I made bread today. I haven’t made any in a long time and I used to make it every single Friday – two big, hearty loaves to last a week’s worth of sandwiches, French toast, and slices thick with butter just for a snack.

I started making bread a couple of years ago. I was listening to a podcast of The Splendid Table (Download. Listen. Repeat.) and they talked about making bread in just five minutes a day. My kids eat LOADS of bread and I liked the idea of managing the ingredients.

Plus, baking bread makes the whole house smell good.

And you can brag about it.

The basic recipe is very easy, and these are all the ingredients you need.

• 1-1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (about 1-1/2 packets)
• 1-1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 6-1/2 cups unbleached flour, plus extra for dusting dough
• Cornmeal

The great thing is, you can modify it like crazy. You could mix in wheat flour. Maybe you could even put raisins and cinnamon in there and make raisin bread. Try whatever you want. I’m not the boss of you. 

Today, I added chopped olives (from my aunt’s trees!) and a few tablespoons of olive oil and I had OLIVE BREAD just like that.

Dip this in olive oil and balsamic. You won't be sorry.

We live in the city. Not like a really big city or anything, but a neighborhood, where the kids are walking distance from school and I could ride my bike to the store if I wanted to. (I don’t.)

As a kid, I grew up in the country, ten miles out of our small town. I could see my horses from my bedroom window and my parents had a garden which supplied most of the year’s vegetables after a few days of canning. The idea of living in a place with street noise and street lamps is completely foreign to me, and yet here I am.

My aunt has a farm just a few miles away (in Oregon, you are never really that far from “the country”) and I like to take the kids out there on the weekends to get their hands a little dirty. Summertime is the best time for this and we spend some time picking tomatoes, feeding the cows and chickens and driving the tractor, which is really a riding lawnmower but don’t tell my son.

It builds character.

The cows get the spent corn stalks.

We learn about the birds and the bees.

These white pumpkins will be the envy of the jack-o-lantern community.

The children have little patience for picking, but endless patience for petting chickens.

Last weekend we picked maybe 30 pounds of tomatoes, all varieties.

My daughter likes to put flower blossoms in our veggie bucket.

On summer weekend afternoons, my kitchen smells like the garden as tomato sauce bubbles on the stove all day. A quick spin in the food processor and off to the freezer it goes…tomato sauce for the entire year.

No tomato is spared.

My apologies to my co-workers on Monday mornings. I can’t get the smell of garlic and onions off my hands.

I am SO shy. I am shy and socially awkward. In fact, it would be better for everyone if the only place I ever was, was where people are not.

That said, The Pioneer Woman came to town today and I was not about to miss it. So I packed up myself and my crippling insecurity, spent way too much time contemplating an outfit, actually put on make-up, got all Spanx’d up and drove to Portland to meet her.

I took an entire half-day off work.

Portland is a great town, and I really don’t get there as much as I’d like. The book signing was at Powell’s in Beaverton, which is Portland sprawl to the west. I stopped at Washington Square to check the Disney Store for treasures (bribes) and to browse through Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn without my kids whining at me to come on already. My next stop was Art Media, a place I probably haven’t visited since I was a student at Portland State. It’s a cool store, but they were out of Yupo (have I started a trend?) so I moved on.

I met my friend at Starbucks, and luckily it was the right one. This is Portland, after all. From the stoplight at Powell’s I could see three Starbucks.

They started giving out tickets for the signing at 4:30, but the line was already well underway. They announced that someone had been there since 10 a.m. I’m not even kidding. I had ticket 110 and last I heard, they stopped handing out tickets at number 375 and everyone else just had to fend for themselves.

We sat in the back. I’m claustrophobic.

There was quite a turnout, of course.

I waited patiently with my cookbooks on my lap. I brought Ree a pendant with the Charlie painting on it (secret: it’s what I send my clients as a thank-you if they order a large portrait!)

I started to fidget.

My pink ostrich boots seemed right for the occasion.

Ree came in through the back of the store, but I don’t have a photo of that. I also don’t have a photo of her impersonating Ethel Merman, giving life advice to soon-to-be college graduates or calling Reese Witherspoon “blonde, petite and narrow.”

But that all happened.

You know how she looks on her website? She looks just like that, but real.

Okay, this is the part where I turn into a complete idiot. I probably blushed. I know I stammered. I walked up and said, “I’m Rachael. The one who painted Charlie?” And instead of calling security she stood up and gave me a hug.

And then I asked the person in line behind me to take a picture of us with my camera. And then Ree asked the same person to take a picture of us with her camera. I’m glad she’s good at Photoshop.

Here I'm thinking, "Is there lipstick on my teeth?"

When I got home, my kids greeted me with, “what did  you bring us?” I tossed some kettle corn in their direction, but H spotted the cookbook. The girl who only eats carbs unsurprisingly flipped right to the Twice Baked Potato recipe and squealed. My husband asked suspiciously if it was a vegetarian cookbook and I assured him that no, it is filled with meat, butter and bacon recipes. He was pleased.

Here's what the cookbook looks like on my counter. Because that's important.

I like to think if Charlie had been there, he would've signed it too.

Yesterday, for about five seconds, so fast you’d miss it if you blinked, I was on the Rachael Ray Show.

It came about after I sent a proposal into the show after the success of Julia & Julia (my new favorite movie), suggesting that someone (me) could cook through a Rachael Ray cookbook for a year and blog about it. We could call it the Rachael/Rachael Project because I couldn’t come up with a more clever idea.

Well, that must have put me on some list because I have randomly received calls from a producer or segment coordinator every six weeks or so. “Have you ever wanted to bob your hair?” “Does your daughter have a boyfriend you can’t stand?” “Can you be in Manhattan on Tuesday?”

Just before Christmas I got a call asking me to send in a video of my daughter and I cooking one of Rachael Ray’s recipes (they gave me four or five choices). We chose Cheeseburger Chili Mac and Cheese because part of the footage they wanted was the family enjoying the finished product and this was the only thing there was even a chance of my daughter actually eating. Even though she doesn’t eat meat. Or things with more than one ingredient, generally. But she likes macaroni and cheese and we had a talk about “acting” beforehand so I thought we’d be okay.

Over Christmas vacation, I scrubbed my kitchen, cleared the counters and displayed two of my paintings prominently in the background for some shameless promotion. We borrowed an HD camera from some friends, and with a 9-year-old cameraman and 6-year-old sous chef, I got cookin’.

Hilarity ensued.

From off camera, my son yelled, “Hey, did you wash your hands?” My daughter took a bite of the mac for the camera…and promptly spit it out. The camera was left unattended several times and we got some good shots of the ceiling. My son discovered the zoom control, and despite my advice to the contrary, attempted to get all artistic with his camera work.

When we were done, I watched it with the kids (sighed in exasperation at the state of my hair), burned a CD and sent it off.

I watched the show in my office on Monday with some friends at work. We cheered when we saw my daughter’s adorable person sprinkling grated cheese over the pan, and boo’d when it became apparent we’d only be on screen for five seconds.

I guess if we all get 15 minutes of fame, I’ve got 14:55 left.

Remember Christmas vacation? And I mentioned that I had filmed a segment for the Rachael Ray Show? Well they might actually air it on Monday, January 25. The producer’s exact words, in an email:

“…you should tape the episode on Monday the 25^th because there is a possibility that a piece of your video might be on our show.”

So, if you’re not busy, or if you have TiVo – check it out!

I really should've had someone come over and do something with my hair that day. I mean, really.

I have a full-time job. And I don’t mean the one that includes pouring milk, doing laundry and feeding Webkinz. I mean a full-time, grown-up, wearing-suits-to-work kind of job. It’s not very often that I take vacation of any significant length, but I do try to when my kids are out of school. This year, I took vacation from Christmas Eve to January 4 and I have to say, it just wasn’t long enough. 

Tomorrow it’s back to work, the suits and the commute. I started to panic yesterday because how could it be over already? And what did I accomplish, really? So here’s what I did do, didn’t do and meant to do.

ART

I worked on a few paintings, even a couple that were Christmas gifts – one that I completed, one that I didn’t. (Sorry, babe!) Then there were three name paintings and two more horsey-type just for fun.

FOOD

I cooked a a delicious Christmas dinner at my parents’ house, if I do say so myself. Grilled salmon, crab cakes, crab mousse, tuna-pasta salad and shrimp. We’re from the coast, after all. I love cooking at my parents’ house because they have every gadget imaginable and my dad washes the dishes AS I GO. 

I also made good use of my sourdough starter, making sourdough-applesauce cake and doughnuts (and gaining five pounds.)

This sourdough-applesauce cake will make you give up chocolate cake forever.

Crabcakes, I adore thee.

A happy sight - bread dough rising in the pantry.

They might not be much to look at, but they are tasty.

FUN

The after-Christmas unpacking extravaganza (how did we get all that stuff in our car?) was followed by an entire day cleaning the kitchen from stem to stern so I could film a cooking segment for the Rachael Ray Show with my 6-year-old as sous chef and my 8-year-old as cameraman. (Stay tuned. It may never see the light of day, but it was fun to do!) 

We made mac and cheese. I cannot make this stuff up.

WHAT I MEANT TO DO, BUT DIDN”T

• Clean the kids’ rooms
• Organize the garage and plug in the new freezer
• Clean the carpet
• Relax

Maybe next year.

Despite the unfortunate events of the past 24 hours (hint: hundreds of dollars at auto mechanic and a break-in at my husband’s office) I am determined to cocoon myself in good thoughts (and chocolate if necessary) and make this a good day.  

As all good days start off, I began at Dutch Bros. with my usual mocha on the rocks. I don’t know what they put in those babies (chocolate milk!) but I am completely addicted. I picked up some ground coffee for husband on the way home – he’s not much for frou frou espresso drinks – so we could all be sufficiently caffeinated.  

I have lentil soup in the Crock Pot, which not only makes the house smell great, it makes me feel incredibly efficient to have dinner cooked by 10 a.m.  

I like saying the word mirepoix. It makes me sound fancy.

The kids are off to the park so they will come back in a better mood (fingers crossed) and their absence also allows me to crank up my stereo and make some art.  

It's going to be a horse. I hope that's obvious.

So to recap…  

• Caffeine (the frou-frou espresso kind if you’re into it)
• Dinner in the Crock Pot
• Kids at the park with dad
• Loud music
• A studio cat, preferably one that doesn’t walk across your painting with muddy footprints (I’m lookin’ at you, Ron)
• Optimism with just a dash of denial

Happy New Year!