Our daily bread

The kids are back in school. Yes, indeed it is true, and I could wax lyrical for some paragraphs on how completely fabulous that is! Why yesterday I had so much time, that I managed to clean out the freezer. That is a good thing.... well having DONE it is a good thing. DOING it wasn't actually much fun, and also the cause of some chagrin, given that I discovered some tubs of lovingly homemade pureed baby food in the bottom of that huge chest freezer, baby food that we have had no need for in this house for 7 years (and don't plan on having a need for again).

The one downside of the back to school extravaganza is the return of the dreaded packed lunch. I am sure some children eat everything their mother dutifully wraps in cling wrap and gently places in Tupperware with gusto and gratitude. My children, meanwhile, have all three decided that they don't eat sandwiches. What? They like bread (in fact it is one of our staples in this house, and we get through a truckload each week). They like ham. They like cheese. However, a ham and cheese sandwich? Nope. I'm not sure when logic kicks in, but I can reliably say that it hasn't reared its head in my 8 and 12 year olds as yet. The optimist in me likes to think that it will soon enough, even if only to counter-balance the less attractive attributes of puberty like sweaty armpits, acne, feet the size of Texas, and the ability to grow visibly by the minute. The satirist in me suspects that logic may kick in the day they leave for college and no longer need a packed lunch. Whatever happens, it made the latter half of the last school year somewhat challenging, particularly when there were no left-overs I could stuff in a thermos.

The only two courses of action I have come up over the summer months with are (a) to sneakily introduce sandwich-like items into their lunchboxes, and (b) to be more stubborn than they are and continue to throw the odd obvious sandwich together and hope for the best. Thus far this week we have tried solution (a) and they had wraps, with lavash bread spread with cream cheese, turkey, cucumber and spinach. They ate these with no complaints. Buoyed up by this success, tomorrow I plan to be less subtle in my subterfuge and give option (b) a whirl, giving them what can only be dubbed a sandwich, but which is made with such delectable ingredients that they cannot resist its charms.

You can't have a sandwich without bread, so this recipe is for one of the most delicious breads I have ever made with my bread machine. The original recipe hails from the instruction book that came with my Zojirushi bread machine (which next to my Kitchen Aid mixer is one of my best friends in the whole world). I amended it a little to make the flavor more suited to our tastes in this family. Moist, and subtly flavored, it is just begging to be used to make a sandwich, so fingers crossed...

Cheddar and Onion Bread
Makes a 2lb loaf in a bread machine

1 1/4 cups (300 ml) water
4 1/4 cups (544g) bread flour
2 TBSP (23g) sugar
2 tsp (11.2g) salt
2 1/2 TBSP salted butter
1 1/4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup (40g) finely chopped red onion
2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

1. Place the ingredients in the bread machine pan in the order shown above. The cheese and onion can be added at this point - you don't have to wait for the end of the first part of the machine's cycle.
2. Set the bread machine for the regular white bread cycle.