Everyone in hubby’s family has a May birthday so we’ve been spending a lot of time over at MIL’s house for gatherings. I usually dislike being around the whole in-law clan (because they are all mouthy Conservative Christian Republicans and LOVE to argue politics) but I was in charge of helping hubby’s grandmother (who is the only decent one of the bunch) with the bbq. I’m always into learning how to make kick-ass food and believe me.. this woman can barbecue like nobody’s business!! The food was awesome (mmm.. grilled chicken…) and no one ended up dead, so I consider that a success. I also managed to squeeze the recipe for homemade Challah bread out of my SIL. She married into the Jewish faith and had some awesome ‘sisters’ where she lived who made their own EVERYTHING from scratch.. including challah for Sabbath.
After puttering around the house for a while yesterday I pulled out SIL’s challah recipe and gave it a go. I usually don’t have eggs in the house (which challah uses a few of) but I made brownies for hubby’s birthday last week and still had them in the fridge. I followed the directions and ended up with a whole bowl of sticky, soupy dough that would have just oozed down the counter rather than kneaded. I panicked, called SIL (who didn’t answer her phone), and then proceeded to dump flour into the bowl and stir until the stuff in the bowl resembled dough. When SIL did finally call back.. she was convinced that I had done something “wrong” but had no idea what — since she mostly watched the bread-making and didn’t actually do it herself. DOH! By this point the bread was rising in my “dough bucket” and I figured I would just ride it out and see what happened. I had already “wasted” the ingredients and had the oven pre-heating.
After a few pathetic attempts at a 4 strand braid (admittedly, I had never done a 4 strand braid and should probably try it on something other than giant wads of sticky dough) I gave up and did a simple 3 strand.. let it rise a second time, covered it in an egg wash, and threw it in the oven while silently hoping that it didn’t suck. The results?
It seriously didn’t suck. My husband has eaten over half the gigantic loaf between last night and today.. He usually doesn’t go that crazy for homemade bread but I couldn’t even keep him out of this! Totally a success- and it looks pretty too! The only thing I’ll do differently next time is to add more sugar so its sweeter – more like the Russian Easter bread (or “paska” as its called) I love so much.
(also.. if any bakers out there would like to tell me why the bread “cracked” like that on the top where the braiding crossed over and how I can avoid that next time.. I’d be very grateful. I’m thinking I might have “braided” it too tightly.)
Yes, I’m spamming all of you in an attempt to win a cool bike for me and the munchkin. I’ve always wanted a cruiser style bike (or any bike at all, really) – so I hope I win! If you click the photo it takes you to their website so you can check out the other bikes. How cool are these bikes with all that cargo room? I’d love to have this bike in black and add some custom graphics to it.
Since I’ve been feeling dramatically less contagious I decided that I would get back into the kitchen, put on my flour covered apron, and see what I felt like making. People have been talking about Indian breads on the Indian Cooking forum on Ravelry and someone posted that they had tried a good online naan recipe.. so I went to check it out. Realizing that I had everything to make it AND the makings for a chickpea curry.. I set about making myself some garlic naan. A few rises, a fling with the George Foreman Grill (a pan worked much better.. but I saw this on one of the comments to the recipe and figured I’d give it a shot) and setting off every one of the smoke detectors in the house (oops).. I had this :
mmm… garlicky goodness. After I decided that the GFGrill wasn’t big enough and the naan were getting too thick I decided to use a skillet which is when I burned the crap outta the first naan and set off the smoke detectors. Sadly I have no photos of the skillet cooked naan because by that point I was too hungry and ended up just stuffing my face. The recipe made 10 naan (not counting the two I burned the crap out of) and I was only able to eat about 2 pieces before I started bloating. I have a ton left and will be eating leftover chickpea curry & naan for the next day or two… they taste just like the bread I loved from the Nepali restaurant in Colorado.
I haven’t baked or knitted in over a week now because we’ve been hit with one type of sickness after another around here. Earlier last week our new kitty Jack was attacked by something (we think a fox or a small coyote – and yes, its news to me that we have coyote here in Georgia) in our yard and had the side of his face torn up and his back leg injured. He was doctored up and is healing quite nicely.
I put a new piece of jewelry in my stretched earlobes and had a horrible reaction to the metal (surgical steel.. but maybe a high nickel content?) leading to a really big infected nightmare. Thankfully I caught it before it was unmanageable and I ordered in a nice new set of jewelry from BodyArtForms.com. My ears are now much happier…
On Friday at noon I got a call from the school to come get Munchkin because he has “pink eye”. A highly contagious illness you say? OF COURSE. We waited 24 hours (b/c the person in the clinic is not medically trained at all and even said it <em>might</em> not be conjunctivitis) and his eye was nasty – so we had to take him into one of those ‘emergency’ clinics and wait for 4 hours to be seen and get antibiotic eye drops. (Did I mention we don’t have insurance and the state run children’s medical insurance has been dicking me around for on the upwards of 6 months??? yeah… you don’t want to know what that visit cost.) HUGE amounts of sleep lost while I cleaned Munchkin’s eyes every few hours so that they didn’t get stuck shut. He is MUCH better today and has a note which allowed him back at school today.
Yesterday when I was woken up by the cats chasing each other around the bed (they were jumping on our heads.. what a great way to get woken up) I realized that I couldn’t see out of my left eye. When I stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror I realized that I had caught Munchkin’s pink eye!! The good news is that the clinic doctor anticipated this issue, had given us enough eye drops, and had told ME how to take them (Love ya doc.. seriously.) should this happen. I’m doing much better but my last pair of contact lenses had to be thrown in the trash because they were contaminated.
I wear 2 week disposables but my prescription is LONG expired and I’ve been wearing this particular pair for an obscene amount of time. The only glasses I have are now about 12 years old (though apparently my prescription hasn’t gotten that much worse because I can see pretty well, just don’t ask me to read you anything on the tv or identify anyone at a distance).. and I’m blind as a bat (and I don’t have that handy sonar feature) without some sort of prescription eyewear. Fortunately my parents (who are AWESOME) are going to help me out for the extra money I need to get myself an eye exam and a box of new contact lenses.. they even said “happy mother’s day” – which means its a gift instead of a loan.. so I don’t feel as crappy about accepting money.
My husband is on a business trip to the West coast for the next 6 days (hence the utter chaos a contagious infection in the house has caused…) and he left early this morning for the airport.. so I’ve been up since about 4am. I’m going to go take a very VERY long shower (all your hot water is belonging to me!!!!) and veg in front of the tv. *sigh* Is it Friday yet??
