This was a great day. Our warm weather came back.

I had to work all day so I did not get to do a beach walk or anything exciting.

I still enjoyed the 70 degree temperature and not wearing a coat.

I have only had a coat on four or five times this year which is just about right in my book.

Today I did manage to sneak down to the Emerald Woods pier on Emerald Isle and take a number of pictures of yet another spectacular Bogue Sound sunset.

It is just amazing how different each of the sunsets can be.

We continued our break from cooking at home. Some friends treated us to lunch at Mike's on Emerald Isle, and I had oysters on my mind so we managed to get into Jordan's before the crowd hit.

The oyster were great. Lunch was delicious also. It is hard to beat Mike's stuffed pepper soup and their grilled reuben sandwich.

That's not bad considering we had some great pizza with friends at Trattoria in Swansboro Thursday evening.

Tomorrow I am hoping for some time to relax and catch up on my writing. We may even cook all our meals at home.

We have had a great winter so far, so I am not really complaining.

However, it has been pretty nippy the last two days.

My hands got pretty cold standing out by the Cedar Point boat ramp waiting for the sun to set.

Our weather here on the Carolina coast is not really that cold compared to where we lived in Canada.

Still we would all rather have some seventy degree temperatures instead of the upper forties.

I did a couple of unusual things today. First I baked bread and then I made some oatmeal cookies.

This is the fourth loaf in this iteration of my bread baking career which has only be going on for a few weeks.

I did bake bread once in a while in my early days in Canada before I got married.

These days I keep experimenting because I have been unable to find a good bakery here on the Crystal Coast. I love whole wheat bread.

This last loaf got the advantage of cracked wheat to go a long with the oatmeal flakes that I had been using.

We also added some millet which gives the bread a nice crunch. The initial taste this afternoon was very good so I am looking forward to my breakfast toast.

The oatmeal cookies were for my wife who complained that we didn't have any dessert around the house. I made cookies regularly when I lived in Canada on our first farm in Nova Scotia.

This was my first pan of cookies in 35 years so I guess baking cookies hasn't been a priority over the years.

Still it was sort of fun doing something different.

We made a quick trip to Beaufort to capture some Marmite for my breakfast toast.

After we made our way across the bridge, we drove down a street with a patch of some freshly mown grass.

Seeing grass being cut in late February reminded me of why I love living in Carteret County.

On an earlier foray we had located Carteret County's only supply of Marmite at the new Coastal Community Market. Fortunately there had not been a run on the Marmite which I consider to be a market of civilization.

My wife has a different opinion and likes to describe it as country ham flavored axle grease.

We turned out to find some other things that I have had on my list for a while.

I bought some cracked wheat and millet for my next loaf of homemade bread. I have gotten frustrated with the lack of a good bakery on the coast. I have taken baking into my hands.

I am enjoying the fruits of my bread baking labor, but I have to be careful not to drop one of my lead loaves on my feet, I might end up in the emergency room.

It has been many years since I baked any bread except with a bread maker. Those long ago years were when we were living in an old farm house on the coast of Nova Scotia.

My wife baked many loaves when we ran our large cattle farm in New Brunswick. She tells me that she is baked out so if I want homemade bread, I have to do it myself.

Still I will get better at it. Kneading dough is very therapeutic thing to do in a challenging real estate market.

I think my bread not rising as much this time was related to buying slow acting yeast and not feeding them any sugar.

Sugar for the yeast is one of those crucial ingredients that wives don't write down. I suspect the info is passed from generation to generation carved on the back of their bread boards.

The next iteration of bread will have to wait for another evening. Tonight I had to get ahead of those sprouts of green showing in my yard. I put some pre-emergent weed killer on so that it would catch tomorrow's rains.

Spring is coming though it will not seem like it on Wednesday and Thursday with a blast of cold air.

Tags: Marmite, Bread, Grass, Spring