I don't know

what has gotten into me = but I've been baking! Yes, don't faint. I don't cook or bake. I don't necessarily hate it, but I just don't do it. I'll make dinner occasionally (only on my day - I'm not nice and volunteer to take over for Tim) and I have made cookies a few times. But not all that often. Why? I'm not sure - but it make have to do with the fact that in order for me to bake/cook, I like to have a clean slate to start with. No dirty dishes. A completely clutter-free counter. Music or TV to listen to. And I like to clean everything up as soon as I finish. But since I don't have a spotless kitchen, all that work has to be done first and then I'm just not in the mood.

However, Saturday I got a bee in my bonnet to make homemade bread. I was actually excited at the prospect (shocked me!). I called my mom for her recipe and she gave it to me over the phone. So I made my very first loaf of bread. I started with a somewhat clean slate - no dirty dishes and the counter was mostly cleaned off. I made numerous calls to my mom to make sure it was going okay. I put let it rise. I put it in the pan - and we pushed it down into the corners cuz it just didn't look right in a log that didn't touch the edges. And this is my very first loaf of bread:



Yeah. Not exactly what I expected. So after another phone call to my mom, I discover that she forgot to mention the fact that the bread needs to rise in the pan, too. Crap! I wondered about that - but since my mom didn't tell me to do it, I didn't do it.

I couldn't stand to not have a great loaf of bread on my counter. So I made another two loaves today. A little better - but I guess I need to let it raise even more. And, after the homemade bread, I got a bee in my bonnet to make Banana bread! A wonderful neighbor brought me some DELICIOUS banana chocolate chip bread (which I controled myself and ate it in two days rather than the one day I wanted to eat it in) - so I decided that sounded really good and attempted to make it. Mine tastes okay, but definitely not as good as hers (it has chocolate in it - so it can't be that bad).

Here are the final products from today:




Besides having the urge to bake, I have started on the final leg of the quilt. Binding the edges is a lot more time consuming than I thought! I thought I would be able to whip it out in a couple of days - but it looks like it will take me all week to get it done. And it will get done and washed and ready to wrap and send on! I'm so excited!