So first of all, let me tell you that Sam made the yummy butternut squash and sun dried tomato soup AND the Kale/apple/almond salad with hazelnut vinaigrette dressing this week (he added some honey to Martha's recipe to offset the bitterness of the kale, which worked great). I think I might have peeled a couple shallots for the dressing, but other than that, it was all him and it was SO GOOD. The soup is a favorite of ours that we like to make in a big batch and freeze for the colder months.
My one contribution was the bread. We have a rosemary plant that is going crazy these days and the whole reason I wanted to try to grow rosemary this season was the memory of this fantastic bread we shared with friends last winter. So I tried my hand at making some, following everything in this recipe with the exception of halving the flour with wheat flour to make it slightly less, uh, white floury...(can I say more healthy? is bread with any white flour ever really healthy? Aren't people saying that wheat is really bad for you now too? I don't know. I can't keep up. anyway) But evidently white flour has more gluten than wheat (and come to find out gluten gives bread a thicker crust, which helps trap gases from yeast and therefore makes bread rise)...so I ended up making bread that was flat, unintentionally. And it looks great from above! Check it out! But kinda broke my heart at first..until i decided to take it as a small lesson on learning to embrace the process and imperfection. The fact that a couple loaves of unintentionally flat bread could shake my mood for a little bit means I do in fact need the lesson.
I just read some of Brigitte's beautiful thoughts on this over at Covet Chicago. Perfectionism (or the illusion of it) keeps me from trying so many fantastic things. It keeps me from experiencing way too many aspects of life. If a lesson on letting go of it happens to crop up when I'm making food for neighbors, I'll take it....and they actually did too, with a smile even and gratitude. I hope to let this blog be an avenue to share much more bold examples of imperfection and failures than this...and I hope to use it as a challenge for myself to jump in and "fail fast," as my smart businessy entrepreneur friend likes to say. In the process, I hope to stumble into beauty. And inspire some imperfect beauty making from the friends who read along too.