Home-Made Again

I've tried my hand more than once at baking bread from scratch. I honestly like it. Like the way the house smells as it bakes, like the way it tastes, like that I know what's in the bread. It's nice.

But it's easier with a bread machine.

When we got married, we got a bread machine that made one-pound loaves of bread as a wedding gift. At the time, those things ran in the $100+ range; it was an extremely generous gift! But when we moved to Virginia, I tried to make this cheddar cheese jalepeño bread. I *thought* I had a 1.5 pound bread machine until that day.

Do you know how awful it smells when cheese bread overflows the baking pan and gets on the heating element of your bread machine? It's not pretty. It's not even ugly. It's horrifying.

And I had to throw away my bread machine as a result.

Ever since then, I've been wanting another one. I'm home with the kids all day, unless we're heading out for dance or sports or YMCA Homeschool Art Classes or working out at the Y or homeschool co-op or church or ... Well, I don't have a job outside the home, so a bread machine to make bread would be nice. I can make bread, but it won't take up my whole day, which, as you can see, makes it hard to get bread made. Schedules being what they are and all.

I was wandering through Wally World and saw a breadmaker for $60. I thought, "Mmmm... I like it. I can make up to two pound loaves, I can look in the window and see my bread... I think I'll save my blow money for it!" I actually said as much to Travel Man this morning as he donned his Super Suit for his business trip. I had saved $15 of my blow money from two weeks ago and hadn't taken out my blow money last week, which put me up to $40 so far. If I just didn't get coffee at Starbucks or anything, I was golden! Only one more week (this Friday!) of blow money, and that baby would be mine!!

And today, I walked into Wally World for some things I actually needed and walked by the display. I pointed at it and said to the girls, "I'm saving my blow money to get th- ... HEY! IT'S MARKED DOWN!!!"

I JUMPED into action and called Travel Man. He didn't answer. I blurted out, "I'm going to get the breadmaker because it's on clearance and I've almost got all the money so I'm just going to get it now and pay the last tiny bit at the end of the week and I am really excited." (Actually, I said this between telling Little Girl to only pick up the conditioner and not the shampoo because I only need one. I'm sure he'll love me for that.) Then, just to be sure, I texted him and told him what I was doing.

See, once upon a time, I wanted a food processor at Wally World, and when they put it on clearance, I hemmed and hawed for four days and it was gone. GONE. And I'm still without a food processor. I'm so bummed out.

But today, I got that bread machine, and Travel Man even texted back "Ok," which might mean just, "Sure! That's great that you found it and I don't have time to text more than two letters!" or it could mean, "Ok, fine, stop bothering me while I'm trying to set up for my workshop, please."

Tomorrow, I think I'll be baking bread. Mmmmm...