A couple years ago I read a post (January 24, 2007) on Cindy’s blog that was titled “I Don’t Want Anything.” I was intrigued, challenged, and inspired, all at the same time.

Not want anything? Now that was a novel idea! I have always known that I don’t really need anything, but to take it one step farther and say I don’t want anything? Could that possibly be true? Could I make it be true?

I pondered the matter for about five seconds and then I got up from my desk, marched over to the table where Mr. Handsome was reading the paper, pressed my stomach up against the table, and slapped my hand over his paper so he would have to look at me. When he finally looked up, clearly irritated (I’m notorious for bothering him when he sits down to read the paper), I calmly stated, “I don’t want anything.”

He looked at me, blankly.

Speaking softly and enunciating each word to the best of my mush-mouth ability, I said, “I bet I can go longer without spending money than you can, because,” and I smiled tauntingly, “I don’t want anything.”

Of course Mr. Handsome rose to the challenge. We drew up the rules:

Non-acceptable expenditures:
*Tools, building materials, etc.
*Entertainment: eating out, movies, plays, childcare
*Clothing
*Certain groceries: no cereal, fresh fruits/veggies, ice cream, meats, gourmet and soft cheeses, snack foods, sodas, candy, alcohol, rice, beans, pastas (maybe)

Acceptable expenditures:
*Standard bills, household items such as laundry detergent, tampons, toilet paper, and medical costs
*Gas and travel: we didn’t usually go anywhere anyway, and on the off-chance that we decided to go visit my family, we would go.
*The advance fees for certain activities for the children, such as camp, a local wilderness activity, etc.
*Birthdays would proceed as normal.
*Certain groceries: standard grains and flours, sugar, oil, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, milk, butter, eggs, basic cheeses and spices
*Garden seeds

Mr. Handsome kept saying things like, “This is so funny,” and “You always spend more money than me,” and “What are you, crazy?” and “I can’t believe you are doing this to yourself.”

I think we made it several weeks, maybe even four, before, eh-hem, Mr. Handsome lost the bet. He had ordered some hardware for the kids’ swing set. “But it was for the kids!” he argued in a last ditch effort to absolve himself.

“It was money,” I said. “Period. I won.”

The next year we planned ahead for the game, making sure we were fairly well outfitted for our spending drought. The kids had enough clothes, Mr. Handsome had some ideas for projects to work on (and the supplies necessary to complete them), and I had my stash of chocolate. We made it for about two months, maybe a bit more, before, eh-hem again, Mr. Handsome lost. I cannot, though, remember the losing purchase—was it the solar panel do-hickey for the chicken fence? Anyway, whatever it was, I won. Again.

A week and a half ago, on January 12, we started the bet once more. It’s not really a bet, my sister-in-law pointed out. There are no stakes, so to speak. Unless you include our honor and integrity. Those stakes are compelling enough to make us stand up straight and do our best. See, whoever spends money first is the loser and the winner, well, the winner has right to flaunt her favorable position, most likely by doing a little skippy dance and chanting something loving and kind such as “You’re a loser! A loser! Nana-nana-boo-boo!” And then the loser gets mad and sulky and declares that the rules weren’t fair in the first place and this is a stupid, stupid game. So maybe it is a bet after all?

At first glance you might think the purpose of the game is to save money, and while that is Mr. Handsome’s goal, it is certainly not mine. When I read Cindy’s post I realized that I spend an inordinate amount of time buying things, thinking about and making lists of the things I want to buy next, and finagling childcare so I can go buy those things. What if I didn’t want anything? What if it was pointless to spend time thinking about spending money because I couldn’t spend money? Wouldn’t that free up an awful lot of space in my head and time in my day?

Whenever I make the trip into town I’m forever racking my brain, attempting to remember if there is anything, anything that I need to pick up. It is the prudent thing to do, you know, optimizing a town trip. So I’ll be driving by Dollar General and I’ll think, “Do I need another hairbrush?” Or going past the bagel shop, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have bagels for breakfast tomorrow?” Or on my way by the thrift store, “Do I have time for a quick run-through, just to see if there are any good deals?”

But what would it be like to drive through town and not need to stop for anything because I didn’t need, didn’t want, anything? If I wasn’t allowed to stop for anything, then I would have more time to think, to look about me at the trees and the oncoming cars, to listen to NPR (or Calvin and the Chipmunks, heaven help me), or to yell more energetically at the kids when they start spitting fireballs at each other.

Anyways, I’m always fussing about how I have so much stuff on hand. A fast from spending would force me to use up what I have, and maybe, just maybe, become a little bit inventive. What about all those unlabeled boxes up in the attic? I bet I could find all sorts of treasures up there if I needed something—kids’ clothing, old lamps, dishes. Of course, there’s the trusty downtown library for good reads, movies, and music. And, if I got desperate for chocolate, I could always barter.

So, in a nutshell, the real purpose of the bet is to take a rest from idle consumerism.

The hardest thing for me, by far, is the restrictions on my grocery shopping. I love buying novelty foods and cooking new dishes. I get bored with beans, potatoes, and bread. I miss the convenience of fresh greens, fruit, cereal, and snack foods. It’s crazy, I know. I have so much food in this house…

I must confess, I did do a little pre-bet shopping. But it was just a wee bit. I bought a small round of Brie cheese, a few boxes of basic cereals, some more chocolate chips (and a couple bars of chocolate that, get this, Mr. Handsome seems to think he has the right to consume—what ails the man?), a couple bags of pretzels and some tortilla chips, that lettuce from the farmer’s market, a lot of pasta, some lemons and grapefruit, and some nuts.

So, that’s the game. We’ll see who wins. (And even if Mr. Handsome wins this round, I will still have won two out of the three games, so that makes me the overall you-know-what.)

In the meantime, we will rest … while we crave cereals, save money, and try to remember that we don’t want anything.

Back to that bread, the five-minute, no-knead, there-is-no-way-it-can-be-any-good bread.

It is good and I recommend it, but, blast it all, it confounds me! It has made me feel unstable, like my world has been turned upside down and all the truths I hold dear are no longer worth two cents. But here it stands, a delicious bread, happily disregarding the most sacred of bread-baking truths. It is a bread so simple it makes me feel stupid.

That said, this bread, though quite excellent, is not the be-all and end-all. I will continue to make the standard knead-and-rise yeast breads. I will still make my sourdough breads, probably within the next couple days.

Because despite the fact that this bread is called an artisan bread, it doesn’t strike me as being totally authentic, and even though the flavor is pleasing, it doesn’t have the depth of integrity that I associate with sourdoughs. Although every loaf of sourdough doesn’t necessarily have an overpowering sour flavor, they do have a strength about them, a presence, if you will. Kind of like a wrinkly old lady who makes a kick-butt chow-chow, dons a floppy sunhat and a pair of men’s oversized rubber boots when she works in her gardens, and decorates her kitchen with a simple bouquet of wild flowers stuffed haphazardly into a mason jar. Reassuring, uncompromising, able-bodied, and earthy—that’s sourdough.

The five-minute bread is like a Birkenstock-wearing, soy-milk-drinking, Peace Corps volunteer living in West Africa, just a few anemic cacti lining the edge of the dirt yard.

Um, whatever.

Bread personifications and personal bewilderment aside, this is the ideal bread for anyone who breaks out in a sweat and starts biting their nails when they hear mentioned the word “yeast”. It’s a good bread for kids to learn with. It’s a good bread with which to wow your guests. It’s a good bread with which to wow yourself.

So now, go forth into the world, ye Bread Bakers, mix up some dough, with a spoon, yea verily, and do not knead it. Yay.

Five-Minute Bread
Adapted from the article in MotherEarthNews.com, emailed to me by my girlfriend Laurel.

For the first few batches of dough, I recommend using all white flour and then gradually adding the whole wheat so you have a bottom line from which to deviate.

I have not detected a sourdough flavor, though I have yet to keep the dough in the fridge for the full two weeks.

It takes a long time to bake, as in 40-60 minutes. Don’t be afraid to get the crust a nice dark brown color—the inside doesn’t seem to dry out at all. And the bread is best when it’s had a chance to cool for at least thirty minutes; otherwise, it is so moist it’s almost doughy.

A lump of dough makes a spectacular pizza crust. (Update, March 17, 2009: This is now my favorite pizza dough. One batch of this dough makes three large pizza crusts. I like to make two large pizzas for supper and save the leftover dough in the fridge for when I want to make a fast breakfast pizza, or a simple focaccia for an afternoon snack or a lazy Sunday supper.)

3 cups warm water
1 ½ tablespoons yeast
1 tablespoon salt
6 ½ cups white bread flour

Stir together the yeast and water and let rest for about ten minutes. Add the salt and flour and stir until incorporated. Cover the bowl with a towel and let the dough rise till about double. At this point you may bake if you wish, or you may put a shower cap over the container and set it in the fridge, for up to two weeks, cutting off hunks of dough when needed.

(Do not wash your bread bowl when you mix up the next batch of dough; simply stir the leftover bits and pieces of the dough into the new batch—that’s supposed to help it to get a deeper flavor more quickly.)

When you are ready to bake: Cut off a hunk of dough, whatever size you wish, roughly lump it into a ball and set it on a bread board, or cutting board, that has been heavily sprinkled with cornmeal. Sprinkle flour over the loaf, slash it a couple times, and allow it to rest uncovered for 30-45 minutes. (It may be better to slash it immediately before baking, after the rest period, but I’m still testing that one out.)

Place your baking stone on the bottom rack of your oven, and preheat the oven to 425 degrees. When the oven is hot, spritz it heavily with water, slide the loaf from the board onto the hot stone, spritz the oven again, and shut the door. Spritz the oven two more times in the next five minutes, and then keep the oven shut for the next fifteen minutes at which point you can check the loaf and rotate it as needed. Continue baking the loaf for about a total of 45-60 minutes, or until it is dark brown all over.

Miss Becca Boo somehow twisted her hair all around a comb.

Mr. Handsome had to de-hair the comb, strand by strand, using a toothpick.

It was very painstaking and we thought it would take hours, but after a few minutes the comb fell free.

I learned, post-event, that Yo-Yo and a friend had climbed out his bedroom window and walked on the metal roof around to my bedroom window, crawled in through my bedroom window, and then walked down the hall and back into Yo-Yo’s room. They said they wanted to surprise the girls. Did I mention that it was raining outside?

This bit of dare-devilry does not really surprise me since Mr. Handsome has told me how he and his brothers used to see who could get from one end of their old country farmhouse to the other without touching the ground and from the outside. The game involved lots of trees and roofs. Could it be that games like that are hardwired into their chromosomal make-up?

Upon waking early one morning, Miss Becca Boo went downstairs and painted her black fingernail with red nail polish. Now we’re not sure what the nail is supposed to look like anymore, so we keep a band-aid on it and pretend everything’s just fine.

Sweetsie, who is learning to wipe herself when she poops, gave the commode an overdose of toilet paper, causing me to throw a minor fit as I retrieved the sodden mass of TP from the (used and non-flushed) toilet. I had to flush the toilet paper down in increments (granted, only two). And then I made Sweetsie agree to call me from now on so I could watch her as she wiped herself.

While I was otherwise occupied in my living room, visiting with some neighbors who had dropped by, Yo-Yo and Miss Becca Boo made ready to repel out of the girls’ bedroom window. They tied a rope to the bedframe, opened the window … and chickened out. (Could it be possible that they have been endowed with a small bit of common sense after all?) Then Yo-Yo went outside and tried to climb up the rope, but didn’t get very far. Or so he said. I, blissfully unaware of my progeny’s escapades, fully enjoyed my pleasant neighborly chat.

Miss Becca Boo’s rest time art projects sometimes get a little out of hand.

While frying up a mess of bacon, I turned from the counter just in time to witness The Baby Nickel cram a large piece of raw bacon into his mouth as fast as he could. I stomped my feet and hollered, unable to do anything because my hands were all bacon-y themselves, and Mr. Handsome swooped down and fished the slimy blubber out of the ornery child’s mouth.

Miss Becca Boo, while poking the fire with the metal poke-y stick (I told her to do so), somehow managed to get it wedged down in the grate. There we were, woodstove door open, pok-y stick stuck, and Mr. Handsome at work. Yo-Yo came to the rescue, and after much maneuvering and spilling of ashes, wiggled it free. Like father, like son.

The kids were playing hide-and-seek. I heard some noises in the bathroom and went to investigate. Miss Becca Boo was standing by the washing machine, cheeks sucked in, trying to keep back a smile. I lifted the lid and there was Yo-Yo Boy. “This is totally not cool, but don’t move. I’m gonna take a picture,” I yelled.

And then The Baby Nickel climbed into the laundry basket,

and was lifted upright by his big sisters.

Sweetsie smears much of her Christmas lip gloss all over her pillowcases, but mostly she just sucks her thumb, listens to music, and roars really loud if anyone looks at her cross-eyed.

When I went in to check on Miss Becca Boo one night, I discovered that she had fallen “asleep” wearing a headlamp.

She must have a deep abiding fear of the dark.

The Baby Nickel is still into cross-dressing.