Mea Culpa--and baking bread

My apologies to those of you who perservered in trying to read the last post. Lesson learned: proof reading isn't enough. I have to check the "preview" before I post. As soon as I saw it, I groaned, knowing part of it was impossible to read. I'm really sorry.

I'm hoping until I can figure out how to get a different background in place, this color will show up better. I'll definitely preview it before I post this time.

I took a letter from my friend Kathryn's book and bought a bread machine. This afternoon I'm making my first loaf of bread. My unsuspecting nephew will be here for supper and doesn't know yet that he's the "guinea pig" for my first bread making experience. I followed the directions carefully, but didn't notice that "bread machine yeast" is measured differently from regular active yeast, so I may have put in too much. If the loaf falls or is too coarse, I'll know that's the problem.

I've never been much of a baker, so this is a totally new project for me. I plan to try several different recipes, including whole wheat, poppy seed, and some sweet breads recipes to see which ones I like best. When I got the machine (on eBay--of course!), I went to one of my other favorite shopping venues, amazon.com, and bought several used bread machine cookbooks at a really good price.

Speaking of eBay, I'd like to make a request of those of you who do a lot of on line shopping on eBay, amazon, overstock, Barnes & Noble and several other sites. My daughter Kim has a webpage (kimbear.com) and on the web page is a link for "shopping". That takes you to a shopping consulting page where you can log onto the above sites and others. If you purchase an item after you've logged on through her website, she eventually gets a small rebate from that site. This is kind of important to her just now, since she recently lost a long-term writing gig. She had been doing a column a week for an online journal, and the journal stopped publishing, so her income dropped. It's not excactly a disaster, but she's feeling the pinch, so I try to log onto the shopping sites I use through her website. I've got the link bookmarked, so it's only one extra step. If you care to participate, it will be appreciated, and thanks.

I keep running in periodically to look at the bread. It seems to be nicely risen, and soon will begin the baking cycle. That's when the wonderful smell will fill the house--I hope! It was that wonderful smell when I sniffed Kathryn's machine during a loaf in progress that sent me dashing to eBay to get my own machine. If I get nice bread to eat, that will be good too, but, oh, that smell!

To go with the bread I'm making chicken noodle soup from scratch, and I have the makings for a caesar salad. I bought some clementines for dessert--also an idea I got recently from Kathryn. What a good influence she is on me!

(Well, I previewed, and the background in preview is still white, so that's no help at all. I guess I'll just have to work with light colors to see what is easiest to read. Hopefully I can change the background soon.)