English Muffins

There are really three things I want to write about here, but since that would make for one long-ass blog, I'll break them up.

The first is my English muffins. Divine!

I used whole wheat pastry flour from Essex Farm mixed with a little of the unbleached all-purpose we have leftover from our last ginormous bag. Moistened with yogurt from the farm and baked on a bed of stone-ground cornmeal, also from Essex Farm.

The dough came together pretty easy. I put it in a bowl and let it rise, just like the recipe directed me.

Then I rolled it out with my beloved wooden rolling pin, and Colden had a BLAST helping me cut the muffins out with a measuring cup/muffin cutter.

Look at that kid go!

We baked them according to the recipe, but discovered that our oven bakes at a hotter 400 degrees F than other ovens, so next weekend, I'll remember not to bake them for quite as long.

We could barely wait to try them as soon as they were out of the oven. I smeared mine with some of my friend Andrea's homemade, organic berry jam. It was like Heaven on a plate!

Tom and his fishing buddy enjoyed them, too, when they took a handful of them to make breakfast sandwiches before they went out on the lakes this weekend.

This weekend was insane. I kept Colden with me all day Friday, and we ran errands in town. Friday evening, Colden went fishing up at Lake Stevens with Tom and Claude and had SUCH a good time. Saturday was kind of a bummer for me, as I woke up with my first real ulcer attack in over a year and a half. I chugged down a glass or two of our pasteurized farm milk, and that cured me, so I figured it's just my ulcer acting up again. Drat.

Saturday night, I cooked a beautiful mushroom-goat cheese-Swiss chard tart and brought it over to Mona's house for a potluck and bonfire. Wow, was that fun! Hung out with some nice folks, had some amazing food, and dragged Colden and his little friends all over God's green Earth in the wagon that Mona had for the kids.

Sunday morning, Colden and I went into Lake Placid to get some more Pull-Ups. On Saturday, we had kind of a rough potty training day. We went through every single last clean pair of underwear, shorts, and pants that we own for Colden. Sunday morning, I woke up with another ulcer attack and though, you know what? I'm not doing this for the rest of the weekend. So there!

We stopped at Starbucks on Sunday morning, and the warm hot chocolate I bought instantly quelled the ulcer attack. Knock on wood, nothing today, so I'm hoping I've nipped it in the bud.

Sunday night, we went fishing again up at Lake Stevens. Sorta got skunked, since we only landed one fish. They just weren't biting. There was a supremely unpleasant family up there at the same time we were. One of the sons (about sixteen years old) yelled to his father across the (very tiny) lake (more like a pond, actually) that he needed some help with his fishing line. The father yelled back, "No way, no! I am not going to help you!" I don't know what was going on there, but we half expected to see NJ plates on their big truck. (Sorry, nothing against NJ folks. I grew up there, you know. It was folks like this that give the state a bad name amongst the locals up here!)

After fishing, we went to the Whitebrook Dairy Bar where we treated ourselves to some yummy soft serve ice cream. Colden had his cup finished before we even got home!

Monday morning, while Tom and Claude made one last trip around to go fishing before Claude went home, Colden and I headed over to the Lake Everest (dammed-up river) beach with some friends for a play date. Just goes to show how long it's been since I've been at the beach: I didn't bring a chair, or a towel, or a change of clothes for the kid. Colden and his two friends had such a BLAST in the water - they couldn't actually go in swimming, since the levels were down because of work going on at the dam further downstream -  but they did discover that they could float their toys in the fast current until they just floated out of sight!

I quelled some of the crying by promising that Tom would look for the toys during one of this future fishing trips at the dam.

So today, it is disgustingly hot - like August - and we're under a severe thunderstorm and tornado warning until 9 p.m. tonight. This should be fun.