Why Did I Think this Was a Good Idea?

Hello Blogosphere,

So I had this great idea: What if I bake all day on Saturday! I could get so much done.

Well, I've gotten a lot done, but I'm tired. And I've still got a bunch of stuff to finish that's in the "halfway done" phase. I just put one loaf into the oven and I've got more dough rising. The only thing that keeps me working to get so much of this done is that when hubby gets home I want to be free to spend time with him and not have to still be cooking.

I have to keep reminding myself why I put so much effort into my food, sometimes.

1.) I'm striving to provide quality food for my family while on a budget. I don't want crazy chemicals like bleach or rBGH in my food.

2.) See above.

Haha, as you can see, I'm super-coherent right now. I've been learning a ton about food and I always am trying to improve our food while keeping it fun. I don't want to have lentils or black beans every single night--how dull!

Today I:
Baked 6 little rye buns which I am hoping turned out in spite of my errors.
Made a batch of spaghetti sauce.
Made a huge batch of granola! (the ! is because I'm very excited about this, in case you weren't sure)
I'm baking bread to freeze and use in a casserole later.
I've got dough for french bread rising to go with our soup later this week.

I've never worked with rye flour before and I'm almost certain I killed it. Which is sad because it's not the cheapest thing in the world. It was about $2.70 for just under 2lbs. I used most of it. It's awaiting judgement currently so I'll fill you in later.
The spaghetti tastes off so when I reheat it I'll probably tinker with it some more. I think it needs more garlic?
The granola! It turned out way better than I thought it would. I was skeptical because I've never made it before and also slightly intimidated (am I allowed to eat granola that didn't come pre-packaged? Isn't there a rule against that somewhere? lol) I used a recipe I found on Lauren's blog, here. You should go check it out because it's awesome. For some reason, though, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to cut and dry my own apples, a process I started last night which took... forever. And then when I got in a hurry it didn't work as well (go figure). I'm not sure I'll ever make my own apple chips again for this, but it's not necessary for great granola!
The sandwich (erm, casserole) bread looks very promising just now. I used my fancy new hand mixer that came with a bread hook attachment to knead it which resulted in much more developed gluten than I could ever get by hand with this dough. And I didn't have to add hardly any extra flour. I'm excited.
The french bread is the easiest bread I have ever made. It requires so little work because you don't have to knead it at all.

So that's my story today. Hope you enjoyed reading about my crazy adventures in the kitchen!