There is a simple explanation for my lack of blogging this week: I have been shamelessly stuffing my face with beautiful, delicious carbs. Oh yes, we bought a bread machine. “Of course, we’ll just use it to make low-carb bread and pizza dough,” we rationalized. That didn’t last long. The Snook started researching recipes on the Internet, and suddenly his inner baking demon – starved for activity for nearly two years – broke free. We spent over a hundred dollars at the grocery store last night just on bread-making supplies. We got, like, five different kinds of flour (including one ten-pound bag), spices, powdered milk, nuts, fruit, sun-dried tomatoes, potato flakes, yeast, seeds, honey, butter, everything. And now we’re eating it all. We’re fat, but man, are we happy.

In the event you want to enable our addiction, does anybody know any can’t-miss bread machine recipes we should try? We’ll also take any technical tips you have. I made my first loaf last night from a mix, and it was also our first attempt at using the timer feature to have the bread ready just as we got out of bed in the morning. It wasn’t perfect though, mostly because the flour and water seem to have caked up overnight and hence there was a bit of lumpy, unblended flour at the bottom of the loaf. It still tasted good, but we want to work out the kinks. Anybody else experience this?