mmmm Bread

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oat and cran bread i made mixing two recipes.jpgSo I live in Canada, I’m originally from New York but I married a Canadian and moved up to the great white north.  What does living in Canada have to do with bread?  Quite a bit, you see in the two plus years I have lived here I have been searching for good bread.  I love bread, I really do, I love variety in my bread too.  Up here I feel limited.  The only bread I like that can be bought at the grocery store is either d’Italiano or the frozen Italian bread you bake to go with lasagna. (Oddly enough, one of the two brands I like is also d’Italiano, the other is the M&Ms Meat Shop brand)  The bakeries aren’t that helpful either, I have bought some bakery bread at the farmers market and while it was good, it was too expensive to buy on a regular basis.

I have been wanting to bake my own, I used to work in a bakery and I know it’s time consuming but how hard could it be?  I have the kneading tool for my mix master so that part, the really hard part would be done for me.  Three people I think are kinda awesome both make bread a lot, (@vividmuse, @encaf1 & Sport) and when I hear about them making their own bread my mouth waters and I just want to try it.  Then I found out that my sister got a new bread machine for Christmas.  She was happy because she couldn’t use her old one anymore because she had used it before her daughter was diagnosed Coeliac disease, since the flour gets into all the parts of the machine, she can’t use it to make Gluten free bread.  So I of course ask what is she going to do with her old machine.  She didn’t imagine making any Gluten bread so she said I could have it.  Now my sister hasn’t been making her own bread recently (meaning the last few years) but since her daughter has been diagnosed the idea of baking her own was appealing since the store alternatives are not that great.  When I went to visit I saw her whole family just in love with the gluten free bread, and that bread was really good.  So thanks @caelann for the bread maker.

My first loaf was a basic white bread that I used the recipe from the manual.  It came out really good, so today I experimented, I combined two recipes to make an oat cranberry bread and it turned out mostly amazing.  I added the cranberries a little late, the machine didn’t beep when I thought it would, to let me know when the kneading was close to done.  Next time I will get it right.  As it is now though it is damn tasty.  Each time I took the bread out of the machine I gave the first slices to my husband, my gunia pig, and he loved them both.  This time though, the oat cranberry time he kept going back for more, so I take that as a win.

So now I need some more fun recipes, got one for potato bread, I plan on trying that one.

Does anyone have tips for me?  How to make the crust softer?  Good recipes? How to keep the bread softer for longer? (I have been wrapping it in a towel for now.  Anyone out there making bread too?  Got stories to share?  Please, share them.

Nutty Bites Episode 00 – Intro

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Here is my intro podcast.  This is episode zero (not E P00 as someone said, thanks @encaf1) where I simply introduce myself and tell you a little bit about what this podcast is all about.  Please excuse some noises from the cat playing with the wires, I didn’t realize they were there till after I recorded.  Stay tuned to the end for some bloopers where the cat interrupts my recording.  It’s amazing how a mute cat can make so much noise.

There will be another episode this month, so stay tuned for the first regularly formatted episode of Nutty Bites before the end of January.  Be Awesome! Continue reading →

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Christmas Card 2010

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Christmas Card 2010

Originally uploaded by nuchtchas

As many of you know by now instead of mailing out Christmas cards I have taken what I would have spend on cards and stamps, doubled that and donated it to a charity. When we got married this practice grew from suporting one charity for the holidays to two.

This years we are supporting the Red Cross and the War Amps. Now the Red Cross is a repeat, and a charity I often support because every time the is a disaster somewhere in the world they are the first there. I have seen this organization in action and have so much to thank them for. The War Amps is a charity that offers programs and service to those who have lost limbs. Not just soldiers, but children and civilians and it is a charity that has touched our lives in the past few years. Seeing people get back up and back into life is inspiring and we’d like to help that cause.

We are so happy to have everyone in our lives and so happy to share this time of year with you, even if it is through a computer and the internet.

Have a happy and safe season.

Nutty Bites

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I have mentioned that I am working on a secret project, well here it is, the announcement.  After listening to podcasts for over five years and being asked all the time what podcast is mine (none, as until now I was the podcast ninja, showed up on everyone’s podcast but didn’t have one of my own) I have finally decided to create a podcast of my very own.

What will it be about?  Well that’s a good question, I am interested in so many different things that this will be something that will highlight things I’m interested in, and hopefully that isn’t covered to death on other shows.

I will focus on Art, the creative process, people out there in the verse doing creative works, audio dramas that I’m interested in, books, movies, tv, music, you name it.  I will also cover Cons that I attend, host discussions and other fun tidbits.  I will even have games, contests and interviews with people who inspire me.

Does that mean I won’t be features on all those other podcasts I work with?  What about the Digger Chats on SciFi Dig?  I will still be working on all those great podcasts, I will still be doing the digger chats, this is just something extra.

I hope you all are as excited about this as I am.

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Christmas and Epiphany

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Every year when talking about the holidays I will drop words like Epiphany, Kris Kringle and Kings Cake only to have baffled looks from people I am talking to.  My family celebrates a little weird, no big shock there, we do everything a little weird.  Many of our traditions come out of necessity, being the 7th of 9 children it makes very little sense to buy a gift for every sibling.  Some of our traditions just came out of us being us.  To explain last year I made a comic on Bitstrips, you can see the whole comic by clicking on the thumbnail.Epiphany

As with many families we are growing and spreading out.  Most of my family is back in NY, one section is in CT and my husband and I are in Canada.  This makes the holidays interesting.  This year was my grandmother’s 100th birthday and so we all (except my mom, then pregnant sister and niece who had to run track for college) traveled down to florida for it.  We had a great time but it meant my husband spent the days he would have spent on Epiphany off work on that, also, we spent the money we would have paid to travel on that.  Still, we are traveling, just not to my family.  For Christmas we are spending it with his family in Ontario, and even better we are meeting our very good friend who lives in BC and spending all that time with him.  Batman (the nickname online I use for this friend) is awesome and we miss him lots.  Since he moved out to BC we don’t get to see him much so this will be a great trip.  Already we are making plans for D&D and ShadowRun games, viewings of Tron (Original and the new one) and so forth.  I can’t wait.

For Epiphany, I will be traveling to NY alone and while my husband really wants to go and be there this is one of the sacrifices we have to make.  We have to get used to it, we live really far from both our families and he is in the military, so there are sacrifices to be made.

We have no need for a tree since we won’t be home, the lights, stockings and decorations will all stay in the box in the basement this year.

While some of my family and friends are celebrating Chanukah and others are getting their trees up and decking the halls I have been plotting and scheming.  I love giving presents, LOVE it.  This year we were able to get a lot of it done early, as of today there are only two gifts left I think to get.  Oh, and presents for each other.  My husband already knows what he is getting from me, and even though the money I was hoping to pay for it didn’t come in yet, I think I am still getting it for him.  A PS3, it’s a big gift, it costs way more then I should be spending, but, it will make him happy and I’m amazed he held out this long on buying one.  I will need to have something for him to open on Christmas though, a trinket of some sort.  Other then that, my plotting and scheming continues for the last two gifts, I love playing Santa.

What I hate doing is waiting to give people their presents, I want to give them now.  More then getting anything I love giving presents, seeing people’s faces light up when they open something I know they’ll love.  It makes me so happy to give them that smile.

So, what’s your favorite part of the season?  What does your family do differently?