Bread!

As Thayer mentioned last night, I was in the process of baking bread. I used the basic white bread recipe from Beard on Bread and had moderate success. This isn't my favorite white bread recipe (I prefer Betsy Oppenneer's basic white bread) and the high altitude (9500 ft., thank you) made the rising and mixing kinda strange. The loaf turned out tasty, but dense- we'll see if we can't improve that in the future. However, it makes good toast and sandwich bread and it has a nice crust.
At this point, you might be asking yourself- they're making bread, but what else will they eat in a cabin for nine months? Well, I'm happy to write a little about that now. Before we arrived, we placed a bulk order with Sysco for all of our really basic needs. Tons of flour (50 lb. each of bread and whole wheat), rice (brown and basmati), beans (lentils, garbanzo, pinto, black and navy), pasta (macaroni and spaghetti), frozen veggies (corn, peas, green beans, and 'Japanese-style mix'), and frozen black bean patties. Oh, and we also got a BIG bag of powdered nonfat milk, which Thayer doesn't mind the taste of. And cereal- rice krispies, cheerios, raisin bran, and oatmeal. I'm probably forgetting some of the Sysco order, but then again, you're probably getting sick of reading my lists of groceries.

We're envisioning eating a lot of bread, stir-fries, sandwiches, and chili. So far, the cooking is going well. We haven't yet been thwarted by the higher altitudes, but we've been sticking to pretty simple fare. To liven things up, we're making a second bulk order from a natural foods supplier. We got the catalog from Billy Barr this morning, and I've been salivating and looking over it ever since. We need an entire case of Newman-O's, right? And a case of organic chocolate bars, too, right? There's still quite a bit of our food budget left, so we'll probably pick out a couple treats to keep us happy in the middle of an avalanche.

On the work front, we have nearly another week off. The building supervisor (I believe that's her title), Robyn, is taking a week off, so we're relaxing even further into vacation mode. I'll be driving our Subaru (the "subie") into town early tomorrow morning for its fall maintenance, but then we're off all week! We're planning to hike out to Copper Lake tomorrow to have a picnic and to enjoy the balmy weather while we still can.