Bread, soup, and Jane Austen

It's a cold, rainy day, so with no hope of going to the park, we've settled into a nice day inside. I've made two kinds of soup: a cheese vegetable soup for lunch, and a roast tomato soup for dinner. The latter is from a cookbook I got for Christmas from my mother- and sister-in-law, and although it's Australian, I think it will translate well. I had an amazing homemade tomato soup this weekend at a wedding, and I'm hoping this one will be comparable.


I'm also making bread today, in a further effort to keep our grocery budget down. I calculated ages ago that, based on ingredients, it costs me 41 cents to make a loaf of bread, whereas to buy the cheapest one would be 1.99$. When you consider that we go through a loaf of bread a week, if I were to make a batch of bread twice a month, that would work out to 1.64$. To buy the equivalent in loaves would cost 7.96$, so 6.32$ more. If I made bread for a year, I'd save just over 75$. Also, I decide exactly what goes into my bread, and it would be made without preservatives. I'm trying out a new whole wheat recipe that I found, of all places, in the manual for my 5-year-old Kitchen Aid stand mixer. The dough hook attachment means no kneading, and that suits me for the moment.


The mood of the weather was matched by one of my favourite movies, which is on Global's website this week: Sense and Sensibility! I check the video section of their site every now and then, and they put up 6 or 7 movies at a time. It's a great free activity, with an admittedly limited selection. And they do recycle the ones they choose to play. I think this is the second or third time Sense and Sensibility has been on. The ending always gets me: "so you are... not married?" "My heart is, and always will be, yours." Baby D sat through a fair amount of the movie with me, enthusiastically pointing out any horses she saw and waving when Hugh Grant was onscreen.