My new Pot

For Christmas, I received many wonderful and useful gifts- a new phone, boatloads of safety pins for basting, a free motion foot for my Pfaff, and clothes. But so far, no gift I have received (likely ever) has been used so much since Christmas as my new Le Creuset French Oven.

Clothes and nice things and FRENCH OVEN

It is beautiful. It is heavy. And it is so freaking handy. As soon as I got it, I dove right into my mom's copy of "All About Braising" and read that book cover to cover. It has fantastic recipes, as well as loads of information about the braising process and different cookware types. For my maiden recipe in the Pot, I decided to bake a loaf of bread.

I found the recipe and video on Le Creuset's website, and had absolutely no trouble and all fun making my first loaf of bread. We ate it for dinner with some fish stew my mom cooked in HER new french oven (hers is a blue oval), and it was divine. 

 

I let the dough rise in the dishwasher, where it was warm. Then in the Pot it went!

What beauty.

WHAT BEAUTY!

Since then, I've made a roasted chicken (Lemon, Garlic, and Rosemary Chicken), a huge pot of chicken stock, and a baked apple dessert. I want to use it every day. Maybe I'll find a way to!

In other news, sewing has been on hold for quite some time. I'm matchstick quilting a baby quilt at the moment, and it is so tedious and annoying to tie off SO MANY THREADS that I've just straight given up on it about five times. Every now and then I pick it back up, sew for ten minutes, then spend two hours tying and burying knots. Ugh.