Beautiful

It is, isn't it? I could start and end this post with this picture and claim myself as a kitchen demi-goddess and call it good. But there is more to this story.

The recipe called it "Earth Bread." The cookbook has been a winner for me in the past. I scanned the recipe and saw that it required 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds. I forgot to go to the store. Never fear! Remember these babies? Oh, yeah. I had sunflower seeds.

I went out to the garden and pulled on one of those sunflower's droopy heads. Something sharp penetrated my finger. It hurt. It stung. It's November. It can't be a bug.

I realized something was wrong when I picked out seeds and dumped them into my injured hand and I couldn't hold the seeds. I ran inside and watched a part of my hand swell. This, in literary circles, would be referred to as foreshadowing. Fortunately, this interaction with, what can only be assumed as a spider, is anti-climactic. No black widow. No decaying flesh. I didn't even die.

80 minutes later and with the help of four children (three losing interest very quickly), I had 3 tablespoons of sunflower seeds. I deemed it good enough.

I am pretty talented in the kitchen. I bake very well. At times I border on genius. But not today.

I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda gal. I start measuring (read: eyeballing and dumping in) the ingredients. I dumped in the water, yeast, sugar before I started grinding the wheat. I added the white flour, the freshly milled wheat flour, quick look at the recipe, add oatmeal, then some cracked wheat.

I don't have any cracked wheat.

The point of this bread is to have the earthy consistency of dirt with small pebbles. Without cracked wheat, all I have is 3 T. of sunflowers. I have wheat. Lots of wheat but I don't know how to crack it.

I started tearing my house apart looking for my coffee grinder before I realized that I don't drink coffee, never have, and hence, don't own a coffee grinder. And so I improvised.

Blender? No. It didn't even cross my mind until the bread was complete.

Ziploc freezer bag and a hammer on cement!

There are hundreds, nay, thousands of tiny holes in this bag.

And this is my kitchen sink:

Why don't you go on back there and compare the size of that loaf of bread to the size of the mess made to produce it.

End result - beautiful loaf of earth bread with a sprinkle of sunflower seeds and a whole lot of whole wheat kernels, making those little pebbles into boulders turning the bread into a health hazard.

Moral of the story: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.