How wonderful it is to lie in a warm bed in the cool of the early morning, to let the pallid light seep in and gently wake you up bit by bit. You open your eyes and goosebumps dot your skin and you think, "Oh. Fall has arrived."

(...well, my exact words that morning may have been more like "it's so dang cold up here, why is the heat not on, WHERE'S MY SWEATER." but the other version sounds more ladylike, so we'll go with that)

Now begins the time of outdoor living--not the kind where you can walk outside first thing in the morning and be wrapped in warm air, but the marvelous refreshing kind that requires a few more layers. I bought a new jacket the other day and on Sunday afternoon, wrapped in a quilt, I fell asleep in the hammock. Do you know how nice that is? To fall asleep in a hammock swaying in the brisk air while you're swathed in patchwork?

In a few weeks I'll probably be complaining again, but right now I'm having a most wonderful time reacquainting myself with farmer's markets on rainy Saturday mornings; with hot coffee instead of iced; with my sweaters and boots and scarves and woolen socks (they smell like cold).

Happy October to youuuu!

quote by sarah weiner

One of the most wonderful things about Europe is bread.

Bread everywhere.

Bread for breakfast. Bread for lunch. Bread for dinner.

Heck, bread for a midnight snack!

When I got back from Europe last year, though, I tried to give up grains for a bit, to give my body a little break from all those carbohydrates.

As expected, that lasted about a week.

Hey, at least I tried? E for effort and all that jazz.

My mom makes a mean sourdough bread that is the lifeblood of this household, but I decided to whip up a quick loaf of standard white bread last week. The basic recipe I used was from Bread, a new book that was kindly sent to me by the good people at Anchorfolk. I tweaked it a bit here and there, but I was quite pleased with how it turned out. It was a hearty loaf with a nice thick crust and I very much enjoyed eating the bread as a pear/blue cheese/honey panini.



You can find the recipe after the break!



Basic White Bread
adapted from "basic white bread" found in the book bread

ingredients
+ 6 cups bread flour, divided
+ 1 tablespoon sugar
+ 2 1/2 teaspoons salt
+ scant 2 teaspoons dry active yeast
+ 2 1/2 cups very warm water
+ 2 tablespoons melted butter

make
In a large mixing bowl*, combine 2 cups of flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Add the water and butter, mixing until just combined. Gradually add in the rest of the flour until the dough forms a soft ball that gently pulls away from the bowl. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic (about 8 minutes), adding small amounts of flour as necessary. The dough should be fairly sticky. *
Place the dough in a lightly buttered or oiled bowl and turn the dough once to coat. Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 8 hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 425°F. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Cut the dough in half. On baking stones covered in parchment paper, lightly shape the dough into loaves. Bake until the loaves are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped (about 20-25 minutes). Cool on a cooling rack.

Have at it, kids.

* I threw all the ingredients in a Bosch mixer & therefore didn't need to knead the dough, but if you don't have a mixer like that, the old fashioned way is just fine.

I would be entirely happy to live in a greenhouse the rest of my days. I am so fascinated by the idea of a house made completely out of glass, filled with dainty succulents and massive cacti and exotic flowers. For my birthday, we bicycled down to a nearby park on the most beautiful of days for a picnic lunch and a little stroll through the greenhouse. I began scheming to fill my room with leafy plants almost immediately. A well-spent afternoon, indeed.

  "What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.
   Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is."

  Eleven by Sandra Cisneros (read the whole piece here: it's worth it)

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I turned seventeen on Monday. I wore a new dress with a heart cutout in the back and, on the way home from school, turned up the music and tried not to think about growing up. Here's to another year of being older and (hopefully) wiser.