Baking and Burning

Baking and Burning

(updated pictures of the finished nursery)

As we are waiting for Rylee to get here, we've been getting as much stuff done as we can. 

We burned over 50 cardboard boxes that we had been storing in the basement. Burning them was much easier than taking the time to flatten them and drive them to the recycling down the road. 

Last week after meeting with the pediatrician, Sam and I went out to eat at this wonderful local restaurant in Watkinsville. Not only was the food amazing and the service wonderful, but our waiter learned that I liked to bake (you should have seen their desserts display) and offered to sell me some fresh yeast. For those of you who don't know, yeast actually comes in another form besides dry, and it is EXTREMELY difficult to find. At least, that has been my experience. Well, little did Sam and I know what we were getting ourselves into. 

We knew the cake yeast was expiring soon (rather it "expired" within a couple days of us getting it), but what we didn't realize was that this sucker was 16oz of fresh yeast (not 6 like I had originally thought). That meant that we had to do A LOT, a whole, whole, lot of baking pronto to use this precious yeast before it went bad. And man, did we do a lot of baking. I think Sam has vowed to not bake for a whole year! 

(crescent roll dough takes A LOT of butter)

In total, we made four batches of cinnamon roll dough, eight batches of crescent roll dough (to be used for crescent rolls and pastries), and two loaves of bread. Each cinnamon roll batch made four "Kroger tube" size batches, and each crescent roll batch will make 14 large bakery-sized crescent rolls and 4 Kroger-sized crescent rolls. 

In case you are wondering, we were able to tell a difference with using the fresh yeast instead of the instant. I made a loaf of French bread last week with normal dry yeast, and this week with the fresh yeast. This week's bread was extra soft and delicious! 

Trulee and Brett came to visit over Thanksgiving break, and they helped us do a lot of stuff around the house while they were here. One of the projects that we tackled was getting rid of the grass that had grown up in the garden. We want to lay down landscaping fabric around the pathways, and the fluffy dead grass was making it difficult. With Brett on "fireman" duty, and Trulee and I standing by to help if needed, Sam burned the garden. Now we just have to lay down the landscaping fabric!  

Check out this week's video on life on the MinIsland!

Pax Domini cum spirito tuo temper sit,
Torey & Sam 

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