Baking!

This weekend was another wonderful, fun-filled weekend of activity. We'd been promised rain so we bought tickets for Golden Compass and Juno - back to back at the Arclight. The rain that was supposed to pour for three days drizzled for about 18 hours. So on a sunny gorgeous Saturday, we headed inside for 4 hours of movies. Golden Compass was.... eh. They totally F-ed up the ending. Juno was brilliant. See it. See it now. (Says me to the three people who read this blog, one of whom saw it with me...)

Even more fun than the double feature was the surge of creativity flowing through the house this weekend. Ajax was writing. I was painting (PAINTING!!). Ajax was editing movies. I was baking. Both Saturday and today we were busy busy busy with our various creative endeavors.

So this weekend I managed to accomplish three little paintings (really little - 3" x 3") and a bit of collaging. I also baked. A LOT! I made vegan and wheat-free Chocolate Chai snickerdoodles. They turned out quite good. Really rich. Even a cookie monster like could only eat one. Next time I'm going to make them smaller. Little bite size yummy bits of spice and cocoa.

Also made lemon olive oil cookies - not entirely vegan (had egg and goat's milk yogurt), but totally wheat/gluten-free. And wow. It sounded like such a weird recipe I had to try it. The original recipe called for a fancy pants lemon olive oil from some shi-shi shop. I got fancy olive oil and organic lemons and winged it. Yum. Sprinkled with sugar, these little gems are bursting with lemony flavor. But I gotta be honest... I think they'd be yummier with either the original fancypants lemon oil or just plain ol' butter. I'll try them again that way this week.

But the BIG BIG accomplishment of the night was a loaf of bread. An honest to God loaf of actual bread. Not banana bread but real bread with yeast. Which brings me to this point. Yeast is a weird tricky odd thing. No wonder you don't want it in your body. It's all alive and foamy... weird. My first attempt at making yeast do what it's supposed to do failed miserably. I killed the yeast. I am a yeast murderer. Sigh. I also wasted the only soymilk I had in the house and almost of all of my soy creamer (still have enough for tomorrow's coffee though... phew!) After 3 yeast packets, several phone calls and texts to the bread master - aka Mom - I got the yeast to do what it was supposed to do. From there it actually went rather smoothly. I mixed the rest of the dough, left it to rise, shaped into a loaf and baked it. I think, in retrospect, it didn't rise enough... need to put it by the heater by my desk. And next time I will definitely procure a loaf pan... The loaf is long and crusty and looks like bread. But it's kind of, um, flat. But good. Very eggy and moist. Great with this new vegan butter I found. mmmmmmmm....

Sadly the bread wasn't anywhere near ready by the time we sat down for our healthy dinner of salmon, salad and asparagus. But it's making a delicious post-dinner snack.

As are the lemon cookies... I really ought to put them away.