Death By Carbs

I love bread. In fact, I took on a new project of trying to make bread from scratch. I was inspired by a recipe, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. It seemed simple enough.

But apparently I spoke too soon when I set my Facebook status earlier this week to "making bread. A first...I have never heard of homemade bread hurting anyone, yet."

On Monday, I mixed the flour, water, salt and yeast, let it rise, and then put it in the fridge to chill. I also took AK to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought pizza stone, the one piece of required equipment that I did not yet own.

That evening I arranged the racks in my oven appropriately, carefully placing the stone and required pan for water in it. I also got other items ready on my counter so that I would be ready to go yesterday when I got home from work.

My plan was to get the dough relaxing on the counter and set the oven preheating while I fed the girls. Once they were done I could just pop my dough in the oven and the house would be filled with the wonderful scent of fresh baked bread in no time. The Hoos would be wowed by my homemaking skills and I would be in bread nirvana.

I should have known.

The girls were out of sorts when I picked them up. AK was starving since they had started her on a new schedule giving her snack at 2:15 instead of 3:15; she was also exhausted since I forgot to send in a pacifier and she only took one nap and had been awake since 11:45. LP also did not nap and ran out of her classroom door with a few other kids when another mom was frozen in place holding the door open.

When we got into the house I quickly removed the bread dough from the fridge and placed it on the counter to relax. I then set about calming LP and AK, mostly by giving them a slightly early dinner (it was 5:30 and they usually eat at 6).

Once they were set up, I got the oven preheating to 450 and shaped my dough. At 6:15, I decided it was time to get the dough in the oven. After spilling cornmeal all over the floor (it kept the dough from sticking to my cutting board, but nothing kept the cornmeal on the board), I finally got the dough on the stone. It looked beautiful.

I then got hot water out of the tap and prepared to pour it into the pan in the oven. Apparently this provides steam which makes your bread nice and crusty.

As soon as the water hit the pan, I knew I had a problem. My problem - I forgot about the properties of GLASS. A Pyrex pan, heated to 450 degrees, does not take kindly to having hot water poured in it. It immediately cracked into a million pieces in my oven.

I spent the rest of the night cleaning glass out of the oven. And cleaning corn meal off of the floor without the use of a vacuum (I tried, but it wasn't very helpful in keeping my girls calm). No one was hurt. But no one got any homemade bread either.

We still have a loaf worth of bread dough in my fridge. I think I will wait to try again until the weekend.

Good...Better

A good story from yesterday:

Next to our washer in the basement is a slop sink that the washer drains into. Typically we have no problems with this set-up. Last night after LP had an accident, I put her wet clothes on the side of the sink to dry. Later on I put up some laundry, forgetting about the Tinkerbell panties and jeans resting on the lip of the sink. Some time later I came down to move the wash into the dryer and noticed water on the floor of the basement - stretched across almost the entire expanse of the basement. Apparently Tink had been knocked loose and got stuck in the drain, causing the slop sink to overflow and flood the basement. Fortunately we have a Wet/Dry vac, the Hoos had just cleaned up the basement, nothing was really on the floor, and the Hoos was a good sport. It actually turned out to only be a couple of gallons, but it still sucked.

A better story from yesterday:

I gave LP some fruit for dessert after she finished her dinner. She held up a blackberry and asked me what it was. She nodded and ate it. She then picked up a raspberry and showed it to me and said," I like these better." She then stuck it on the tip of her finger and laughed hysterically. I was amazed that she had somewhere, somehow picked up the concept of "better". She is so smart.

Where is the F*in Instruction Book?

LP is a wonderful, beautiful, smart, perfect little child. Except when she isn't. Last week I blogged about her mooshing up tortellini and spreading it all over the floor, like Tinkerbell, sprinkling fairy dust on the inhabitants of Neverland. Apparently my daughter thinks she is Tink, because this behavior has not stopped.

Even better she likes to draw our attention to her destructiveness when at all possible. She called me into the living room from the kitchen yelling out "milk!" so that I could see how she had taken a gulp of milk and spit it out on our living room rug and (relatively new) loveseat. Unfortunately the old standby threat of "just wait until your father gets home" doesn't really work either. Last night she confounded the Hoos by spitting out water, medicine, and milk all within an hour of each other.

It isn't that she doesn't like any of these things, rather it is just that she likes to get a rise out of us. Typically she just laughs if we yell at her. My strategy is to surprise her and remove her from the situation by grabbing the cup (or whatever) out of her hand, picking her up and firmly placing her down elsewhere. I thought maybe just the jolt of the world changing so quickly would snap her out of her nuisance mode, but she could care less.

I know they say that a lot of toddler's behavior is testing boundaries and acting out for attention (like when she took my shoes off yesterday afternoon by calmly and deliberately removing the laces), but what do you do when the child HAS your undivided attention and still does these things anyway?