The air was filled with giant white puffs of snow for most of the morning, so I decided not to drive to town for in-a-pinch bakery bread after the last slice was eaten for breakfast. No, this would be a perfect day to toast up the house, which I found cool for the first hours after getting out of bed.

We had only five cups of whole wheat flour in the house, so I had to add five cups of white flour into the mix of whole wheat and rye flours. I have never baked bread with white flour, that I can recall, so I am curious how much difference that little bit will make. Today’s recipe is for Raisin-Rye, which I haven’t made for some time. It’s no one’s favourite but mine, but I had to make it today in order to make use of the flours that were available. It was either that, or go to town, or do without bread.

Recently I threatened Steve (who says he's going to start updating soon, and I hope that's true) with an armwrestling match if he continues to insist that Diana Krall’s version of A Case of You is better than Joni’s. I attempted to instil the fear of god into him by alluding to my massive biceps from all the kneading I do. Alas, Steve, now you know the truth. My muscles have become downright puny since the kneading machine came to live here. And I wouldn’t trade it for the strength my arms used to have, no how no way.

There was a lot of snowfall over the weekend, but since I went nowhere after Thursday’s trip to my home town, I didn’t realize how much there had been until we drove cross-country yesterday. Other vehicles had already cut deep tire-tracks in the snow on the roads and as the van passed through these ruts you could hear the snow scrape loudly against the bottom of the vehicle. It sounded like hitting the waves in a motorboat at high speed.