A Success and a Failure...

I bet you thought I forgot about my poor little sourdough starter, didn't you? I sure didn't. I made my very first little baby loaf of sourdough bread on Saturday. She turned out so pretty that I took her outside for a photoshoot.




I especially love the floury-crackly look.




Doesn't it just look delicious and crumbly and wonderful?





Well, it turns out that Little Miss Sourdough has a sense of humor. This loaf of bread weighs approximately 10 pounds and is so dense, I could probably give you a concussion if I threw it at your head. I had one slice and it was just ick. I blame it on a poor rise -- I didn't give the starter enough time to get good and frothy. (Nevermind that I decided I wanted to bake it on Saturday night at about 8:30 PM and then decided to let it rise overnight, so it was rush-rush-rush with the starter and then the dough just sat there rising forEVER. That could also have caused a problem...)





Anyway, its gorgeous looking and now the goal is to get it to taste as good as it looks. I am planning more loaves for this weekend, and I spiked the starter with a little dry active yeast, so maybe that will help.
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So, the first sourdough loaf was a failure, but dinner on Sunday turned out to be a total success. This is flank steak with white rice and sugar snap peas, from a recipe in my favorite little magazine, Everyday Food.




The recipe is available online here, and although the picture in the magazine looks a little more organized than my tabletop with stray jacket sleeves in the picture, I think it probably tasted pretty darn close to the original. Yum.




This is a make-again recipe for sure. I also made dinner tonight (for myself, since Steven decided that Wing Zone was too good to pass up) -- chicken with Ramen and broccoli. It was quite tasty. So tasty, in fact, that I forgot to take a picture. I made enough for lunch tomorrow because my goal-of-the-week is to take lunch to work. Because that's what you do in a recession, right?

Next up -- how I intend to feed the Steele Household when the recession really starts to bear down on us. (Hint: we bought it from Lowe's and I'm planting it in a big plastic pot on the porch...)