Big Days Call for Bakin'

Today started out like any other. Scratch that, David got called in to work, so he was up at the crack of dawn and I was too. After a long night of discussing life and our plans, we were both operating on minimal sleep, so I just got up with him. I usually help him make his lunch but this morning I got fancy with a can of Pilsbury biscuits that I found in the fridge.

I made donuts.

David's family has a deep fryer that they never use, so I got it out and put it to work. The dough was pretty old, so it probably didn't hold together as well as it could have, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the results. There are a lot of options for topping them (we tried one with cinnamon/sugar), but everyone knows that plain glazed donuts are the best.

Once I got the whole family off to work/school, I got down to business: I got my first big girl, full-time job!

The quick backstory is that I was looking for a part-time job to get out of the house while we waited on the Peace Corps to give us the where/when of our assignment. David's dad, Don, got an email about a part time job at Fleet Feet Roanoke and thought it would be a good fit for me, so I went in last week to talk about it with them. To make a long story short, I'll be working full-time and doing their marketing and couldn't be more excited. The owners are great and the concept of the store is great. I'm jumping right in this week with one of their biggest events of the year, Diva Night. Hooray!

The weather was also finally halfway decent (okay, it was hot) today, so David took the opportunity to grill out hamburgers. I was feeling adventurous, so I offered to make the buns. Oy vei. We used the bread machine to mix up the dough (because I'm over kneading) and tried both a cookie cutter and a (drinking) glass to cut out the circles. David's burgers were pretty enormous so we used the bigger buns and just ate the smaller ones.

I had no idea what to do with the leftover dough (because it doesn't really mold back together like cookie dough) so I tried to make more buns and pretzels. Since it had been re-kneaded and rolled a few times, it was pretty dense and ended with more of a biscuit-like texture. Definitely still edible but I need some better ideas for the extra dough. Any thoughts?