Of bread and valentines

I have been super bored lately. The house has been fairly clean, although I have been neglectful of the laundry, and I have just had nothing to do. With all this time on my hands I have taken up surfing Stampin' Up demonstrator's blogs. There are so many creative people out there. Hence of course, the previous post of the Ghirardelli boxes. Anyway, today I made valentines from the template found here http://paperpleasing.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/01/quick-valentine-gifts.html . Yes I am ghetto and I don't know how to do a link in my text. Anyway, here is my version. I found these a couple of days ago and I have lamented not having the same supplies but I decided to just make do with what I had and I was pleasantly suprised to be able to make my own without buying anything except the candy to go inside. I even had the plastic bags to put the candies in!

So that was today, on V-day while my husband, who planned a date night last night, was out at our accountant's house getting our taxes done. Two days ago though, in the throws of boredom I decided to bake. Now, I love to bake. I love to eat what I bake too and that has left me with about 60lbs to lose so I am trying a new route. I made an artisnal bread. I know, a bunch of white flour isn't good for me, but it is still better, and takes more work than 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies. I opened my book called Complete Baking by Martha Day. I love this cook book. Almost everything I have tried I love, and better than that they have a color picture for every recipe. So I opened up to the "International Breads" section and chose British Poppy-Seeded Bloomer, mainly because I had everything in the pantry for it. Now I have never HAD a British Poppy-Seeded Bloomer so I am not sure if it turned out proper but I think it tasted good. It had the consistency of a sourdough round but without the sourdough taste. So it was pretty dense but it was light at the same time. I made Sophie an egg salad sandwich on it and it was wonderful. I really enjoyed the process, all 10 hours of it. I definitely have to work on my kneading and loaf forming skills. I also think I should have left it to cook just a little longer.