Coffee Musings - 020608

Today is the first day of Lent. I consistently visit Pearl Jam Synergy Board, and someone wrote a thread asking what others were going to do for Lent. Ooops, I forgot! Last year I gave up fear, and it worked! I ran more mileage in one week than I have any other week in my entire life. Also, I ran more in one run than I have in my entire life. March 2, 2007 I ran 10 miles non-stop on a treadmill. Pretty cool! Well, this year, I'm going for mileage per week again as I am training for the Cherry Blossom Run. However, I want to give up meat (except eggs and dairy products) and I want to bake at least 3 loaves of bread. That's why I modeled a random selection of my bread cookbooks. As you can see they are almost in pristine condition. A couple I've had over a year, and a couple I've had over 3 years. I haven't baked bread since I moved to Maryland in 2003, but the thought is always there. I attended pastry school, and it totally sucked, so that's probably why it takes a while for me to get into baking something new. Of course, now I bake quite a few sweets, and it's time to expand my horizons. My best sections in pastry school were cookies and bread. This makes sense because I baked bread and baked cookies growing up. Potato bread, here I come!
I baked a pan of brownies yesterday, and there are some things I recommend you DO NOT do. From the book, Culinary Artistry I saw that lemons could be paired with chocolate and almonds. Eureka! Why don't I add roasted almonds and organic lemon zest to the On the Fence brownie recipe from the King Arthur Cookie Cookbook? I did, and don't do it. I added 4 oz of roasted almonds. The texture is not right with brownies. It reminded me of a time I had a Spring ravioli dish at Dahlia Lounge. Usually, I like their spaghetti dishes, but they added corn to the top of the ravioli, which is a BAD BAD Texture combination. Almonds and brownies reminded me of that. Roasted walnuts or roasted pecans are better choices with brownies. Also, I added the zest of one lemon. If I wanted more of a presence I should have added zest of two lemons.