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Procrastination… We’ve all done it before. Some of us (a.k.a. me) do it more often than others. I was a big time procrastinator yesterday.
I started out just fine. I bought a few plants in the morning, and I wanted to get them in the ground. Great, right? It was tax day, but my taxes were done (the night before, but that counts!), so I could do what I wanted with my time. I spent a few hours gardening, planting, weeding, etc. It was wonderful.
I planted lavender, marigolds, and some seeds (green beans and carrots).
My tomato plants are coming along, and I’ve added some marigolds to keep the bees happy.
Why am I showing you a patch of dirt? I decided to plant spaghetti squash from seed as one reader suggested. We’ll see if 4th time’s a charm. I planted some marigolds to attract bees, so, hopefully, if the seeds grow, and I get flowers, the bees will pollinate them. Here’s hoping!
I had a fleeting thought that I should make sure that the bunnies didn’t eat my new strawberry plants. But I ignored that thought. That was a BAD idea. I was going to take pictures yesterday, but I decided to wait (a.k.a. procrastinate) until today. Also a BAD idea. When I stepped out my front door this morning, I found this:
No leaves! The bunnies ate them all! You can see their little bit marks at the base of (what used to be) the leaves.
And this…
They must love strawberry leaves, because they left the one unripe strawberry on this plant.
And this…
Look, there’s a leaf growing in the center of the plant, which the bunnies didn’t eat (yet). Maybe I can still save these plants.
Hopefully, these are not too far gone, as the bunnies only munched on the leaves. I’ll find some way to protect them, and, hopefully, they’ll survive and thrive. Grr… I’m not loving the bunnies this morning.
Of course, that’s not all I procrastinated doing yesterday. I am a professional procrastinator! I was a bit tired after all that gardening, so I decided to wait to make bread. We ran out of bread at lunch, and I knew I needed to make more. We don’t usually go through bread that quickly (2 loaves in 3 days), but my sons thought it was my best attempt so far at homemade sandwich bread (see my recipe here).
Arrogance proceeds the fall, right? I thought, “I’ve got this! I’ve mastered bread making.” Have I never watched an episode of Survivor or Amazing Race? What happens right before people are kicked off of the show? They become overly confident. While I don’t base my philosophies on reality TV, I have found a correlation between my own over confidence and my rate of failure.
Overconfidence + Carelessness = FAIL! See?
This bread is usually ready to go in the oven 30 minutes after I put it in the pan. When it’s about an inch over the top of the pan, I pop it in the oven. These weren’t lookin’ too hot. It had been 90 minutes, and they were not rising as I’d like them to be.
So what happened with my bread? I heat up my milk to hurry the process along when making bread. I usually check the temperature. I didn’t. I think that coupled with the warm water and melted butter killed some of my yeast. It wasn’t all dead, but my bread was rising very, Very, VERY slowly. Not good. Not good at all! It should look more like this.
Look at those beautiful, puffy loaves! And that’s after only 20 minutes!
Usually that wouldn’t be a big deal, but remember how I said I’m a procrastinator? I didn’t start my bread until after 8 pm. Usually the bread is done in 1 1/2 hours from start to finish. So, it’s 9:30 at night, and I’m tired (remember, I gardened for several hours that day), and my bread just isn’t rising. Do I put it in the oven and hope it’s not a rock? Or do I make new bread. I was so tempted to just put it in the oven and hope it turned out.
BUT, my kids still miss the store-bought bread. If the bread is rock hard, that’s not going over well. Trust me. So, I bit the bullet and made another batch of bread. It rose exactly as it should. Look at this picture with both sets of loaves. The first batch is on the right. The second batch is on the left.
This picture really shows the difference. By this time, the loaves on the right had been rising for almost 2 hours. The ones on the left? 30 minutes.
I cooked both batches, just to see what would happen. Here they are.
The two loaves on the left are my first batch. It improved a little, but it didn’t rise anywhere near as much as my second batch (on the right).
Here they are out of the pans. You can really see the difference.
You can see how dense the first batch is when you compare slices. These are slices from the middle of the loaves. The one on the left is my first batch. The one on the right is my second batch.
My first batch isn’t bad, but it’s not as light and fluffy as my kids like, so I’m making it into croutons. I’m cutting the bread into thick slices to make some nice croutons for Caesar Salad.
This bread will be croutons by day’s end.
I’ll post about that a little later today. I am making garlic infused olive oil right now, and it needs to sit for at least 4 hours, and the longer it sits, the better it is. That’s good for a procrastinator like me.
Procrastination + Garlic + Olive Oil = Wonderful Garlic Infused Olive Oil!
So, now you know a little more about me. Maybe more than you wanted to know, but such is life.
