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?
As the weather gets colder here, my urge to bake kicks in. Yesterday I got a hankering for 
Three things that describe my afternoon: 
In need of a challenge, I decided that tonight I would attempt a culinary feat that has set cooks a-trembling since the Dawn of Man: making my own homemade pizza from scratch. Armed only with the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and the memories of watching my mom do it a bazillion times, I proceeded to make a large, floury mess of my kitchen. The kneading part was enjoyable, though I proceeded to get goo all through my hair. Once the yeast beast was “resting” in a covered dish, I suddenly remembered that I had only one pan suitable for baking a pie on. “Oh well,” I thought. “There isn’t that much dough, really. I’ll just use it all on one pizza.” (Take a note, kids. Never double up on your pizza dough.) Strike one. While that monstrous slab was baking in the oven, I turned my attention to the toppings. Wanting to be professional, I sliced my onions very thin. Thin to the point of shriveling into tiny charred strands of nothingness after being baked. Strike two. (Always remember to cut veggies into substantial chunks to avoid oven disintegration.) And lastly, as I was spreading the cheese over the top of this aberration (the dough had formed a lovely dome in the center, so everything slid towards the crust), I realized that simply picking the “white” shredded cheese doesn’t guarantee mozzarella in this country, but instead nine times out of ten you’ve got low-fat cheddar. Which kinda sucked. Strike three, I’m out.