Day 1- Rosemary Walnut Bread and Blonde Brownies

While everyone around me was busy making resolutions I was busy taking actions. I was tired of whining and excuses. I'm hemming and hawing about reposting the recipes or just simply explaining my process. Maybe I'll find some clarity later.

I've decided to chronicle my adventure as a second year vegetarian. I began my vegetarian adventure last year after not having eaten red meat since I was eight or so. Last new years I made a promise to get healthier and give up meat entirely. 

 I'd like to make a few clarifications. I do eat fish, making me a pescetarian. I do this to supplement my diet and because I can't give up sushi. (It's a weakness after growing up in a Japanese church since birth.) Second, I pull recipes from various sources and then tweak them slightly.  

For Christmas I received two cookbooks for which I will be pulling almost all of my recipes.  The first is Cooking Light , Way to Cook Vegetarian which is published by Oxmoor House. The other is downstairs and I will cite it tomorrow when I'm less lazy and more prone to moving. Less talking and more posting...

Day 1-

Mother announces that father will be cooking his famous linguine and clam sauce.

Daughter scrambles to pull ingredients in the house together. Comes up with rosemary walnut bread and blonde brownies. Posts the following: 

Rosemary and Walnut Bread (Courtesy of Cooking Light-Way to Cook Vegetarian, 2010, Oxmoor House Publishing)

Bread can be a royal pain in the rear. It takes a lot of patience and time killing.  You begin by whisking together the wet ingredients with yeast to cause a chemical reaction of sorts. 

After adding flour you have to let the mixture rest for a while and then again to let it rise until you have this...

Those two little holes in the dough are just an indication that the dough has fully risen. I warmed up the oven for a brief second and then shut it off before sticking the bread in to double in size. There is nothing more dorky than getting excited about a giant gelatinous ball of dough.

Then the real fun begins. Working your biceps and hammering out your frustrations while your sticky fingers wrestle a blob of goop. 

Once the dough has come to a glorious puff and you've mixed in your various seasonings you can plop the bad boy down on a cookie sheet lined with gritty corn meal and pray that you have something beautiful turn out. 

Turn out it did-come off the sheet it did not. I had to wrangle with a dull steak knife to release it from it's hold. 

We all finally came together to enjoy a fabulous meal. My brothers girlfriend asked what the occasion was, to which I replied "nothing, this is a normal meal, nothing fancy." But it sure did taste fancy. 
I had run out of white sugar but had a whole canister of brown sugar to use so I whipped up blondie brownies with semi-sweet chocolate chips and a caramel frosting. It was a rich sweet ending to the night and a wonderful start to the new year.