claire the baker

for the past two fridays in a row, i have come home, watched a little tv, and then done some baking.  this is in contrast to my normal friday routine of coming home and watching a lot of tv and then going to bed.  i'm EXHAUSTED on fridays.  i am good for nothing.  i need a lot of claire time and i take that time in front of the tv, in my pajamas.  but last friday there were a whole bunch of pears in the fruit basket at school.  (yes, we have free fruit for our students and faculty to try to con them into eating better.  and it works shockingly well.)  and i knew those pears would go bad if they sat around school all weekend, so i took as many as i could carry (7) and came home and baked a pear cake that wasn't particularly pretty (that's the "old-fashioned" part of the recipe, i think, and i like that), and with whipped cream it was heavenly.  kelly and i ate a third of the cake by ourselves, standing up in the kitchen, before we even ate dinner.

this friday when i got home i made zucchini sweet potato bread, except the zucchini i bought two weeks ago when i first intended to make this bread had gone bad.  imagine that.  so it was just sweet potato bread, with walnuts and cranberries like the recipe suggests.  and it is equally heavenly.  i cooked it about 5 minutes too long, so the outside is tough, but inside it is the perfect consistency.  i ate about a third of the loaf before dinner.  joey helped this time.  (thanks to morgan for this recipe!  she introduced me to this blog and i LOVE it.)

on fridays i am good for nothing EXCEPT BAKING.  this is something i'm discovering.  there is something really relaxing about grating and cutting and combining ingredients and making a big mess and cleaning up and running the dishwasher and eating whatever i've concocted.  i've always known this, but been too lazy on a friday night to make it happen.  i still watched a lot of tv yesterday, but the baking calmed me down and put me in weekend mood than the tv did.  and i felt productive - not like the waste of space i normally am.  not that there's anything WRONG with being a waste of space.  it's pretty fabulous, actually.  but now i'm a waste of space with a full and happy belly.