Stellar Day so Far....

Wow, did I accomplish a lot today!
Started off getting up early to catch Nigella on Food Network. Now that I know she's on at 7:30am on Saturday, it makes my inability to sleep in past 7 no matter what something to be celebrated rather than reviled. While I watched Nigella make sticky toffee sauce for her late night ice cream (yes, it was as porntastic as it sounds) I mentally evaluated our egg and milk situation to determine if a walk through the newly frozen tundra to the farmer's market was in order. I determined it was not, so I poured myself another cup of coffee and settled in. After Nigella was done, I switched over to VH1Classic for the 80s nostalgia video hour, and Rebby got up and made breakfast. It was equally porntastic having bacon and eggs and homemade potato bread toast while watching Frankie Goes to Hollywood(though not the X rated version of Relax)
After breakfast, we each got to work on our chores: Rebby sanding and mudding the walls in the foyer, and me cleaning out and reorganizing the kitchen drawers and cabinets. I didn't even realize that was my chore for the day, but once I started with one I had to go and do them all. I can't begin to tell you how great I feel about it. Especially the loathed and feared JUNK DRAWER which I would only ever open to quickly toss in a rubber band or twist tie. I removed EVERYTHING from the drawer, tossed most of it, and organized what I kept into little plastic takeout containers. One for rubber bands, one for twist ties, one for miscellaneous hardware, one for corks and stoppers and beer growler lids. I also moved the keys and toothpicks there from the dishtowel drawer so now it can be ALL ABOUT THE DISHTOWELS. And potholders. I also designated one drawer exclusively for baking items, including the cake decorating tool set I bought five years ago and have yet to actually use. This is the year, my friends. I am going to learn how to pipe a damn icing rose.
After my cleaning and organizing frenzy, I dived headlong into the bread baking. Last week I sort of spur of the momently went trolling the internet for a potato bread recipe for three reasons: 1-I wanted to use up some sprouting potatoes; 2-I wanted to use up some souring milk; and 3-I wanted to have some bread that Rebby and I would want to eat jelly on. You see, for the second year in a row Rebby has received several jars of gorgeous home canned jams and jellies from relatives for Christmas, and we are just not jam and jelly people for the most part. I was feeling really bad about it and wanted to try to make an effort, so I thought a nice pillowy potato bread with butter and jam might be appealing. After checking out a few recipes, I settled on this one. It has the bonus feature of containing a small amount of lard, which I am absolutely convinced based on empirical study makes everything taste better. So I tried it last week and let me just say--it is beautiful, wonderful bread. I don't know what kind of loaf pan this woman has but there is in my opinion waaaaay too much dough for one loaf. The first batch I made two smallish loaves, and this time I made one largish one and six sandwich buns. It's fairly easy and the dough is nice and soft and a pleasure to knead, so I might just make this all the time. At least as long as I have some potatoes and a little bit of milk in the house.
Simultaneously while making the potato bread, I made some Swedish rye. I had a bee in my bonnet to make a Swedish rye because a)I bought that special loaf pan from IKEA and b)I bought some salmon to cure and I wanted to have an appropriate bread for it. Again I scoured the internet for a recipe--nothing looked right until I plugged DARK swedish rye into the google. Then I came up with this. I really like the fact that the recipe contains more rye flour than white, while most use the rye only as a flavoring. It seemed like an absurd quantity of bread, though, so I halved the recipe. And at that point I kinda fucked it up, because while I made a point of writing out all the halved measurements before hand, I didn't go through and adjust in the recipe so when it said to combine the liquid and yeast with 2 cups rye flour and 1 cup white, I ended up with a solid mass instead of anything that would ever get "foamy". I let it sit (can't really say rise) anyway and then worked in the remaining ingredients, kneaded it, shaped it into a long roll, chucked it in the pan, and hoped for the best. After the pan rise it didn't look much different, so I was pretty convinced I was going to end up with an inedible brick. Once it got in the oven, though, everything changed...it became light and almost a little airy, and oh so incredibly fragrant. It's a pretty sweet bread, but boy howdy is it good! I will have it with some jam for sure.
Another project I worked on today was going through my cookbook shelf and pulling out an entire file box of books to give away. I'll be posting a list sometime soon to offer to friends first...there are some real goodies in there that I just don't really ever refer to and would like to share with someone who might use them more often. Rest assured, I still have more cookbooks than will comfortably fit on a five shelf IKEA bookcase. But now I can at least get them all jammed in there. Might try for a second cull after I organize them into categories.
While the breads were baking, I cleaned out the fridge and then applied the cure to my salmon. I neglected to get any fresh dill, so instead I decided to keep it mega local and just use some seeds I harvested from the garden--dill, fennel, and coriander. So I crushed them up in the mortar and pestle and added them to the salt, sugar, and black pepper. Rubbed it all over the salmon, wrapped it up tight in plastic wrap, and set it in the fridge for 5 days or so of curing. So excited.
By this point Rebby was ready to call it a day, so she showered and we hopped in the truck to visit Home Depot for some potting soil. Apparently no one told the Home Depot Garden Center that it's seed starting time because all their big bags of potting mix were out in the uncovered, unheated garden center. Rebby had to dig through a small snow bank to pull out two bags, which were frozen solid. We brought them home and set them on a trash bag in the living room in front of the wall vent to thaw. We also brought home some kind of lambourghini of ladders....after being on my little apartment sized ladder mudding the ceiling all day, Rebby decided to invest in something more home ownery. This one can apparently telescope to 15 feet if you want. Wow.
The frozen potting soil sort of put a damper on my seedling enthusiasm, so I decided to give myself the rest of the night off to play around on the internet as long as I washed the dishes. Which I did. I also listened to this really awesome podcast interview with Sandor Katz the Wild Fermentation guy. His way of speaking is simultaneously soothing and exciting to me, and he's got what I would consider vital information. Listen to it if you have the chance.
I'm feeling really excited and inspired by life right now, despite all the kinda crappy weather and bad news in the world. Hope I can hang on to it!