Juliska Dishes...

This is what the other colors look like...they suggest mixing and matching.

I Am In Total Love...

Juliska Pottery has entered into my life...I love it...I was reading La Cucina magazine and it was so beautiful this month that I literally devoured it from the inside front cover to the inside back cover when the most beautiful cup in the entire world caught my eye.   I really had to have it as soon as I could find it.   So...I went to a site called plumpuddingkitchen.com.  The amazing Juliska Pottery was obtainable right there on that lovely site.  I have to say that I love dishes...and since there are just the two of us...I tend to buy fabulous place settings for two so that I could easily use a different place setting for every dinner of the week.  White tends to be my favorite...big oversized white sort of restaurant dishes.  But I might be willing to give up my other sets just for these.   They are made in Spain, dishwasher, oven and microwave safe and so lovely in their simplicity.  These dishes come in pale shades of blue and green and yellow as well as white but this sort of grainy white with these bumps is my favorite.   I bought the mugs as well as this tea/coffee cup.  For now...but two place settings of this pattern are mysteriously on their way to me...I must have ordered them in my sleep.

Really Dense Chewy Crusty Bread In 5 Minutes...

I don't know if people are really aware of this fabulous bread book.  It is difficult to believe that you can have bread in minutes...let alone bread that is this good.  It is so easy...flour, yeast, salt and water...mixed in a big bowl until it looks like goop.  Leave it out on the counter until it rises to the top...bubbling and sticky and looking as though you are not going to get anything good out of it at all.  Put in in the refrigerator and let it sit until the next day...although yesterday I mixed the starter and made the bread all in the same day and the bread was still fabulous.  I even forgot to put the requisite bowl of water in the oven and the bread still had a dense yet light interior and a crusty crackly crust.  I have made big loaves and small loaves and even pizza out of this same dough.  It never fails and you truly do not knead it...you sort of toss on some flour and flip it around and let it rest...I call it magic...the authors call it artisanal no knead bread.  I have never in my life had success with bread making until this book.  I make it weekly because it is fabulous for toast and equally good dipped in a pure organic olive oil.  I use organic unbleached flour and yeast and sea salt and the result is perfection all of the time.  I have made it so often now that I know the 4 ingredient recipe by heart.   I can easily give you the recipe  but the book has so many variations and tips that it is worth buying.  Oh...the authors state that if you don't wash the bowl that the starter is in when you start the next batch...you will have sour dough bread...I find that totally magical.

Happy Bunny Day...otherwise known as Easter Sunday!!!

It is a lovely sunny peaceful day...the required number of Peeps have been consumed...as well as some amazing chocolate covered ones.  There is nothing that has to get finished today.  Dinner will be a rack of lamb encrusted with herbs and Dijon mustard.  With that we will also have fresh asparagus and baby potatoes...dessert will be a juicy wedge of watermelon...yum!!!  We went to a local dairy yesterday...and bought their fresh milk.  We bought some little bottles to taste on the way home and it was so frighteningly good...the cows were happy and peaceful and not injected with anything.  Babies were everywhere!!!  We also bought local fresh eggs from them.  The story in our area about these eggs is that if you want to go to the actual egg farm...you will drive down a long long long driveway and actually walk into the farmhouse kitchen of a now 92 year old lady who is the egg czar...she sits in her kitchen, tells lovely stories and sells these most beautiful brown eggs.  I boiled an entire dozen yesterday...and they are truly so pretty that I didn't miss adding any Eastery colors.  They also peel so easily I was shocked.  Our new routine will be getting this fresh milk and these fresh eggs weekly.  Oh...bonus...next week they will begin to sell their own ice cream.