A little bread and a little history

I spent Sunday (off and on from 8:30am to like 10pm) on ancestry.com (I hit up the 2-week free trial :-p). I traced the Vaux side back to 1500 (the name changed from Vax to Vaux sometime between 1593 and 1620). It flew by!! But what else was I going to do with myself while I waited for my bread dough to rise, eh?

My second workstation of the day. I made 3 french bread loaves from scratch! It was really fun and the work paid off!! The first thing that I did was slice my finger open on the carrot slicer when I opened the drawer to get a spatula :( oops!

The dough had to rise for 2.5 hours the first time.

My library bread cookbook :-p I will be renewing this!

Rising dough! After it rose the first time, I had to punch it down and let it rise for another hour and a half!

I didn't get glammed up to bake and dig into history :-p

still rising...

my three loaves had to rise again for 45 minutes on the cornmeal sprinkled pan under a towel

it also had to be baked with a pan of water steaming below it...

but look how beautiful it turned out! (I forgot to slice three slices in the top of each to allow for expansion, oops!)

ta daaaa! (I also grabbed a pan to move it out of the way and forgot it had been sitting on the oven the whole time and it burned me!!)

yummm!!!

Today we picked up my friend Amira and went to Mount Vernon! It was FREEZING outside!

They have a scale model of the mansion! Jesse was really excited to take pictures :)

there it is! George Washington's house!!

This is hilarious! They had the most up to date technologies...including a "Necessary" or today it is also known as an "outhouse!"

they brought in a camel for Christmas. His name is Aladdin.

Amira, Aladdin, and me :)

they also had a woman making chocolate candies as they would have in the 18th century

We went to Petco and the Humane Society Thrift Store today to pick up our cat supplies!! We are set! The carrier is the same kind we had for Juliet!

Our set up. :) We have been practicing closing the closet doors and I am putting the Christmas decorations away tomorrow so hopefully we will be cat-proof! :)

We are having a good 2010 so far! Hope you are, too!!!