The Accidental Hedonist writes that there are some serious questions being raised about whether Horizon’s farming practices are truly organic or not. Horizon is the supplier for individual milks at the Mermaid (as Fortune likes to call them) and they sell giant boxes of their milks at Costco—they clearly need gigantic supplies of milk. They may be letting their standards slip in response. The AH also explains what constitutes organic and not when it comes to milk, so go read her whole entry.

I don’t buy Horizon, actually, because I don’t like the taste of their individual milks, and I don’t think the kids do either—whenever I’ve taken them by the Mermaid, they always want to get a couple of boxes of chocolate milk, and I remind them they didn’t drink them the last time.

You know what hurts? Realizing, after you’ve mixed the mix and baked the cupcakes, that the recipe calls for self-rising cake flour and Softasilk isn’t self-rising and what you now have are not so much cupcakes as flat, tasteless little cup-cookies.

(Yeah. Again with the self-rising flour. Only this time it’s self-rising cake flour. Would it have killed Nigella to include the measurements for non-self-rising cake flour and baking powder and salt?)

You know what hurts worse? When the daughter you’ve made said cupcakes for says, “The bakery makes better cupcakes.” Okay, sure, she’s right, but it still hurts.

(Btw: Sophia is going to be FIVE tomorrow. FIVE. I cannot believe this. Didn’t I just bring her home from the hospital? Best saying I’ve heard on this phenomenon of life with kids: “The days are long and the years are short.” Boy howdy, is that the truth.)

I have drunk the bread-making Kool-aid so thoroughly that I have signed up at my local Sur La Table for their bread-baking class, which is taught by a baker who is also the retail operations manager for Beckmann’s retail bakeries—Beckmann’s is the brand of sandwich bread I buy at the market, so this seemed like a good sign.

I’m hoping I can get a handle on this before I’m asking Darin if we can take our next week-long vacation in Vermont.

§

Rob and Laura came over this morning so that we could make brunch together. My first batch of dough for cinnamon rolls did not go well, and so I did not have rolls waiting for them when they arrived. Laura—who has done so much baking she has evidently flirted with the idea of starting her own baking service—helped me whip up another batch of sweet dough for cinnamon rolls (using the recipe out of Domestic Goddess) and showed me some ways of how to tell when the dough is done.

The rolls were pretty tasty when they came out even if, as Sophia complained, they didn’t have frosting on them.

Laura, by the way, who has baked far, far more bread than I have, loves Beth Hensperger’s books, including and especially The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook, which she uses all the time. In fact, she has inspired me to take the book out of the library and try to make some bread doughs in my machine again.