I caught on to the COVID home baking trend pretty early on, I think. It started with a need to make a sandwich loaf at home but once I mastered that, I realized that baking bread, even without a bread machine, can be super easy and deeply satisfying - just as long as you have access to flour and yeast!
My mind has been set for a while now on learning to bake a crusty bread loaf.. the kind of loaf with thick crusty skin and soft fluffy bread inside that you can dunk into hot soup and enjoy. I came across this recipe on King Arthur Flour and true to it's name it was indeed a very easy bread loaf to put together.
I didn't change anything from the original recipe except halving it and making one bread loaf instead of 2. In the hindsight however I should have made 2 for the work of 1.. the one loaf I made in the morning was long gone before the dinner time :)
I am sure to be making this bread loaf again and again now. A keeper recipe.
Summer Home Activities:
This summer has been special for my daughter because she got to spend all of it at home, without any summer camps or travels. She was excited about no summer camps - she is at the age where she has gotten over the fancy of the camps and just prefers spending her time her own way. However she was bummed about the no travel plan. Anyhow, she got a promise out of us to make up for it by 2x longer vacation next summer :)
We did manage to do a lot of fun things at home however and had a lot of summer fun. It was a different kind of summer than traditional summer, but fun-filled neverthless!
She is quite outdoorsy and likes to learn a new outdoor activity every summer. This summer learning to skateboarding has been her main project. After a few falls and bumps, I think she is coming along quite well!
We wrapped up our Spanish learning course on duolingo and embarked on Scratch programming. Scratch is a programming language for kids - like blockly, where building a game or a program is simple putting the right blocks together. It encourages kids 8-12 to build logical thinking which is a key skill of computer programming but at the same time keeping it fun and exciting. I spent some time teaching her scratch, she attended an online camp and had fun building some fun new games like this obstacle run and a simple translator (being a young coder and all, both games need keyboard and not mobile friendly yet :) )
I also bought an embroidery starter kit and we had fun doing embroidery together on long weekend afternoons. It took us about 4 weekends to finish the two projects - but we had a lot of fun. She did the simple straight stitches and attempted some loops. I finished remaining loops and all the french knots. We are super happy with how it turned out!
I hope you are all having fun and relaxing summer break and staying safe!