Good Friends

For about the last year I have been getting together on a pretty regular basis with my good friends, Karen and Arleen.  We probably plan a get together about twice per month.  It has been so nice to spend some quality time with these girls.  It was more difficult in the past with Karen living in Langham and Arleen living up at Christopher Lake.  But now that we are all within a 45 minute drive of each other the get togethers have been plentiful.

Our next planned get together is in a couple of weeks to do a bit of Christmas baking.  We are planning to make some sort of rolled and cut cookies and decorate them.  It will be nice to spend a day together just baking and hanging out.  I have never had good luck with rolled/cut cookies so I hope to pick up some tips so that I could make them again in the future and not feel like pulling out my hair before they even get in the oven! 

Gluten Free Baking

I am thinking where I might struggle most with this lifestyle change is when it comes to snacks.  I am glad to see that my favorite multigrain tortilla chips (Food Should Taste Good brand from Costco) are actually certified gluten free.  I ventured to Bulk Barn on the weekend and picked up a few GF flours, rice pasta, quinoa and kasha.  I had never heard of kasha (it is buckwheat, which is GF), but thought it looked like it might make a nice subsitute for steel cut oats.  I have no idea what buckwheat tastes like, but thought I might cook it up for breakfast sometime.

I decided to try making some muffins the other night.  I had done a bit browsing at recipes and saw a couple that called for almond flour.  I didn't realize that almond flour is just ground almonds.  I decided to try this recipe and for a first try at GF baking, I think they are great.  However, I don't think I would use a recipe that calls for only almond flour.  There is a lot of fat in nuts, so the muffins have an oily taste to them. 

I was itching to try the GF all purpose flour I had found at Bulk Barn.  I tracked down a highly rated GF Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.  I think that the recipe came together well.  It looked similar to other chocolate chip cookie doughs.  I would say that it was definitely a little stickier than usual, but they baked up nicely.  I have to caution you, when you are using GF flour, DO NOT taste the dough.  I don't know how the magic happens, but the cookies don't taste bad, the dough tastes awful!  I tasted the cookies last night and thought they tasted funny, but Jay figured they taste pretty decent.  I tried another one this morning once I had the awful taste of the dough away from my brain and the flavor is just fine.  I think there might be a tiny bit of an aftertaste, but it's not bad.  I think I will tuck them into the freezer for emergency snacks :) 

I read a blog post last night about making your own GF all purpose flour mix.  The lady who wrote the blog said it was her mission to create a mixture that gave good texture to baked goods, but also tasted good, whether as dough, or when baked.  She discovered that she did not care for the taste of garbonzo bean flour (or chickpea flour) and looking at the stuff I got, that is actually the top of the list of flours used in it.  She found that they tend to have a strong flavor that is often hard to mask.  At some point I may go back to Bulk Barn, or possibly Nutters and buy some larger quantities of different flours and use a 'recipe' to mix up a good all purpose GF flour.  Definitely a learning curve...
  

Ridiculously Busy Weekend

I think I have always looked forward to long weekends.  Because, hey, it's an extra day off work.  However, I think since it has been so busy at work for the last four and a half months I really seem to appreciate them more.  Typically the days off are just spent relaxing, or doing things at home like cleaning or baking or knitting or relaxing.  This weekend was particularly busy!

Friday started out with having friends over for coffee.  They came over in the morning and I gave a knitting lesson and Jay visited.  I think the lesson went well.  She caught on easily to the basics, it will just take practice until she builds more confidence and gains an understanding of what the different stitches should look like, and how to tell if something isn't right (at least that's what I found when I first started).

Friday afternoon Jay and I headed down to the Midtown to look at Tip Top Tailors for a jacket he had seen at Market Mall on clearance that they didn't have in his size.  Unfortunately the Midtown didn't have it either, so we browsed around a little then headed home.  After a quick look at the weather forecast for the weekend I decided that I should probably get out and hang the Christmas lights.  I manged to do that without falling off the ladder, so that was a plus.  Friday evening I headed down to my 'office' to start ripping up carpet.  It actually came up fairly easily and only took me half an hour or so to get it all taken out.  Next I spent a bit of time taping around door and window frames.

Friday evening I got an interesting email from one of my old massage instructors at McKay.  She was emailing to find out if I knew any clinics that were hiring as she had just given her notice at work because her workplace had too much 'drama' that she was tired of dealing with.  I emailed her back and said, yes, my clinic will be hiring as two of our therapists are leaving.  She emailed back with a ton of questions, which I answered and she seems interested.  She is going to stop by the office tomorrow morning to look around and drop off a resume.  I have never worked with this girl before, but I would say that she was a great instructor and she has at least ten years of experience and likely a lot of her own clientele.  Great timing, I hope it works out!

Saturday morning I woke up quite early and couldn't get back to sleep (between thoughts of painting and the email from my massage instructor).  I thought that five hours of sleep would have me looking for a nap by lunch time.  However, Saturday was another productive day!  We got up in the morning and I took Kiwi for a walk then I shoveled our couple inches of snow that fell overnight.  Then we headed over to Home Depot to buy my painting supplies!  We decided a while back that we wanted to cook a turkey this weekend, just for us to enjoy so we stopped in at the local bakery to get some bread to go with our turkey.  We settled on a loaf of olive sourdough which was delicious!  When we got home I went downstairs and got to work painting!  I probably spent 3-4 hours down there and in that time got a first coat of the light green paint on everything, then did a second coat on two of the walls, which just left one wall and the inside of the closet for today.  I am pleased with how the colour looks, and I am looking forward to doing the feature wall to see how it all comes together.  Last night my lack of sleep caught up with me and I spent my time relaxing with some knitting, surfing the net and a soak in the tub.  We were in bed by 10:30 and I slept like a log all night!

Today we went to church in the morning.  Then came home and I baked skor bit cookies.  After that I headed downstairs and finished up the green paint.  On closer inspection of my paint job yesterday I think I did an alright job.  I only saw drips in the closet, which I don't think anyone will see.  I have to say painting closets sucks.  After spending a few hours painting yesterday and today I have to say that I don't love painting.  It's okay, and I am not quite as sore as I thought I would be, but it's not my favorite thing.  I don't know if I would have the patience to paint our whole house by myself.  I could probably do another room if I had to, but I won't be opening a painting business any time soon.  I capped off this afternoon with a nice nap.

It has been a good weekend.  I look forward to watching my home office take shape.  My inlaws are hoping to come up in two weeks to help me lay the flooring.  That will depend on the weather though because it can be so unpredictable at this time of year.  Once that is done and we put the baseboards back on, all that will be left is to start trying to figure out how to decorate and find some decent but inexpensive furniture to use in the room.  Fun! 

Baking up a storm!

I have been going a little crazy with baking lately. This week alone I made chocolate chip cookies, peppernuts, multigrain buns and lemon bars. Fortunately, most of the cookies, peppernuts and buns made it into the freezer before I could sample too many of them. The lemon bars are for dessert for supper tomorrow.

We are making a practice turkey so we will know exactly how to make our Christmas turkey perfect (we are hosting my family, all 16 of them, again this Christmas). I must admit that I spend a bit of time each day reading recipes from the website Tastespotting. On occasion I will bookmark a recipe and come back to it if we are looking to try something new. In one of my sessions, I came across the concept of brining a turkey. I did some more research into it and decided I wanted to try it because I had read that it makes the turkey juicy and tender and delicious. I was informed by a client at work that they sell a brining kit at Costco, so last time we were out there I picked one up. The kit included a bag of sea salt with seasonings in it, a gigantic brining bag (for a turkey up to 24lbs!) and a spice rub to put on the bird before you roast it. Today I brined the turkey for eight hours. I just rinsed it and put it back in the roaster in the garage to await the oven tomorrow afternoon. With the turkey we are having some of my fresh home made buns and an Asian cabbage salad. We decided we didn't need to do a big turkey dinner for just the three of us, so that is the menu we settled on.

I decided I wanted to have something for dessert, since we had invited a friend to join us for supper. When I stopped today to pick up some bean sprouts for the salad (that I forgot to buy the other night) I saw some fresh lemons and felt inspired to make something lemony. I have to confess that I am not a lover of lemons. I would say in most instances I prefer lemon as more of a savory flavor than a sweet one. The exception of course is lemon meringue pie...yum!

I only bought two lemons because I didn't have any specific recipes in mind. When I came home I thought about the frozen tart shells I have, and thought about making lemon curd to go in them, but I didn't have nearly enough lemons or eggs, so I scratched that. After probably spending a good hour sorting through lemon recipes on Tastespotting, I narrowed it down to blueberry lemon crumb bars (which I would probably make with saskatoon berries since I still have some in the freezer from the summer) and lemon bars. I decided to go withe the lemon bars. After they were baked and cooled I decided we should probably taste them to make sure they weren't gross before feeding them to our guest tomorrow. I was pleasantly surprised. They don't look quite as pretty as the ones that are on the website, however they taste like a thin layer of lemon pie filling on top of a nice firm, crispy/flaky shortbread crust.

I have been amazed by a few recipes that we have made that call for lemon zest. It is chock full of delicious lemon flavor. I think it tastes even better and more pleasant in recipes than even the fresh lemon juice does. On the other hand I have tried making muffins with orange zest and I don't care for the taste of it. Not sure if I have ever done lime zest, but I think I would like that too. Mmm, I bet those lemon bars would be awesome as lime bars. Oooh, I will have to keep that in mind for next time!

I have really been enjoying baking, but I have to say I need to get back to working out regularly or these extra calories are going to start sticking to places I don't want them!!

Disappointment

I had been thinking about asking for a Kitchen Aid mixer as a birthday present (as my 30th birthday is approaching quickly) and when I saw that Costco had it on sale on their website for $100 off, with the permission of my husband, I jumped at the chance and ordered it.

It arrived by UPS a little less than a week after I ordered it. I was excited and had decided when I was waiting to receive it that my first order of business when I got it would be to bake cinnamon buns. I decided to try this recipe. I was pleased at how nicely the dough came together with the mixer and the dough hook. It made a beautiful soft dough that rose beautifully and made delicious cinnamon rolls. I have to say that as good as they were, that I would likely just stick to plain cinnamon buns over the pumpkin variety. They were good, but I guess I am just a cinnamon bun purist.

A few days after I had made the cinnamon buns I was debating about what I could make next. I decided that since I had a cup of left over pumpkin puree in the fridge from the cinnamon bun recipe that I would look for a recipe for pumpkin cookies. I had a vision in my mind of the type of cookie I was looking for. I was looking for something puffy and cake-like. I looked a number of recipes before settling on this one. They were EXACTLY what I was looking for, and with the glaze on top, man I may have a new item to add to my Christmas baking list. Yum!

This week, I came across this recipe and decided that it was time to give the mixer another go. I am fairly new to the world of baking yeast bread, but I felt pretty confident after my cinnamon buns turned out so nicely. I caramelized the onions last night, to save some time and set to mixing up the dough. It turned out pretty well. It was a different method with a significantly shorter rising time and I was intrigued. The recipe said to bake the buns for 15-20 minutes at 375F. I baked them for 15 minutes and the tops were still really pale looking so I thought they needed the additional 5 minutes. I watched them off and on for the last 5 minutes and pulled them out just before the 20 minute mark only to find that the bottoms were burned. I feel so sad! Buns are a lot of work, and to have a batch that aren't really any good, pretty much stinks :( I know in my baking career that there will likely be other failures, but it is no fun to put time and effort into something with great expectations and end up with something useless!