Good morning, world.

Before I got to sit in front of this screen, typing to you, world, I was dressed for work. I cleaned six stalls in thirty minutes, turned 26 horses into their stalls from their pastures and fed them their breakfast. In my world, animals eat first, because they are dependent on your work for their well-being. The world was, and still is, quiet. We’re waiting on the rain reported for today.

The half-pot of coffee that just finished brewing is the first made in my apartment in some months. I weaned myself off when I felt I was getting dependent. Today, I just want the warmth and the taste. It will be strong – five scoops in six cups of water – but I never drank weak coffee. 354 is still asleep in the bed. When I came back from my morning ritual, I took the laptop and sat on the floor. I hate waking him up. I feel guilty, especially when he has to work tomorrow night.

I have food running through my head. French toast, made from slices of the fat loaf I made the other night. I’m on a French toast kick – yesterday I had French toast at IHOP, along with half his pancakes. (He’s never a very big breakfast eater.) I saw my mini-muffin tins a second ago as I was looking for the coffee filters, and brownie tarts popped into my head. Of the Baker’s Banter variety. Will they stay soft and moist, or will the size of the depressions make them firmer? I’m curious to know. I have to cook something for supper, a large Sunday supper, so we can have a few days of leftovers. There are two pound pork loins in the freezer. I need to make a grocery run. I need to pay bills.

Life starts over again tomorrow. Work, barn chores, martial arts, obligations, test day, packing slowly and urgently. My camera is dead, without batteries to recharge it, and I don’t know where the rest of my rechargable ones went. The register for our checking account needs to be updated before I pay anything.

Right now, I have my cup of coffee. It’s as strong as I wanted, and the world is quiet, and I am happy.

A couple of lovely loaves, not long for this world…

I don’t know if I’ve told y’all or not, but here it is, out in the open: I’m a bread fiend. And I’m not kidding – my parents and fiancee will testify that this is the God’s-honest truth. 354 can’t understand how I can eat plain slices of white bread (guilty pleasure). As a kid, up until both Mom’s and Dad’s households figuratively threw out white bread for honey wheat or wheat in high school, one of my favorite snacks was white sandwich slices and a cold glass of milk. I love it to this day. But I have to be careful, or half a loaf will be gone in a matter of minutes. True story.

I love any kind of ‘white’ bread: sandwich bread, French baguettes, soft Italian, sourdough… basically anything non-wheat that you can buy in a grocery store bakery. I’m terrible with all that in the house. It’s gone in a flash. And I don’t feel (too) guilty about it after the fact, either. Thing is, those loaves get kind of expensive, especially at that level of consumption. But not even then did Mom – or I, to be more accurate – delve into bread-baking at home. The thought of anything more complicated than pasta with cream sauce or more time-consuming than open-faced basil-and-provolone sandwiches was foreign to me then. Even as I got more adventurous in college, anything to do with yeast or baking was a no-go. Too scary. Too unsure. Too involved. Then I got into bread, though not necessarily with the no-knead crowd (ABin5 is still on my wishlist). Just baby steps; sticking my toes in the water. Foccacia, sandwich bread, wheat bread, white bread – just playing around.

I always wanted to make baguettes, but didn’t have the special pan. Woe is me, I’d say (or something similar). How could it be a baguette without a baguette pan? I would have to wait out the day I got one, and then the baguettes would fill the house with fragrant, yeasty goodness.

Well, now I know better. Hell with the baguette pan. Baguettes are too small anyway (I’m still getting one at some point, but now I care less about immediacy.) Last night, I made two large loaves. And I ate almost half of one for breakfast this morning. Oh my word, this is good stuff.

Mongolian beef, if in name only.

Whenever I have a craving for bad Chinese food, I always go for Mongolian beef. My favorite used to be sesame chicken, but I had a bad batch once upon a time, and it dropped from the list for a while. Mongolian beef took over. And I won’t lie – I like the overly-sweet, sauce-coated, deep-fried beef strips, greasy onion (I can do without the bell pepper), and of course the ubiquitious crispy noodles. But that’s not going to stop me from trying my own version at home. I bought a couple of good flank steaks from the meat lab down the hall (yes, I work in a building that gives me weekly access to local, fresh cuts of pig, steer and the occasional lamb), a bag of short-grain white rice and some cellophane noodles. I was good to go.

Rasa Malaysia was my chosen recipe source – Barbara Tropp didn’t have a recipe (or if she did, I couldn’t find it). And really, could you pick a better source than RM? Have you looked at those photos? Every time I click on a recipe, I have to wipe the drool off my lip. I was sure I could get by with this one. The recipe was simple. Ingredients list, fairly short. I could do this.

Let’s just say it didn’t turn out like the recipe indicated, but it was still tasty. However, I cannot rightfully call this ‘Mongolian Beef,’ but rather we’ll stick with just ‘Hoisin Beef.’