A tip for when you are baking bread, and also generally in life when things don't go your way.

Okay, this is a quick one.

Almost every weekend (Friday night/Saturday morning), I make a couple loaves of bread. Brian eats it throughout the weekend as sandwiches and toast whenever he's hungry between meals.

So this has become a tradition for me. I've done it so often that I don't use a recipe anymore. Flour, grains, sugar, salt, yeast - dump it all in. Add some butter or oil. Mix it up in the mixer and slowly add water. Mix until blended, separate into loaves, let rise for a bit, then bake. Every time, it's a success. I have made it more times than I can remember.

UNTIL a couple weeks ago when I decided to fidget with the loaf size. I did almost everything the same, except maybe adding a little less flour - and suddenly, I wound up with two squatty, dense loaves. Surprise! So this is just to say that if you are foraging into the world of baking your own bread, don't give up if you run into a bump in the road. This might sound haughty but I thought I had baking bread down PAT. I guess I was wrong! Anyway, this morning I made bread again, and it was perfect.

In other news, I think this is going to be a great weekend. Right now Brian and Bo are running around some public hunting land, scouting for new spots and tiring themselves out like crazy. I'm about to leave to sing at the nursing home with our church choir and on the way home I'm stopping at the store to buy MUSSELS, baby! Whole Foods is getting 20 pounds in this morning - I called. Then tomorrow I'm heading off to the library booksale, because as a matter of fact I am still on a book-buying bender for children that don't exist yet.

More on that later, but you should see how big the stack in the empty room has gotten. : )

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, too! (Bake some bread, if you're up to it!)