I can't believe I went through the whole Christmas vacation and never posted anything. Returning to grad school has been overwhelming. But, I'm happy to say I passed all of my courses and have started the Spring semester.
I'm back working at Pineridge X-Country ski area a few days a week. It is fun to go back to something you did ages ago and see changes (and what hasn't changed!) The conditions this year have been the best in the past 10-15 years! And still we get people who complain. It's groomed too much, groomed too little, too cold, too warm. While Tim and I always talk about owning another business, I'm not sure I can handle the whiners.
So, we got about a foot of snow between yesterday and today, and the University canceled classes, so I get an unexpected day off. No time for knitting however, homework and baking are the tasks today.
I remember my mom always liked to bake her Portuguese potato bread when we had snow, and I have tended to keep up that tradition, snow days usually turn into baking days. So, today I made pain au chocolat from the King Arthur Flour catalog Winter 2011. I made a few modifications to fit my budget and pantry:
-We were nearly out of white flour, so I used all White Wheat flour (King Arthur Brand)
-I used Idahoan Yukon gold instant potatoes I got free with a coupon stack ages ago. We never eat instant potatoes, but it was free, and they never go bad, so I got them anyway. They are a great addition to bread recipes.
- we didn't have any grapeseed flour, so I left that out.
I also made the dough in the bread maker- (I really love that thing $5 at a yard sale!) almost thru through the first rising, then I took it out and put the dough on the woodstove to rise further. One thing I noticed, this dough doesn't rise a lot, but it should be puffy. I then followed the followed the directions in the recipe from #4 on
- I couldn't afford the chocolate sticks from King Arthur, so I warmed up some Nutella, spread it on the dough and added some semisweet chocolate chips (10-12 chips) to each roll.
They came out great and are a nice snack with a mug of hot Ovaltine! Mmmmm!
Knitting
Not a whole lot of knitting going on- I started a new sweater and got bored with it. The Cloisonne I started in the Fall needs some work, so that is on hold as well. Lately I am doing some plain toe up socks using stash yarn I got in a swap ages ago. It seems like all of my socks are wearing out at the same time. I am doing both socks at the same time and am ready to do the leg portion, I just need a find an interesting pattern to use to get this project done.
But I did make Tim a new hat to his specifications- he wanted a chullo type hat with no ties and with pine trees on it. I used yarn from Stonehedge Fiber Mill, Shepard's Wool. This is seriously nice and soft and it was great to work with. We bought our mill equipment from Stonehedge years ago, so I have a soft spot for their mill.
-
No comments:
Post a Comment