February Bread Challenge: Day 29

Boy. Am I glad that's over. I baked 2 loaves this morning, gave one to the school receptionist, and I was done!

What did I learn? Well, the whole project was meant to push my limits in terms of bread baking and in terms of connecting with people. It sort of pushed my limits in terms of bread baking. I found a REALLY EASY system to pump out bread with little effort that completely fit into my schedule and reliably produced two loaves of sandwich bread per day. Not the best bread, maybe, but pretty darn good when it was hot out of the oven. The requirement to give away bread each day, however, did not promote the experimentation and recipe innovation I had thought would be part of the project. I just wanted to make something that people would want to eat, so I played it pretty safe much of the time.

Another thing I found is that there are two kinds of pushing limits. One is pushing limits with something you are comfortable with, but upping the intensity. Baking bread every single day for one month. It took some work, and, I have to say, I feel giddy with not having to mix up any dough tonight. I feel good that I did it, and I now know that if the need arises, I can bake a lot of bread.

The other is pushing limits with something you aren't comfortable with. Throwing yourself into the deep end of the pool and making yourself swim to the side. Giving bread away to people I don't see on a daily basis was a continuing source of stress, concern, and confusion. But it was also a bigger source of satisfaction on some days than the baking was.

Giving bread to neighbors and friends whom I don't see all the time really did make me feel like I strengthened a bond with them, even though I did not magically become a master of the social interaction.

Then there is the category, maybe my favorite, that included the pediatrician, the OB/GYN, the banker who helped the kids open accounts, and the physical therapist. They seemed genuinely touched that someone took the time to express their appreciation for what they do. As my OB said, "Nobody EVER give me ANYTHING!"

Then there is the "going out on a limb category" that included the Ronald McDonald House, the Fire Station, and the bunny lady. At the first it went great, at the second they seemed unsure what to make of someone bringing them a giant boule, and at the third, well, you can read about that here. Those I was glad I did because I had set a goal and then I tried, but they were not really at all fun.

The project got a little old over the past week. In retrospect, my husband identified the 22nd as the day the project "jumped the shark."You may remember that Sunday the 18th I tried making bread with milk and honey and found it to be delicious. You may also remember that on Wednesday the 22nd I was hit with a mild but very queasy stomach bug that resulted in a feeling of disgust being associated with bread dough. Well, in between there I went a little crazy, so taken with the milk-honey mixture that I couldn't believe I hadn't done it sooner. This experimentation reached a fever pitch on Wednesday, when, egged on by my husband, I made a loaf with not only milk, but sugar, cocoa, mashed banana, and vanilla. This not-especially-chocolatey attempt at a chocolate bread is what I ate right before I got sick. I don't think it was actually bad-tasting, but bread dough made with milk started turning my stomach as it sat there in the bowl rising.

So that's it. I have pictures. I timed myself a few of the days. I have insights about the mechanics of bread making. And, of course, I have recipes that I hope to share in the coming days. But now I'm off to enjoy not making any bread.

Bread giveaway FAIL

We're getting down to the end of the month! I am behind by a couple of loaves to give away, so this morning I took two loaves of piping hot bread with me in the car when I dropped off the kids at school. On the way, I knocked on our neighbors' door. They are runners, up early, and I thought they'd appreciate some whole-grain bread. Well, I guess they had already gone to work. Oh, well.

So I dropped off the kids, and then headed over to the house of the woman who fosters bunnies and who gave me bunny poop for my garden last year. I have been torn about this all month. She was someone I wanted to thank, but only met once for a few minutes while we shoveled poop into a bucket and the kids met the bunnies she was fostering at the time. I decided not to email her, because I didn't want it to turn into a weird, complicated scheduling thing that would inconvenience her. So I stopped by a couple of weeks ago at about 9 am on a weekday and no one was home, so I decided that she must get up and go to work on weekdays before that time, based on, really, no information at all. So at around 8:30 this morning I pull up, and there's a car in the driveway, so I go to the door and knock timidly on the storm door. Nothing. So I try the bell, but my finger sort of slips off, and I don't hear anything, so I have no idea if it rang. So I wait. But I don't give up. I decide to just knock decisively on the door. I do, then immediately decide I'll leave, when she opens the door.

I don't know if I woke her up, forcing her to get dressed and answer the door, but I am afraid that on this day I had arrived, unannounced, a little too early. Or maybe she was just wondering what the heck I was doing at her door. I re-introduced myself and told her I had made her bread, whereupon she told me that she can't eat bread.

"No gluten?" I asked. Oh, no. I told her that I know how to make peanut butter cookies without gluten, and I could bring her some of those sometime. She insisted that it wasn't necessary, and asked if I wanted some poop, which made me afraid she thought I had just come over to get poop, rather than to strengthen neighborly bonds. I was determined to turn my gesture into something less weird. Apparently, I decided the best course of action would be to refuse to give up. "Are peanuts ok?"

"Yeah...but it's really not necessary."

"Well, I can bring them sometime when I come to get some poop."

"And no eggs."

"Oh."

I was beaten. She insisted that she really didn't need any baked goods from me, and that what she really needed was someone to take away poop. I don't really remember how we ended it. I'm sure I apologized, but, typically, I didn't think to find out when would be a convenient time for me to come and get the bunny poop.

A neighbor just came by

The first one we gave bread to the other day. He said the bread was delicious, and brought a bottle of honey for us to put on our bread. I am so pleased!

Stomach bug

You know how when you get sick, sometimes the last thing you ate before it hit you just makes your stomach turn to think about it? Well, I have a stomach bug. And you guessed it: I can't stand the thought of homemade bread, and I can't stand the sight of the big bowl of rising dough I mixed up before bed last night. *shudder*

Cha. Ching.

Our street has about 15 houses on it that were all built in the second half of the 80s by the same builder. At one time, there were 17 kids on the street and, it sounds like, everyone knew everyone. There was a block party every fall, and occasional progressive dinners. A lot of the same people still live here and haven't retired yet, but they have empty nests and not a ton of motivation to get out and make new friends. Pretty much everyone is pleasant, but we don't hang out or anything.

I haven't given away any bread since Friday, so today, as part of February Bread Challenge, I managed to give away 2 loaves. One was to a friend around the corner, who was delighted, and the other was to our next door neighbor, who we sort of know, but don't see much.

She held the warm bread, which was wrapped in a kitchen towel and smelled it. After initially seeming like she maybe was in the middle of something when she first answered the door, she seemed really excited about the bread. Then she said, "Have you talked to [the neighbor who knows everyone]?"

Me: No, not recently.

Neighbor: Well, we've been talking about doing a progressive dinner, like we used to...

Me (interrupting): Oh, that would be great!

N: ...and if you'd like to be included...

Me: We would definitely love to be included!

N: We will probably get together  sometime to plan it, I can let you know when that will be. It should be really fun...

I got back in the car so excited. That was just what I hoped would happen if I gave bread to the neighbors! A chance to socialize. Priceless.

The Big Rocks, Part IV: the Point!

I wrote this in my first post, where it was already 9 am and I "hadn't even gotten anything done," but I decided to reframe:

It's not even 9 am, and I helped the kids get up, get dressed, eat a healthy breakfast, brush teeth, wash faces, and get to school on time, all with a largely positive attitude, little nagging, etc. Then I took a short walk...I would say that those are some REALLY IMPORTANT things that you have done already today.

Well, when I look back at my day at the end of each day, I tend to see Important Things from the To Do List that I didn't do, like organize the office or update my will. And then I see lots of sand and pebbles that I used to fill up my jar. Little, urgent things, like cleaning the kitchen and doing the laundry and making dinner, that couldn't possibly count as Big Rocks. And I feel like once again, I have failed. I have let the big rocks slide and have only wet sand to show for it. 

So I am taking a stab at reframing this. Taking Gretchen Rubin's idea of a chart where I can compare how I did today, but replace resolutions with, I don't know what to call them. Goals? Big rocks?

Is this possible? Can I stop to reframe at the end of each day, and maybe see that all this sand really builds up into these hugely important rocks?

I made a draft of a list of Big Rocks so that at the end of the day, or maybe even throughout the day,  I can go over my day and say, this thing that I did that seemed like an inconvenience and a distraction? This was part of a huge rock. Instead to going down a list of resolutions and checking off things I did, and seeing where I've failed, I'll go through my day and see how the little things were actually part of bigger things.

The list needs work. But here are a few Big Rocks that I think may help me see things differently:

• Look for opportunities to create a network of local friends. Example: The phone rang just before I was about to start my exercises, and I answered it, even though I had just enough time to exercise before preschool pickup. Mistake? No! I was able to talk to my neighbor about keeping an eye on her house while she's out of town, and she also asked me over for coffee another day. I took an opportunity to create a network of local friends, and that is very important!
• Take care of my physical, mental, and emotional needs. Example: I was feeling like I was catching a cold, so I didn't do all my exercises, and I didn't walk. Giant failure? No! I was taking care of my physical needs.
• Help the kids learn how to take care of their toys and books/themselves/their home. Example: I spent 10 minutes working with the boys to clean up a plant they knocked over. Waste of time? Inconvenience? No! I was helping them learn how to take care of their home, and that's very important!

I tried this last night, and it sort of worked, but I think my list of Big Rocks needs work. I'll let you know how it goes. Feel free to comment and let me know what you think. And, boy, am I relieved to finally finish this train of thought!

Oh, the bread.

Yes, I am still making bread. And still not telling you a thing about it. Sorry about that. It's really not my intention to keep you in the dark.

The hard parts of the project remain, in ascending order of difficulty:
1) make bread every day = easy
2) give bread away every day = medium to hard
3) blog about the bread project = apparently impossible

Every day so far this month until yesterday, I have given away bread. Twice it was eating some part of a loaf with a guest here at my house, so those are maybe a little lame, and once I had to freeze a loaf and give it to my target the next day, but yesterday was the first day I just did not manage to give away any bread. Ridiculously, we spent quite a while baking cookies to bring to a friend's house for dinner, but did not bring any bread with us. It was the house of my friend Jennifer, who is the one who got me baking bread in the first place, so I was sure she would have made some fresh bread for the occasion and thought it would be silly to bring bread. Well, she hadn't, and they had some store-bought artisanal bread that was delicious, but very similar to my boule, so I totally could have brought some, but missed my chance. I still have some of yesterday's bread in the freezer, so maybe I can still give some away sometime.

But. Every day so far this month until yesterday, I mixed up dough at night and baked it the next day. Until last night, when we got back from Jennifer's, and I was tired, and I figured, it's Sunday tomorrow, I'll just make some pita bread or something. Well, I never got around to deciding what to do, and we were trying to get a few things done around the house, and finally, at 2:30 I decided to just mix something up, just so I could say I had made bread.

Now, when you are planning to give away the bread you make, you don't have a lot of incentive to really try new things. But today I guess I was liberated by having failed to give away bread yesterday. Plus, I was already cutting the rising time down by about half, so I didn't know how it would come out anyway. So I tried a couple of things I had never done before: used milk instead of water to add some fat, and added honey, thinking that the sugar from the honey might get the yeast going faster than normal. The dough started to rise and smell yeasty, and I thought about leaving it overnight to really do its thing, but then, I thought, No, then I won't have baked bread today. So it's due out of the oven in 2 minutes. I'll tell you at the end of the post how it came out.

I will tell you now, though, that I mixed up a similar mixture tonight, to let it rise overnight and see how that is. And then I licked some dough off my finger. It. was. horrible. So bitter and terrible and punishing. I have no idea why it would taste like that, and I can't really remember if I've ever tasted the dough before, so I don't know if it always tastes like that, or what.

Timer's going off; I'll report back in a minute about the bread coming out of the oven now...

Here it is.

It's kind of short.

Came right out of the pan, though. Sounds hollow when I thump the bottom, that's a good sign.

Seems to be cooked...oh, yum. Not bitter.

Definitely kind of different. Hmmmmm. Better have another piece with butter and honey to really evaluate it properly.

The Big Rocks, Part III

I think I'm really going to get to the point this time. I have a good feeling about it.

Part of Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project is/was keeping a resolutions chart. Like Ben Franklin and his  famous resolutions, she makes a list of resolutions, and scores herself on them daily. She explains pretty succinctly at that link why they work so well for her. I read the Happiness Project over New Year's weekend, and, though I think a Resolutions Chart would probably be useful to me, I did not make one.  I've never believed in New Year's resolutions, particularly, because I have always felt that I tried my best to do what I thought I should be doing all year round (not that I succeeded, but that I was trying) so there was no reason to make New Year's resolutions that, like diets, seem to be made to be broken.

So I continued my policy of not making resolutions, but I was obviously very inspired by what I read in her book (she appears in probably 1/3 of my posts, and a lot of what I write about has resulted from trying her suggestions), and I did jot down a list of things I thought of while reading that I thought would make me happier in the new year. It said:

• plenty project
• * time--slow down
• create at will
• be open to earning $$
• find people to play music with
• call friends; spend time with local friends; look for opportunities to create a network
• call not email
• reframe

In one of my first posts, I talked about reframing so that I would feel good about the few important things I had gotten done in a morning rather than focusing on the things I wasn't getting done. So this is where I am about to tie in the big rocks, but I have to stop for now. I'll try again later.

The Big Rocks, Part II

So, back to First Things First...

I would say the book is geared toward people who not only work, but for whom their career is very important. My career as an archivist, which is what my career was at the time when I read this book (and still is, in theory, anyway) was important to me, but not in a way where it was in danger of interfering with my personal life beyond the fact that I had to go to my job 40 hours a week and I was often worried about things related to work when I wasn't at work. So some of the things he suggested didn't really resonate with me.

Here was a problem I had: keeping our tiny kitchen clean. I kept wanting to put cleaning the kitchen in the Important And Urgent category because if everything is dirty and piled on the counter, it makes cooking dinner difficult or impossible, particularly for someone like me who is a morning person and can barely muster the will to go on after about 4 pm. (Either Mr. Covey does not do his own dishes, or he is one of those people who has plenty of energy after dinner and he just does them in 10 minutes, because he did not address this in his book.) 

But, my husband argued, doing dishes couldn't possibly be considered an Important thing! It had to be one of the either Urgent (to me) or Non-Urgent (to him) But Not Important things. But, I countered, cooking healthy meals is an important and worthwhile goal, and having a clean kitchen enables this.

Now that I am, for the time being, a stay-at-home mom, the past 5 years have felt at times like one long string of Unimportant things. Would Mr. Covey label putting away laundry as Important? How about making lunch? Wiping off the table? Getting dressed? Brushing teeth? Putting on shoes? And to top it off, for many people, being a stay-at-home parent often feels like a long string of Unimportant But Urgent Things That I Am Failing To Do because, somehow, for some people, taking care of a baby makes getting anything at all done feel nearly impossible. What a horrible feeling to have no big rocks even in play, and to be not even getting the pebbles and water into the jar.

Now, as I have mentioned before, it is time to reframe.

...and I will do that another day.

The big rocks, Part I

I keep starting posts but not having time to finish them. My goal is to write a little on the blog every day, even if it doesn't result in something actually being posted every day. I'll just keep plugging away and hopefully more things will get posted soon.

Years ago, back before we had kids or were even married, when my husband, Dr. J, and I lived in temperate Northern California, we thought we were busy. Once you have kids, you just shake your head and laugh because you thought you had no time before. Hahaha! Anyway, we both read a book by Stephen Covey et al. called First Things First. In it, Covey suggests identifying what is important in your life and identifying specific goals and activities related to these important things. The idea is that these important activities are often of a non-urgent nature, so they are always getting pushed aside by urgent-but-not-really-important things. For example, you would like to take your kid to the zoo, which is important because spending time with your kid is important to you, but since it's not urgent,* you keep putting it off so you can deal with other, non-important tasks that are urgent. You may even feel, as I would, that SOON, I will catch up on all these little tasks, and THEN I will have all the time in the world to spend some real quality time with my kid. Exercise could be another example. You feel it's important, but it CAN be put off for a day. But if you put it off for one day every day, it never happens.

The idea that you should identify what is important and do those things before all the little things on the list are done? That's golden. I have talked about that before on here and elsewhere, but not in a Covey way. 

So what you do instead, Mr. Covey says, is when you are scheduling your week, you put in these important-but-not-urgent activities into your schedule first, and then squeeze in the little things around them. Because once your schedule is full of little things, you can't fit in the big ones. His analogy is filling a jar with rocks and sand: if you put in the sand first, then the little rocks, the big ones don't fit, but if you put in the big rocks first, all the little stuff will fit in around them. Here's a YouTube video demonstrating this with actual rocks and sand. There are a million videos of it, but this one was short, if not very neatly done.

Gotta move on to another big rock. I'll continue this soon, I hope...

*unless you have this guilt-inducing song running through your head all the time, as I often do

Boule-y boule-y

Challenge Update: I took this picture the other day and now can't remember what I was going to say about it. But I am still baking bread! And tomorrow is the middle of the month! The Challenge is not as challenging as I was afraid it would be. It is just the right amount of challenge. The challenge really has been having a chance to blog about it or anything else. 

The computer is back with a new hard drive, but the challenge with that is that we upgraded the OS, and so it also has a new personality to go with its new brain, and so everything I try to do (merge mailing labels for a school mailing, sync the phone, etc.) takes about 50 times longer than I think it should. 

Seems like pictures on other people's blogs always look better than this one that I took with my phone. Oh, well. At least you can see that's it's bread. 

Giving

So as I think I said before, baking bread everyday has turned out to be the easy part. The hard part is the giving away. I now realize that I'm always afraid that even something intended as a kind gesture will be seen as intrusive or inappropriate.

I have had to fight my tendency to scuttle up to my target, ashamedly hand them a loaf of bread while muttering something about having extra bread, and running off. Not exactly in line with my intention of making friends, strengthening ties, and learning about Syracuse. For example, my idea for bringing bread to the Ronald McDonald House came from friends who had brought strawberries there once after picking more than they could eat themselves. But I don't know anything about the RMH AT ALL, other than that it seems like the parents staying there might need all the homebaked bread and freshly picked strawberries they can get. The lady at the Ronald McDonald House seemed very happy to receive the bread, but my husband and I are both surprised that a place like that, which I assume is run by a large organization with lawyers, etc., would accept bread from a stranger showing up at the door. I mean, what if I had poisoned it, and then a guest there ate some! I can't imagine why anyone would do that to people staying at the RMH, but corporations don't like to take chances. But did I ask, while I was there, if they could accept these kinds of donations and if it was actually something they encouraged so I would know next time I wanted to bring them something? I did not.

I have decided that "I made you some bread" is probably a better opening, even if I feel that it's not strictly true since I usually don't know who is going to get it when I'm making it. I'm not really telling people about my Challenge or the blog; not taking pictures of people I'm giving bread to. Just keeping track every day of what kind I make and who gets it.

In another post I'll list who's been given bread as well as my recipe, because it's wicked easy, and you should totally try it.

Ronald McDonald House

I just brought a loaf of bread to the Ronald McDonald House! This was my first loaf delivered to strangers. I was scared, but they didn't look at me crosseyed or call the police. They thanked me heartily and cheerfully. And I went on my way, feeling heartened and cheerful myself.

FBC update and Intro to Treats

It is now Feburary 6, and I have so far made bread every day of February. Every day but yesterday, I have given a loaf away. Yesterday we had friends over and ate most of a loaf together, so I'm counting that.

Here are my thoughts so far:

• baking bread every day has not really been a hassle because I am doing it in a very stripped down way most days
• so far, I have not made any new friends by giving away bread
• since I often vary the variables (kinds of flour; amount of yeast, etc.) if I make one loaf in a day and give it away, I have no way to be certain if it's cooked through, if it's not as dense as a brick, etc.
• people seem very pleased to be given a fresh loaf of bread, even if you tell them you're not sure how it is because it comes out a little different every time: the pediatrician was so touched gave me a big hug
• I can overthink ANYTHING

Last winter when I first started making bread, fresh bread warm from the oven with plenty of butter was such a treat, that we would eat a bunch of it every time I made it. That, it turns out, is a really good way to get fat. Eventually, since I wasn't making every day, I got into the mindset that it would be good if we didn't run out of it right away, and so we got into the mindset of saving the bread, but not too long, because bread with no fat in it doesn't stay fresh forever. So it became a little bit of a rationing and controlling mindset about the bread. Not that I was denying anyone bread, but my approach changed from  "gobble it up (and get fat)" to "save it (and end up eating some pretty stale bread)."

I realized this the first couple of days of this month when I made 2 loaves each day, so we would have one to eat and one to give away. Knowing that there would be more bread the next day really put me  back in the "let's eat all the bread now!" mindset. Fresh bread became a treat again because I wasn't having a scarcity mindset about it.

But I wonder: does something you have every day really count as a treat?

My First World Problems

Two days ago I was pumped up and primed to tell you all about Day 2 of the February Bread Challenge, and how hard it was for me because I was, as usual, overthinking everything and just couldn't figure out who would be best to give that day's bread to. But these tribulations are a story for another day. So there I am, logging onto my year-and-a-half-old iMac, and it keeps rejecting my password. A few restarts later, it became clear something was very wrong. Trying to get the computer working again has eaten up a bunch of time over the past couple of days and it still isn't working; even if it does start to work, there may be damage to the hard drive (the desk-ish thing we bought at IKEA to house the computer may not have allowed for enough ventilation, and we may have fried the hard drive). Plus, although we had backups of most of the stuff on it, there may be some very old things that weren't backed up, but we aren't really sure. You know, it's been a pain.

When you start a blog, (and when I say "you," of course, I mean, "I") you are putting yourself out there, open to criticism and distain from, well, anyone around the world who has access to the Internet. You start to imagine who might read what you say, and how someone in a different situation than yours might judge you, say, for writing about trivial matters while people are starving.

I don't know if it was this vulnerability to judgement that got me thinking about First World Problems --problems you have to live in a rich country to even imagine-- or if it was an article called "Half the world's richest 1% live in the United States" that my cousin-in-law, who works for the World Bank, posted on Facebook. Here is a quote that has been sticking with me:

In the grand scheme of things, even the poorest 5% of Americans are better off financially than two thirds of the entire world.

I do not post this to trivialize the very real problems of Americans living in poverty. But wow. That is really saying something almost incomprehensible about 2/3 of the people in the world.

As always, The Onion really gets to the crux of the matter in this Point/Counterpoint, although once you get to the second half the humor really drains away.

The problem of the IKEA desk with poor ventilation is, of course, a First World Problem. As my husband put it, I have it so hard because one of the 3 computers in the house may have died (here I  disclaim: "the other 2 computers are old and we don't really use them anymore; I don't want you to get the impression that we use 3 computers in our house! I mean, unless someone in visiting, and my husband brings his work laptop home...") and the iPhone and 2 iPods ("one of those we got free when we bought our iMac!" I protest; "good heavens, it's not like we BOUGHT 2 iPods!"), are so hard to type on, how will I ever post to my blog?

And pretty much all of the problems I have addressed on this blog are First World Problems. "Oh, I have SO MANY CLOTHES in my closet, it just makes me feel like I  have NOTHING!" "Oh, I own 2 houses (disclaimer: not outright; we have mortgages), if only I could just SELL one and be DONE with it!" "Oh, I have to CHOOSE which TV to buy but there are TOO MANY OPTIONS!" "Oh, I have SO MUCH BREAD! How will I EVER give it all away!" Please. It's disgraceful.

But is it really simply that I'm a selfish boor? I think it's maybe part of human nature. From the Wikipedia entry for hedonic treadmill:

The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the supposed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.^[1] According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness. 

So maybe it's not our fault, per se, that we think Cracker Barrel running out of Chicken and Rice on a Saturday night is a major problem. Maybe we in the first world are no shallower than those in the world who have, literally, nothing. Just a whole lot luckier to live where we live.

And now, if you feel like you need to assuage some First World Guilt, here's a link to Heifer International.

February Bread Challenge, Day 1

I'm not going to post about this day-by-day, I don't think, because then I'd never post about anything else. But since it's the first day...

I mixed up dough for 2 loaves last night and figured out how I could come down at 5:50 when the alarm goes off, put the dough into pans and stick it in the oven. Then, using the "time bake" feature on our 1988 oven, not have to do anything else until taking it out of the oven at 7:30. This is a new routine, and that is one thing I hope to get out of this project: incentive to try new ways to bake bread--improvements, shortcuts, etc.--to see what works and what doesn't, thereby expanding my skills and knowledge. One thing I learned is that it can be hard to know if the oven's on when you're using "time bake", but if you start twiddling knobs in a panic, you are likely to turn off the oven and not realize it until later, at which point you will have no idea how long your bread has baked at what temperature. Another thing I learned is that you can turn the oven back on and guess about the time and the bread will still come out yummy.

Now, the other part of the challenge is what to do with all the bread. My lovely, generous, deserving friend Tina, whom I have mentioned before in regards to laundry, came over for tea and a visit this morning, and I thought giving her a loaf of bread would be the perfect start to this project, since the first time I met her and her partner and her daughter was when they signed up through the local mom's listserve and brought a meal to us after we had our baby after we moved here and knew no one. They are stunningly giving and ready to help other people in need. I am working on being more like them, but I have an awfully long way to go. Long story short: Tina's partner has celiac disease, and Tina thought it would take her forever to eat a loaf of bread, so we ate some together, and I'm going to give the other loaf to...someone else. 

Unresolved questions re: goals and procedures for FBC: is it that I'm making bread (loosely defined as either something with yeast OR a flatbread) every day? Or is it that I am giving away bread every day? Or both? I'm not sure. And I am thinking right now I will do it every day of the month, but we'll see how I feel on the weekend. Or tomorrow. I'm not making any promises here.

And, what the heck. I'll post a picture of the bread.