Mini-Size Me

I work a long distance from my home.  This means that I'm either going to eat out very often or take my lunch.  The balance I've tried to achieve is one lunch meal out a week and lunches from home the rest of the time.

I could go into how "brown-bagging it" saves money and is healthier but my real motivator is, I simply get tired of eating out.  The meals out are mostly heavy, the portions are large, and dealing with the leftovers can be a pain in the tookus.

As part of my summer menu for work time lunches I've made bread the last three weeks.  I'm trying something (new for me) with the bread, little loaves.  I'm not very often a sandwich person but I do like a slice of bread with cheese or perhaps some cheese and meat.  I'm experimenting with the small loaves because it breaks the meal into smaller more slowly eaten portions and quite honestly, those little loaves are just so darn cute.  Also, a small slice with butter is great to accompany my breakfast banana as I scramble out the door.

Despite how nice it is to have home baked bread, you have wonder where is the practicality of making bread when one has an already very busy life?  For me, practicality in this venture begins and ends with the breadmaker.  Some of you may remember that around Christmas I was on the cusp of gifting my breadmaker to someone else.  After all, it had been gifted to me about ten years earlier and I'd used it about three times.  Then, I had strep throat right before Christmas, a slow recovery, and family coming over on Christmas Eve.  I simply didn't have energy to bake bread.  

I've always objected to the breadmaker because it makes such an awkward loaf.  This past Christmas I found a recipe for dinner rolls that was mixed by the bread machine and then shaped and baked by hand.  Marvelous!  While, I'll still love the process of making my own bread I have to admit that I've been seduced by the ease of just throwing everything in the breadmaker and letting it do it's thing.  In about an hour and a half I have a beautiful dough that has risen once and is ready for shaping and the second rising.  Oh the ease!  How did I manage before this?

Occasionally, I feel like I am cheating but then I remember if I still had to do it all by hand I wouldn't be eating my own bread at lunch.  So, I think my little shortcut and bow to modernity is paying off, for now.   I just hope it doesn't take me out of the running for a Betty Crocker Award.