a bread recipe book with us, but for the most part all the recipes take two days to complete, which this week's work schedule made it difficult to complete. So after some discussion it was decided to make the bread using a recipe I used all the time when our kids were little. Once upon a time made all our own bread - until we decided it tasted too good and we were eating more than we should, so it became a treat once in awhile and we started making more whole wheat bread. The original recipe is a simple one from a Betty Crocker cookbook given to me by my mom when Dale and I were first married, I don't even have that particular cookbook any longer, think we gave it to Jodi when she went away to college. So the recipe had to be from memory, not hard since most bread is flour, water and yeast with a few additions for flavor and texture. Today's recipe might not have been exactly the same, but I still think we got it correct or close to the original. The next problem (or change from the original) was we had no bread pans, which led us to make free form loaves, and one final change all the new books I have tell you to use only the minimum of flour to make a lighter loaf, which I did. So they may not be exactly the loaves of our earlier years, but they sure taste good and brought back many memories, which makes for a great day! ps I may add the extra flour the next time.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Greensburg, KS





Going back to March 2009. On our way to CA we stopped at Lynn and Helen's (Leavenworth) for the night. Then we took a different route than usual and went through Greensburg, KS. This town suffered a devastating tornado that wiped out the everything. The Green channel did a reality show about how the town pulled together and it was all rebuilt. It was just amazing how much destruction tornadoes produce.