Bread Machine 2

I bought the bread machine, and made my first lovely loaf with it.  I love the smell of bread baking.  However, I messed up my calculations yesterday.  The shop had two machines, one was my lovely Panasonic for $279, yes $100 more than I posted, still that's only another 40 days to pay it off by not buying bread.  So I bought it, the other one, for $190 was a Sunbeam with the same silly spring thing as the old Sanyo, so no way I was I going to buy it.  Also when I take into account making pizza for tea once a week, the savings on pizza bases is about $6, so that really cuts the days down to 83 days till its paid for itself.  Not bad when I plan on using it daily for another 5 years or so.

Bread Machine

For the past 16 years I have had a Panasonic Bread Machine.  Actually that's not strictly accurate, i've had 2 of them, they aren't designed to last forever.  In that whole time I've found that home made bread costs about half of bought bread.  My second machine died last year, since then I've been using a Sanyo that was given to me by Mum.

It isn't as good as the Panasonic, the bread doesn't have the right texture, but even worse it has a serious design fault.  The bread pan is held in by a couple of bits of bent metal at the top of the machine.  Each time I put the pan in or remove it I have to push or pull it past these bits of metal.  The first time I saw it I could tell this was a mistake, and last week I was proven right.  The bits of metal have gradually weakened and no longer hold the pan in place.  The machine works perfectly if I am prepared to stand there and hold the pan in place, but that kind of defeats the purpose, I might as well make it by hand, but sadly I just don't have the time.  Note the woosy little hooks holding the pan in, also note the dried dough, I had to take the last dough out and cook in manually

It's been costing me $5 a day to keep the family in bread.  That's two loaves of bakery bread.  I just calculated that it costs about $2.5 to make home made bread, so half the cost.  I checked out a new bread machine and it will cost me $179, which works out to be 71.6 day's bread.  So within 3 months the new machine will have paid itself off.  So guess what I'm buying today?  You guessed it, a new Panasonic bread machine.  No more bought bread.  Fresh bread all the way.

I love that hat

I love this hat pattern so much I made two.  One out of mohair for Amber, I made it last year, then this year I needed a hat myself, so I made this one out of wool.  I just love it, so warm and comfy, and it looks great too.  I'm making a matching mobeus scarf, knitting is so much fun.

Helpline

Today I did my regular fortnightly helpline shift.  Every second Sunday from 10 - 2 I make sure I'm home and available to answer the phone.  Mums from all over Australia ring the helpline number for breastfeeding help.  I am one of approximately 900 counsellors in Australia, we take turns to take phone calls. I really enjoy it, it is great to be able to help people.

It was an interesting shift today, usually on a Sunday the phone rings hot for the first how and then slows down.  I usually have a call at 10am on the dot.  Today I hadn't had one by 10:15, so I rang the number to check that I really was on.  I had one call before 11 and then it sped up until 1 and then calmed down again.  I usually have about 12 calls on a shift, so todays 11 was pretty much normal.   Just interesting that they come in fits and starts.

I also do email counselling, where people enter their query onto our website and its gets sent to one of about 7 counsellors rostered on for a few days.  It is interesting the number of people who email that they couldn't get through on the phone and after some questioning I discover it is because they haven't read the information properly.  A lot of VOIP phones won't connect because there is an extra number on the end, so if you are having trouble getting through drop off the extra 6 and you should get through no problems.  This is written on all of the literature, yet many people don't notice it.  I hope the VOIP providers fix the glitch soon as we aren't the only organisation with an extra number :)