Jan
18
Okay. So. I made bread today. With a bread maker, so you know, it’s not exactly “making” so much as “preparing and dumping ingredients” but whatever.
And I think I have discovered the secret to making good bread. Are you ready? Okay. Here it is.
HORMONES.
When I was doing my infertility treatments, hopped up to the hilt on every baby-makin’ hormone known to man, I baked. A LOT. I made all kinds of stuff. Ask Kelly, she can tell you. She was often on the phone with me as I measured and kneaded and cut. Every day, the more hormones got coursing through my system, the more I would bake. I was up to my elbows in flour and baking up a storm.
And I made good bread. Oh yes. So much tasty delicious bread-y goodness it was not to be BELIEVED. My house smelled like… well, like a BAKERY, to be honest. And it was wonderful.
But now, I am a perimenopausal lump of infertile personhood. I am not making babies, no way no how, and no amount of science could make me. The hormones? I don’t has them.
And OHMYDOG THE BREAD DISASTER.
I am currently staring at this doughy lump. Some would call it bread. I mean, if you were starving, you would call it manna and be very grateful thankyouverymuch. But it does not look like any bread that I remember from my salad days of bread. It is a knobby, dense, baked disaster of a loaf. It is not so much a loaf as a mound or a knob or a stump of bread-like substance.
It tastes fine. But it is not what I wanted to make when I set out to make bread.
I wanted a nice smooth loaf of well-risen, well-kneaded yeasty goodness. And this? Is what I did not get.
And I have decided that it is because of the hormones. Or lack thereof.
There is a correlation, I know there must be. Because this is not the bread I remember. Could it be the yeast was dead? Maybe, but it rose some, and the yeast was good well into the summer of 2011 according to the package. So maybe some of it was dead. Was the recipe bad? Perhaps. I got it from a BHG classic cookbook, so you’d think it would be tried and tested. And I followed it closely, so you’d think it should go according to plan. Is it the breadmaker, for those of you who pooh-pooh the notion of making bread in a machine and not fully by hand? Well, the recipe was specific to a breadmaker, so I took that into account. Possibly the breadmaker needs replacing? Maybe, although at least the lump is cooked, and the timer seems to have worked, and so did the kneading bit at the bottom of the pan…
And yet…? Bread lump.
So I have to blame SOMEONE. Or in this case, someTHING.
The obvious culprit is hormones. So I am blaming them. Which works perfectly fine for me, because it gives me an excuse for being extra crabby as well.
Jan
18
We’re trying to enjoy a little quiet time here these days.
This morning, that means that I’ve got a loaf of bread preparing in the bread maker, and a cup of coffee by my side as I sit and watch That Baby, who is puttering around in front of a Wiggles video. We both are kind of enjoying the down time.
It’s been a flurry of activity these past couple of days. We had play dates and swimming and appointments and visiting to do. That Baby had lots of fun, played hard, met new people, and spent a lot of time in the car. I drove a lot and spent a lot of time out of the house, visiting friends, socializing, getting my hair done (YAY!) and having a good time.
But with all that fun comes a down side. And when you are a toddler, that down side is that your schedule gets disrupted.
That Baby is tired. She’s been up late, and waking a bit early. Her afternoon naps came as we drove around in the car. And one that WAS spent at home was not very good because of an angry molar making an appearance. And all the activity makes a person tired.
Yesterday, we took a down day. That Baby played, mostly quietly, and watched some TV, and we got her back on schedule. She slept like a log, despite the aforementioned molar disrupting her naptime, and we actually had to go wake her up this morning. BDH spent his day, despite a few hours of work yesterday morning, mostly relaxing and napping and playing WoW. And me, I did a lot of nothing, looking for recipes, cooking a bit, and futzing with the camera and some pictures, followed by parking my butt in a chair and watching Our Friends In The North last night.
We’re good with that. A person needs a little down time every now and again. As much fun and as exciting as being out and about is, I think that Stinkerbelle is happy for the break in the action, to just putter around in her own playroom for a little bit, with her own toys and her own stuff around her. And me, I am a creature of habit, so I am happy to be in my own environment as well. I might make some more bread, or throw in a few loads of laundry. Or I may grab a bit of knitting and do that while Stinkerbelle plays. It’s hard to say. But it will definitely be something around home.
It’ll be a quiet week for us, which suits us all fine. Quiet time is restful. And next week, we’re going on a little holiday, so it will be nice to rest up before we travel and head out for more fun.
