Kitchen Therapy

I'm feeling better today. I was going to get up early, but I slept until almost 11 a.m. and woke up feeling so refreshed that I knew I'd needed the sleep badly. After coffee I went out to run errands. It was a crisp, beautiful sunny day so I wore my favorite green sweater to the bank, the co-op, and the grocery store. Then I came home and spent the rest of the afternoon cooking.

I made three loaves of honey-wheat bread with flaxseeds and sesame seeds, brushed with melted butter. I should've kneaded them longer but I was distracted with the next project, so they're a bit dense but they taste good. I just had two thick slices for dinner... good stuff. Next time I'll add more seeds.

Next came paprika-cheese cookies. I wanted to make cheese straws, but I don't have a cookie press, and I couldn't get the dough to hold together well enough to make twists (next time I'll add an egg). So I rolled out the dough and cut it into little circles, sprinkled it with paprika and baked it up crispy. These I had to put in a bag straightaway because I couldn't stop nibbling at them. They're so good! What is is about cheese that's so addictive?

On a healthier note, the next up was a fat-free, no-sugar-added "cookie" that I made to use up four blackened overripe bananas. These little drop cookies contain nothing but the bananas, my friend's chunky applesauce leftover from Thanksgiving (thank you), dried cranberries, walnuts, oats, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, and cloves. They're deliciously chewy and seriously addictive. I had to put those away in a hurry too.

After that I made savory pie crust that I can use to make quiche later on when I want to. It's a whole-wheat crust with rosemary, nutmeg, and cheddar cheese, and it should go really well with the pumpkin quiche recipe I recently discovered. I made enough for two crusts and put them up separately in the freezer.

Now I'm running the dishwasher and thinking I'll put up a couple of sweet pie crusts too before I go to bed. I'm thinking a sweet crust with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves so I can do a holiday pie when K comes home or when our friend comes to visit in January - or both, it makes two crusts after all. So yeah, I'll whip that up and then have a hot bath and go to bed at a reasonable hour, or maybe knit a little more since the scarf is coming along so nicely.

Then in the morning I have to figure out what to do with this gigantic pile of bread and snackies.