Cooking some more

Ben and I have been having a great time hanging out around the apartment, working on our second bedroom (sick of hearing about that project yet?? :-), and generally relaxing. I'd love to show you what we've been up to, but it is not very entertaining or even photo-worthy! I will be posting photos of the second bedroom if it's ever completely finished, you can rest assured of that! :-)

I've also been working on getting my name changed everywhere it needs to be changed. Since we JUST got our debit cards for our new checking account (with my old name!), it'll probably be a couple of weeks before I get the one with my new name, but that is in the works. My new credit card came, too, and the customer service man who helped me activate it called me Mrs. Isley the whole time--so much fun!! I also have big plans to go finally get my own library card (I know, I know--I seem to be all talk on this one!). And I got a new driver's license, too. It's funny because twice now--at the social security office and at the DMV--the workers have assumed I wanted to use my first and middle names and drop my maiden name. I had to quickly correct that!! :-) I also hope (fingers really crossed here) to get my car registered in Missouri tomorrow. I have all the forms now, and Ben had the EXACT same forms and got his done no problem, so we'll see how that goes. I'm still nervous. :-)

Since we've both been home so much, we've been cooking more! As I mentioned before, we made some delicious cookies--the recipe we used can be found here. However, the bakery featured on the Throwdown episode we saw has a whole list of copycat recipes on their site, too. The cookies were really good and really rich! Of course, we ate them all. And most of the cupcakes. And our how is now dessert free, at least for this week. We don't want to gain our newlywed 15 in our first month of marriage! :-)

This week we plan to use some recipes from Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade magazine. My mother-in-law sent me this in the mail (it also has quick white cake recipes, just like I was looking for!!), and it's an awesome resource. Sandra has a week's worth of recipes and a grocery list for those recipes printed right in the magazine--that's what we're trying this week, and the whole thing is available online here. We're skipping the Sloppy Joes, by the way. Ew. :-)

Today for fun we're making a loaf of white bread in the slow cooker. I've never made bread before today, and using yeast for some reason makes me very nervous, but the process was really easy! The recipe came from another great wedding gift, a book called "101 More Things to Do With A Slow Cooker".

Classic White Bread

Ingredients:

1 envelope (.25 oz) or 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup warm water

1 egg

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 cup lukewarm water

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup sugar

3 1/2 to 4 cups flour

1. In a bowl, combine yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar, and 1/4 cup warm water. Allow yeast to foam, about 5 minutes.
2. Add egg, oil, lukewarm water, salt, 1/4 cup sugar, and 2 cups of flour. Beat with an electric mixer 2 minutes on low.
3. With a wooden spoon, stir in the remaining flour (we used only a tiny bit more than 3 1/2 cups).
4. Place dough in greased 4 to 5 quart slow cooker. Cover and cook on high heat 2-3 hours (ours cooked for 2 hours and 40 minutes, but I think that was a little too long. The crust is approaching burned. Maybe 2 hours and 20 minutes instead? Our bread is still plenty moist, though).
5. Remove stoneware from slow cooker and let stand 5 minutes before slicing. Makes 10-15 servings.

Final product!

It smelled SO GOOD while it was in the slow cooker. Our whole apartment still smells good. YUM. Also, confession: I forgot the salt. In fact, I'm not sure it even counts as forgetting--I completely did not see the salt in the recipe until I started typing it up here!! The bread it still good, but definitely bland. I am thinking it needs to be dressed up with olive oil and garlic salt. BUT, I am just glad my omission didn't completely ruin the recipe (thank goodness! :-). And the nice thing is that it was so easy, I feel like I could make another loaf later this week without a lot of trouble. It's fun to make new recipes, but I also really like knowing what to differently the next time for a better result.

Well, that's it for now, I guess. I will try to update more often this coming week. :-)