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Having fun making bread at home with our new bread machine

February 25, 2011 by Tricia

If you’ve been reading my posts over the last few months then you already know that I’ve sort of been on a cooking spree. I’ve always enjoyed cooking and baking, but over the last few years, other than making dinners, I kind of stopped being creative, however, for some reason, over the last few months I started getting my cooking groove bake and we’ve had lots of delicious treats to eat.

In December I made several types of cookies and special sweet breads. I also made two pumpkin cheesecakes. Yum!

I had been planning on making cinnamon buns and cinnamon swirl bread but we had a surplus of baked goods in the house given that there’s only two of us in the house to eat the food that I make so I had to lay off for a while.

Anyway … this past weekend, Chris and I were in Costco and we happened to be walking down a row that had kitchen appliances. Guess what I bought … yep … a bread maker. I truly enjoy making bread from scratch, but I’ve always been interested in trying out a bread maker. Well .. I guess the price was right so we bought it and by that evening we had our first loaf of white bread.

The first loaf of bread turned out great. It was delicious, but since I’d tried the rapid white cycle i.e bread in less than an hour and a half it was a little more yeasty than I like so I was determined that the next loaf that I made would be for a full cycle with a normal amount of yeast. So … the next day I found a recipe online for a tasty sounding Flax Sunflower Bread that I just had to try. I got to work putting the ingredients together in the machine and then set it to a normal cycle so it took about three and a half hours but oh … it turned out great.

The second loaf of bread was tasty! Actually we still have a little bit left,. As I said there’s only two of us in the house so trying to eat two loaves of bread in as week is a lot and I”m sure we ate more than we normally would because there’s nothing like eating bread when it’s still warm and fresh after it’s taken out of the oven (or bread maker). Oh and that Flax Sunflower bread … I think it’s going to be a healthy bread to keep on hand too … maybe too healthy if one were to eat too much if you know what /I mean ie think colon cleanse hint hint!

This weekend we’ll go out shopping for some rye flours special bread flours (I was using all purpose flour) so any breads I make going forward should be even better and of course with a wider selection of flours on hand I can experiment a little bit more. I’m sure I”ll eventually get around to making that cinnamon swirl bread that I’d intended to make back in December … I mean it started this whole thing. LOL

Do any of you have a bread maker? Do you use it regularly? What kind do you have? The one we bought is a Breadman bk1060 and so far it’s been working well.

Finally bought a new Laptop!

February 17, 2011 by Tricia

Well, as I just said in a recent post on my other blog I finally broke down and bought a new laptop.

I really didn’t want to spend the money since we don’t have a lot of extra money, but my current laptop is getting really slow and it’s hard drive is filling up. Yes I do have an external hard drive, but I’ve moved everything I can move over to the external hard drive and I still have only 25 gb of free space … not a lot when you do a lot of graphic intensive work on your computer!

So … about two weeks ago I started seriously looking at new laptops. I started by looking online and just deciding what features I wanted. I new I wanted a laptop with a decent sized hard drive, a fast CPU, and a very good graphics card and display.

I spent a whole weekend looking at computers online and then looking in a few stores nearby just to physically see some of the models I’d been eying online. I looked at everything from HP Notebooks to compaq desktops and then I finally settled on an Asus N53JF.

The computer that I bought online finally arrived on Monday afternoon and ever since it arrived I’ve been busy trying to move files over from my old laptop to the new one. the only thing that I’m really stuck on is that I’ve been using an old outdated copy of Eudora for my email on my old laptop and I want to transfer all my email and email settings to the new computer but I’m having trouble. Any hints?

What I’ve done so far is to install Thunderbird onto the old laptop and it picked up all of the mail and mail settings from my copy of Eudora but of course there’s no export in Thunderbird … so now I’m trying to figure out how to make a new profile in Thunderbird on the new computer and then I’ll try to add the Thunderbird profile from the old computer to the new computer’s Thunderbird. Does that sounds about right to those who know what I’m talking about?

My husband might be giving guitar lessons soon

February 16, 2011 by Tricia

My husband is a musician … well I guess you could say he’s a part time musician as he doesn’t play music for a living although he would if he could.

He’s been playing guitar since he was nine years old and along the way he learned how to play 13 other instruments. He’s quite accomplished.

Now he’d like to at least start teaching others how to play guitar and possibly other instruments. I guess he’d do this from home. We’re just starting to look into how to set this up as a part time business. I mean we could advertise online or send out direct mail marketing or just start out small by posting some flyers on the bulletin boards at the hospital where my husband works.

Of course we’ll have to see if there are enough people interested in taking lessons and if the times that they want lessons fit with my husbands schedule etc. Hopefully everything works out. It would be a great way to make a little extra money, plus my husband just loves playing guitar so it will get him playing regularly again.

It’s so cold this winter!

February 4, 2011 by Tricia

It’s been so cold this winter. Last winter the temperatures were more spring like – honest, I’m not just waxing nostalgic.

I’m actually looking forward to the next few days because it’s going to be warmer out – close to zero Celsius and above zero for the first time all year. That’s nice when compared to the – 20 Celsius that we’ve been experiencing! I won’t mind seeing some melting snow either.

Inside the house we have two humidifiers. One small one upstairs and a large one on the main floor. We use them to help moisturize the air a little bit in the winter time otherwise the air would be extremely dry what with the furnace going on all the time.

We also have ceiling fans upstairs and on the main floor in a couple of the rooms. I think most of them are Hunter fans. In the summer we have the fans on all the time and the blades are going one direction (I can’t remember which direction they go right now) to help circulate and cool the air. In the winter we flip and switch on the fan and the fan blades go in the opposite direction and it actually helps circulate the warm air in the room so it helps us feel warmer.

At least it’s February and the ground hog saw it’s shadow … Spring is coming soon!

Planning a party for my niece

January 27, 2011 by Tricia

I was speaking with my sister in law earlier this evening and as usual she’s busy making plans months ahead of time. Her daughters 7th birthday happens to fall on Easter this year and she wants to hold a big combination birthday Easter celebration on that day.

See what I mean about how she likes to plan months in advance?

While we were talking on the phone I was looking online and I found a place that can get easter basket delivered that looks pretty good. I gave my sister in law the address so that she can check it out too.

I’m actually glad she called me about the party. I’d like to help her plan it. It might be fun.