Day two of our Niagara adventure. Jon says when he comes down the stairs he swears he smells cinnamon buns baking in the oven. I smell nothing – can he be more subtle? He makes a coffee and gives Jake his treats.
Jake is a wonderful, larger than life cat. He lumbers around the house slowly, the size of a raccoon, Jake’s not a fan of quick movement or any other form of exercise. In the morning, Jon takes his treats from the bag in the pantry and walks with them (and Jake) to the other end of the kitchen. He drops them on the floor and Jake gobbles them up happily. Jon’s theory is that Jake needs the exercise.
Then Jon lounges in the living room, basking in the extra time he now has in the morning. He no longer gets up at 5 am to drive to Niagara from Toronto. Now, he gets up at 7 and relaxes with a coffee – and I’m guessing he wants cinnamon buns to go with that.
When he finally goes off to work it’s just Jake and I. I scratch his back while I put in an hour or so of work before I begin slicing onions for French onion soup. I just happened to bring some home made bone broth with me so a hearty French onion soup should be a quick dinner on this frigid day.
I run to a few grocery stores to get the lay of the land before making a trip out to Morningstar Mills. This historic mill at Decew Falls makes the best stone ground bread flour. It will be perfect for the cinnamon buns I’m going to make. Yes, the power of suggestion has gotten the better of me.
But, it’s not a successful trip. Morningstar Mills I learned, only grinds flour four times a year, each time they mill a different flour and right now, they’re out of bread flour. They won’t mill it again until end of May or perhaps September – the volunteers weren’t sure. While I LOVE the flour from this mill, it’s February and I’m thinking a plan B is in order.
It’s not my only plan B. I went out looking for more bones to make another batch of broth and can’t believe what I found. One grocery store had five bones in a package for $7.00, another had one bone, albeit larger, for $3.00. Pigs feet were equally outrageous. Heck, I can get a giant bag of bones for $2.00 back in Toronto and pigs feet for $1.00 each!! I’m either not looking in the right place or Niagarians are just willing to pay a lot more for their bones.
I’m back at the house almost empty handed. I find some whole wheat flour in the kitchen and in the absence of a dough hook for the mix-master, I mix the dough by hand. I made the onion soup with half a can of Guinness – yum – and we lit a roaring fire. Jake on the other hand had no interest in the warmth of the fire preferring instead to stay out in the freezing weather. For all of us it’s a glorious cold winters night. And while the instant yeast I bought for the cinnamon buns had difficulty rising, they were still delicious with plenty left over for Jon’s morning coffee.