I Never Promised You an Organic Garden

A while back I started a baking adventure. My plan was to pick one recipe from Cooks Illustrated, test it out, and blog about the results each week.  I really enjoy desserts and wanted to learn to make my own.  I’ve been doing it since August, and I have made a LOT of baked goods.  Some of them have turned out amazingly well, and some of them have turned out quite poorly, but it has been fun along the way.  I have learned a lot and gotten to the point where I look forward to baking each week.

Unfortunately, I have gotten really behind on the blogging portion of my challenge, so I have made a number of yummy items that no one ever got to see.  So I thought it would be fun to go through and list those items. Continue reading this post…

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Came across this video today on Geeks are Sexy Technology News, and it pretty much explains why women feel like such failures. Our society’s beauty standards are based on impossible and photoshoped bodys we see in magazines.

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

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I am finding that I am not having any trouble keeping up with my weekly baking adventure, but I am having a hard time getting a blog post written each week.  I will try to do better, but no promises.  I finally felt up to taking on advanced recipes and went straight for homemade eclairs followed by chocolate cream pie with oreo cookies crust.  I love eclairs, and chocolate cream pie is a favorite Thanksgiving dessert, so I was very hopeful that they would turn out well.  And I am pleased to announce that, a little under-baking on the eclairs aside, they were AMAZING! Continue reading this post…

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That’s right folks, I am a quitter.  I quit the Six Items of Less Challenge yesterday.  It was my second go round, and I was just simply tired of doing it. I made it through day 24 of 30, but couldn’t finish.  I spent a week trying to talk myself out of quitting but didn’t succeed.

The reason I started doing the challenge to begin with was because I had a good time the first time I did it, and I thought I would enjoy it equally this time.  Unfortunately I did not.  I don’t know if it was the clothes I picked or the time of the year or the fact that I was sick for most of it, but I was not into it.  I realized that wearing clothes I didn’t enjoy was affecting my mood. I was spending far too much time stressing in the morning about how I could possibly make the same six items of clothes look different or make me happy about what I was wearing.  But for a long time I wouldn’t allow myself to quit.

I thought I would let people down:  At least a few people have enjoyed seeing my photos each day.

I though people would think less of me:  Who quits a challenge six days before it ends.

I though that Matt would pick on me:  He had a much harder time the first go round but didn’t quit.

I thought it meant I was a failure: I have a very hard time not being able to complete something.

But I realized that if the point of doing this was for enjoyment and I was no longer enjoying it, then it was time to stop. And I think I might have learned more from quitting than finishing.

What I learned

• My friends and family aren’t going to stop loving me just because I don’t succeed at something or if I change my mind.  They don’t like me for what I do or accomplish.  They like me for me.
• I don’t always have to be perfect.  I don’t always have to “win”.  People will not think less of me.

Personally, I think these lessons are more important than anything I might learn about my clothes or my relationship to my clothing.

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Outfit for day one

Well it is official: I have lost my mind.  I am going to do the Six Items or Less (SIOL) Clothing Challenge again.  There is an official cycle starting today on the SIOL website, so I am joining the community and jumping in.  For those of you who don’t know or remember what SIOL is, here is a quick reminder. Each cycle of SIOL is 30 days and you choose six articles of clothing to wear for the full 30 days. That does not include: undergarments, socks, shoes, accessories, workout clothes, work issued uniforms, outerwear, or pajamas.

I am still picking out my six items of clothing, but as long as I don’t wear something I still have a few days to make a decision.  It is a lot harder this time to make a decision, because I don’t want to just usethe same clothes I did last time. I actually broke down and borrowed a few items from a wonderful friend so there would be some variety in my wardrobe.  Plus there is the added pressure of living up to my last experience.  I have decided on four main pieces, but I am struggling with the last two.  I am waffling between a purple dress and a pair of black dress pants for one item and a black sweater or something more colorful for the other.

I have selected the following itmes for sure (I’ll post photos once I get them all chosen):

• Dark-wash skinny jeans
• Purple v-neck sweater (One item from last round)
• Grey striped long-sleeve shirt (On loan from a friend)
• Grey button-up shirt (On loan from a friend)

As with last time, I will take a photo of my outfit every day and post it on Facebook. I will also be blogging here and as a part of the SIOL community.

I am a lot more nervous about this round than I was the last one.  Especially with the weather being so cold.  I am worried I’ll end up wearing the same combination all the time just because it is warmer than others.  Either way, it will be an adventure and I am looking forward to learning more about myself and my relationship to clothes.

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It is official, I made the best brownies ever this week.  That includes boxed brownies and restaurant brownies.  I tried the Cooks Illustrated brownies earlier this year and was not impressed with how they turned out, so I turned to Alton Brown for a recipe.  And let me tell you, I hit the jackpot.  These brownies are relatively easy to make, taste very chocolaty, and have a nice fudgey texture.

Continue reading this post…

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Buoyed by my baking success earlier this week, I decided to make chocolate chocolate chip bread for the potluck at church. I have made this recipe before in muffin form, so I didn’t expect any problems.  Unfortunately, I underestimated my mess making abilities.

The recipe calls for 1 stick of butter melted, so I popped it in the microwave, like I have done 100 times, to melt the butter.  About 30 seconds in, I heard a bang and turned to see that the unmelted half of the butter had exploded all over the inside of the microwave.

And, in this case exploded is not too strong of a word.  There was literally butter all over the inside of the microwave including under the rotating tray. It was quite impressive.  It took me 15 minutes to clean out the inside of the microwave so I could complete the melting process.

I did, however, learn a valuable lesson for future butter melting: Do not melt a whole stick of butter all at once on high in the microwave.  From now on, I will use short burst at about half power.  On the bright side, our microwave is now quite clean.

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This week’s baking went really well.  I made Quick Cinnamon Buns with Buttermilk Icing from Cooks Illustrated and they were delicious!!  They were biscuit style buns, so they didn’t have to rise like traditional cinnamon buns.  Hence, the “quick” in the name.

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I have been riding a new bike for the past few weeks, and I have fallen in love!  It is a beautiful blue Concord Pacer mixte likely from the 70’s.  If you are uncertain of what makes a bike a mixte, here is a quick primer:  A mixte is a particular type of step-through frame where the top bar runs from the bottom of the handlebars all the way to the rear axle.  This style bike is very popular in Europe and is ridden by both men and women. Continue reading this post…

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I just realized the week is almost over, and I never blogged about my baking adventure this week.  I did, however, remember to bake so the important bases are covered.  Since Matt is out of town this week, and I wanted to try and use ingredients we had on hand, I decided to go the easy route and make Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookie Bars.  They are very similar in prep to chocolate chip cookies, but require a few extra ingredients and turned out much thicker and cakier than my cookies ever do.  With Matt being gone, I am also missing our normal camera so, I had to use our old point and shoot.  Please forgive the subpar photos of my food. Continue reading this post…

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