Life Takes Over...But Baking Continues

The Big Guy was chastising me last night for not posting a new blog entry in a couple of weeks. But that's what happens when you have too many irons in the fire.

The last couple of weekends have been busy! I tried three new Peter Reinhart recipes, all of which turned out splendidly. And all of which came from his book Artisan Breads Every Day. I've referenced page numbers below.

My biggest problem when it comes to blogging about my baking experiments is remembering to take the darn photos. I get all caught up in the process of baking and forget about the need to document the steps visually. Or, I remember to take a few photos during the process, but when the finished product comes out, it's so delicious that it gets devoured before I remember to snap a shot of the end result. That's what happened weekend before last. We served the French bread - using Reinhart's Lean Bread recipe (page 46) - to guests on Saturday night with dinner, and I was too busy entertaining and enjoying the evening to capture it "on film." The sandwich bread I have no excuse for other than laziness. I thought about taking pictures of it a couple of times before we devoured it, but was too lazy to go do it. Meh, it happens.

Here are the baguettes made from the Lean Bread recipe and the Soft Sandwich Bread (page 105) loaves as they were rising:

 

Pretty, aren't they? I wish I had captured the finished products as well. But as the title says, life takes over.

The Lean Bread recipe tasted great, but the dough was a bit tricky to work with. So the next weekend I went with Reinhart's Classic French Bread recipe (page 49) to fulfill the request for bread boules for the Super Bowl party we were attending. My girl Rachel was going all out with a Snack Stadium, so I had to bring the goods in the baking department to accompany her soups. This time I remembered to take photos of the finished product but not of the steps it took to get there. Feast your eyes on these beauties:

I made them small so that more people could try them, and so that no one was tempted to fill up on soup and miss out on the glory that was the Snack Stadium. When making these bread boules (pronounced "bowl" by the majority of the world, but "bow-lay" by my dear hillbilly co-worker Heather), I went with a tic-tac-toe pattern of scoring on the top so we would have a guide to cut around to remove the centers of the boules for soup. Since there was not a scrap of bread left in the end, I'm calling this one a winner. Woohoo!

Now, you want the recipes? Go buy Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day! I promise you that even if you are a complete novice baker you'll find these recipes simple and easy to follow. I would reproduce them here, but every recipe comes with 3 pages of instructions. Don't be intimidated by that! The 3 pages of instruction is what makes these recipes so easy to follow. Reinhart doesn't leave out a single detail, therefore you're not left confused (unlike with Martha's recipes) and wondering if you've done it right.

Get in there and start baking! Or ask me for samples. Either way. Enjoy!

Taking off the training wheels

It's official! I'm live and worldwide!

Just changed the settings on my blog to viewable by everyone. Yikers. It took a lot of talking myself into it, but I've finally done it. Now we'll see if I can deal with the haters who I hear are so prevalent in the blogosphere.

Since this is my first post since going live, I've got to give props to a couple of people. A friend of a friend - who is a social media consultant/guru and blogger extraordinaire - lit a fire under me a couple of years ago to get serious about blogging this time. Then I just had to find the time to devote to it.

Now that I've carved out a little time to do this, I needed a name. I went through a few different blog names and urls and was really struggling with what to call my new creation. Nothing felt right. So I turned to my Sista From Another Mista, Rachel, who is a very creative and wordy person, and she nailed it with only her second or third suggestion. My friends always joke about my undiagnosed OCD - especially in the kitchen - so her suggestion of Obsessive Cooking Disorder just seemed perfect.

So I'm now taking the training wheels off my shiny new bike. I hope you enjoy it. Please don't run over it with your giant SUV or steal my nifty basket. Thank you.

~K

Getting up the nerve to go live

This is blog entry #4 and I'm sitting here wondering when I'll get up the nerve to go public with this whole thing instead of it just being my own personal diary.

If you know anything about me, you'll know I'm a deadline-oriented person. Also a bit of a procrastinator - ok, a HUGE procrastinator - which is why I'm just now starting this whole blog journey about six years after I first started toying with the idea. So I guess I need to just set myself a deadline.

But the problem with self-imposed deadlines is that they are too easily moved for an endless number of inconsequential little reasons.

• I don't have enough content yet! I need to write just one or two more entries. THEN I can go live.
• I need to add visual interest. Gotta pick out photos to add, and THEN I can go live.
• I need to talk to the Big Guy and make sure he knows I'm going to be talking about him.
• Things are REALLY busy at work this week. I'll go live this weekend.

And my personal favorite...

• It's not perfect yet.

Did I mention I'm also a perfectionist? Yeah. Totally.

For instance, I decided to start playing with adding free stock images to my blog. Like the one below. But you see what I have to put below the photo? Giant horsey attribution line. Gag.

It's not perfect yet.

© Photographer: Johnlric | Agency: Dreamstime.com

None of their damn business

I know I want to make a go of this whole blog thing, but I'm struggling to find my niche. Do I want to be just another recipe blog? No. But is anyone interested in reading about my hum-drum daily life? And do I really want to put all that out there anyway? No and no.

So I started trolling blogs on BlogHer for inspiration. I found something interesting while there. Something that strikes a nerve with me and I find constantly irritating me in myriad places - from magazines to television to, now, blogs. There are nine sub-categories under the "Family" heading. Not one is for DINKs (that's "double income, no kids") or otherwise childless (by choice or otherwise) couples. However, under "Work/Life" there is a Childfree sub-category. I think, great! Until I start scanning the posts there. Over half of them are from either parents talking about childfree couples, singles, people who've lost their children, or people who are currently childfree but are completely focused on trying to have children. Then, about 75% of the remaining half are trying to defend their position as childless by choice because of the near-constant vilification of DINKs by the parent crowd. ARGHHHH!! 

So maybe my niche is DINKs in the Kitchen? I dunno. What I do know, though, is that this is a minority that needs to start standing up for itself. We need to start providing resources for others like us, and we need to make the parent population out there understand that childfree couples are not deficient or cold or selfish or pitiful or secretly envious of them. We simply choose to live a different lifestyle than they do and we wish to do so without judgment from others...because it's none of their damn business why we live this lifestyle. Sometimes it's a conscious choice and other times it's not. But it is always, first and foremost, none of anyone else's damn business.

Learning to live again

I have a project I should be getting started on, but what am I doing? Writing my first blog post.

Nearly a year and a half ago, I posted on Facebook that I was toying around with the idea of blogging. An acquaintance offered to help me get started, but I declined. "I'm too busy." That's been my mantra for the last three years. And at that time it really was true. But this weekend I realized that it's not really true. I'm not always "too busy." It's just become a convenient excuse for getting out of things I don't want to do and for being a horrid time manager.

Recently some things have happened in my life that have granted me more free time than I previously had. I'm trying to get myself motivated to take control of my life again and start being a better housekeeper, a better wife and a more productive employee. But it's hard, yo.

In the midst of all this, I'm trying to learn to live again. I remember the first few years the Big Guy and I were married, I had time to do nearly everything I wanted to do. My house was tidy and clean. Laundry was done and put away. I read books...often. I saw at least one of my girlfriends almost daily. On the weekends, my girlfriends and I would cook and bake and play. Sometimes on weeknights too. If I sat down to watch TV, I often worked on a project simultaneously - copying down recipes, doing cross-stitch, organizing photos.

So why don't I do any of this anymore? Why is everything such a chore? I'm pretty sure depression has something to do with it, but I refuse to go to the doctor, who will likely just want to give me a pill for it. So I'm going to start blogging. And cleaning house. And cooking up a storm. And taking walks. And reading books. And just trying to learn to live again in general.

Step one: Post this blog.