April 8th, 2012

Happy Easter weekend everyone.  We hope you have a relaxing and joyful day of celebration!

This week I embarked on my bread making journey. For my birthday Ben’s parents gave me some Amazon money and I decided to use part of it to purchase a bread cookbook.  I decided on Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  The bases behind the book is that you mix up a bread starter and leave it in the fridge (similar to sourdough starters).  When you want bread you take it out of the fridge, shape it according to the type of bread, let it rise and bake.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!  And tasty too.  I made a couple of Boules, ciabatta, and regular sandwich loaf bread.  There are lots of variations in the book and I can’t wait to try some of them out!  The only tricky part is that it calls for supplies we don’t have and for two racks in the oven (which we also don’t have).  So far we have managed and the bread has turned out delicious (even if we have to cook it for double the amount of time called for)!

One of Ben and mine’s favorite Easter treats is Reece’s Peanut Butter Eggs.  Unfortunately, you can’t find them here in Swaziland.  So when I saw a recipe for homemade Reece’s eggs on this blog, I thought I would give it a try.  And while they weren’t exactly the same, they were still tasty.  I made them a little large this go around, so next time I will make them a little bit smaller.  They were pretty rich!  Mikayla even jumped in on the action and enjoyed herself a little peanut butter!

Easter school 007

Easter school 009

Because of Easter weekend, Ben had a four day weekend.  So Friday we enjoyed a relaxing day at home as a family.  We hung out and were super lazy!  So lazy in fact that I think Mikayla got a little bored!  Amidst our laziness we managed to squeeze in a game of disc golf and a nice Thai dinner cooked by Ben.  We don’t exactly have a disc golf course, but we make up our own when we play.  For example, shoot to the post near the soccer field!

On Saturday we woke up early to go to the grocery store.  One the way in we stopped at a Country Club for Mikayla to play at their playground.  It is one of the best playgrounds in Swaziland and is the closest one to our house (thirty minutes away).  She had so much fun running from play area to play area.

Today is Easter Sunday and we once again plan to lay low and hang out at the house.  Tonight we are having Joe over for some Easter steaks on the grill.  I am also going to make a loaf of bread and a Pina Colada Cake (I will keep you posted on how it tastes).

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