Simulcast

[For those reading both, this is the same post as the one at my other blog. It was largely about cooking and I thought it belonged in both places. I'll get you some pics of the cinnamon bread and financial breakdown when it is done!]

As part of some general cost cutting measures, coupled with a desire to pare down the number of processed foods in our lives, we dramatically cut back (read: stopped buying) cinnamon toast bread. This is huge as my kids, especially Eion, can be categorized as complete addicts. And at $3.99 a loaf, their habit was running us $12 a week or more.

But this morning Eion, who was nearly in tears at breakfast, begged that we might have it again. So I commenced to baking. I am following a recipe from a blog called Pioneer Woman who did a lovely job describing and photographing the process so rather than duplicate or replicate, I'll just send you there!

I got started about 8:15 and all was well until I went to add yeast. Tim mentioned yesterday we needed to get more but he certainly didn't raise the "Holy crap! We are down to our last teaspoon of yeast!" which would have prompted an immediate trip to the store. Instead, I figured this out in the middle of warming butter and milk when it was too late to turn back. Off to Kroger.

Once my dough was rising and Tim, who is working nights, was off to sleep in the basement, complete and utter boredom set in. That boredom, and the 3 1/2 pounds of hamburger meat that needed to be dispositioned very soon (I had somehow grossly overestimated the amount of meat we would need this week,) set me off to several hours of cooking. Morrigan, while too picky to eat many of the things I make, was more than happy to help cook. We turned on the Mozart channel on Pandora and commenced to cooking.

I don't like to freeze raw ground chuck because I dislike the taste of hamburgers made from thawed meat. (And overall, not a huge fan of frozen beef.) So Morrigan and I took two pounds of hamburger and made taco meat, which is perfect to freeze and use at a later date. We also whipped up a three pound batch of pasta bolognese (yeah - more freezer meals,) baked a loaf of plain bread and got the cinnamon bread ready for its second rise. We topped off our cooking morning by making lunch for Maggie and Eion.

Sadly, this brings us to only 12:45 and I am bored again. Time to clean out the closets!