Butt Bread

I have a freezer full of sliced bread. Two pieces per bag - heels of bread loaves. I save the bread to make panade (bread paste) for moist meatloaf, meatballs, or juicy burgers. But mostly I can't seem to throw them away. Which is to say they're taking up valuable freezer space.

Recently The Man "helped" by gathering the ends, repackaged, and relabeled them.

Since he came this close to throwing the bread out I guess I better use them up, pronto. What better use than homemade croutons.

I'm lucky I didn't burn the bread cubes. I got a little distracted when I looked out the kitchen window and saw a rainbow. A Hawaiian rainbow is pretty; a rainbow in Atascadero is a miracle. I had to go outside and try to get a picture of it. Of course all the animals had to show up to see what all the to-do was about but I did manage to get a small peekaboo rainbow.

 

And, yes, the croutons turned out delicious. The TJ Multigrain bread made excellent croutons - a little sweet and nutty, crunchy on the outside, and a tiny bit soft on the inside. Perfect.

I wasn't worried, after all, it was garbage. I had nothing to lose.

Topic inspired by Jenny who also hoards saves her bread and makes croutons.

Dream Come True

It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down . . .

Thanksgiving Day 2014

Yeah, runnin' down a dream
That never would come to me
Workin' on a mystery, goin' wherever it leads
Runnin' down a dream

I felt so good like anything was possible . . . . 

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Frozen Food

If you peeked into my freezer right now you would find various meats waiting to be turned into delicious meals: lamb chops for the grill, chicken breast for burritos or enchiladas, and beef stew meat for  . . . well, beef stew.

You would find three packages of Swiss cheese, six pounds worth, for sandwich-making. They were on sale at Costco; the Checkout person commented, "You must really like cheese!"

You would see fresh fruit vacuum-sealed at their peak of sweetness: strawberries from the farmer's market last summer, and magenta-colored dragon fruit flown in from Maui yesterday with The Man's Mom. The Man's sister grows the dragon fruit in her Upcountry Maui garden. (Thank you Connie for the home-grown yummy goodness.)

You would also find two gallon-sized Ziploc bags of luscious yummy yarn. Yes, yarn. Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in hand-dyed happy crazy colors and Malabrigo lace-weight skeins in colorways of greens, blues, and purples - of which I hope to make more woven pooled scarves.

The yarns are not in the freezer because my stash has runneth over or because I'm hiding them from The Man. Rather, they're in quarantine, a little time out before they join up with my regular yarn stash. The freezing cold will kill off any hitchhikers - nasty moths or moth babies - that feast on natural woolie fibers.

Bon appétit ~ but not for you little larvae.

(The Man just asked me why there's a book in the freezer. That, is another story.)