It’s also  the end of a journey – a journey that took 6 months. That’s right. It took 6 months for Joel to publish 6 books. That’s not the end of writing and publishing books though. The next one is in the works and we’re working with an author currently to get his new book edited, formatted and published.

We’re celebrating tonight in Philadelphia with friends and two co-authors, Shanna Mann and Rick Wilson. If you’re in the area, come join us!

Wonder where the journey will take us in the new year?

I did a Google search and read up on what some others have done when their oven didn’t work and they just had a broiler. Joel and I then experimented to see what we could do.

Here’s the result!

Top and bottom of broiled bread

Does it taste as good as it looks? You bet! The top got a bit crustier than we like and the inside was a bit softer. Fiona came back for more and said, “you make good bread!” Half the loaf was gone in less than 30 minutes. We’re trying to save the rest for tomorrow’s lunch. We’ll have to go out tomorrow and buy some flour and yeast so we can make more now.

So how did we do it?

We turned the broiler on and let the oven heat up. We put the dough on our baking stone and placed the stone on the lowest rack, moved to the lowest position. After 6 minutes, we turned the broiler off and let the bread sit in the oven 12 minutes or so. Then another 12 minutes. Turn the broiler back on for a few minutes; turn the bread over. Turn off the oven and let it all sit some more.

Next time we’re going to try it a bit different. We’ll put the bread in with the broiler on for 6 minutes, then turn it off and let it all sit another 15-20 minutes without opening the door. A delicate balance between getting the bread baked and not letting it burn. We’ll let you know how it turns out.

If you have a working oven, try our bread recipe below and let us know how it goes. If you try broiling your bread, we’d love to hear about that as well!

Homemade Baked Bread Recipe

3/4 cup hot water
3/4 cup cool water
Combine

Add 1 tbsp. sugar and 1-1/8 tsp salt. Dissolve and mix thoroughly. Add 1-1/2 tspn. yeast and let set for 5-10 minutes.

Add 2 cups bread flour and 1-1/2 cups wheat flour. Add any spices or herbs you may want. Combine thoroughly.

Let rise for 1 hour. Punch down. Shape. Let rise another hour.

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

When we started traveling, we kept a few things to travel with. Included was our small blue teapot and our two favorite mugs for tea. The teapot is just the right size to make our two mugs of tea every morning. So wherever we go, we hope to find a tea kettle. Or at least a saucepan to heat water in. Then we find our tea. We used to have a favorite India store back in California where we could get bulk tea fairly inexpensively. Not only is that not convenient any more, we did get a bit tired of it.

Currently we’re drinking Tazo Awake tea. It’s a bit more expensive though. We’re always looking for a good robust tea to drink that’s not too expensive.

So no matter where we are, we have a little taste of home. We can feel right at home every morning drinking our mugs of tea and having our morning chat as is our routine.

What morning routine do you have? When you travel is there something you bring along to make you feel at home and in a routine?

The lady front and center seemed to really enjoy it and commented afterward to me that it was nice to have something different for the hour. Another lady told Joel they have a mandolin maker as a resident as well.

Fiona loves visiting Mimi and her family since there are three little girls to play with. They also have four brothers. They usually stay up quite late at night playing and giggling.

Of course last night Fiona decided to stay up ALL night! And she did. Though the other children took turns sleeping. She woke one of them up at 2 am to get a drink of water! Mimi and her children haven’t yet said we can’t come back. Fiona crashed for about an hour during our visit to the care center. I’m working hard to keep her awake now till after dinner so she will sleep tonight.

Last night we worked together with Sonja to make a vegetable stir fry with brown rice for dinner. Tonight when she gets home from work, we’ll have a pasta dinner waiting for her. We leave in the morning. Our first stop will be to say hi to our friends Carrie and Larry before heading up to stay with Couchsurfing hosts Chris and John again.

So today we’re working here at the kitchen table getting our work done. Trying to finish a big client web job and working on new client stuff. Yep, feels like home!