Bread

I meant to take a picture of our dinner last night, but it smelled so good that I totally forgot that I even BROUGHT my camera! Sally made the most fabulous chili and Andie brought salad with spinach and peppers and sliced almonds and tomatoes and Bean and I brought bread (that I baked that afternoon) and cheesecake (that I bought that afternoon).

After dinner we went for a (long) walk. Andie and Sally have been working out regularly and Bean and I have, um, not. Bean is (of course) in better shape than I am, but we managed to keep up. It felt good to be active... and reminded me how easy it really is to just decide to get up and move around a little bit. I am looking into classes at a yoga studio downtown. I do believe that yoga can replace a lot of what you would do at a gym - resistance training and cardio - if you do it "right."

I forgot how much I enjoy baking bread. I haven't done it in so long. I made *Anadama bread last night... it has a base of cornmeal and molasses and I thought that sounded like just the thing for chili. I also have the ingredients at home for some 9-grain, which Bean and I will make this weekend.

There is something magical almost about bread from scratch. You more or less start off with the ingredients for homemade playdough and then add yeast and then beat the crap out of it, bake it, and then eat it with butter on it and congratulate yourself for your cleverness.

It also makes your house smell really good. Seriously.

And somehow it changed my mood. I was not sad yesterday... just sort of bleh, you know. Assembling all of the inredients and watching the dough take shape was great, but the end of the first rise is my favorite part. I LOVE kneading the dough at that stage because it changes so much as it rises. The Anadama bread doesn't get the same elasticity as a more traditional bread, but it's still fun. The nice thing about Anadama is that you get that good (but not overpowering) molasses smell even before you start baking.

Anyway, it made my day happy even before I had dinner with 2 of my best friends and my Bean. And I did some knitting on my Super Secret Knitting Project at Sally's. I am through with about half of the knitting part, but this one will require not only some assembly but also some crochet, so I am signing up for the next "learn to crochet" class at Twist. I am hoping to finish it in a few weeks, so I need to step it up a little bit!

One of my smaller secret knitting projects is done. I found some soap at FFT the other day that smelled sooooo good and I thought Sally needed a little lift so I bought it and knitted two washcloths for her.

It was a good night... and we are planning to make our Thursday potluck a regular thing, so I am excited to try out new recipes. I am also happy to have a "standing date" with them. I think it helps to know that there are people who are looking forward to spending time with me every week!!

'Cause it's all about me.

*This is not the recipe I used, but it's pretty close.