Miscellaneous Friday

I went to a potluck tonight.  It was awesome.  I brought Cauliflower and Barley Risotto.  It was pretty good, although I think I still prefer the sweet potato barley risotto.  It took longer to cook than I thought it would, and I was panicking towards the end because I was so late - I would say it took a good 45-50 minutes to really cook properly.  I will probably work on adapting this for the crockpot, since it was pretty good.  I think I might use white wine next time.

The taco casserole from the other day actually came out great.  A tortilla was rendered unnecessary by the rice, but cheddar cheese and sour cream on top would not go amiss.

I have found the winning bread recipe.  I'll repost it shortly, but it's the American Sandwich Bread recipe from The New Best Recipe Cookbook.  Do yourself a favor and buy a copy.  It comes out dense and filling but not too chewy, and no matter how you screw it up, it's totally salvageable.  Thus ends the quest for the perfect white bread and I'll be moving onto whole wheat.

In totally other news, I just closed out our registry at the Pampered Chef, and will be getting my new pizza stones (2!) and pie pan and other stuff shortly.  The one thing we didn't upgrade at all with our registry was really our baking stuff, so I'm very excited to have the stones - I got a round one and a rectangular one, but imagine that I can make cookies and stuff on both of them.  We have a bunch of frozen pizzas in the oven that I think we'll be using in the next few weeks because I've actually started to be busy during the day - volunteer work, but good stuff and keeping me occupied.  Has anyone tried baking stuff other than pizza on stones?  Help a girl out with some tips!

I think the first thing I might try to make are these cookies, which a co-worker brought and and are amazing!  Her's didn't have the nuts or the drizzle on top, but they were still seriously seriously fantastic.