Green Product: Fail

If you haven't heard by now, phosphates are bad for the environment, specifically aquatic habitats (cheap and easy education found here). So bad, in fact, certain states have banned their use in dish washing products where they are most commonly found. So, wanting to help save the ol' gal Mama Earth, Brian and I decided to give the Seventh Gen powder a shot.

Fail. Epic fail. I suppose if I had read the reviews on their website,  I would have known better. Our dishes are clean of food scraps, but they are very filmy, especially with our hard water.So filmy you can rub lines in it with your fingers. Seventh Gen said they are reworking the formula to perform better. Until then, they recommend soaking dishes in a sink of vinegar water before you put them away.

What?!

Really.

To get any dishes that have filming on them back to normal, you can soak them in a sink of water with a cup of vinegar. A quick rinsing afterward should have them back to normal. For any dishwashers that are getting film on the inside you can again use vinegar. Add about 1/2 cup to the bottom of the machine and run a rinse cycle, this should restore in the interior of your machine.

We'll finish this box, and we'll be testing their capsules next. Anyone use their liquid for automatic washers?

Anadama Bread - put one down in the 'fail' column.

I've been messing around with breads for a few months now, and I find the whole process pretty fascinating. I enjoy the totality of what makes a success or failure in the bread world. So far, I'm 1/3 successes to attempts. I didn't change much with this recipe, from Yankee Magazine. The description was for a 'sweet, well textured sandwich bread'. Hmmm, sounds good. Plus, combining molasses and corn meal? Crazy!

The taste was alright, but it was damn dense, and didn't rise properly. As far as the rise goes, I had a feeling my yeast might be a little off, and it was Instant, where I think I've decided I'd rather regular active yeast over instant. So, one problem solved.

The problem of density took a little more research. I found these causes:

• Too much flour.
• Too little kneading.
• Those cute crosscuts you see on artisan loafs at the store? They're there for a reason. If a crust forms too fast, it can actually trap the 'growth' of the bread, rather than letting it expand. Cutting the raw loafs will allow the bread to rise more freely.

I found this web discussion to be very helpful - in fact, ChowHound in general has some great resources for your baking maladies. 

Since my bread looked nothing like this and I know I had issues, I won't review the recipe quite yet, I'm going to give it another shot in the near future.