A Typical Winter Weekend

When the days are short and the mercury is falling (or fallen) there is still a million ways to fill a weekend. This weekend was practically perfect, the only thing missing was magical housekeeping fairies. I started Saturday with an pre-dawn ski (remember pre-dawn is anything before 10:00 am) going straight out the back gate and up to the Magnusson loop. It was pitch black when I left, but by the time I finished, the sun was up and the sky was bright. Cold winter sunrises are a special treat, that can only truly be enjoyed while hanging out in the cold. It takes a lot longer for the sun to rise on these short days which gives the sunrise a beautiful slow motion affect. While skiing, I got to watch the sky change from a pink grapefruit to a beautiful tangerine orange... the best part is that I got to enjoy the scenery while (hopefully) simultaenously shaving inches off my backside. After our early morning ski, we partook in our favourite weekend activity - breakfast at the Talisman. There's nothing quite as satisfying as two poached eggs, bacon, tomato and hollandaise sauce and a piece of crisp rye bread. After all that we still had time to go "shopping" for our Christmas tree. By shopping, I mean trudging through 2 foot snow looking for the perfect pine or spruce to decorate the living room.

Sunday was a little bit lazier, but equally as fulfilling. Tony has done a great job keeping his no-drive resolution . While my promise to bake bread on Sundays isn't quite as noble, it defintely is a bit tastier. I'm definietly improving my baking skills, but am still by no means a great bread-maker. Today I made Yogurt bread, that is still rising in the oven, and Pitas. The pita bread was more of an experiment and to be honest, I was shocked that they actually worked. In fact they were much eaiser then I had thought they would be and the recipe is super easy.

Pita Bread

• 2 teaspoons of yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 6 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 1/2 cups of water
• 2 1/2 teaspoons of salt
• 1 Tbl honey
• 1/4 cup sesame oil

Dissolve the yeast in water. Mix flour and salt in a bowl, pour in oil, honey and yeast/water mixture. Mix ingrediants together and then knead well. Let the dough rise until doubled. Deflate, and let it rise again. Preheat the oven to 450 after the second rising is finished. Take the risen dough and flatten it. Divide into around 20 pieces and round them into balls. Let these balls sit for about 10 minutes, cover them with a damp close to ensure they don't dry out. Take your rounded balls and use a rolling pin to roll them into flattened discs that are about 1 cm thick. Put the flattened discs into the oven on the bottom tray (you want the heat from the bottom elements to be close to your baking sheet). Wait for 3 minutes, the pitas should puff up, pull them out and let them cool on a cooling rack. To keep things moving, I would put 3 pitas in the oven at a time. While they cooked, I rolled 3 more. This helped everything move at a good pace. Enjoy!

Sierra posted this on Dec 17, 2006 from the kitchen | | permanent link