Flour so deep there are white footprints across the carpets!

Okay, here I am writing when I should be sleeping... but I think if I tried to go to sleep right now, I'd just lay awake thinking about what I could be writing... so this will be the test... will I be able to sleep once I get all of this out of my head?

(I am exhausted from only getting 5 hours sleep last night, so a warning --clever writing will not be my strong point tonight!)

Busy, busy baking day today. Tomorrow is a picnic for my foodie group (DR.com) and I've spent the day making a bunch of bread. I've become known as a bread person and that is not necessarily a bad thing. As far as having some sort of reputation, it is a rather benign one. The only real downside is the pressure to provide good and interesting breads at events such as this (especially since there will be people attending who know good bread from mediocre bread).

I estimate that I've used 10-15 pounds of flour today. Sourdough deli rye (with onions & caraway), Pain de Mie (a buttery sandwich bread baked in a lidded pan), baguettes, S.F.-style sourdough (which I'll take only if it turns out well -- sourdough is tricky this time of year because of the ambient temps in the house, but that is also a topic of its own!), Pain a l'Ancienne (a really cool, no pun intended, cold fermented bread) and rosemary-topped fougasse (a fancy-shaped foccacia). As RWT would say: "too much". Yes, over the top as usual, but that is me and, with this group, the majority of the people are also type-A and won't see anything unusual in it (at least I hope!).

And although RWT thinks all bread needs is a good slathering of unsalted butter (we're patriotic in our butter preference and prefer good 'ol American Land 'O Lakes) and I could easily survive on a diet of plain bread and water alone, I've also made some toppings... mortadella mousse, blue cheese/chevre/cognac/spiced walnut terrine and an MKT-original recipe "BLT" spread (arugula mayo, chopped oven roasted tomatoes & crumbled crispy bacon). Then there are the back-up spreads of lemon/herb/garlic cream cheese (I'd have preferred to use chevre, but I was out of it) and some roasted eggplant with basil & garlic (I had toyed with the idea of making calzones for the picnic and this would have been one of the fillings). Yes, having "back-up spreads" is pretty out of control, but I at least I'll be able to sleep and not lay awake worrying about my arugula mayo turning into green slime as it sits in the refrigerator overnight. And even if it does, I picked up some back-up arugula on the way home from the party tonight. Okay, I am out of control. Gracious, will this only get worse as I get older?!?

And speaking of the party tonight -- I took two french apple (the kind with the struesel on top) pies to our neighbor's 60th b'day bash (potluck appetizers & desserts) at a local parish hall. I waited far too late in the day to make the pies (busy making bread, back-up bread, spreads, back-up spreads, back-up back-up spreads -- you get the picture...), but was able to throw them together (including making the crust from scratch) in about 45 minutes (yay for me!). Normally, the pies should cool for 2 hours after baking, but I set an electric fan next to them on the counter and with that got them cooled down in 1 hour & 15 minutes. (And we were only 15 minutes late to the party -- and that was due to waiting for the Pain de Mie to finish baking.)

At the party, RWT quickly sated himself on the sad selection of appetizers (it appeared there was a deviled egg theme that everyone but me knew about...) and than asked if I cared if he got a slice of my pie that I had out on the dessert table. I thought it was a great idea since I had not cut the pie and I know how people can be shy about taking the first slice of something (but never RWT's problem!). As soon as RWT got his slice, one of the resident gray-haired church ladies reprimanded him for eating dessert when people were supposed to be eating the appetizers! Too funny. I am really tempted to start going to that church for the sole purpose of sitting in her spot in her pew. (Fellow Episcopalians out there will know how we get about "our" seats in church and for those non-Episcopalians -- no one has assigned seating, but everyone always sits in the same exact spot every service -- a social minefield for the newcomers!). But no matter at what point of the evening that one ate the pies, they went pretty quickly. The first pie was gone sometime within a half an hour after the "official" dessert eating started (I was talking with neighbors and did not pay much attention to it) and the second pie was gone within 10 minutes of my putting it out. Sort of incredible that something that took 3.5 hours to create could disappear so quickly. However, I'm very glad it was appreciated (although nothing beats a piece of apple pie for breakfast, mmmm....).

Well, I was going to write about my current candy quest (I am thinking of calling it "A Study in Sugar & Nuts"), but I am getting really sleepy so that will have to wait for another day. Will this blog endeavor work in clearing my over-active mind and will I be able to get some much-needed REM tonight? I'll let you know that later also!