Tuesday 15 February 2011

Cinnamon and raisin bread and sticker charts.

Today I had my first resounding success with our new bread maker.  A friend recommended cinnamon and raisin bread (thanks Mel!) and since I am finding it hard to think of things I'd like to eat in the mornings currently, I decided that might be a tempting breakfast choice.


It smelled absolutely fabulous as it was rising and then cooking away, and it tasted delicious both plain with butter (says Al) and toasted with butter (says me!).  Sort of like hot-crossed bun as bread. Yum.



The other thing I discovered was that some of my lack of success had been due to the type of yeast I was using- not "fast bake" but one that was more suited to hand baking rather than bread makers.  Can it make much difference? It turns out the answer is YES, given that this one rose to about twice the height of my previous attempts!


Lots of my life at the moment revolves around spending time with my toddler son.  He's amazing, and a huge amount of fun to be with, but is also going through that (totally normal so I hear!) phase of pushing lots of boundaries.  It's quite full-on working out on a case by case basis how to respond in a loving yet firm way.  Today we decided to give stickers a try, and (although it's early days) the idea of a sticker reward for being well-behaved at the dinner table worked very well.  We'll see how this carries on.  He certainly pointed out his two hard-earned stickers to Daddy with pride upon his return from work.

We had potato rosti for dinner tonight.  I don't know if you have a good recipe for one, but I got our one from the back of an emmental cheese packet about a year ago, and we've been enjoying it ever since.  If you've not tried it before, then do! It's delicious.  If you don't know of a good recipe, let me know, and I'll post one.

Right.  Off to bed for me now.  I hope your week is going well.

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