WOW I did not even realize how long it had been since I had posted but it has been a crazy month and a half or so. Finals went really well, I got all A's for the semester and even made the President's List! But between the break from school and moving, I haven't been doing that much baking lately. That's right, I said moving!!! For those of you that know about our disastrous house search, you know that this is a freakin miracle! We have been house hunting for about six months now because the house that we fell in love with on the first day of searching was a short sale. We made an offer and the sellers accepted it but then it had to go to their bank...and we never heard anything back, for months and months. Oh except for once when their system had an error and rejected every offer for every short sale on record. So we kept looking..and looking..and couldn't find anything that compared...and couldn't stop thinking about that house. Between premature packing, people giving us furniture when they moved away, and wedding gifts, our apartment was getting smaller by the day. And then four and a half months after our offer, we finally heard back that it was accepted!! It was another battle getting to closing, but that is another story for another day...it would take me hours to write it all and I would get really really angry all over again, so we'll skip to the happy part! We closed on December 16 and we are finally all moved in and settled. Well pretty much. Here's a picture:
Ok, but enough about that... this is a baking blog after all! As I said, hasn't been much baking going on around here lately, especially for the holiday season. But my parents and Grandma came down from SC before Christmas to help us move, and I did make a couple of the recipes from Breads class for them to try. I did my best to duplicate the six-strand Challah - not as pretty as the one from class but not bad for doing it by myself, I think. I also made the focaccia recipe in a loaf-ish form so we could use it for sandwiches, and worked some pesto into the dough. Yum!
And while they were here, we made homemade pizza for Grandma's birthday using the dough recipe from Breads class (forgot to take a picture but it was delicious!) and I surprised her with a pecan praline mini-cheesecake.
My family had to leave before Christmas and we were crazy busy unpacking, etc so I didn't do much in the way of Christmas cookies this year. Which is way out of the norm for me, I grew up in a house with 20 varieties of Christmas cookies every year. I did attempt my favorite of my Mom's cookies on Christmas day, Spritz cookies. They turned out okay except that I didn't realize until the batter was made that my cookie press was in pieces from last year's deep cleaning and I had no idea how to put it back together, and Trevor was at work. Helpless I know but what can I say? So I made freeform Spritz blobs...needless to say, no pictures of those beauties. But they were still tasty!
I know I said no more house talk but one more thing...since it was a short sale, they took the majority of the appliances and we had to buy a new oven, fridge, washer and dryer. The most exciting of which is obviously the oven! We got really good deals so that we could splurge on this fine piece of machinery I had been eyeballing for months:
A couple of companies make a double oven in a standard oven size now, but I picked this LG one because it has an extra infrared feature I haven't really figured out how to work yet. Oh, and because it had touch-screen buttons for the stove instead of knobs. Is it just me or are those things impossible to get clean?? Seems like a tiny thing I know but it has been a pet peeve for years. I'm really excited about the oven even though I haven't done much baking. But the two ovens have already come in handy for cooking supper - garlic bread up top while the meatballs are below, for example. Can't wait to break it in some more!
Well this was a crazy long post for me so thank you for reading if you have made it this far!! I promise I will post more often now that school is starting back up next week. I am really excited, and have been out shopping this week for all the new tools we are required to have this semester. I'm still a little nervous because both of the teachers I have this semester are supposed to be really tough, but I can't wait anyways.
Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! Happy 2012!
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