Belated Birthday Shopping Extravaganza.

I like the word "extravaganza" a lot. A lot a lot. As in, I use "extravaganza" to describe things that might not quite be an extravaganza, at least not to the majority of people in the world who know the definition of the word "extravaganza." So while it might not seem like "elaborate and spectacular entertainment" to you, for me the belated birthday trip to A Southern Season this Sunday was just that for me, and for Steph too.

A little bit of back story here: Steph and I have been attempting to conquer the bread machine for quite some time now. Since we brought it back in our car at Thanksgiving, we traded off on trying to find the right balance of the basic ingredients to create the perfect light and rustic loaf for sandwiches. The thing of it is, we've only managed to make one such loaf, and the rest have been good for nothing but morning toast, when our mouths are at their least discriminating. We had heard from our friend Sarah that she had had similar problems baking and that she was going to use Martha Stewart's advise to purchase a kitchen scale to weigh baking ingredients instead of measuring them. Which seemed a little extreme to me, as I had always measured flour and had fine results. But we had to face it: our results had been much less than stellar, and often less than edible.

Then last week at the library I picked up a book called CakeLove, written by a D.C. lawyer turned baker. And what do you know, he swore by weighing ingredients as well. He ran several experiments, and more often that not, measuring flour by the cup resulted in using too much flour. As in THIRTY PERCENT more than when weighed, which seems like quite a difference. So Steph and I set out with my gift card to A Southern Season in search of a kitchen scale that could aid us in our breadmaking.

(A guilty admission: we had actually be in A Southern Season on Saturday as well, on the hunt for something with a lid to hold our compost. We're a little overun with fruit flies at the moment - think swarms. Ew. We found the perfect vessel, an intense blue canister, but it was a little overpriced AND it was fiesta ware. Neither Steph nor I could bare to spend the price on the label when there was the possibility that a chipped/dented version could be sitting by its lonesome at Holly Ross in PA. So we covered the bowl with the dish, and are hoping for the best.)

Back to Sunday. After breakfasting at home, weeding the garden, phone calls for mother's day, lunch, a walk for lucy, and work time for Steph and I, the southern food mecca was singing our names, and we heeded its call.

We passed up a frying pan, some $18 Italian semolina pasta, an obscenely large bottle of mustard, a wooden pizza peel, a flour sifter, some delicious $25 olive oil (you can actually taste the difference!) and some other gadgetry deemed inessential. What we did purchase was the fabled kitchen scale, some local North Carolina cotton honey, 2 bags of frivolous pasta (orecchiette and some fantastically large loops that reference sushi and look like extra fat rigatoni without the striping), and close to a pound of pancetta ends. Oh the possibilities...

Arriving home with our goodies, we made our very first grilled pizza (fast, delicious, and tasted of amazing foccacia) and worked long into the night.

Maybe if you take the day as a whole it will seem more extravaganza-like to you?

Linda is often prone to fantastic overstatements that, in her persoanl context are not overstatements. But in this case I can agree that it was a slight extravaganza- I'm excited to perfect grilled pizza and am envisioning an asparagus basil, lemon, string bean pasta to go with our new purchases.