bread and lilacs

So I tried out my new stand mixer yesterday with a loaf of bread using a recipe from America's Test Kitchen cookbook. Oatmeal sandwich bread. It was fabulous to read the recipe directions which say "knead bread for 10 minutes" and to set the mixer on and let it do all the work while I sipped my tea and admired my lilacs.

The bread rose when it was supposed to

and although it may not be the prettiest loaf in the world, it sure tastes good.

Here's a picture of this weeks batch of banana chocolate chip muffins.

Last week I made them pumpkin muffins as I was missing bananas (subbed in 1 cup of pumpkin puree for the mashed bananas) and they turned out well. They are already gone so they must have been good.