Merry Christmas Oliver

Aunt Sharon sent us a very nice house warming gift and Oliver really likes it. What's funny is that he almost immediatly claimed it as his space.

Oliver has been growing in a thicker coat for the winter and as a result has been shedding. I mused that instead of vacuuming all of his hair off the carpet and furniture we should just vacuum Oliver. After I said the joke a light bulb appeared over my head.

Oliver's face says it all...
We probably won't be trying that again.

No Knead Bread

I found this recipe about two years ago and always wanted to try it. Until two weeks ago I wasn't sure it was worth the price of admission. The bread must be baked at 450 degrees in a 6-8 Qt pot that had a lid.

I love bread, especially fresh bread. In college I found a bread machine at a garage sale for $5 and made quite a few loafs with it. The problem with the machine is that for one it's loud and annoying and second, the shape of the loaf was circular so all of your sandwiches, toast, etc... had to be circular. The shape also made it hard to cut without smashing it. To remedy the shape problem, I started taking the dough out before the baking cycle, shaping it myself and then baking it in the oven. This ended up being quite a bit more work and the luxury of machine automation was now gone. The one thing my bread machine kneaded, oven baked bread lacked was was an excellent, crispy crust. ( I tried spraying water in the oven every fifteen minutes but never had a noticeable effect.)

The recipe is extremely simple, mix water, flour, salt and yeast then 24 hours later bake it for 60 minutes. Time does the work for you. Indecently it actually takes less of my time to prepare than the bread machine bread. Here are two things I've learned after making a half dozen loafs. First, regular flour will work but bread flour rises much more and produces a loaf that is about 30% bigger. Second, don't use tap water. The chlorine in the water gives the bread a very slight chemical taste (I always had this taste in bread machine bread but didn't figure out it was the water.) I use distilled water from the grocery store.

The bread from the no knead recipe is nothing short of exquisite. The crust crackles to reveal a delicious crumb...

I also made a pie...

Helicopter

Megan and I live right next to Christmas tree farm. The farm, which has been bustling for the past few weeks, uses a helicopter to move trees from the field to the trucks. We've really enjoyed watching them work, the helicopter doesn't stop moving for a second. It puts the trees into the truck and heads back to the field in one fluid motion. In fact, the only time we saw it hovering at all is when they hook the cable up to a new bunch of trees.

Here is the view from our home...


The helicopter bringing in a bundle of trees...


Dropping the trees into the trucks...