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I'm making a brine tonight which I will soak my turkey in starting tomorrow morning. How exciting! It smells wonderful.

Today I went totally nuts and made potato soup, two loaves of bread and lebkuken... which is a german molasses spice cookie that my family makes. It has to soak in a rag of brandy for 3 to 4 days before I can make it into cookies.

Dieting

... probably nothing interesting for a bit

This was very fun. I used the sticky bun recipe from the bread bakers apprentice. (I'm still borrowing it from my boss but I swear he's fine with it.) The dough was so wonderful to work with, but I used over a half pound of butter just in the caramel.

I made noah a four layer birthday cake and he ate almost all of it! How is he not fat!

Some chicken chili and merlot. It's getting cold outside.

Steaks, asparagus, a nice chewy molasses and wheat loaf of bread and some beer. I'm not exactly watching my figure tonight am I?

failures make you learn, right?

My oven caught fire today. At least the ciabatta loaves are still tasty... I just have to rip the bottoms off... I don't know why I thought parchment paper wasn't flammable.

Wow the weather!

The weather yesterday was so surreal! I just had to take some pictures of the beach.

A nice evening on my own

Today I made a dutch apple pie and other picture is a poolash for some ciabatta bread that I will make tomorrow. It will sit in my fridge overnight to ferment. My boss told me today that it's all about bringing out the sugars in the flour. How exciting!

For dinner: Some mashed potatoes, butterfly porkchops, and sadly underdone bread. I wasn't paying enough attention and took it out too early. I know it looks like a lot, but I promise I had help eating it. Also I found a great way to store my new mixer's attachments above my washer.

Well, I've wasted no time. These are the first creations with my new mixer. The first one is yeast raised donuts which, honestly, did not turn out as pretty as I had hoped. They tasted just fine though. The second is pound cake made from my better homes and gardens "new" cookbook. The third is just oatmeal wheat with a little molasses. My mom says that bread is better when left in the fridge overnight and I don't think I'll ever bake bread the same day as mixing it again. It was just wonderful.

My new mixer

With a little encouragement from my mother and boss at work, I finally bought what is probably the most useful thing in my kitchen. It's the 6 quart professional 600 series KitchenAid mixer, and it's wonderful.