I am back with a recipe and another giveaway to celebrate three years of blogging! While I originally said I’d be doing a week of giveaways, I decided to spread them out over the month of May…because a month of celebrating is much more fun, don’t you think?

Have I ever told you about my long and somewhat complicated relationship with bread? I’m pretty sure you’d start snoozing if I shared all the sordid details so here are the highlights:

When I was in high school, I was obsessed with bread. I loved it more than any other food and couldn’t go a day without it. Bagels were particularly adored…I spent countless hours walking the streets of NYC in search of the perfect bagel.

I set out on a quest to learn how to make all kinds of homemade bread. I bought books. I took classes. I baked- and ate- a lot of bread over the next few years.

But then- gasp!- I was diagnosed with multiple food sensitivities, and wheat and yeast were at the top of the list. A direct result of overconsumption of said obsession? Probably. In any case, I had to give up my beloved bread, at least for a while.

I went for a year or so without a single bagel, slice of pizza, or any other type of yeasty deliciousness. And then when the food sensitivities were cleared up and I was finally able to eat bread again, I made the decision to only do so on a very limited basis, because I decided I felt better when I only ate small amounts of gluten and starchy carbohydrates.

I haven’t baked bread on a regular basis in ages, but bread and I are now slowly getting to know each other again. I am finding that bread and I get along just fine as long as I don’t go overboard, so I am re-learning how to make it. Earlier this week, I baked up this Walnut Bread.

The bread, which I adapted just a bit from the King Arthur Flour website, is simple to prepare, and I love the tip about taking the internal temperature to ensure that it’s done. When you do this, you guarantee that the center of your loaf isn’t still basically raw…this has happened to me a few times when I’ve baked homemade bread, and is a real disappointment.

I love the flavors of the honey and the toasted walnuts in this bread, and in my opinion, it has a wonderful texture. It slices beautifully, which makes it perfect for sandwiches; for breakfast, I’ve been toasting thin slices and piling on some cottage cheese…delicious!

Toasted Walnut Bread

Yield: 2 loaves

Ingredients:

*1 1/2 cups warm water
*1 tablespoon active dry yeast
*1/2 cup honey (I used a local dark wildflower honey)
*1/4 cup walnut or olive oil (I used roasted walnut oil)
*1 1/2 teaspoons salt (I used fine sea salt)
*6 cups (approx.) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (I used 3 cups of King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour plus 2 1/2 cups King Arthur Bread Flour instead)
*8 oz. walnut pieces, toasted over medium-high heat in a skillet until lightly browned (watch that they don't burn

Directions:

1. Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour (or white whole wheat flour) and let sit for 10 minutes to give the yeast a chance to "get going" (I added a teaspoon of honey to this, as well). Stir in (the rest of) the honey, the oil, and the salt. Add the flour, a cup at a time, until the dough has formed a shaggy mass (I mixed everything up in my Kitchen Aid stand mixer, with the dough hook attachment).

2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter. Knead the dough, adding flour as necessary, to form a smooth and satiny ball. Put the dough into a bowl and drizzle with an additional tablespoon of oil; turn the dough to coat it with the oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let the dough rise until it has doubled in bulk; this will take about 1 1/2 hours.

3. Gently deflate the dough and knead in the walnuts. Divide the dough in half and form each half into a ball. Place on a cookie sheet that has been oiled and sprinkled with cornmeal or semolina flour. Cover the loaves with damp towels and let rise until swollen. This will take 30-45 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Be sure that the oven temperature is correct; the loaves will burn if the oven is too hot. Sprinkle flour on top of the loaves, and use a serrated knife to slash a cross in the top of each loaf about 1" deep.

5. Bake the loaves for 35-45 minutes, until they are well browned and sound hollow when thumped on the bottom; their internal temperature will measure 190°F on an instant-read thermometer. Put the loaves on a rack to cool, and let sit for at least 20 minutes before cutting.

Adapted slightly (with permission) from King Arthur Flour

I’ve been a big fan of King Arthur Flour for ages and when I asked the folks over there if they’d like to sponsor a giveaway in honor of my blog’s birthday, they generously agreed. They put together the following fantastic package that’s going to make one of you very happy:

Five Pound Bag of King Arthur Premium 100% Whole Wheat Flour
Five Pound Bag of King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour
One Pound of King Arthur Flour Whole Flax Seed
One 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 Loaf Pan
The King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Cookbook

Official Rules: No purchase necessary. Open to US residents over 18 years of age only. This giveaway will end on Monday May 21st 2012 at 11:59 pm EST. One winner with a valid entry will be selected at random using random.org. Winner will be notified by email and will have 48 hours to claim their prize or another winner will be selected.

To enter, please leave a comment below (this is your mandatory first entry).

For additional entries (please leave additional comments for each)

- Follow King Arthur Flour on Twitter
- Like King Arthur Flour on Facebook

Thank you and good luck!

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Welcome to Week 17 of One Simple Change: my year-long series of posts that focus on small changes…changes that when practiced and cultivated into habits will help improve the quality of your life and help make you a healthier person.

As I stated in my last 2 posts, this week marks 3 years since I started this blog. Because I am so thankful for my readers, and because I read this wonderful post this week, gratitude has really been on my mind as of late. So gratitude is what I want to focus on for One Simple Change today.

I have to be honest: I never thought I’d be writing a post about gratitude here. I started this site as a recipe blog, and I didn’t plan to stray too far from discussions of food and its impact on health. So why am I writing about this topic? Because an all-around healthy lifestyle is about more than the foods you eat. And practicing gratitude appears to have an impact on both health and happiness.

I am not sure where I read it (The Secret, maybe?), but I’ve always liked the following quote: “until we are grateful for what we already have, we can’t expect anything new to come into our life”.

To me, this means that our lives can’t change or improve if we spend all of our time thinking about what we don’t have. We must appreciate what we do have before anything new and potentially positive can come our way.

My go-to site for wisdom of this sort is Zen Habits, and I love what author Leo Babauta has to say about gratitude. I love the idea of holding a daily “gratitude session”, too.

I am not a particularly spiritual person, so for me, practicing gratitude simply means devoting some time to thinking about and being grateful for everything positive that exists in my life- my family, my friends, my health, my house, my pets, good food, the ability to connect with others through this blog, etc. Are there negative things in my life? Sure. But when I am practicing gratitude, I put those out of my mind, and focus only on things that are positive.

I’ve been trying to do this more and more often as I find that practicing gratitude calms me down when I am feeling stressed. It also helps me reverse the negative thought patterns I occasionally fall into, and it is a pretty effective way to turn a bad day around.

And don’t be afraid to share your gratitude with others…tell people that you appreciate them! Phone calls and thank you notes, in particular, let others know that you are grateful for something they did, or simply that you are glad they are a part of your life.

Are you new to the concept of practicing gratitude or is this old hat to you? What do you think? Are you “in” to this week’s One Small Change? As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.

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I wish I could give everyone who stops by and spends time at my blog a gift. I really and truly do.

I cannot actually give you all something, but I can give a few of you something.

So in honor of my blog’s 3rd birthday (or anniversary or whatever you want to call it), I’m going to post some great giveaways starting today and finishing up at the end of next week.

First up we have a Kitchen Aid 5 Speed Hand Blender.

This item was given to me (or rather, I won it through my participation in a blogging event), and I was really excited when it arrived: it looks like a fantastic kitchen gadget. It’s like an immersion blender on steroids: among other tasks, you can use it to blend smoothies, chop nuts, froth cappuccinos, shred vegetables and whisk egg whites.

Because it sat unopened in my garage for a few weeks, I realized this hand blender is just not something that I really need in my kitchen.

So I want one of you to have it :)

While Kitchen Aid was nice enough to give this to me, this giveaway is not officially sponsored by them; the item is mine and I will be shipping it to the winner (and covering the cost of the shipping, of course). As stated above, this hand blender is brand new and I never opened the box (please note that the box came to me a bit banged up, though).

So there you have it…a Kitchen Aid Hand Blender will be going to one of you as my way of saying thanks for helping to make my first three years of blogging a fantastic experience. This item is valued at $99.99 and you can read more about it here.

To enter, please leave a comment below.

For an additional entry, follow me on twitter then leave an additional comment letting me know that you did.

Official Rules: No purchase necessary. Open to US residents only. This giveaway will end on Monday May 14th 2012 at 11:59 pm EST. One winner with a valid entry will be selected at random using random.org. Winner will be notified by email and will have 48 hours to claim their prize or another winner will be selected.

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