Slow January

I have been waiting to write a new post, because not much has been happening. Marlene lost her 4th tooth and is now missing all four incisors. Amelia has gotten even more stubborn, if that is possible and tries to exert her independence whenever possible. I was glad when vacation was over and school and preschool started up again. A routine is a nice thing.

So, when Jason - who is back from Egypt - proposed to take the girls for a weekend to his parents, I was very excited to have a weekend to myself. And to make the most of it, I decided to visit Victoria B.C. with a friend. We just wanted to get out of town so we were not tempted to clean or do other things that should have been doen a long time ago. So I drove Jason and the girls to the airport on Friday the 25th and enjoyed a quiet evening and an undisturbed night of sleep. (Both girls have had problems with sleeping lately, so we are usually up three or four times a night.) In the morning Jen picked me up and we took the Victoria Clipper to Viktoria. Those packages are pretty nice. They start you out with a champagne breakfast and then shuttle you with taxis to the hotel. We had decided to stay at the Empress to treat ourselves. This time of the year there is not much difference in prize between the Empress and other hotels. Our room was ready upon arrival at 11 am and so we could get our stay started very smoothly. For lunch we went to High Tea. I had researched places the night before and everyone seems to agree, that the "White Heather Tea Room" is the best. We made reservations and took a taxit to Oak Bay. We were well rewarded. The Tea Room is owned by a scottish lady who knows a bit or two about tea. As you can see from the picture above we did not leave hungry and we paid less for the two of us than we would have paid for one person at the Empress (were all the toruist busses go). We walked the three miles back to downtown and saw some nice neighborhoods. We even stumbeled upon Craidarogh Castle. That was quite a treat.

After resting in the room we went for drinks in the "Bengal Room" at the hotel. The Indian Buffet smelled great, but there was no way we could tackle that. Instead we walked around some more and ended up in a little Carrabean Restaurant. We had plans for the live Jazz at the hotel, but we were too tired and just went to bed.

The next morning we worked out in the gym and swimming pool, before we checked out and went for breakfast. Sunday was a day of beautiful sunshine, so we just walked around and exlpored more of Viktoria. In the afternoon we had more tea at the St. James Tea Room, before we boarded the Clipper to go back home.

We had a great relaxing weekend and I think we both agreed, that we will do this again.

My new Bread

Since I feel I have the baking department pretty much covered, it is rare that I make a new and exciting discovery. The fact that I dedicate a whole blog entry just to this bread shows you the level of my excitement! It just goes to show, that you can always learn something new. As many of you know, I started baking bread when I moved to the U.S. over 10 years ago. While I think I make several varieties pretty successful, it is very hard to produce a loaf at home that tastes like from an artisan bakery (or in Germany, almost any bakery). The home ovens are not hot enough, I don't work with various stages of fermentation and starters, procuring good flour etc., all this contributes to the fact, that you can not make a "Bakery" loaf at home. So when I tasted this new "no knead bread" at a friends house, made by her father, who is a quite experienced baker, I was floored, I could not believe it, it was just perfect. And the best part is, it is extremely easy, idiot proof (if you follow the steps) and the variations are pretty much endless.

So here is the story. A while ago the New York times published a recipe for a "no knead bread", bakes inside a Dutch Oven in an very hot oven. This recipe proved to be not very consistent in its results, so the "American Testkitchen" (a PBS TV Show) and "Cooks Illustrated" worked on it and perfected it. You use a very high liquid to flour ratio and let the dough sit for 8-18 hours to ferment. So instead of kneading to produce the long gluten strands you let time and enzymes work for you. The protein strands in the flour are broken down and realigned. Then you knead only 10 times and let it rise for 2 hours. The second trick is, that they bake the bread inside a Dutch Oven. Being inside a closed space helps the bread to rise faster, cook, and built a nice crust, because the moisture can not escape. For a rich flavor, they replace some of the water with beer (beer and bread are very related) and add a little vinegar for depth. The complex flavor the bread achieves is amazing.

Sounds interesting? Want to know more? Here is the link to the article, it is well worth reading for everyone, who makes bread at home:

http://www.cooksillustrated.com/byissue.asp#topOfPage

Don't worry about becoming a member, they give you this free trial. I actually had several free trials, so now I had to go out and actually by the magazine, because I could not get in for free anymore. But it was well worth it.

Into the New Year

We had a little snow on Christmas Day; I would not call it "white Christmas", more like "slushy grey Christmas", but enough to make a snow penguin in the yard. That day Marlene lost her 3rd tooth, as well. She has now quite a gap in the front. And the 4th incisor is barely hanging on. We will see, how long it is going to make it; I will keep you updated.

Since Christmas it has been kind of quiet around here. All the big hoopla is done. It has been raining a lot, which kept us housebound, or at least mall bound. We took turns being sick, with my mother still recovering. The girls have been playing with their playmobil castle which has now a carriage and a treasure room. This treasure room gets robbed a lot by Amelia's pirate ship, and even the dragon seems not to be able to prevent it. We have been spending some time in malls and I was surprised, that is was not as busy as I expected it. During a rain break we headed to the zoo. Our all time favorite, besides the Zoomasium (an indoor zoo playground with research and learning station), is Willawong Station, an Australian Outback building, that houses over 150 bird, mostly parakeets. They fly free inside the building and you can feed them with millet on feed sticks. Amelia gave a few months ago one of the birds the name "Paul". Off course we don't really know which one it is, but she always recognizes him again. In winter the zoo is much less busy and so the birds come more freely to visitors. The other day I had five birds fighting over my millet.

Today we went to the International district (the China Town of Seattle) and had some Asian food. In the evening we enjoyed soup at Tor and Jess'. Soon school is starting again and with that, swimming on Thursday nights, which will prevent us from participating. And we saw Karla and Einar. The girls love to play with Einar. They had a lot of fun "sharing" seats.