K's Faves

In January, I channeled my love for the smell of homemade bread into learning how to actually, you know...bake homemade bread. Here's what I learned along the way:  Baking bread is ridiculously easy...IF you have the equipment.  And by equipment, I mean a stand mixer with dough hook.  I think that's why I've been intimidated in the past.  Luckily Santa gave me one this Christmas.  Everything takes 3 hours.  They don't tell you this.  The recipe might say it takes 40 "active" minutes with 2.5 hours "additional time" that includes a double rise.  And you'll miss this and think the recipe takes 40 minutes.  No matter what recipe I made, they all took about 3 hours.  I found Sundays a good time to do this because I usually had a chunk of time in the middle of the day.  There are TWO kinds of yeast!  I've only ever known the kind in the packet (active dry yeast).  But most recipes call for instant yeast.  This is d...

I may not be Barack  Obama , but I also like to recap my favorite things of the year! Here we go: Books The Price We Paid, Andrew Olsen.  I had a vested interest in this book: my 3rd and 4th great grandmothers were in the Martin Handcart company, but they were so traumatized by it they didn't like to speak of their experiences and couldn't bear to look at a handcart for the rest of their lives. Reading this book helped me understand more of what they went through. For that alone, this book was invaluable to me on a personal level. The Only Plane in the Sky: A Narrative History of 9/11, by Garrett M. Graff.  This book was both hard to pick up and hard to put down. Hard to pick up because you knew you were going to be reading about the worst day of people's lives; hard to put down because you became transported into that day and then superimposed it with what you yourself remember from that day. I can't imagine how much effort must've gone into gathering these ...

For my latest birthday I decided I wanted to try something new: a skill a month! I pick a skill, work on that skill for a month, and see what happens!  There are no illusions that I master anything, just some intentional practice. For December I knew I'd need something that wasn't a very heavy lift; something I could fit into the cracks while I'm doing other things. For a while I've wanted to learn more about classical music. Here are some takeaways: If you want to be a major composer you better give up if you start after age 12. Preferably you'll be composing by age 6 like Mozart and Strauss.  Mendelssohn composed 4 operas and 12 symphonies by age 12. Thinking of starting at 13?  Pah! Get a new dream.  It also really helps to be German. Did you know there are four periods of classical music?   I didn't! Here they are: Baroque : lots of music for churches - think Handel's Messiah and lots of Bach. And LOTS of harpsichord.  Oh, all the harpsic...

CHRISTMAS WISHES AND MISTLETOE KISSES (HALLMARK) Plot in a nutcracker.   It’s Wipeout’s Jill Wagner in her first of TWO Christmas shows. She’s a single mom/interior decorator who gets a contract to decorate a hot business man’s mansion.   Want proof he’s rich?   His character’s name is Nick Sinclair.* They’ll have to overcome his workaholic nature and mean female coworker and of course your standard miscommunications to have a happy ending.   *Total rich guy name Hotness of male lead: 3.5/4 - it’s Matthew Davis from Melinda’s favorite guilty pleasure Blue Crush and Legally Blonde!   However, I was very aware of the fact that he doesn’t have much of an upper lip!   Acting : 4/4. I like Jill Wagner and Matthew Davis actually has real acting credits. Also, Donna Mills! Disclaimer : misleading advertising. There are NO kisses under the mistletoe in this movie!! FINAL RATING: 4/5 sleigh bells. If one can ignore the fact that thi...