It Can Rain On My Parade

So rainy. It is a beautiful spring day, here in Minnesota.  The grass is green, the flowers are blooming, the rhubarb is everywhere (including in my new favorite summer drink-rhubarb lemonade!!), and the sky is cloudy and leaking rain every now and again.  The earth is alive!

Maybe it is the west coast girl in me, but I really do love rainy days. It is cool and damp outside (which is perfect for a romp around the block in big knee-high rain boots with the dog), and warm and dry inside (PERFECT for cooking and baking with a glass of wine or a cup of tea).

I had that perfectly romantic idea in my head when I set out to make a new bread this week. I have a bag of Red Fife whole wheat flour that I got from a wheat grower in my area. She wanted me to develop a bread recipe for her to take to farmers markets to hand out with the flour she sells, so obviously I take her up on that offer! An excuse to play? Homework for fun?! I was thinking a nice whole wheat bread with a little molasses for that dark sweetness...mmm...I had this idea...aaaaaand then it failed. I got a flat loaf that tasted too salty and was...well...just plain bad.  I was sad, upset, frustrated and bummed.  I refused to let my boyfriend try it, even though I know he would have told me "it wasn't that bad" or "it would be good with something", though that something would have to be powerful enough to mask the dry/salty/bitter/molasses brick I had created.

He really is sweet.

So there I was. Bummed about my failure.  This perfectly ideal 'trapped inside so I get to bake' day has been completely ruined. No good food came out of it.  But as I thought about it, it was still a 'trapped inside so I get to bake' day, the process was relaxing, and I still created something. It may not have been worth a picture, but the experience was worth a thousand words.

Yay for springtime rainy days.