Friday, April 30, 2010

Baking Bread

One afternoon during the winter, DH happened to be channel surfing when he came across an Oprah show featuring Michael Pollan discussing his book, Food Rules. We were very interested and listened as he suggested that one not eat anything that one’s grandmother would not recognize as food or anything with ingredients that a school child cannot pronounce. We had just watched the film, “Food, Inc.”, so we found all this quite interesting. He also mentioned the rule that one should not eat anything that doesn’t rot or spoil.

A few days later, I was checking through the fridge and found a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread that had never been opened. This was in February and the sell by date for the bread was October. The really scary part was that the bread looked as if I had just bought it. Yikes! We checked the ingredients and, of course, there were enough preservatives to keep it fresh until next October.

Now there are quite a few very good bread bakeries not far from us and the supermarket in the next town carries bread from most of them. They don’t use any preservatives or anything artificial, but I decided that I would rather bake my own. I own a Zojirushi bread machine, which had been relegated to the garage, so I went out to rescue it and dust it off.



On our next trip to New Hampshire to visit DS #1, I made a side trip to the King Arthur factory store and stocked up on sour dough starter and all kinds of interesting flours, such as Ancient Grains and Harvest Grains. I started baking different kinds of bread, using my bread machine to knead the bread only. The more I got into it, the more ingredients I needed – vital wheat gluten, grains and seeds to top the bread, 9 grain flour, and it goes on and on. Then I decided to try making English Muffins, which required muffin rings and a raft of new ingredients - hi-maize fiber, malted wheat flakes, and non-diastatic malt powder (whatever that is).





Since we don’t go to New Hampshire that often, the woman who delivers our mail started dropping off big boxes from King Arthur. It seemed as if it was getting out of control, but every loaf of bread was better than the last and we decided that there is no comparing homemade English muffins with the store bought – even the organic, no preservative store bought ones.




So today, I set about making my second loaf of the week and had a terrible time finding a recipe for which I had enough ingredients. I finally settled on 9 grain bread sweetened with maple syrup. I’m not sure what we’ll have next week, since supplies are getting low, but there is a visit to New Hampshire in my future, so that will mean another side trip to King Arthur.


Monday, April 5, 2010

Labor of Love


So, despite the fact that I am retired and, supposedly have all the time in world, I haven’t been very good about updating this blog. The last three weeks have been consumed with a labor of love.

When my parents moved to Vermont in 2006, they decided to attend the Episcopal church with DH and me. They seemed to enjoy the fellowship and, when my dad passed away a few months later, my mother was supported by both the clergy and the parish. She formed a close bond with one of the priests and even planned her own funeral long before her death. My mother wanted to make a memorial gift in my father’s name, so my sister and I joined her in donating a new smaller cross for the younger crucifers.

When my mom died in 2008, I wanted to give a memorial gift in her name, but had a hard time deciding what it should be. I finally decided on white vestments and altar hangings, since the church did not own any. The only problem was that the fabric would be more than I had planned to donate. Recently, a friend’s daughter became engaged and the white vestments became important to her, too. We decided to share the cost and, with four weeks until Easter, I insisted that we get going and finish them in time for that celebration. We ordered the fabric and appliqués, and I began what would be three weeks worth of work.

It was a little scary to cut out the pieces because of the expense of the fabric, but I bit the bullet and went for it after a lengthy discussion with my neighbor over the right and wrong side of damask. The plan was to make a pulpit hanging, a superfrontal, bible markers, a burse, a veil, stoles for two priests and a chausible. Most of the items had only one appliqué, but the stoles had three each and the superfrontal had three. That added up to fifteen appliqués. They are attached by couching them with gold thread, applying two separate rows of couching.


The bride-to-be helped with the appliqué on the veil, but the rest was up to me. It seemed to take forever. By Maundy Thursday I had completed everything except for the chausible and about 25 little rings to be sewn on the superfrontal to attach it to the altar. The chausible has a beautiful, intricate appliqué which took much longer than I anticipated. By Good Friday afternoon, the appliqué was finished, but I couldn’t figure out how to sew the two pieces together. At DH’s suggestion, I googled “sewing a chausible” and, surprise, there was a website with photos of exactly how to do it! The deadline was Saturday at 1:30 PM and I finished by noon.

On Easter Sunday, the priest who was celebrating showed off the new chausible, pointed out the new hangings and read a note of thanks for my work from the altar guild that was accompanied by a beautiful pink azalea. I didn’t need any thanks, though, because I knew that my mom was looking down proudly at the work I had done in her memory.