Why does it seem like we had a super busy weekend, but really we didn’t do much of anything?  Oh well, with my Master Gardener class starting Tuesday maybe a little downtime was a good thing.  I had the opportunity to cook supper for the family tonight, and here’s what I made:

The bread: Vollkornbrot (German for “whole kernel bread”), recipe from Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.  It was pretty good, but not quite as good as the “master recipe” bread we made last week from the book.  I tried soaking all the ingredients for a solid 6 hours before I added the yeast, in order to give it the Nourishing Traditions treatment.  Result: it was hard to work the yeast in, I ended up adding more liquid, and as a result the dough was very difficult to work with today.

The bread itself was quite heavy, and some of the wheat kernels were kind-of difficult to chew.  Has anyone ever had authentic German Vollkornbrot?  Is it supposed to be this heavy?  Maybe.  I liked it, but wouldn’t want it every day.  This might be a dough that gets better after it sits for a couple of days.  (Confused?  See my “Healthy Bread” synopsis.)

Then there’s the soup: Smoked Haddock Chowder (from a restaurant called The Spotted Pig in NYC).  Jason Kottke linked to it from his blog, and was so excited about the recipe becoming available that I couldn’t help it; I had to try it.  It took a long time to make — especially to dice all those vegetables, but boy howdy.  This is, hands-down, the most delicious thing I’ve ever cooked.  The only thing I did different from the recipe was that I couldn’t find smoked haddock and used smoked whitefish instead.  Wow.  It wasn’t super difficult, but it took a kitchen novice like myself a long time.  So worth it.  Next time I need to impress someone, I will whip this recipe out.  Highly recommended.