The Other One is moving his home office back into the freshly painted room, and the next order of business was to figure out how to store all of his books. Here’s what he came up with – floor to ceiling bookshelves:
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
One of the things I’m learning about the world is that everything has a name. Yes, everything. The name is also very exact. Take the world of cabinet doors, for example. If you know what you’re talking about, you can walk into a kitchen store and instead of saying, “I’m looking for a cabinet door with vertical lines up and down it,” you can say, “I’m looking for a bead-board panel front.”
I came across a handy listing of common kitchen cabinet door styles in a big kitchen design book. From left to right, that’s reveal-overlay panel; frame and panel; flat panel; beaded frame and panel; square raised panel; curved raised panel; bead-board panel; and cathedral panel.
The book is called The Smart Approach to Kitchen Design, and it’s a full-color glossy ode to what I’m pretty sure are $100,000 kitchens, complete with walls of windows that look out on nothing but nature as far as the eye can see. Which is how we build everything today, of course.
I browsed through a library copy, but if you’re desperate for some very high-end ideas or just like to run your eyes over pretty pictures, you can purchase the book at
an independent bookstore near you,
at Amazon.ca
or at Amazon.com.
Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day
Posted in Books, Current Affairs, Food and Drink, Recipes on January 26, 2010|
Fresh-baked bread is a big part of life at 963, and this is my new favorite go-to bread book. Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day sounds too good to be true, but it works for me so far. The trick is mixing up a big batch of dough (a "master recipe") that can be refrigerated for up to 14 days. Then, when you're ready to make bread, you cut off a pound or so of dough, and style it as you like according to one of the other recipes in the book.
For example, I made the master "boule" dough recipe, which is flour, yeast, salt and water. It took about 5 minutes to whip up, then had to rest for about 2 hours. After that, it was ready to use.
I wanted to make Sundried Tomato and Parmesan bread, so cut off a hunk of the Boule dough, rolled it out into a rectangle, sprinkled chopped tomatoes and grated cheese over it, rolled it up into a log, tucked the ends under, let it sit for 40 minutes, then let it bake for 35. And presto! Yummy artisan bread for dinner. (OK, maybe that took a bit longer than 5 minutes, but not much longer. Rest times don't count because you can go away and do something else.) We decided this bread in particular will be lovely when we're all sitting around on the deck on a hot summer night, sipping white wine and enjoying food and company. And if that's not inspiration for baking, I don't know what is.
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