Bread and Books

This post is basically a summary of my Mothers Day on Sunday.

I've had a bread recipe out for about 2 weeks, but just haven't had the time to make it. So I figured on Mothers Day my hubbie could take care of the kiddies for a while and I made bread. I used another Canadian Living magazine recipe (Oct '09) for Multigrain Loaves. It uses a mix of multigrain and white bread flours, molasses and sunflower seeds (both inside and a topping). It is delicious. There's something relaxing, at least for me, about kneading bread dough for a good 15 minutes. It forces me to stay in one place and I build up a nice rhythm.



My husband doesn't usually remember to do gift shopping ahead of time, but it is kind of nice, because he usually takes the boys to the bookstore for a few hours and I get an added gift of some peace and quiet. So he took the boys out and I made bread, actually got to have an extended, uninterrupted shower and knitted.

I was quite impressed with my Mothers Day gifts, so I thought I'd share:




Three Cups of Tea, One man's mission to promote Peace one school at a time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. (Top Left)

I read both of Khaled Hosseini's books The Kite Runner and a Thousand Splendid Suns while my husband was in Afghanistan and have wanted to read more books based in Afghanistan. I had heard good reviews of this book and it was on my "To Read list", although I don't remember sharing this with hubbie. He is too clever, isn't he?

Next up are three cookbooks, can I ever have too many??

Saha by Greg and Lucy Malouf(Top Right) is a chef's journey through Lebanon and Syria. This cookbook has beautiful photography and has great dishes as well as stories of the author's culinary adventures through their travels. I love cuisine from this part of the world and it is the only book I now have dedicated to it.

Curry by Jody Vassallo and awesome photography by Deidre Rooney (Bottom left). The photos in this book are modern and really show off the spicy colour of the food. I love curry and this book incorporates curry recipes from around the world.

The last book, Easy Everyday Indian by Das Sreedharan (bottom right) is another Indian cookbook for my collection. It has some different recipes to my other books and has a lovely little section on ingredients. I'm quite familiar with the ingredients in Indian recipes, but it can be quite intimidating if you're not used to cooking this cuisine.

So I hope to be cooking and sharing from these books soon.