I must be Polish at heart

My grandpa was Russian/Polish, and I can't ever ever pull myself away from the TV when Dr. Zhivago comes on. The old country must linger in your DNA because I love fall food which seems to be chock full of potatoes, onions, turnips...things like that.

With my farmer's market fair this week I made potato & leek soup. I threw in a smoked ham hock from the happy Barrett pig, and I served it with yummy rye bread. Its a recipe from Joanna in DK. Now that I have a bread machine, its a breeze to make, and it turned out scrumptious. Rich commented on it at least twice during dinner. That's a lot for him.





Here is the recipe:

360ml water
350g brown flour (I used 300 g rye flour)
150g white flour (I used 200 g whole wheat flour)
3 oz sunflower seeds
1.5 tsp salt
1.5 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon marge (butter is better for you)
(1.5 tablespoon milk powder optional) (I don't keep this stuff around, I think its from China)

I also added the standard 1 3/4 tsp of active dry yeast.

Bake in the bread machine - follow your machine instructions.

Wait for it to beep that its done. Easy peasy.

Other than that I've spent the last two weekends in the backyard. I'm on a mission to eradicate common buckthorn along our back lot line. Its been left to proliferate for far too long, and the only way to get rid of it is by pulling it out - roots and all, or cutting it down spraying it with brush killer. Not liking the chemicals so much, I'm pulling and digging out the smaller bushes. I've left the larger trees and will be cutting them down in the spring and then painting a little brush killer on the stump.

That's me..back in the brush. I think about 18 mulch bags made their way to the community compost pile. And I could even make more.