The Adventures of a Frustrated Baker

About 6 months ago, I made the very difficult decision to leave my long-time job at Lower Columbia College for the opportunity to work at University of Portland, which had been a dream of mine for quite a while. During my last few days at LCC, one of my co-workers and friends asked me if I would finally be able to resume my blog and share recipes since I was going from a 40 hour work-week to a 35 hour work-week. At the time, I told him I wasn’t sure but that I would certainly try! Well, it has been 6 months...and all that extra time ended up consumed with a new obsession - gardening! (I’m sure there will be more about that new adventure in the future.) Anyway, I still haven’t been all that active with baking lately but I think this is the perfect opportunity to change that, if for no other reason, than it has  been almost impossible to even buy bread in the town of Woodland right now! Lol Which leads me to my post today - we’re making bread! And though I will end up making ...

Hello everyone!  Glad to see you again!  Now that the school year is finally under way and the first day of fall is behind us, it is time to start up with blogging again!  One of my most favorite things of fall is that the weather is once again perfect for baking!  Don't get me wrong, I still bake even in the midst of 90+ degree weather when the mood strikes, I'm just not super motivated to take photos or write about it...I'm most motivated to eat it!  To ease us all back into our baking routines, I decided to start off with banana bread...perfect for before school breakfasts on the go or a post soccer game snack.  I LOVE banana bread in all its forms...with nuts...with chocolate...in muffins...in bundt form...but most of all I just love the typical banana bread loaf!  Nothing beats that basic loaf!  I love to warm it up and slather on the butter too...though that is not ideal for shoving in your face on your way out the door to work! :) ...

I love having granola for breakfast!  I remember always wanting to have some granola whenever we had it in the house as a kid, it seemed like the kind of food grown ups ate, sort of like Grape Nuts only way better! The biggest down fall to granola is the really yummy stuff is sort of expensive, especially if it has lots of fruit and nuts, just the way I like it!  That's fine though, they can keep their expensive granola because this stuff is so simple to make at home! It takes almost no time and the joys of making it yourself is you know exactly what is going into it and you can customize your ingredients depending on your tastes!  Like I said, I love mine with lots of fruit and toasted nuts so I tend to use quite a bit of them in my recipe.  Feel free to adjust this to your tastes and try out different ingredients like coconut and various seeds, nuts and fruits. In a medium bowl combine your oats and sunflower seeds. Roughly chop you...

Good morning!  I just love starting Sundays with a freshly made warm breakfast!  There is just something about sitting down with the family and having a yummy meal together that just makes my day.  Maybe it is because it is the last day of the weekend and I always start Sundays hoping that I will just be able to sit back and relax, and if the season is right end it with a football game!  It rarely works out that way, especially during the school year, but one can always hope! This morning we started our day of with French Toast Bread Pudding!  I love this recipe because it is quick to throw together and bake the next morning and because it is a great way to use up old bread, particularly if you made it yourself and cannot bare the thought of throwing it away when it starts to go stale!  For this morning's bread pudding we used up the leftover Choereg bread we made for a Girl Scout event last week and it worked out great.  Since Choereg is sweet, i...