Rise to the Occasion

Cinnamon raisin bread is by far my favorite bread, what makes it even better is making it at home. No preservatives because it won't make it past five days, even for one person!

This is the second time I have made this bread with my brand spanking new, and slightly used, bread machine that I got this last Christmas. To say I love my bread machine might just be a bit of an understatement as it stands proudly on the podium with my kitchen aid mixer to receive the gold.

The recipe comes from the manual, that I had to find online as the manual was not with the machine at the thrift store but hey for easily under twenty bucks for a sturdy working machine I'm not going to complain having to download a manual! This time around I tweaked the recipe just a bit as a quarter of the flour is whole wheat flour, added a third more sugar and doubled the amount of cinnamon.

Even the end piece was scrumptious, and I never like the end pieces, which can only mean one thing: this wonderful looking textured loaf of bread won't be around for much longer.

Chewy Granola Goodness

That's how good the chewy granola bars were, every time I thought about taking a picture I ended up eating one instead, and then just because I wanted to make doubly sure that they were as good as I thought I would eat another.

Smitten Kitchen's Thick, Chewy Granola Bars

The recipe is forever saved to my computer for many many future uses. The first batch was filled with dried cranberries, raisins and chocolate chips, and peanut butter that added just a lovely hint. Next time there's going to be allot more peanut butter and just chocolate chips. No longer will I be buying my granola bars from the store coming from a box, I can easily pronounce all the ingredients and no preservatives because they will not last long enough to need them.

Spring has Sprung!

Or at least here in sunny Southern California. Yes I am rubbing it in the faces of any from the East cold Coast.

Green Onions
are the first
in line, it's
those little
green stems.



Forget
me nots>









And the
Tomatoes!>>
Mmm
salsa, and
bugers with
slices of the
red fruit in
summer.

Wrinkled

This is where I got that nifty sewing machine images from. It's from a newspaper that came from Iowa possibly before the turn of the century. Back when they knew how to advertise!

The paper is really nice, it seems to have had some fabric added to the process before it was pressed because it has preserved far better then the newspapers from the thirties that were in the same box it came out of from up in the attic. Not bad for something well over a hundred years old.

Why it was saved I will never know, but I'm happy that it wasn't turned into food for the silver fish that seem to enjoy getting into every thing that they can.

Take Two^Umpteenth!

I've lost count a long time ago how many blogs I've started, let die, or have utterly destroyed with playing with the HTML coding.

A site for my general musings, fun, and the things I just think are way to cool.

Hope I make your day a bit more happy with my part of the blog sphere.