But I wanted to do something fun to celebrate, so I figured I’d make pretzels. They’re sort of heart-shaped, right?

This is an example pretzel. And I may be stretching it with the whole “heart-shaped” thing.

Really, it was just an excuse to try a new recipe. I used this recipe, and I’m not sure what I did wrong, but I don’t think I made them right. The dough was very dense and dry and very, very hard to roll and shape.

In the end, the pretzels looked like this:

Not very appetizing, I’ll admit. But we tasted them, and all we could say was – WOW. They were delicious. They were dense and doughy like street vendor pretzels, but with a little sweetness like mall pretzels.

Really, really delicious. I’ll definitely make them again, and see if I can figure out a better way to roll them into shape. Because these do not resemble any pretzels I have ever seen. Oh well.

This weekend, I baked Cranberry Scones:

Yes, they’re a little overcooked. I think I need to get an oven thermometer and see if our oven is accurate.

The recipe is here, and I only made two slight substitutions. One, I didn’t add nutmeg, because we didn’t have any. I don’t think that made too big of a difference, though.

As for the second substitution, the recipe called for buttermilk (which the recipe author subbed with homemade yogurt). I have neither buttermilk or homemade yogurt in my fridge, so I did a little Googling, and discovered you can (sort of) make buttermilk in your kitchen. I know! Amazing, right? And yet, so simple. Here’s how:

Ho to Make “Buttermilk” in Your Kitchen:

1. Place 1 Tbsp of white vinegar or lemon juice in measuring cup

2. Add milk to measuring cup, filling to 1 Cup level

3. Let sit out on counter for about 5 minutes

4. Use the amount you need for the recipe

I will admit, the resulting concoction concerned me at first – basically, you’re souring the milk. But I used the amount needed for the recipe (3/4 of a cup) and neither Mr. Martini nor I had any major illness or reaction, so I figure that was a success.

Like I mentioned above, I did overcook these scones just a tad, but the results were still delicious. Very crumbly, and while I usually find coffee shop scones very dry, these were much more moist and tasty. A fantastic recipe, and one I’ll definitely making again.

Anyway, back to the real news – I made bread this weekend! Go, me!

“Bake Bread” has been on my 101 in 1001 list from the beginning, and looking at the list again made me realize just how much I wanted to try this. But there was a catch – I didn’t want to use any fancy (expensive) ingredients or tools. No fancy flours, no fancy mixers or processors. I had to have almost everything in my kitchen.

So I did a little Googling, and found this recipe: Super Easy Bread for Beginners. Perfect!

Best of all, the ingredients were all in my cabinet. The only thing I needed to buy was yeast. (OK, and Crisco, because I didn’t have that either, but I’m guessing most people do):

I dissolved the yeast, mixed in the wet ingredients, then added the flour. Then it was time to knead! I had no idea how to do this correctly, but a quick peak at an instructional video helped. Basically, you hold the dough with your left hand and push the dough away from you with the heel of your right:

Then, you fold the dough over onto itself:

Then turn it a quarter turn, and repeat. Over and over again. When you’re done, the dough should be (according to the recipe) “soft and smooth, not sticky to the touch.” Like this:

From there, it rose in a bowl for 3 hours, until it was time to be punched down:

This was my favorite part.

Another gentle knead and shaping into loaf  shape, it was into a loaf pan for a second rise of 30 minutes. Then it was ready to bake:

It smelled SO GOOD in the house while it was baking. The finished product didn’t taste too bad, either!

Yes, I realize this is the same picture as the top of the post. I’m THAT PROUD.

Now, this is the most basic, white bread recipe out there, I’m sure. But it’s really made me curious about other recipes, particularly for wheat breads with a little more texture.

Yup, that’s right, I want to bake more bread. I think this new kitchen is magical, because I actually want to spend more time in it!

Do you have a favorite bread recipe? I’d love to hear about it, especially if fancy tools aren’t required (I may be willing to branch out on ingredients, though!). Feel free to leave a link  in the comments!

I will, however, spend hours knitting socks which I put on my my feet and shove into shoes. The irony is not lost on me.

This year, though, I decided that I wanted to cook an entire meal for Christmas for Mr. Martini and I to enjoy. It had to be easy, it had to be (fairly) inexpensive, and it had to be food we’d like.

I happened to find a few recipes on The Pioneer Woman Cooks that looked good, so I printed them out, and yesterday I cooked. Like, real food. Not just grilled cheese sandwiches, is what I’m saying. For those wondering, the reason we didn’t have our Christmas dinner until the Sunday after Christmas is because we ate out on Christmas Eve. A huge meal. And we still weren’t hungry Christmas day. But we were hungry on Sunday, so that’s when I dove into the cooking!

I cooked pork tenderloin, browning it in a cast iron skillet before baking it in the oven (also – surprise! there were two pieces of meat in the package, which I didn’t realize until I had started seasoning them. So we have extra.):

I boiled potatoes, then crushed them and sprinkled them with salt and pepper and olive oil, and browned them in the oven (this is a before shot):

I roasted asparagus (again, just olive oil, salt and pepper):

I made a sauce out of onions and wine and cranberry sauce, and at the end of my prep, this is what it all looked like:

Then it went onto plates:

I also made buttered rosemary rolls, but I miscalculated the timing, so they were in the oven baking while we ate dinner. But they were really good, too:

All together, this was a FANTASTIC meal. Mr. Martini can’t stop raving about it. He even went so far to say that it was one of the best meals he has ever eaten, and was way better than the fancy meal we ate Christmas Eve.

I admit, the cynic in me thinks that he’s just saying that to get me to cook more often. But he’s adamant that he means it, and I have to say, it was a darned good meal. Good thing we have leftovers!

If you missed them, here are the recipes I used:

Pork Loin with Cranberry Sauce

Oven Roasted Asparagus

Crash Hot Potatoes

Buttered Rosemary Rolls

Baking! Me! Anyone who knows me knows I am not very comfortable in a kitchen. I love to eat, don’t get me wrong, but I’m impatient. I don’t understand the need or desire to spend hours creating a masterpiece of fine cooking which will be eaten up in less than 10 minutes. It does not compute in my over-rational brain.

(Let me give a huge shout-out to Mr. Martini, because without his cooking skills we might just live on nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches and frozen pizza.)

However, I was called upon to make something for a bake sale we held at work to benefit a local chapter of Big Brothers/Big Sisters. I didn’t feel right just buying cookie dough in a tube and trying to sell it off to my unsuspecting co-workers, so I decided to bake some cookies. From scratch.

I can’t believe it either. I also can’t believe how much FUN it was.

When we moved down from Chicago to Louisville, we hadn’t really stocked up on the basic supplies needed to bake things. Mr. Martini, an excellent cook, isn’t a baker. With my handy recipe in hand, I headed out to the local Kroger’s and purchased everything I needed, right down to the flour and baking soda and vanilla. Here we are halfway through the process:

I had to stir these the old-fashioned way (wooden spoon) because I couldn’t find my hand mixer. I did, of course, find it when I was putting away the cookie sheets after the entire process was complete. Figures.

I loved the recipe I found online, because it used the WHOLE JAR of peanut butter. The cookies ended up super-peanuty and rich. Very tasty.

The bake sale was a huge success. We raised about $100 – not bad!

It was hard to resist spending all of my cash on some of the amazing goodies people brought in. Especially the hand-made “Bourbon Balls,” a delicious pecan & bourbon candy covered in chocolate (a local favorite, since I live in Kentucky now, after all).

It was only after I was done with the cookies I realized I had completed something off of my 101 in 1001 list: #5, Bake something from scratch. I say that one is complete!

Also, I just checked, and my UPS package is “out for delivery.” Woo-hoo!