Daily Bread

I made bread yesterday and of course, anyone who knows me very well, knows I am a trainwreck in the kitchen. I can usually come up with something tasty but at a cost! The cost being the mess I make of the kitchen and the mockery from Vance. My messes drive him crazy. He thinks its really easy to avoid flinging flour onto every surface within 10 feet of me when I'm baking. He thinks I could easily avoid using every single pot, pan, dish, spoon, cup, and bowl we own when I'm cooking. He thinks I have time to clean counters during my cooking process. He thinks following a recipe without skipping ingredients or miscalculating them when I double or triple them is easy! He thinks its ridiculous that I keep preheating the oven before removing the stuff inside (last nights pizza boxes this time). He thinks I could boil water just once without having it overflow onto the floor. And just once, he expects me to make sure I have all the ingredients I need BEFORE I start baking so he won't have to rush to the store mid-recipe. He really does ask a lot of me! But its all in fun because while I am a trainwreck in the kitchen, at least I make an effort! And I know he appreciates that. Besides, he has his own little issues in the kitchen as well. Vance is a really good cook and we are very grateful that he enjoys it (or we wouldn't eat!) but he has a really bad habit of not turning off the stove or the oven when he's done. We've come home from 3 hours of church sometimes and found the stove still burning hot. Once, he left some corndogs in the toaster oven for l over 6 hours and that was a fun smokie little surprise when we got home! The corndogs were so burned, they just crumbled in our hands when we went to throw them out. I am so excited to be getting a complete kitchen make-over next month. All the cabinets are getting taken out and replaced with new ones. New countertops too! And a new sink and new backsplash! Vance just built me a new pantry last week! So I'm feeling like I need to start justifying it all and I've taken to the kitchen! I made bread yesterday. I figured I'd double the recipe so it would last longer. Oops! My poor kitchenaid wasn't large enough to hold it all! It was overflowing out of the bowl. And the yeast I was dissolving in warm water...ya....I didn't use a big enough cup and it grew and grew and grew out of control till it was all over the counter and dripping down the cabinets. Of course, this all happened while I was at Bashas buying more flour because of course I didn't make sure I had enough before I started. My kitchen looked like a snow storm hit after I fired up the mixer and tried to blend in the flour. And by the time I had used up almost every bowl in my cupboard trying to fix all these little set-backs, my sink was overflowing and my dishwasher was on over-load. Not to mention all the mopping I had to do. I wish I had thought to take a picture because it really is hard to believe! So really, trainwreck is a mild word to describe my attempts in the kitchen but danged if I didn't bake some beautiful loaves of bread! They were beautiful! And so sweet! And I had leftover dough enough to make fry bread for dinner too! Yum! Of course I had to endure the rolling eyes of my husband as he observed the state of our kitchen when I brought him in to show him my perfect loaves, but he ate my bread and he loved it! I'm not giving up. I've been trying to learn to use a kitchen for over 15 years and eventually I've gotta get it, right?