They were okay, but still kind of dense. I used cheap all-purpose flour from Aldi along with the good KAF whole wheat. Makes a difference.

Homemade subs

Here’s the finished subs, wrapped in foil and fresh from the toaster oven. They were dinner Friday night. Howie liked the, but I didn’t like the buns too much.

Can you guess what it is?

It’s a recipe hanger!

I use my hanger made of twist tie wire and two binder clips to hang my recipes from the pot rack when I’m cooking. I do most of my prep work there, so it’s the perfect spot.

You don’t want all that sherbet, do you? If you need help finishing it, just let me know. My schedule’s wide open tonight, won’t be an imposition at all.

You gonna finish that?

You don’t want all that sherbet, do you? If you need help finishing it, just let me know. My schedule’s wide open tonight, won’t be an imposition at all.

This is not the best quality video, but gives an idea why we sometimes call Stella “Spider-Dog”. It was dinner time and she was dividing her attention between the cat in the bedroom, her dinner being prepared in the kitchen, and bouncing off the couch.

She did a great job on a batch of focaccia bread dough containing 6 cups of bread flour. I’m very pleased with how sturdy the machine is and the dough hook worked great to mix the dough and knead it.

Focaccia bread, hot from the oven

I made the basic dough recipe from the Cuisinart manual and recipe book, enough for three 9″ rounds of focaccia bread. It’s topped with onion flakes (I reconstituted them first), kosher salt, black olives, olive oil, parmesan cheese, dried rosemary, oregano, and basil.

It smelled as good as it looks, and it tastes even better.

The dough had the consistency I’d hoped for. I am eager to make wheat bread and see how it turns out.

Squeeeeeeeeal, it’s here! Now I’ve gotta scrambleand come up with something for our get-together tonight!

I normally love Caribou’s Christmas displays and merchandise. But this year I really think they blew it. Turqoise, red and purple mice, rabbits and owls? They went for this “nature” themed stuff, which could be cute if done right. But these? I can’t think of the name of this style of comic art. Maybe someone can help me out. It puts me in mind of poorly drawn Flash animations that pop up all over the web.

Not. Christmas. Not. Holidays. I didn’t take pictures of the ornaments, but they’re either big styrofoam balls covered with knitted yarn or woodland creatures made from plant materials. The latter were actually kind of cute, but they were gone by the time everything was marked half off. There are knitted and presumably recycled coffee cup clutches for sale, too, but judging from how many I still see on the racks, customers didn’t much like them, either. Very little of it has any kind of holiday feel to it. I know they were trying to go for designs that didn’t necessarily bespeak a certain season, but they went too far and the result is shelves still full of merchandise that would, I think, be gone by now normally.

C’mon, you guys can do better than this! Past seasons’ POP and merchandise has been great! Please, don’t jump on the whole “go green” bandwagon just for marketing. It really fell flat this year. Other customers we know felt the same way. It’s just not up to past years’ standards.

it’s been a fun and satisfying Christmas week, but it wore me out! I am in bed with the puppies, catching up on a little news and not too far from slumber. Tomorrow I am gonna sleep until I wake up on my own; that could mean eight or it could mean noon, whatever I need!

We had a rude surprise as we were heading out to meet family this morning for breakfast in Columbus. Once again, someone’s broken out the van’s window.

Doggone it, WHY do people have to do this stuff? This is the sixth or seventh time it’s happened in the last few years.

Nothing’s stolen, and if people wanted to steal they could just open the door since we quit locking them after the Jetta’s stereo was stolen in a smash’n grab. No, it’s not motivated by theft, but just plain meanness. Someone drives by while a passenger throws a chunk of concrete, a rock or a brick at the window.

Take your pick, we’ve had all three hit our vehicles and one time found a large metal pellet from a pellet gun in the van after the same window was broken. Another time, someone took out the side view mirror on the driver’s side.

Let’s hope the USPS doesn’t decide to fine us for using Priority Mail tape. It’s all we had available and we couldn’t drop everything to go buy tape before driving to Columbus to meet family. We hope it holds in the cold and the rain we’re expecting. The van’s got so many blemishes at this point, we don’t even care if it takes the paint off. What’s the use of trying to keep any vehicle nice?

It’s just so frustrating, you know? State Farm sent us a nastygram last year after our car stereo was stolen. It didn’t threaten anything, just pointed out that we’ve experienced far more comprehensive claims for vandalism than the average customer. Gee, State Farm, tell us something we don’t know! We don’t have a garage or off-street parking, and we certainly can’t MOVE. What can we do?

If we turn this claim in, they’ll probably force us to have a deductible on the comprehensive or they’ll raise our premiums. Worst case scenario, they could drop us. Considering we’re still in the middle of the legal proceedings for my car accident of 2007, switching insurance companies right now is very low on my list of things I want to hassle with on top of everything else. And that wasn’t even my fault, not that these vandalisms are!