Food Friday - Bread Alone

From Kris B.

I am a fan of anything oatmeal - oatmeal cookies, granola, plain old oatmeal for breakfast, and oatmeal bread.  I was buying a store brand of oatmeal bread, which was appalling to my daughter the bake; so, she developed an oatmeal bread recipe just for me.  As I was writing this post, I asked her what she wanted me to call her bread.  Her response was, “George.”  Though I am 99% sure she was just mouthing off at me, I went with it.  I am OK with calling the bread “George” because that was my dad’s name.  When I was at home, my dad was the bread baker in the family so somehow this all makes some weird kind of sense in my head.  If you’d rather not call your bread “George,” Oatmeal Bread will certainly do.

Asking Brooke for the actual recipe was not anymore straight forward than getting a name.  She first told me that she didn’t have the recipe written down.  I can appreciate that as there are many things that I make for which I have no written recipe.  Instead of thinking it through and writing the recipe down for me, she made the bread and I got to take notes in order to document the process.  Who knew that bread baking could become a spectator sport?  I was graciously given a concrete list of ingredients before the event got underway.

INGREDIENTS

1 Cup steel cut oats, cooked

1 TBS *Instant yeast

1 1/3 cups dry milk

2 oz. butter

1 pound all purpose flour

1/2 pound whole wheat flour

1/2 cup honey

1 cup rolled oats

2 tsp salt

You may notice an inconsistency in the way the measurements are presented here—the flour in by weight and the other ingredients in standard cooking measurements.  In culinary school, the ingredients for all recipes were given by weight.  To my daughter, who is not a fan of washing dishes, this is a big plus.  She puts the mixing bowl on the scale, zeros it out, and starts adding ingredients, monitoring the weight on the scale.  In her words, “Everyone should prefer to cook this way.  You don’t have to wash all those measuring cups and spoons.”  She does have a point, sort of.  For those of you that don’t have a kitchen scale and don’t mind washing dishes, a pound of flour is roughly four cups.  So for this recipe you will use four cups of all purpose flour and two cups of whole wheat flour.  The good thing about bread is that there is a bit of leeway in the exact amount of flour needed.

• Instant yeast differs from active dry yeast in that it has smaller granules and does not require proofing, but can be added directly to the dry ingredients.  The two can be used interchangeably, but the active dry yeast does require proofing and may add an additional 10-15 minutes on to the rise time of your bread.

The Recipe:

1. Cook the steel cut oats in 2 cups of water.  Cook until all of the water is absorbed by the oats.  Add the honey and butter to the warm oats.  Mix thoroughly.
2. In a mixer bowl, combine the two flours, dry milk, and yeast.  Stir until combined.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.  Knead for five minutes in a stand mixer with the dough hook, or by hand.
4. Add the rolled oats and the salt.  Knead for another one to two minutes.
5. If the dough feels too dry, add a little water a tablespoon at a time.  If it feels too wet, add some all purpose flour a little bit at a time until the bread “feels right.”  This is the part that takes practice!
6. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for an hour.
7. Punch down the dough.  Divide it in half and place in two standard loaf pans.  Allow to rise for another hour.
8. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 30-35 minutes or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.
9. Remove the loaves from the pans and cool on a wire rack.

This is a chewy bread with a lot of texture.  It works well for sandwiches or toast.  And, is especially tasty with butter or peanut butter and some pumpkin butter.



From Tracey G.

When Kris and I talked about what kind of recipe to do for this week, we decided a bread would be good. Immediately I knew what I wanted to try, a pull-apart bread. And since I've seen so many recipes for it, I culled them all and then developed my own "recipe", if you can call it that, lol. I'd say it's more of a method really. Vary the ingredients and you have a completely different spin on the pull-apart bread idea. That's not to say that this simple recipe wasn't without it's hang-ups. I think at one point, my statement to Kris was "I think for some reason the Universe doesn't want me to get this recipe out there!". 

I'd made the bread dough a day ahead of time. Most recipes call for frozen bread dough - but I love making bread so it was the perfect excuse to get me back into the swing of it - I'd like to get back to making it every week like I used to, when I was caregiver to my mom. Due to her special diets I had to work with, sodium was a huge restriction on both the renal and heart diet - and commercial, store-bought bread, is insane with sodium! We were given a list of the worst sodium offenders and it was the either number one or close to number one on the list! So, I took to making homemade so she could still enjoy sandwiches and toast etc, because homemade is much more reasonable sodium-wise. I baked at least 4 loaves a week, and would wrap them and freeze them - on that schedule we always were ahead of the game! And I even discovered that you can accidentally forget to add the salt altogether and it still turns out fine - little flat tasting, but still pretty good!

So, I made my own for this recipe. As my bread dough recipe makes 2 loaves, I baked one as a traditional loaf, and, since I ran out of time for the pull-apart bread recipe, I did what the yeast packet suggested and put the dough into the fridge until I could get back to it. They recommend getting back to it within 24 hours and picking up where you left off for rising - perfect! I can finish it the next day! Well, when the next day came along, once I got it put all together, I forgot to account for a little extra time needed for the now cold dough to rise, and I should have realized that. So, that put me even further behind schedule than I was, due to the garlic butter shortage I encountered.

 Since I'd created the recipe from quite a few other recipes, I averaged out the butter and garlic amounts I'd need. I thought I had enough with 6 tbsp, and, had the dough been room temperature, I probably would have had enough, but  the chilled dough seemed to be chilling up my butter mixture too and things were getting a bit more heavily coated with the butter mixture than they probably should have. So, I ended up melting up 4 more tablespoons of butter and mincing up another clove of garlic!  For my finished recipe I am adding only 2 more tbsp to my original 6, to get 8 total, and one more clove of garlic, making the total 5 instead of 4. I'd rather have a little too much than not enough!

Finally got it all put together, let it rise and let it rise and let it rise (thanks to the chilled dough), and it was now time to bake! Most recipes had bake times of 30 minutes. For some reason, my oven seemed to be having issues and I had to tack on about an extra 15 minutes to my bake time. Yes, this recipe seemed to have more setbacks than I've ever encountered, but it does make for a more interesting story as to how it all came about and together!  And to top it off, pulling it all off with this crazy miserable cold was a feat unto itself!!! And this stupid cold is also the reason for the recipe photo being taken with my phone and Hipstamatic app - Loftus Len and DC film.

Final verdict though, was that, for all the minor setbacks and issues, it was well worth it! It turned out to be super yummy - and super easy really, and definitely something I'll make often!

Garlic Butter Pull Apart Bread

1 lb frozen white bread dough, thawed

8 tbsp butter, melted

5 cloves of garlic, minced

2-3 tsp dried parsley

Combine the melted butter, garlic and parsley. Cut the bread dough into 1" pieces, dip into butter mixture and layer into a greased 9x5" loaf pan. Cover and let rise until doubled (about an hour if using non rapid rise yeast). Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until light golden brown.

Tuesday in Texas - Oh, Crop!

I often wonder how people got to "the photo," the one that they are willing to publish share.  For what it's worth, I'm going to share that process with one of my own recent images.  The reason that I am writing about this particular photo is because the journey from beginning to end was circuitous and not my normal process.

I do try to get my photos composed correctly in camera.  I really do!  But, sometimes, for various reasons, that doesn't happen.  

• I haven't thought through the shot that I really want.
• I have the wrong lens on my camera for the image I want
• I missed some distraction in the foreground or background
• My exposure was not spot on and I end up with areas that are blown out, too dark, or both

This list can probably go on in infinitude...  The bottom line is that sometimes we don't get what we want and we are forced to try and "save" the image, make it what we want it to be.

Beyond the basic adjustments like brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, clarity, and sharpening, I am not skilled at editing.  I know that LOTS of things are possible with Photoshop, but I don't know how to do most of them.  And the truth is, I am only interested in editing my photos for aesthetics's sake, not to alter the reality or the story of the image.  It would be nice to "get rid" of my wrinkles or my rough aged hands in my self portraits, but they are who I am (sadly); they are the story of today.  I do, however, crop photos. For some reason that I can't explain, I prefer an aspect ratio of 4:5 rather than 4:6, especially with portraits, but sometimes with other images as well.  So even with a photo that is well-composed in camera, I may still do this basic crop.

With the photo that I am about to share, there is more than a basic crop.  I missed the mark on what I wanted and I used "creative cropping" to save the shot.

The saga begins with the Capture Your 365 prompt from January 14, "Black and White."  I decided that I was going to photograph one of the buildings in our city's historical park.  Unfortunately, I could not get out to do this until about 5:00, leaving me only about 30 minutes to accomplish the shot before it got dark.  The historical park contains several buildings and I wasn't sure which one I wanted to photograph so I wasted a little time wandering around making that decision.  I finally settled on a little log cabin with a rocking chair on the porch.  It was this rocking chair to which I was drawn.  Now with only fifteen minutes, I started shooting...focusing on the chair, the window, the door, the porch, the surroundings...this was a case where I didn't not have a clear image of what I wanted.  I thought it was the chair, but maybe it was the window.  I tried a few different angles, not taking everything into consideration that I should have.  When I got home and started looking at the images on the computer, the results of my haphazard approach were revealed.  Straight out of the camera, not a single image was what I wanted compositionally.  I began trying to figure out some way to salvage one of the shots.

One thing I had done that was a good thing, was that I shot the photos in monochrome, so I did not have to consider what was going to happen when I did the conversion to black and white.  I find that I shoot differently, focusing more on lines and textures, when I shoot in monochrome rather than color.  Even that, though, didn't help me much here.

As I looked through all of the photos, I realized that what I wanted in my photograph was the window and the rocking chair.  I didn't have a single image that included those two things in a way that I liked.

Here I cut the window in a seriously bad way, centered the rocking chair, and blew out the sky.  This one went to the reject file almost immediately.

From the composition perspective, this is more what I wanted, but the blown out sky completely drew my eye away from the chair and the window.  I tried adding a sepia filter to tone it down a little, but again, it didn't work for me.

Back to the drawing board.  I didn't have a whole lot more from which to choose. At this point,  I was becoming frustrated and disappointed in myself for not doing a better job of thinking about what I was doing while I was behind the camera.  In the long run, being fully present then would have been a whole lot easier and less time consuming than trying to work some kind of post-processing magic.

My last hope was this image.

Initially I did a little bit of brightening and upped the contrast a little bit.  This one was definitely the best choice of the bunch, but it still was not what I now thought that I wanted.  

Here is where the serious cropping begins.  Because of what I felt was too much porch in the foreground,  I decided to see what would happen if I cropped this photo to landscape.

Things were now getting better, but the dark door added a heaviness to the left side of the frame that I didn't like.  On the plus side though, this angle got rid of the blown out sky on the right, leaving some nice lines and texture in the tree and fence.  For a brief moment, I felt that I could live with this being my final image for the day (with the initial brightening and contrast boost that are not seen in the above image).

However, the more I looked at it, I kept feeling like the balance was off.  Something about that dark, heavy door was making me unhappy.  I stared at the image for what felt like an eternity and then it hit me.  Crop it back to portrait.

Yes!  This is the composition that I wanted.  Finally.  And after a whole bunch more cropping than I ever do on a photo.    I saw no alternative with this one.  I now have the window and the rocker composed correctly and a nice, non-distacting, background.  I then added a slight warming filter as this photo was taken during the golden hour and the slightly brownish tone is reminiscent of the true tone of the cabin.  And just in case you are wondering...yes, I could have cropped the priginal portrait photo and gotten to this point more quickly, but I needed to go through this entire process to come to that realization.

This is not a process that I have the time or energy for on a regular basis, but I wanted to redeem the thirty minutes that I spent on this particular day's images.  I think I also needed to forgive myself for not being as attentive to the details as I should have been while I was actually shooting.

In the case of this image, I don't think that the crop altered the reality of the photo or its story.  For this reason, ethically I am OK with my solution.

For me personally, I always feel like I learn more from seeing a process rather than just the final product.  I hope this helps you to redeem a photo of your own one of these days.  Don't give up on a photo too quickly!

Happy shooting!

Food Friday - Anyone for Pie?

from Kris B.

Thank you again to all of you who took the time to tell us what you'd like to see us write about here.  We are doing our best to share our vast, and, in some cases, not so vast knowledge about the things that you requested.  One of those was a post about pie.  In my case, my knowledge is somewhat limited, but I know people in high places so I will share what I learned about making pie in consultation with them.  Lol!

I have mentioned before, that my mom was not a baker; she was a master of the home cooked meal, which at our house did not include dessert on a regular basis.  Honestly, I can't remember my mother ever baking a pie.  To make sure that I wasn't forgetting some significant detail of my childhood, I went back and looked through the recipe box containing all of her favorite recipes that my mom made for me when I got married the first time back in 1983.  No pie recipes.  The only pie I ever remember eating at home was apple pie.  It was my dad who always made it.  I have no idea what recipe he used or if he even used a recipe at all.  That, I kind of wish I now knew.  All of this to say that I never really learned how to make pies.

As a young adult who became responsible for preparing family meals and who had then moved to the south where pies seem to be "a thing,' as well as one who was occasionally required to take things to potlucks, and eventually had to bake for various fundraisers at my kids' schools, I became interested in learning how to make pies.  I quickly learned that the quality of a pie is judged by its crust more so than its filling.  Over the years, I have made some good and some not so good pie crusts and in all honesty, I can't really tell you why some were "successful" and others were not.

I am not the pie maker in my family now.  My oldest daughter is a trained pastry chef.  She (and we as well) are fortunate that she did her internship for her certificate at a pie shop, The Hoosier Mama in Chicago.  She is the master pie maker at our house.  It is such a joy when our children grow up and find their own passions and they are willing to share them with us.

Though she has loved to bake from the time that she was about three, my daughter, Brooke, has also had a passion for books almost since birth.  This is not an exaggeration!!!    In terms of a "grown-up" career, she chose to follow her passion for books and currently works as a librarian.  This means that most of the baking that she does is for pleasure.  Translation: Most of the baking that she does is for us at home.  This is good for the taste buds and bad for the waistline!!!  Brooke served as my expert advisor for this post.  

This week’s recipe for Chocolate chess pie is from The Hoosier Mama.  Don't worry!  I am not revealing trade secrets here.  The Hoosier Mama has published The Book of Pie, full of many of their delicious pie recipes, both sweet and savory, as well as lots of tips, tricks, tid-bits, and trivia about pies.  I highly recommend the book to you if you are one of those who asked us about pies.  

INGREDIENTS

Pie Crust:

I used The Hoosier Mama All-Butter Pie dough for this recipe, on pages 24-25 of their cookbook, with napkin folded edges..  You can use your favorite homemade or store-bought pie crust recipe; or, buy the cookbook.  Lol!

Filling

1 stick unsalted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

4 oz. 70% bittersweet chocolate, chopped

4 large eggs

1 1/2 TBS cornmeal

1 TBS vanilla paste

Pinch of kosher salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
2. Place the pie shell on a baking sheet and brush the rim with pie wash.  Set aside.
3. Melt the butter in the top of a double boiler, or a medium heatproof bowl set on top of a saucepan of simmering water.
4. Remove the butter from the heat and beat in the sugar until it is thoroughly incorporated.  The mixture should look shiny not greasy.  If the mixture appears greasy, continue to beat.
5. Melt the chocolate in a separate bowl in the same manner as the butter.  Remove from the heat.  Be sure to wipe any condensation off the bottom of your bowl, otherwise it may drip into your batter.
6. Stir the melted chocolate into the butter mixture.
7. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking to combine after each addition.
8. Add the cornmeal, vanilla paste, and salt and mix until thoroughly combined.
9. Scrape down the side and bottom of the bowl to incorporate any unmixed butter.  Pour the batter into the pie shell.
10. Bake for 60 to 75 minutes, rotating 180 degrees every 20 minutes, until the pie doesn't give when pressed firmly in the middle.  The pie will rise up to 1" above the rim of the pie tin as it bakes, the. Fall slowly as it cools.  The finished pie may be slightly concave.

Let cool 30-45 minutes before cutting.  Dust with powdered sugar before serving.  Enjoy!

* The finished batter may be stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 days before using; it may separate as it cools so whisk it together before baking.  The baked pie can be stored at room temperature for 3-5 days.

Note to self and those of you who photograph food: Remove your lens cap from under the pie stand or you will have to reshoot the photos!!!

By Tracey G

My baking experiences growing up are pretty well in line with what Kris was saying about hers - my mom was not a major baker. She had said that when I was little she made cakes often, but honestly, I don't remember any of it, lol. Now, I know that her mom (my grandmother) was quite the baker, so I am thinking the baking gene skipped a generation and that my grandmother is the kitchen with me every time I decide to bake, lol. And believe me - I think about her every time I switch on my KitchenAid mixer, it does everything she did by HAND! Now that's amazing. I've tried beating a cake batter by hand and I just don't have the stamina, lol. It amazes me how she did it all without the modern conveniences we have now!! So, basically everything I've learned and done I've taught myself through perseverance - and I still have a long way to go I'm sure!

I'm always on the lookout for an easy pie recipe. But pie pastry and I usually don't get along - I should say from scratch pie pastry. I've just never been very good at making it, I don't know why, maybe because I don't do it very often? I'm not sure. But to combat that, I've taken to buying either the frozen crusts or the refrigerated and rolled pie crusts - they're easy and taste good too! So, when I ran across a recipe a few years ago that was a pat-in-the-pan crust (that also doubled as the topping) - I was all in. That would be this recipe - and it's pretty yummy. Harry said I should title it "Mama's Famous Pie", now that was funny, but I thought it was pretty cute too!

The one year I had a bunch of frozen peaches, I used them in place of the apples and it was really good - so this crust/topping combination would go really well with a few different fruits I'm sure - I'd like to try it with blueberries some time!

With the method you use for this, you're basically making your own pie filling instead of it making itself inside the pie by the combination of dry ingredients with the fruit. It might seem like an extra step, but it's really no trouble at all!

Dutch Apple Pie

6-8 servings

Preheat oven to 350°

2 c flour

1 c packed brown sugar

1/2 c quick cooking oats

3/4 c butter, melted

1 tsp cinnamon       

1 tsp salt.

Filling:

2/3 c sugar

3 tbsp cornstarch

1 1/4 c cold water

3 c diced, peeled tart apples

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

dash salt

1-2 tsp vanilla

For topping and crust: In a large bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, oats, salt, cinnamon and butter until crumbly; set aside 1 cup for topping. Press remaining mixture into an ungreased 9" pie plate; set aside.

For filling: Combine water, sugar, spices, dash salt and cornstarch in a large saucepan until smooth; bring to a boil. Cook and stir 2 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat; stir in vanilla and apples. Pour into crust; top with reserved crumbs. Bake at 350°F for 40-45 minutes or until crust is golden brown etc. Cool on wire rack. 

Tuesday (Not) in Texas - Planning to Achieve

by Tracey G

I discovered last year that in order for me to remember anything, I needed to write it down. Now, I know I've said before that I'm a list-aholic, so that's nothing new - grocery lists, chore lists, packing lists, dinner menu lists and so forth. But I now discovered with Harry's school schedule, my Creative Team important dates and just general appointments, I needed a planner. So, I scoured Amazon for a planner and bought this one, which by the way, I love. And it comes in lots of cute covers too!

Bloom Daily Planner Goal Organizer

But somehow, this year it just wasn't going to cut it. I had way more I wanted to do than just a few lines for a day and the monthly layout. Since I ordered it late in the year, I went with the academic year version - it runs from August to the end of July. But as I got to this year, as I said, it was just not "enough". It's the smaller size, so I may turn it into a purse model, yes, my purse is big enough and could probably accommodate it.

When Kris mentioned she was doing Ali Edwards' One Little Word project  I was intrigued. I'd seen the title before but was clueless as to just what it was about and what it entailed. Kris, kindly enlightened me! With the way I'd been wanting to shake things up this year and achieve certain goals for myself, big and small, I decided I was going for it. So, I signed  up and got my binder (and a pen, because, well, I just love pens!). My word is "Achieve" for the year. It's exactly what I'm hoping to do in all kinds of ways, once again - big and small. And since my word is Achieve, I needed some tools to help me do that. I figured the place to start, was a planner that could at least come close to what I wanted in one. I limited my search to Amazon because, I know myself, and, if I allowed myself to search everywhere - I'd likely still be looking! So, Amazon it was and even then, I had a hard time deciding. My list looks a lot like the one Kris came up with for her planner wishes:

ð A bigger size - I too went with an 8.5x11

ð Monthly Layout

ð Weekly/Daily Layout

ð Hourly Scheduling

ð  Place on the weekly/daily section for notes and goals of the day and of the week

ðPlace for things to be checked off  - because I just love checking things off!

ðSpace/Place for Monthly Goals to accomplish, both big and small

The planner I got for myself actually has all of that and MORE. It's almost intimidating! I told Kris when I got it, "I think my planner is mocking me!"! It's definitely a different push for myself to become a bit more CLEAR on my goals and things I want to accomplish. In the goal sections, it asks for your goal - then in the next space why it's important/it's value and in the 3rd space it wants details on how to make it happen. So, for example, instead of just "clean the kitchen" you have to state why: so I can cook in peace!  And what to do to get there: wash dishes, put dishes away, clean counters, clean stove etc etc etc. That's just an easy example I could easily come up with, lol. But you get the idea! 

This is the planner I bought for myself at Amazon - Tools4Wisdom Planner 2016 Calendar 4-in-1: Daily Weekly Monthly Yearly Organizer - Purpose Driven Goals Planning Book - Personal Life Progress Journal Notebook

I, so far, am really pleased with it, it's really forcing me to think not only WHAT I want to accomplish but WHY in addition to all my other scheduling needs. I am only on the 2nd day of my down-to-the-half-hour planning of my days, and yesterday was a bust because Harry was home on a Snow Day, that sort of derailed anything I wanted to accomplish and fill in that morning, so it was a Snow Day for me too! But I am confident it will a great tool. And to make it even more "fun" I bought some fun colored pens too!

I can totally relate though to what Kris stated about actually seeing just how many hours in the day there are, but how much we underestimate just the amount of time needed to accomplish the things I say I want to.

As I type this and finish it up - I'm already a behind an hour! Oh well. It's guide, not written in stone I suppose. That may prove to be a problem for me though, I tend to get rigid about schedules and start to get anxious if they aren't going the way they are supposed to - hopefully I can be easy on myself and try to plan in time into the next day for the things I didn't get done in the current one! 

Monday (Not) In Michigan - Ordering A Planner and Planning for Order

I am not much for New Year’s Resolutions per se, but I do like to use the end of one year and the beginning of a new one as a time to evaluate, re-evaluate, and with intention consider my perspective on where and how things stand in my life.  I have to add here that I really do this twice a year because, although THE new year really starts on January 1, life at my house works on an academic calendar so our “new” year starts some time in mid August.  That said, I have found the beginning of 2016 to feel more like a real beginning, a new beginning, more so than Januarys of past years.

One reason for this feeling of new beginning is, that for the first time, I am participating in Ali Edwards’ One Little Word project.  I have seen references to it online the past few years and have been intrigued, but have never made the commitment to the yearlong process.   I feel like right now I need this commitment and accountability, so this year I am an official participant.  My one little word is ORDER.  As the year starts, I am feeling that the “little” part of this is a serious understatement!

My first musings on the word order revealed that order is different from organization.  I am organized in that I know where things are.  I can find what I need, but my system of organization is not orderly.  I am relatively sure that I am the only one that could find anything amidst my “system” of organization.  My goal this year is to create some real sense of order from my rather ugly methods of organization.  This includes establishing order within the tangible stuff, both at home and at school, and the intangible stuff, how I think about and organize things mentally.  As I write this, I realize that I have a lot of work ahead of me!!!

The first step for me in this yearlong, or maybe lifelong, process was to find a planner, an actual paper planner than requires a pen or pencil to write things down and has a format that will help me to establish the kind of order that I sense that I need.  I have an iPhone and my husband has dutifully set up color-coded Google calendars for each of us individually as well as a family calendar, but this only works if you actually look at it.  lol.  I do rely heavily on technology in some aspects of my life, but maintaining my daily calendar is not one of them.  I still prefer and need a paper planner.  There is something about writing things down and seeing them on the page that makes me feel more in control and more accountable for the things that make it onto my schedule.  This need led me on a  search for the “perfect” planner for me.

Here is where I do rely on technology…I did an online search for planners.  The results were a bit overwhelming; there must be thousands of them out there!  I was amazed by many of the beautiful and creatively done planners that I discovered on Etsy.  I found myself being sucked in by their aesthetics—pretty colors, appealing graphics—rather than what i really wanted, which was a means by which to maintain order simply and concisely.  I have no doubt that there are many fantastic paper planners out there.  I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to stop looking and make the best decision that I could in that moment.  The search for the “perfect” planner, I realized, is much like the search for the perfect purse or the perfect camera bag.

The things that I was looking for were:

• An 8 1/2 X 11 format - Last year I used a half page sized planner and felt like I didn’t have enough writing space.
• A weekly layout
• An hourly schedule - This is the big change for me from last year’s planner.  The one that I used for 2015 did not break the day down into hours; it had blank lines for me to write down the details of day.  This worked fine for the events that happened at particular times, but it failed me with regard to the free-floating “To-Do” list.  I would write things down on this list and come to the end of the day and be frustrated and disappointed in myself because too many things were left undone.  My husband suggested the hourly schedule to help minimize my frustration (and ensuing grumpiness).  
• A place on the weekly page to notate my goals for the week.
• A place for notes to myself - I have come to the place in my life where things need to be written down or there is a real possibility that they will just disappear into thin air!

I finally settled on the Intentional Life Planner by Abby at Just A Girl and Her Blog.  Several things helped me to finally make this decision:

• This planner is purchased as a PDF download and then printed at home. (Or, you can send it to be professionally printed and bound, but that gets too pricey for me.)  I should mention here that when you purchase the download, you receive both an 8 1/2x11 page format as well as a half page format.  I liked this because I think I want the bigger pages, but, if at some point later in the year I realize that this was not the best choice for me, I can print the rest of the year as the smaller format.  I am a fan of the Levenger Circa system so by printing the planner pages myself, I was able to punch them for the Circa system.  This allows me to add my calendar pages to the Circa notebook that I already use for other things.

• The pages are pretty, without the graphics and colors being overly distracting.
• It has the weekly and hourly layout.

• Each month begins with a page asking you to outline your goals for the month and notate action steps to help you reach your goal.  This page also contains a box for a monthly assessment of things that you feel like you did well this month and things that you hope to improve on in the coming month.  I like this gentle method of assessing my strengths and weaknesses for the month.
• For each week, there is a column to articulate three more immediate goals.  I like the fact that there are only three places for these because I have to think carefully about what my "real" goals for the week should be.  Abby then provides space to notate two things that I can do to help achieve each of these goals.

• Above each day’s schedule is a “To-Do” list for that day.

• For me, the monthly and weekly structure is succinct, functional and not overwhelming.

Less than two weeks in to 2016, by using this planner and my evolving system for creating order in my life, I have begun to realize why I came to the end of so many days frustrated and discouraged.  I would make a daily To-Do list with no real plan as to how to get those things done.  I wrote all the tasks down in a list, but I never considered the when or how long it would take to do said things.  My list may have eight hours of tasks that needed to be accomplished, but my schedule only had four free hours.  Hence, the source of my frustration and disappoinjment in myself.

Now I am scheduling everything from my “Me Time” in the morning to write my morning pages, read the daily photo prompt, check my daily schedule, and mentally prepare myself for the day, to lunchtime, folding laundry, cleaning the kitchen in the evening, time with friends, as well as all of my work-related have-to’s.  This is not about being a control freak.  It is about seeing how and where I use my time and structuring that time so that I can create a realistic means to accomplishing those things that are most important to me.

I should add here that Abby also has created a bundle of “printables,” additional pages that help organize everything from menu planning, exercise, household finances, as well as many other things.  In addition to her planner, I am using some of these as well.  Again, because they are downloaded as PDF’s, I print and punch them to use in the same notebook as my planner.  I have a section called “THIS WEEK.”  It includes our weekly menus (another piece of my quest to create ORDER) and details on unique events for the week.  Once I go back to work, this section may evolve to include teaching plans as well.

The year’s system is not yet without kinks, but I do feel like it is going to work for me, especially once my spring semester starts and I go back to work next week.  Here is an example of one of those kinks.  Last week was the first full week of my new approach to time.  I scheduled all of my household chores and the writing projects that I needed to finish.  I plotted photography time based on the times of day where the light was best for what I needed to shoot.  As I have said several times in my past couple of posts, finding the best light for the food shots that we need here is not easy.  That said, I penciled in the spaghetti shots for last week’s Food Friday post at a time when the light was good where I needed it to be.   I got the shots done in the time that I had allotted for them.  Life was good and I was ready to move on to the next thing in the schedule.  There was one little problem.  I had failed to take into account the fact the things from that photo shoot would need to be cleaned up.  I had pasta to store, dishes to wash, and linens to put away.  True, none of these are big chores, but when you are taking into account how your time is spent down to the minute, 15 or 20 minutes can be disruptive to that flow of time.  Now I know.  From now on, I will remember to include clean-up time.  This may seem like a simple realization, but the reality is, that many of the things that we do take longer than we expect because we forget about small but necessary steps an details along the way.

One other thing that I am a little concerned about is that with this planner,  the day is marked off only in hours.  I'm wondering if there will come a point where I will need or want the ability to schedule in half hour increments.  Time will tell.  (No pun intended.)

So far, I am grateful for this new to me process.  I feel like a have a better sense of where my time goes each day.  I have to admit, that I am a bit surprised with how much time I spend on certain things.  Knowing this provides me the information that I need to readjust and rebalance my daily schedule if things aren’t the way I want them to be.  With these revelations, I am better equipped to do what I need to do to create that sense of order that I crave in my physical and emotional worlds.   Previously I was never sure where all of my time went or why I felt so scattered.  I just knew that something was not working.  The problem as well as a solution is now unfolding.  I am looking forward to opening myself to this process throughout the year.