Bread, Toffee and my addiction to The Kitchn

Nope, that's not a typo up there. I'm talking about TheKitchn, the sister site from ApartmentTherapy.com. For me, it's a little like what I imagine Valium to be like: an initial hit to the senses that quickly makes my eyes glaze over and takes me to that very, very happy place of thinking and reading about food. (Guilty confession: I actually get a little stir crazy when I don't read TheKitchn on a daily basis. If that's not the sign of a true addiction, I don't know what is.)

The really great thing about reading TheKitchn is that it inspires me to make all sorts of things that I wouldn't normally have thought about even venturing a stab at. Just over the last three months, I've used their recipes to make Garlic Zucchini Soup and Chocolate Orange Truffles for my engagement party in October, as well as homemade No-Knead bread (yesterday) and Mailing Toffee (tonight). If the soup, truffles and bread are any indication, the toffee should be out of sight!

The assembly of ingredients. As usual, I didn't have all the ingredients on hand, so I replaced the vanilla extract with rum.










Melting the butter, sugar, salt and water. Putting a full pound of butter in here made me think I was having a real Paula Deen moment, but boy, is the taste of this worth it!


Here's the toffee spread out on the cookie sheet. I sprayed non-stick spray on the aluminum foil, just to be on the safe side. The color didn't come through really well on this picture, but the toffee was a beautiful tawny brown.








The chocolate chips before they've melted into the toffee. Next time, I'm only letting half of them melt in this step.




Final step: sprinkling the almonds on. Yum!

Coffee

We've been out of coffee at home for a couple of weeks. Been making do with espresso on the weekends and work coffee during the week (the espresso doesn't work in the regular coffee maker, and the stove-top espresso maker is too much for a weekday), but on Wednesday I finally got to the coop to get some organic, fair trade, dark roast coffee.

And I remembered how much difference good coffee makes. The coffee at work needs milk and sugar to be palatable - there's no depth of flavor so I end up masking it with additives.

The coffee that I've remembered to make and bring for the past two days is complex, deep, and almost chocolately in its richness. No additives necessary.

Now I just need to remember to clean my travel mug before I go home!

woo hoo! first post!

Since Heather won't be sitting next to me at work any more (she's leaving for other pastures), this will allow us to continue our conversations. It'll be tough, but hopefully I'l persevere.

Grilled cheese was the topic today - Heather favors the apple-turkey bacon-sharp cheddar variety, while Morgan espoused the dijon mustard-chives-sharp cheddar or the pepper jack-salsa on top variety.