Wishful Thinking

While you might be thinking (and I might be wishing)  that I was mixing up a rather large batch of dirty martinis with all of these green olives...

I had bigger and better (tasting) things planned! 

The yeast, sugar, olive oil and warm water proofing. 
 One cup of green olives, coarsely chopped.

The dough after the addition of the green olives and rosemary... 

 I had a beautiful herb garden in Miami and one of the herbs that grew really well there was rosemary. Knowing how great fresh rosemary tastes in bread or on focaccia, it just about killed me to have to use the dried stuff in this bread. 
Ready to rise.

After the first rise.

After the second rise and shaped into loaves. 

Yum! Green Olive and Rosemary Bread.

 

I bought a loaf of green olive and rosemary bread last week from the Urban Pantry stock sale at ISB. It was good (as it should have been for about $3.+ USD) but I knew that I could make a bread just as good, if not better. And I did. For a lot less $$$. 

I did not like the looks of these loaves - they were too flat for my liking and seemed more like focaccia and not the "loaf of bread" look that I was hoping for. However, looks aside, WOW! The taste was amazing - even with the dried rosemary! If you are a fan of green olives (and i know not many are), this bread is for you. I ran a few extra miles this morning to make up for how much of this bread I ate yesterday. It was totally worth it though!

It is Sunday here and I planned the early part of my day so I could stalk yahoo.com/sports because Notre Dame was playing Oklahoma at 8 pm Saturday (US time). The Irish won and remain undefeated! Yay! Monday morning (my time), the NY Giants will be in Dallas - hopefully to avenge their loss earlier in the season.  

I just added weather.com to my bookmarks bar so I can track the progress of Sandy and keep up to date on the storm's progress. My stomach ties itself into a knot every time I read about how devastating this storm could be. I know it does me no good to worry from 1/2 a world away but I do. I have too many family members and friends in the mid-Atlantic and North East not to worry. Maybe those olives would have been put to better use in a dirty martini?!?

Have a great Sunday.