Priceless

Hey, has anyone seen the ad for mastercard where the girl goes into the store for a gallon of milk? The end is something to the effect of, "Shopping while hungry, priceless." (Of course in the end, she comes out with a huge shopping cart full of stuff and forgets the milk.) That was SO me yesterday after work!! I went to get some flour to make my friendship bread recipe, and I ended up with a week's worth of groceries. I saved $48 on coupons, though, so I feel just a little justified. Plus, I don't have to go shopping again this week. Priceless! Or, should I say price-reduced?

Speaking of friendship bread, I've been craving bready things all spring ever since Mike has been off of his Jenny diet. I've been trying hard to cook healthy meats and veggies via the South Beach lifestyle just about every day, which means usually a large green salad for lunch, veggies for snacks with some of that Laughin Cow cheese wedge stuff, and meat/green veggie cuts for dinner. So, when someone brought this friendship bread yeast starter to work last week, I grabbed a bag in a moment of weakness. I also recently acquired a set of really nice-looking colorful ceramic bowls at Crate and Barrel that I was anxious to use. (My largest glass one was a medium, so it was hard to mix large recipes.) I figured I would take my baking results to work and to my quilting ladies.

I was so excited yesterday to make my bread! I haven't baked in ages.

I had a little mental checklist that I rattled off as I prepared my recipe. I came home with the appropriate flour. Check. Time to make recipe after putting away said large grocery purchase. Check. Large bowl clean and ready to go. Check. Dishes done like every other morning to make room on counter for mess and baking spillage. Check. Ok. Pour and mix and pour some more and mix some more ingredients. Check. Admire how good said ingredients look in new bowl. Check. Think about taking out a clean spoon and having a lick at the batter. Well, hold the check on that one for now. Getting to the end of the recipe and seeing a previously-not-noted call for instant vanilla pudding. Oh no! Not check! Gotta scrounge through the pantry closet....Score! Check! Sugar free vanilla pudding to the rescue! Check! Stop and admire new bowl some more. Check. Finish batter with ALL appropriate ingredients. Check. Fend off hungry hubby. Check. Pour batter into pan as prescribed. Check. Give poor hungry waking hubby a spoon for batter scrapings. Check. (Poor Ghee; there's a reason I don't bake much.) Bake bread recipe. Check. Ok. Time to take results out of oven. Oh boy, this is smelling great! Aw, darn! It's still doughy. Back into the oven. Check. Bake carefully while checking frequently for another half hour beyond recipe instructions for desired non-batter result. Check. Ok, let food cool a bit. Check. Time to take bread out of pans. Check.

Bread sticking to bread pan and falling out on the cooling rack in moist doughy chunks: priceless.

Oh well. It tastes ok. While I might not have the courage to take my Friendship Flop to work for my coworkers, I know my quilting friends will eat it without complaint. Hey, if nothing else, it's worth a laugh! And that, dear blog readers, is priceless.