Yeast Woes

Since I've been cooking and baking more these days, I've been exploring the pantry shelves we have in the garage and finally located the yeast.  It is in a sealed, air tight container so I thought I'd try it.  Coincidentally, I got a You Tube video suggestion of baking bread with a really easy recipe and method.

First step is to activate the yeast.  Nothing happened.  Tried it several more times - the water temp could be too hot which kills the yeast though it seems like it's just getting cooled off so fast, there's little to no warmth to get the yeast going? 

Four tries, four fails.  I'd say the yeast is dead.  I found a 1 lb. package of yeast on Amazon for $18.97 and was about to push 'buy' when I checked King Arthur - their price is a third of the ridiculous Amazon price so I didn't buy it.  I'm frugal and I'm not paying 3x the price.

We don't even really need bread.  I'm just killing time and if it had been successful, I would have used it to whip up some homemade croutons for our salad tonight in addition to enjoying hot, fresh baked bread.

I'll get yeast at the first opportunity and then the bread baking practice can commence.

I had coffee with a friend in Tracy this morning via Facetime - so fun to catch up and be able to see each other.  Thank, technology!

It's been a quiet day on the homestead - started out rainy but J. wedged in a walk.  It's still pretty cloudy but dryer now.  Not really cold.

Tonight, we're looking forward to the new season of The Good Fight and also another episode of Little Fires Everywhere.  Then I'm sure we'll watch one or two West Wing episodes.  We're seeing scenes on West Wing that neither of us remember seeing before so it's kind of fun.

J. is going to make a trip to the grocery - haven't done that in a couple weeks but we need a few things.  We have masks now - thanks to our dear friend A. in Tracy - and he'll wear gloves, too - and carry antiseptic wipes with him.

We're working on sketching out the house projects that we need to do once we're in the house.  As previously mentioned our goal of having oodles of leftover money from our Tracy house sale isn't going to happen so we're going to have to prioritize what projects we do first.  Tomorrow, we meet the window covering lady at the house to finalize the plans.  Gone is the dream of wood shutters.  They really weren't ever my favorite and they are super expensive.  I've actually really liked the honeycomb shades we have in the rental - they provide privacy but let light in and also can be made to blackout all light if preferred - for a bedroom.  Costco has our washer and dryer on sale until the end of April so we're hoping we can get permission to have those delivered and installed in early May.  Gutters can technically wait until late Summer.  We also want to install the same overhead shelving system we had in the Tracy garage only this time hopefully the type that have the ability to be lowered - to keep us from having to use a ladder to get down stuff.  Shelves aren't the highest priority - we have a pretty big garage in the new house with lots of room for storing things along the walls - so if we can make do with that, we will.  We gave away all of our camping gear and pared down our Christmas decor so hopefully, we can wedge stuff along the walls for now.

And as I was attempting the bread bake, I reminded J. that I really, truly want to get some new baking and cooking supplies.  I want new Tupperware (like) bowls - ours are ancient and need replacing.  New sheet roll pans.  Some pantry storage items.  We found a restaurant supply store somewhere - we just can't remember if we saw it in Reno or here in Carson City - so we'll have to figure that out.  It definitely said 'open to the public' so I'd like to check it out!