Years ago, there was a PBS reality show called Frontier House, where a few couples and their children were dropped into an 1800's existence somewhere in middle of nowhere, Wild West. Other than the young man who built a log cabin with his dad, the person who sticks in my mind was the woman who could bake bread from memory. Oh, what's so hard about it? Flour, yeast, water, salt. You'd be surprised. I stayed away from bread baking for years, assuming it took a level of precision I'm just not built for. Then, I got a copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
(the old one) from the library. And over the last few months, I've started to get the hang of the bread baking thing, just from having a big container of dough sitting in the fridge, ready to go whenever the mood the strikes me. Fair disclosure, it's the mixing that takes 5 minutes, the dough still has to proof for an hour and bake for another 40 minutes.
OpenStack Summit kicks off next week in Vancouver and for those who haven't spent much time in this amazing city, you're in for a good time. Conference food is
Fifty Shades of Grey ties, huh?
I debated whether or not to do this post, mostly because it feels like a Pinterest fail waiting to happen. But what the hell, if you're even moderately crafty, you can make these grey tie cookies without too much trouble. They certainly won't look like they came from a bakery where someone with real artistic skill is decorating your cookies, but that sort of fits the bill with these 50 Shades of Grey tie cookies, doesn't it? Everyone slags the book and yet millions have read it. This Friday theaters will be at capacity with people who want to see Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele brought to life.
Before last weekend's Super Bowl, you might have seen the Baking Steel's pizza face off between a Seattle Skittle pizza and a New England sausage pie. As much as we love Marshawn Lynch around here, I don't think many of us are sprinkling Skittles on our 'za. Ann Osbourne Peavey, who commented on the Baking Steel Facebook post, called for a "REAL Seattle pizza" with Uli's Famous Sausage and Beecher's Cheese among other ingredients. With thanks to Ann for the inspiration, I bring you this week's #FridayNightSlice -- an Andouille and Crimini Mushroom pie topped with mozzarella and Beecher's Flagship. Now that's a Seattle pizza.