Smell My House

We all had plans for Saturday night. DQ was going to a Bat Mitzvah, Hubbo and I were going to a party for his office, and we'd made arrangements for Stinkerbelle to spend the evening (I knew better than to call it babysitting) at my friend Felicia's. Then Hubbo threw his back out bagging leaves so no party for us and no need for Stinky to go to Felicia's. I thought that Stinkerbelle would be happy to stay home with us. It turns out that she was looking forward to her evening plans so I had to come up with something really good to justify keeping her home with us. Once I mentioned baking she brightened considerably.
I bake a lot but usually it's cakes and cookies - I haven't tried to make bread in ages. In our old apartment I'd make challah that would look wonderful until it went into the oven. Something would happen in there to turn gorgeous loaves into yummy but very flat and wide bread.
Saturday night I made challah with Stinky and we had a blast. She was fascinated by the yeast and the way something that smelled bad to her would yield such wonderful results. She was impatient with waiting for the dough to rise. We had a blast and in the end we had lovely, warm bread and the house smelled marvelous. Is there any better smell than bread baking? Yum! If only we could bottle it. The braided loaf is mine and the other 2 were Stinky's. After I put them into the oven I went online and found out the proper way to do a 4 strand braided loaf. I'll just have to make more bread soon to test it out.
I must've been in a real cooking groove because I just couldn't stop. I made a huge pot of vegetarian chili. No pictures of that because chili isn't terribly photogenic. Apple-cranberry crumble looks good in pictures though. Don't you think so? it smelled really good too.