Canadian Thanksgiving: a not-so-traditional October celebration in A2

Our 2011 Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner in Ann Arbor 

Our family celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving on October 9th this year with our annual community Open House party.

Over 90 family, friends, neighbors and colleagues stopped in from 3 to 10pm to sip apple cider, share a glass of sangria, munch on sandwiches, salads and maple-baked beans and to plow through over 70 pieces of pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream.

How do you host an open house this big in a place this small?  You try not to have too much of it actually take place in the house.  You clean up, clear out the clutter, pull up the carpets, open the doors and set some chairs up outside.  Basically, you host a picnic.

We arranged the food (most of it cold picnic items with only two dishes served hot over chafers), wine and dessert tables inside -- we took our tv, extra photos and various other extra items out of our living room.

My Scandinavian teak furniture unfolds and expands for serving buffets on multiple surfaces:  the credenza expands to 70 inches long while two hidden leaves expand the dining room table to 124 inches.  I love these furniture pieces (picked up second-hand years ago) because they are so flexible -- and they return to their smaller-scale forms during the rest of the year.  The space we used indoors to host measures just under 370 sq ft.

Desserts went on the stretched-out credenza while a large red "ice bucket" for chilled wine and sangria sat on the dining room table with our not-so-traditional Canadian Thanksgiving dinner spread.  It was a passable spread but then -- like magic and like always -- even more generously arrived with our guests.  Such delicious treats came our way -- thank you, all!

We set it up that morning/early afternoon with help from my brother and sister-in-law.  My family and I stripped our living area  -- our "event space" -- down to the basic elements of furniture and decor, much like you would for a realtor's open house.  In our invites, we asked our guests to bring chairs and blankets for our picnic area outside.

We put covered bowls of snacks (like my favorite imported dill pickle chips) and ice-filled coolers of beer and Canada Dry ginger ale (of course) outside and set up a large 10-person tent for the kids to use.  I used to call that tent our "spare room" in the summer as it added 132 sq ft to our living space.

After re-arranging the deck with red-decorated tables and chairs, my event crew covered folding buffet tables outside for our non-perishable snacks, like the chips, pretzels and cookies for the kids.  My kids pulled out soccer balls, frisbees and footballs for anyone game to play in our big shared common backyard/playground, a beautiful outdoor feature of life in Pittsfield Village Condos.

Finally, my husband lit a mighty blaze in the fire-pit and gathered all of our folding chairs around it in a circle pulling it together for our guests in our great outdoors.

We can't plan this kind of outdoor event too far in advance.  Fortunately, we have not been rained out for this in the 8 years that we have hosted.  As each October unfolds, I obsessively monitor the weather forecast -- as if my very survival depended on it -- for approximately 10 days in advance.  I send the save-the-date out then, too.  I let everyone know that the party is officially on just a few days before.  It's quite the autumn ritual.

The after-glow on our table as the party started to fade.

A big part of the charm of this holiday for me in Ann Arbor is this amazing, early-autumn weather of ours.
It is often a classic, clear, crisp and sunny day on or around our traditional harvest holiday, celebrated officially up north on the second Monday of October.

Our day this year was nothing less than perfect:  a bright sun in the blue, cloudless sky kept the temps in the high 70's, low 80's until it set.  Then, with the fire-pit roaring late into the evening, guests enjoyed a rare Michigan mosquito-less night around the  fire.

Although we tell our guests each year that what we host is not a "traditional Canadian Thanksgiving", there is something quite traditionally Canadian about it:  we thoroughly enjoy the good weather, good food and good company!

I'm so thankful every October for all of these things.

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day, everybody.

Earth Day is a great opportunity to think of your annual spring cleaning in a green way.  De-clutter, downsize, rethink what you have, need, want, and use.

Pittsfield and Scarlett will be having Donation Drives with the Ann Arbor PTO Thrift Shop in May.  What a great opportunity to give away to others while clearing out some space in your life.  All donations help the schools in so many ways.

More info to come.  Stay tuned...

Slob-proofing and the secret inner life of the happy homemaker

I admit it.  I can be a little OCD with the cleaning of the house.  I'm better than I used to be but I still do L-O-V-E a clean, tidy home and I will often do exactly what it takes to get it that way.

When you live in a teeny, tiny space like mine in The Village, you become accustomed to the constant picking-up, tidying, de-cluttering followed by the down-to-basics dusting, cleaning, wiping needed to keep the place looking reasonable.  The tidying takes forever.  It literally seems never-ending to me.  A family in the space requires that all of us living here be on the same page and that isn't always the case.  They try but only after some serious nagging and/or  after I give them the look.

The cleaning actually doesn't actually take that long because the place is so small.  But small spaces means that clutter builds up faster.  Once the clutter is out of the way, the rest is easy.  The problem I find is that I'm so wiped out from the tidying that the next step just seems like too much.  I have lost the energy needed to go the extra mile.

At times like these, I look for those little cheats that make my life easier.  Or perhaps they just make me a little happier.  Well, they certainly help to get me closer to happier a little faster.  Yes, fast and easy.  No wonder I get an endorphin rush from a clean house!

These include the double laundry hamper I can throw everything in and - voila - the house looks picked up.  The slight patten to the area rugs hide less-than-perfect care.  Dramatic contrast of dark and light to take the eye away from the flaws in older paint job on the walls.  The books pulled out to the edge of the bookshelf to make appear as a smooth surface and pushes away the dust from the edge of the shelf, away from view.  There are lots of cheats like this we all have.

When I ran across a link on my Twitter feed today - thanks to the Amish Furniture folks - it reminded me of the sneaky little things I do to keep the place looking spiffy in a jiffy without breaking a sweat.

It is about furniture designed for slobs.  Or perhaps, with slobs in mind, would be a better way to put it.

It caught my attention because it is marketed as something different.  It's designed to be a big cheat, of sorts.  Check out this so-called furniture line for slobs:  "gently-priced, family-friendly, eco-friendly and slob-proof" furniture.  It sounds fantastic - almost too good to be true.  I will be checking this out myself a little further...  It could be perfect for me.  I'm not a slob - and neither are you - but we can all use a little less time taking care of our homes and a little more time taking care of ourselves.  Think dark chocolate, red wine, great movies while curled up on your slob-resistant furniture...

The prints and patterns featured in these pics in the piece on their own will hide most trouble a family may spill up on itself.  Not to mention the pets...

No, I won't really mention them.  That is so far out of my area of knowledge or expertise.  I won't go there.

In the meantime, my own slob-proof adventures in furniture include my reupholstered dining room chairs - renewed for me by The Great Cover Up, home to a true local furniture artist and restorer - in wonderful, family-friendly fabric for next to no money that I wash with dish soap and warm water once a month or before hosting a party - whichever comes first.  (That's usually the party.)

Such an amazing, easy care solution she offered me with this fabric years ago.  It was a good move.  And if - more likely, when - I want to upgrade to something more soothing and smooth to the touch (and a bit more expensive, I imagine) I will head back to the small shop on Chesterfield with my six chairs in tow.  (What a perfect street for an upholsterer, eh?  Chesterfield Street!)

The other good move made was the apartment sized couch purchased from Three Chairs in Ann Arbor a few years ago.

It was listed as the Annie sofa so it was literally calling my name...  I had to buy it.  And what a buy it was!

Still, after many years of living with our family - and being the main place we plop ourselves for our in-house dvd or on-line Netflix viewing marathons - it is still looking pretty darn good.

It is a microfiber sofa so it also comes clean with a cloth soaked in dish-soapy, warm water.  Very easy care, compact and still looking as good as it feels to curl up on.  It is still the most comfortable place to sit in the living room.

It's simple, straightforward soap-and-water cleaning.  Plus a little extra elbow grease thrown in when I have put it off a little too long  - I tend to not wipe the furniture down as often as I should.  When I get around to it, it can be a bigger job.  It's on my big spring cleaning list, one based on Martha Stewart's list - something to look forward to.  Hey, this stuff is easy care but it's not self-cleaning nor is it not totally slob-proof...  yet.

This all feels a bit confessional - like soaking my nails in dish soap, talking with Madge the manicurist - admitting to my obvious cleaning obsession while owning up to the fact that I don't actually clean it all that often or that well, perhaps.  Yes, I do confess:  I rely heavily on my cheats.

It's a little secret of mine - something which keeps me happy on the home-front.  Pass the chocolate and the remote.

Gadgets gadgets gadgets.... argh!

Living in a small space with a "teeny-tiny kitchen" as I do, I have a policy on - and a veto over - whatever comes into the house.  I am quite particular about what comes into the kitchen.  It has to be compact, shared, and/or multiple use.  No exceptions.

I read this piece today in the NYTimes Dining section on kitchen appliances and gadgets at a trade show and it hit a nerve right away.

The vendors at this show are the trendsetters who shape our lives and our kitchens - we, the mothers, the "deciders" in home - the kitchen gate-keepers.

These vendors are real-world Jack Donaghy's.

If you are not one of the 100 or so dedicated viewers of NBC's 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy - played by Alec Baldwin - alludes to the importance in history of the invention of the popcorn button on the microwave and was himself, until recently, the executive in charge of an NBC TV show and microwave ovens.  He is famous for the invention of the Trivection oven...  It's very funny and it's all at GE's appliance division's expense.

Life imitates "art" in this slightly bizarro-world NYT piece on the new kitchen gadgets.  For the price of nearly an entire Ikea kitchen remodel of my 7 ft x 8 ft kitchen (granted, only a low-end remodel), I could buy a Frigidaire oven with a chicken nugget button on it.  Can't find the nugget button?  It's right next to the frozen pizza button...  

While I am loving the time saving - and don't begrudge anyone the luxury of one more bedtime story or Uno game with their kids that the occasional batch of frozen chicken nuggets might afford - this is going too far:  too far into anyone's wallet let alone mine.  I am all for multi-use but the bottom line is the bottom line.

A $2000-$3000 appliance to cook Mc-food?  Are we all really having such trouble cooking up our chicken nuggets just so?  What is a "perfect chicken nugget", anyway other than a culinary oxymoron.

Isn't this the year that Julia Child made a comeback and sales of her bible/cookbook soared.  Are we all just using that tome as home decor, prestige pieces on the bookshelf or strategically placed next to the over-priced 6-burner oven or, perhaps, it is light reading while we distractedly cook perfect chicken nuggets with the push of a button?  ... What would Julia say?

Clearly, I have ruled out buttons-for-nuggets big-ticket appliances for my kitchen.  But I considered the smaller toaster ovens with the pizza "bump".  I use a toaster oven rather than a toaster already for it's multi-use flexibility.  And since we don't buy pre-sliced bread, and a toaster just gets our unevenly sliced Texas-sized chunks o' bread stuck and burnt, it's the practical choice for our household.  We don't like or use croutons enough to handle all that burnt toast.

But with a food allergy to corn in our household, I barely even have a frozen pizza I can buy that meets both the corn-free criteria and the taste buds of my used-to-mummy-made-food.  Trader Joe's cheese pizzas worked the last time I checked their ingredients but only if I add a lot more cheese to them and some other toppings.  I'm not sure these would fit into the bumped-out, pimped-out toaster ovens anyway.

I just turn on the regular, cheapo apartment-sized 24-inch oven, heat, and serve - poor, specialty-appliance-deprived soul that I am.

Eyeball it for yourself.  Do you see space on that counter for a designer Italian toaster oven with a "bump"?  Somebody else will have to buy those gadgets.  And they likely will, launching yet another Jack Donaghy into the premium appliance market stratosphere...

A guide to recognizing your springtime saints

My daughter just experienced one of the rites of AAPS 5th grade on Friday.  She went on her winter survival field trip.  She did, indeed, survive.

In the past, I've known kids who had considerably more wintery survival experiences on these outings in the bush north of Ann Arbor.  Sometimes wearing inappropriate footwear and/or bringing food that may never cook, those kids returned exhilarated, smokey and perhaps a little cold and hungry.

Not my girl.  Not this year.  Some great saint of spring was watching over these children from Pittsfield on Friday.  What a glorious day they had.  All fires going, all food cooked.  My daughter said she was in charge of grilling - that's my girl!  The oo-ing and ahh-ing over the food went on for days.  Oh, yeah.  That is my girl!

This got me thinking about my own winter survival efforts and the various, palpable markers I use to recognize the arrival of spring.   Food, cooking, and entertaining in my home tend to be at the heart of it.  If it wasn't for my bright, small-but-mighty kitchen and all the special occasion meals my girls and I cook up in it, I truly believe I would not survive.  If you've never seen it, it is quite small.  The floor space is 4ft by 5ft-ish.  The compact stove is to the right in this photo, the fridge is just to the left.  It's compact but powerful - the Mary Lou Retton of kitchens.

We celebrate any and all potential holiday dates, people, and events with some kind of special meal or party in my small Village indoor space.  And year after year, it works.  Amazingly, exhaustingly, it works.  We start out the fall with Canadian Thanksgiving and just never stop having a reason to tidy and clean the house, cook or heat up, as the case often is, eat and drink with friends.  In fact, I'm itching to have a party again.  It has been almost 3 weeks since our last dinner event...

But soon I can leave the confines of my kitchen behind and begin grilling whenever I please.  I can sense it already.  E's talk of grilling burgers - and the description of the kids eating them bite-by-bite - really got to me.  Simple, wonderful, grilled hamburgers...   Oooo...  Ahh...

I just have to wait for the foot of snow to melt in the backyard - a full northern-exposure enclave, sheltered from most of the day's sun by our home.  It gets only a slice of the morning sun.  I'll have to get out there and shovel it out.  There is so much hardened snow and ice on our deck right now - a 53 degree F, gorgeous day - I had to crawl outside the window by the deck to take this picture this morning.

By late February, I do tend to feel like I am hanging on to so very much by the tips of my fingers:  my budget, my waistline, my sanity.  After months of being cooped up inside, coping through food, friends and Netflix, I see light in early March when the bulbs pop up in my garden and the roads clear.

I can run again  - outside - and I actually want to run again.  Running outside helps me out all three ways - the road is cost-free to run, I trim down automatically, and I feel like myself again - body and soul.  I think more clearly, I feel more positive, and actually get more accomplished when I have that little daily run on the road back in my life again each spring.

Starting up again is as easy as walking.  I use a modified, shortened version of a Couch-to-5k Plan.  As a merely lapsed runner and not a totally new convert, I can get into it a little quicker and often can run the 5k on the first try after many months off.  But not always.  In those cases, I start over by walking, then adding as many steps of jogging (I don't think you can call my early pace actual running) as I can.  Then I walk again until my heart rate comes back down, I can breathe more easily, and I feel like I can do some more jogging.  I keep going like that each time until, eventually, I am running more than I'm walking.  In just a few of these, I can "run" the whole 5K or 3.12 miles.  I usually start this routine again just after a doctor's visit, getting a baseline on my overall health.  That usually offers the final incentive to get going on the road once again.

Although I discovered that the girls and I are too late to register for Shamrocks and Shenanigans 5k race this year, I started "training" for it almost 10 days ago now and could do it easily - if not quickly - but for the 5k registration being capped and full now.  No matter.  The running is back in my life again and the kids can still register to run the Kids Kilometer.  It's a fun event - check it out!  Downtown Ann Arbor is always packed for it and buzzing.   I will run my own 5k race on St. Patrick's Day instead to mark the occasion.  Others will undoubtably celebrate the saint in other ways...

One of the other things I look for after a long winter indoors, are the Passover items at Hiller's at Arborland.  We don't celebrate Passover but we take full advantage of the shopping possibilities and options.  I stock up on kosher products because they are corn-free.

The corn allergy in the house is a tricky one to negotiate.  My daughter has been a hivey mess for a while now.  The corn-free treats I pick up at the front of the store in their Passover display are lifesavers at this time of year.

And the four bags of Bazooka Joe kosher bubble gum is going fast, too!  I've been chewing gobs of it on my runs every day for a week.  This is literally blessed gum - and in its strawberry incarnation it is a powerful evocation of childhood, springtime bike rides around my hometown of Espanola.  But these cartoons are written in Hebrew.  I love it!  Yet another sign of spring...

Happy - and golden - New Year, Tiger!

This day marks the end of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver - a great games for the host country, my motherland - and the end of the period of Chinese New Year celebrations for my family, too.  We have been enjoying both non-stop for 2 weeks now.

Lots of great food, snowy days curled up with NBC, and a side or two of socializing with friends, young and old.  It seems to have been an embarrassment of riches for this mid-winter fortnight:  Olympic, culinary and otherwise.

It has been particularly good this Olympic year to feel like a host of the games even though we live here in Ann Arbor, so very far away from Vancouver.  We have felt connected and - strangely - responsible for the feelings on the festivities.  I am so glad too that it's over and was successful for both of our "home" teams.  Good on you both!

The whole experience has given us reason to celebrate.  And there was much feasting today - and no cooking involved for me.  Just watching some hockey, on the edge of my seat, and soaking up the skin-of-their-teeth golden moment for Team Canada.  Sorry all-around to our friends here, but not winning gold in hockey would have been so devastating for Canadians - a real blow to the collective, national psyche.  Team USA played so well - I thought they deserved the gold but the score just happened to say otherwise today.  Certainly, their goalie deserved the tournament mvp.  He was impressive.  But I am happy for the country, for family, friends and everyone across the border that it was won by Canada on home ice.  It was a Hollywood (North) ending.  But enough of hockey...  They will be talking about this for a generation, eh?!


Earlier in the Year of the Tiger celebrations, I made some celebratory dinner for my family.  By "made", I mean that I boiled up noodles with stir fried ginger beef, steamed and pan-fried dumplings, and quickly sauteed some Chinese greens with garlic, pictured left.  A lot of it I didn't actually "make" at all but rather "heated up".  The bamboo steamers are great for that.  The yu choy cooks very quickly up in the wok - rinsed and salted - in a little canola oil with fragrant garlic cooked quickly first.

The yu choy tips are a family favorite - fresh, healthy, tasty.  I get them as Huaxing Asia Market in Ypsilanti.  Inexpensive, at $1.99/lb - I L-O-V-E them for that too!  Easy to cook this meal, with only the back two burners being used.  One wok, one large pot of water and my bamboo steamers.  I get the shrimp dumplings we love from Trader Joe's and the frozen pork buns from the Huaxing Asia Market as well.  The pork buns are steamed.  The dumplings are done in the wok first with a touch of oil, then a splash of water added and a lid placed on it so it can steam.  They get perfectly crispy on the bottom.  Yum yum!

All the girl friends and mums celebrated earlier this week with a dim sum lunch midweek at Great Lake Seafood Restaurant.  Thanks to our friends Amy and Alyssa for organizing that with friends, old and some new.  Even my little girl got to tag along with the teenagers...   Much thanks to the big girls for letting her crash.

We closed out today with a trip to Great Lake for dim sum - again.  Oh, yeah!  With the tax refund in the bank account and these Vancouver Games a roaring success in our eyes, we were out to truly relax and celebrate before an afternoon of skating at Vets Park Arena for half of us and workouts at Planet Fitness for the other.

Ohh...  The treats!  Calamari:  so sweet, so tender, so worth it.  I never eat deep-fried food but this was like candy - deep-fried-seafood-candy!
The egg tarts and the sweet glazed barbeque pork buns are my girls favorites, too.  Each only available on the weekends.  Take a look at the weekend-only cart they wheel around covered in baked Chinese goodies, pictured further above.  Well worth this Olympic weekend trip with my family.

But soon it will be over.  The Olympic Closing Ceremonies are about to get rolling.  Tomorrow, it's back-to-school for the kids and a tough new exercise routine for me.  Today at Planet Fitness, I began Day One of 10 Days To Shake My World.  I need to run 5k minimum, up to 5 miles maximum for 10 days straight.  I was inspired by all those folks in Vancouver.  Wish me luck - Golden-Olympic-Tiger luck!

Pulla recipe - so good, so simple, so inexpensive to make

I started doing some baking the other day. Serial baking is a better way to describe it, to help fight the winter blues.  

I was in search of more than just an everyday, ordinary carb-high. Chips would NOT do. I wanted memories and meaning and depth. So, I pulled out an old recipe and baked a favorite bread from my childhood. Pulla : sometimes known as Finn bun or Finnish coffee bread.  

It's braided, infused with cardamom, and looks as good as it tastes. You can decorate it - like I did for Valentine's Day - and shape it however you like. It's a great, forgiving dough to work with.  

I just cut this batch of dough in half after making the 3 dough snakes - giving me 6 shorter snakes - shaped them into two separate round braids, and put them in cake pans lined with parchment. It was a whole new look. There was an extra feel-good bonus to it too. It produced one bread to keep and one to give away. Sharing is good medicine for the blue soul in winter, too. Even better than carbs.

Ooo, and one final hybrid idea for this recipe. This dough makes an incredible cinnamon roll base too! Check it out...  

Bread is inexpensive when you make it yourself and stock the ingredients in your fridge (like a jar of yeast, butter, milk, eggs) and pantry (bread flour, sugar, decorator sugars, and ground or whole spices like cinnamon and cardamom from East-Indian markets like Bombay Grocers in Ann Arbor). If you've never made bread before, give this one a try and invite your kids along for your baking adventure.

Ann's Favorite Pulla Recipe- from a fellow Northern Ontario Finn  

In a large mixing bowl, combine these dry ingredients.  

1 Tablespoon or 1 pkg of Quick Rise/Rapid Rise/Bread Machine yeast, like the one I stock, shown here
1/2 cup sugar 
1/4 teaspoon salt 
4 1/2 cups bread flour - set aside another cup of flour as well for working the dough 
1 teaspoon of ground cardamom

Mix to spread the spice throughout. Set aside.

In a smaller bowl, combine these wet ingredients. These need to be warm to activate the yeast. Too cool, the yeast won't work. Too hot, the yeast will be killed.  

1/4 cup warm water 
1 1/3 cup warm milk 
1 egg, lightly beaten (best at room temperature so it doesn't cool off your other liquids)  

Mix lightly.  

Make a well in the center of the large bowl of dry ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients in and mix with a wide wooden spoor or spatula until the wet and dry ingredients are combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl as you go. It should begin to get tough to mix with the spoon.  

With clean hands (rings off, please) continue to mix the dough as it begins to separate from the side of the bowl. Add some of the reserved flour as needed, a Tablespoon at a time to achieve this.  

Now add the final ingredient.  

1/3 cup softened butter.  

This will be greasy and sticky at first but you will feel this dough start to come together as you work it in your hands, squeezing it to spread the butter throughout.  

Knead - a process of folding over the dough and pushing with the heel of your hand - the dough. Knead it well enough to spread the butter well and work the dough so it no longer feels sticky, gluey, or greasy. Add a bit of flour as needed to get the feel of a smooth, elastic dough which easily forms a ball in the center of bowl, fully separated from the sides.  

There are great tips on kneading in cookbooks and on-line but the best way to know how this works is to get your hands in there and do it. Get the feel of the dough as it changes. I posted a short video of my one-handed kneading of this dough so you can see the look of the dough as it gets to that last stage where it's ready to be set aside to rise. View it on my annarbor.com blog.

Cover the bowl with a dish towel or other clean cloth. Set in a warm, draft-free area and let it rise for just 10 minutes. Lightly spread flour on a clean surface - a large bread board, butcher block, table or counter top will do. Remove the dough from the bowl and, with a sharp knife, cut the dough into three equal parts. This doesn't have to be perfect division. More or less is good enough.  

Roll these dough segments into long snakes of dough of approximately equal length. I do this on my kitchen counter top. Kids LOVE doing this with you so feel free to put them to work with their clean, little hands. They are naturals, likely having made play-doh snakes since before they could use complete sentences.  

With three long snakes of dough, approximately 1 and a half inches thick and nearly two feet long, now it's time to braid them. Alternating side, crossing one outside piece over the inside piece of dough, braid them until you get to the end. Gather the ends together and pinch the dough to a sealed end, tucking it under. Go back to the top and braid this starting point backwards - outside under inside - and pinch this end closed in the same way.  

Lay this long braid, centered to fit, on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Completely cover with that tea towel or cloth again, set in a warm place and let it rise until it is nearly doubled in size. This will take 45 minutes to an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. When the bread has finished rising, remove the cover and place it on the center rack in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes. While it bakes, combine 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice with 1 Tablespoon of sugar. Stir and set aside. I like to put it in a heavy glass bowl or mug and leave it on top of the stove. It melts and combines to a nice syrup. When the bread is done, it should be golden top.

Remove from the oven to a wire rack to cool. Immediately brush the top with the sugar/lemon glaze. It will sizzle as you brush it. The sound - along with the sight and smell of this fresh baked bread - is hard to resist. But resist it! This bread needs to sit until it is at least cool enough to handle. Cutting it or pulling it apart too early will release a rush of steam, especially dangerous to your junior bakers. Be warned...

Enjoy it warm - not hot - from the oven plain. So good! Or cooled, sliced with just butter. It's so delightful!

Try it out. I will post the Bread Maker version too... Gotta run a girl to swimming now.