Experimental cooking

I have been meaning to try the New York Times recipe for "no knead" bread, and this week I finally got around to giving it a go. I used 1/3 whole wheat flour, and a little extra water, but other than that, I didn't make any changes. End result:

Very tasty-- nice crunchy crust, chewy & soft interior. I used a first rise of around 18 hours and second rise of maybe 1.5 to 2 hours. The one puzzle was that the original recipe called for a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot, which turned out to be much too big-- next time I will go with a 4 qt pot. There is also another recipe page that has some pictures, which was helpful.

Second cooking experiment: home-made "Nutella". I stumbled across a recipe while looking for other things on the net, but in fact the web is littered with recipes. This recipe is just roasted hazel nuts (about a cup) and a package of dark chocolate chips. Photo:

The color is quite a bit darker than the store-bought kind, and it's a bit less sweet, but it is amazingly good.