Ugly Rolls

i baked cinnamon rolls last night. From scratch... made my own dough and everything. There's something very primal about baking.. It involves all your senses, and creating something from virtually nothing is pretty amazing, when you think about it. Watching dough rise.. kneading it in your hands.. knowing that certain things can't be measured, but only "felt" - like how much flour you need, or whether things are ready. Anyone can follow a set of instructions, but to truly be in touch with what you're making - ah!

If you've never read the book "Like Water for Chocolate" I wholeheartedly recommend it. It's a short read, but a magical one. (There's a movie of it too. And the movie does the book some justice!) I think sometimes the romance of cooking and baking is lost in this microwave-age. I actually don't own a microwave. It wasn't intentional; it just started out that way by having an old kitchen with no room to put one. Now, mostly I don't miss it. Though sometimes I'd love to reheat a cup of coffee gone cold, I think not having a microwave is one thing that saves me from the world of nightly frozen crap.

I'm kinda disappointed in how UGLY these rolls turned out. I read a tip about how to "snip" the rolls so that they will bloom. I couldn't quite figure out which way to snip them - so I tried different ways with each of them. (FAIL) The proud girl in me is embarrassed at how dumb they look, but *shrug* they don't taste dumb!

* Verizon wireless called my house this morning to remind me to renew my contract and get a "new every 2" phone. Anyone see the irony of them calling my HOUSE? Hmm, if they called my cell phone, they might understand why I'm not in any hurry to renew a contract: the bloody thing has NO SIGNAL in my neighborhood. I have just enough to pick up txt msgs. Not even pics/flix. And definitely not enough to carry on a conversation. ::eyeroll::

* Got a note from a coworker that there were only 4 patients on the unit last night. I'm scheduled to work tomorrow. Something tells me I probably won't... I worked only one full day last week, and 2 part days. I can joke about having "healing hands" that kept anyone from being sick in the area, but this is kinda past the joking stage. Thankfully, I've got plenty of PTO to draw from, but still.. I'd rather use that for vacations, not to make up for the lost pay on days where I sit at the house "on call," under obligation to be @ the hospital within an hour on the off-chance that they'll need me. [/rant]