Brenda's breakfast

Brenda enjoying her "breadfast". Actually the witty term was coined by mrleedy at 8:03 am this morning.

texting

Someone's thinking of me...

Progress

I finished laying tile last night. Phew! Look how close to the edges I'm getting. I think I'm making progress.

Buttering

As a kid I developed this aversion to buttering my own bread. I don't know why, I just hated to do it. Some kids hate their food touching, or eat their food one at a time, but for me it was spreading butter or jam or what have you. My mother enabled this type of behaviour well into my teens by buttering my toast for me. As an adult I developed a coping technique by buttering as quickly and sloppily as possible, often resulting in big globs and always ignoring the corners.
These days it only comes up at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, usually in the form of heckling; my siblings asking me if I need help buttering my bread.



I spent this last weekend tiling my bathroom. Smearing mortar on the back of each tile is called "buttering". That's the official term. I did so, one tile at a time, a nice even coat, all the way to the edges. I hated every minute of it.

As the bread truck drove away...

Someone suggested I chase after it. I barely got a picture...

Toaster

We usually don't use the toaster at the same time, but today we did and the contrast amused me.

Guest Blog

I've been encouraging others to share their bread pictures with me, and I would gladly post them; so here's one of the first takers:



via mrleedy

Here's some delicious bread I had on vacation at Pianeta Ristorante in Truckee, CA.
The crust was crisp and crackery, but the inside was all soft, delicious bread. There was olive oil and balsamic on the table, but I served it up with some oil and salt. Fantastic. I said to L, "take a picture of this bread for me. I want to give it to Bread Guy for his blog!"
--
mrleedy

Zeppoli

Last Saturday was Zeppoli day at the Italian bakery. They only do this once a month and like to make a big deal about it. It was packed. I gave my order to the Italian looking fellow behind the counter, and said "zeppoli" with enthusiasm; the way you would say "forgetaboutit". He repeated it back to me with twice as much enthusiasm as if to show me who the real Italian was. Jeni gave them her approval by eating 4 or 5; I also had one.

Wandering eyes

The baker thought I already had breakfast this morning when all I asked for was a loaf of bread. He said I usually look around and can't decide what to get; while doing an impersonation of me that looked like a little kid in a candy store trying to decide what to buy with his one dollar. I haven't been feeling well lately. Even the baker noticed that I was missing my usual wandering eye.

Bread Torque

http://www.autoblog.com/gallery/asias-largest-race-car-made-from-bread

thanks to my friend mrleedy for the link.

Bread box

The bread box has been replaced by a platic bag with tiny little holes in it. The fresh loaf will loose moisture at a fairly constant rate. Leave it out in the open or in a paper bag and it will dry out in three days to the point of making it useful for pounding nails. Stick it in a plastic bag, and the trapped moisture will make the crust chewy and soggy. So how do you alow just enough moisture to escape to slow down the drying, without trapping it too much? A bread box. But for those with not much counter room, the perforated bag works almost as well. Then again, how big is a bread box anyway?

Mamica bread

Whenever I go to visit my mom, she always has a loaf of home made bread to send home with me. These are the last 2 slices. We call it mamica bread, which translates to mom bread. Everybody in my family knows what that is. Actually more literally it translates to "mommybread". She bakes half a dozen loaves at a time, and kneads the dough by hand in a giant bowl. I've borrowed this bowl on many occasions to try my hand at her bread recipe.

It's also great for spinning baby nieces in.

Photography

I'm a terrible photographer. Somehow though, I'm starting to think that it's impossible to take bad pictures of bready things.

I need a quarter acre

More bread math. I know how much you love it.
5.5 x 5.5 = 31 square feet
31 square feet x 365 = 11,315 sq. feet. (1/4 acre)

Almond & Chocolate Balls

Actually they're called "baci di dama" which is italian for lady kisses, but then again they taste better when you don't know the translation and simply call them by their sexy foreign name. Personally, I don't mind knowing what's in the food I eat, so almond chocolate balls it is.


The real reason I went to the bakery this morning, the previous rantings just on impulse.