Flat Bread

How do you know when you need new baking powder?  When your loaves of rhubarb bread are as flat as pieces of French toast.  *sigh*  I haven't tasted it yet, I'm sure it'll be tasty but dense.  At first I thought I put too little batter in each pan but I suspect that the main culprit is my baking powder with the Dec 2014 expiration date.  (it's probably a bit of both)  That stuff must know when it's supposed to expire and goes all-in as soon as that date rolls around.  It's a good thing the recipe only makes a couple small loaves of bread, I'd hate to have wasted a lot of ingredients on this failure.  *sigh*  Guess I'll be buying baking powder tomorrow and trying again.  Maybe I'll try a different recipe too... could be the recipe is flawed... but it's probably the dead baking powder.  This is why I don't buy Bisquick anymore.  I just don't use the stuff fast enough to use it up before it gives up the ghost.

There are buds on the lilac bush.  I don't think I've ever looked at it this time of year before.  The buds look like tiny groups of grapes standing on the tips of the branches.  There are a few leaves poking out too but mostly there are flower buds.  Hooray!

I knitted on the sweater sleeves but they don't look much different than they did before so I won't be boring you with pictures.  I mostly just goofed off yesterday, read the paper, played computer games, and knitted.  I ran to the store in the afternoon BEFORE my abortive bread baking attempt so I didn't realize we needed new baking powder or the bread outcome would have been different.  I'm peeved about it, can you tell?

April 27--Michael von Ruber, Autumn Reflections.

Aspen leaves
yellow coins pile up
slither down
into the stream
wind-swirled
they float away
~~~~~

Sitting and knitting (or doing crosswords or playing on the computer) for hours yesterday put an ache between my shoulder blades I can't seem to stretch out.  I want someone to pick me up by my shoulders and snap my bones back into place like you shake out a rug.  Wouldn't it feel great to have everything all lined up again?  Yeah, that'll never happen, but I can dream, can't I?  It's Monday--again.  How do these days roar around so quickly?  Life's a blur.
--Barbara