I've turned a corner, my friends. Not just on the doubt issue (but thank you all so much for your great comments!), a different corner. A cooking corner: I've turned a corner in the kitchen.
Yup, I've become a real food addict. Not to be confused with a real food addict. Nope, I'm addicted to making, baking, creating, and serving real food to my family. Might not sound like a big deal; after all, I've long advocated the benefits of eating real food but I'd become a bit of a slacker in recent months. I started to take more and more advantage of convenience foods. Nothing major -- I was still cooking decent dinners and such -- but I was buying and serving more foods that made me cringe just a little each time I served them.
So, just like with the smoothies and the chia, I am now back on the real food track. More whole foods. More organic foods. Less of the processed stuff. I'm not swearing off all conveniences -- I'll still buy my butter (although I did find a good, seemingly easy, recipe for making your own . . . ), and many other things -- but I am striving to be better about the quality of what I feed the family.
And first up: Bread. I've gone crazy bread-baking style!
Um, why didn't I remember how easy it is to bake bread? And how satisfying? Because it is. Easy. Satisfying. And better. Oh, so much better.
Last week I made three loaves of bread, using a recipe adapted from my favorite cooking dude, Mark Bittman. I first made one loaf and we ate it with a veggie-heavy soup that I made for dinner. It was hearty and good. The next day, the bread made excellent toast:
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| Mmmm . . . toast! |
The second day, I went for two loaves, a regular one and a cinnamon swirl:
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| That's the cinnamon swirl loaf in the front. |
Seriously, bread is not hard to make and I plan to keep baking.
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| Give it up for homemade bread! |
