I Watch Movies, Read Books, and Eat Food

March is coming to an end, and I thought I'd write an entry to review my progress with baking!  I know we're not quite at the end of March yet, but I know I will not be able to bake anything until next month because I am going to be very busy!  So I will wrap up Q1 now. January: I started out by making quick breads.  I did not even know what quick bread was when I started!  It is bread that does not require yeast.  Instead you use a leavening agent (such as baking powder or baking soda) to make the bread rise.  This was the right move on my part.  If you are just learning how to bake like myself, I highly recommend starting with quick breads. February: In February I graduated to yeast bread.  I started with a basic honey wheat bread that turned out okay, except for the fact that I burned it.  Because of this, I now literally sit in front of my oven and watch the contents during the last five or so minutes of baking.  Pat calls it m...

Happy Oscar Day!  I gotta say, 2016 was a pretty good year for movies!  Overall I was quite pleased with the films that came out this year.  It was a challenge picking just 10 of my favorites.  What were your favorites of the year?  Here are mine. 10. Hacksaw Ridge That Mel Gibson might be bat shit crazy, but he makes freakin' good films!  This movie tells the true story of Desmond Doss who served in WWII without firing a single weapon.  He wants to join the military as a medic, but because it's against his religion to kill, he refuses to touch a weapon, even through training.  Everyone thinks he's a joke and a coward, but he proves them all wrong when he rescues something like 75 wounded soldiers from the battlefield to safety.  It's an amazing story and an amazing film!  Andrew Garfield did a fantastic job!  He won't win, but I'm glad he was recognized for his work.  I see a very bright future ahead for him.  Also, S...

It's that time again!  As always I will post my ten favorite films of the year on Oscar night, this Sunday!  Please enjoy this list of movies that I really did not like from 2016!  What were some of the films you hated? 10. Zoolander 2 I will admit that I laughed quite a few times.  It was pretty funny and I think they did a decent job at making a film that the fans of the original Zoolander would like.  But it did fall flat overall, and I think they were trying too hard at some parts.  In the beginning of the movie, Derek's Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Want to Learn to do Other Stuff Good Too collapses, killing his wife and injuring Hansel.  Because he's so dumb, Derek is deemed unfit to keep his son, Derek Junior, who gets sent away to an orphanage.  Derek and Hansel have a falling out and don't speak to each other for 15 years.  Meanwhile, famous celebrities are being murdered and posting their farewell messages to social me...

Now that we're halfway into January, I have figured out what my resolution will be!  It's a two for one-er! 1. Learn How to Bake, Specifically Bread      I've always wanted to learn how to bake, but I've never been good at it.  Like...never.  No matter how simple the recipe, I always found some way to mess it up.  But lately, as my skills have improved in the kitchen, my baking skills got a little better as well, and I effed up less and less each time I baked (which happened maybe once a year!)  So this year, I decided to finally face my fears and become full blown Betty Crocker.      Why was baking so hard for me you ask?  Shouldn't it be easy?  Yes.  Don't you just follow the recipe and throw it in the oven?  Yes.  What's so hard about that?  Math and precision, is what's so hard about that!  When you bake, you have to be accurate with your measurements, which for a normal person isn't h...