Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

The Mac and Grilled Cheese Sandwich

I had this idea awhile ago to make this sandwich but then it occured to my while making it that a local street food vender, Wiseguy Foods, mught have a similar sandwich but anyways.

This bad boy is a combination of traditional Kraft Dinner or Macaroni and Cheese (with ham added to it) with a Grilled Cheese Sandwich. It is pretty easy to make.

First thing I did was make the mac and cheese and added the ham. I then sliced to thick pieces of my homemade bread and buttered one side of each piece. Slapped some mac and cheese in between and let it grill on low.

The Mac n Grilled Cheese

You have to make sure the mac and cheese is thick enough it wont fall apart. This sure does taste good. Dip it in a bit of BBQ sauce and you are golden pony boy.

How I make bread that will blow your mind

Hello again, It is I, your favourite single 22-year-old male, here to share with you how I make bread. To help you understand why I might be able to do this, I will tell you that in the last two weeks I have made over 12 loaves of bread and have no plans on stopping. It was requested on Twitter that I share my process, so here it goes.

First of all, I use a bread maker, so I suppose it isn’t really making bread but it is a good place to start and mostly fail proof.

Bread Making

When it comes to combining the ingredients there really isn’t any secret, I just throw everything thing in. To be totally honest I hardly measure anything anymore. Yeast, flour, sugar, salt, marg and water. I do store my yeast in the fridge, that being said it also expired in 2011… still works. I also try to use room temperature water.

Once all the ingredients are in the bread maker I set it to the dough cycle and let it go. My primary Black and Decker maker takes 1:30hrs to mix, while my secondary one takes 2:25hrs. Why? I have no clue. I normally stop the second one early and knead it a bit myself.

Herb Dough

Now as soon as it is done I make sure I’m there to transfer it to bread tins. When I first take the dough out of the bread maker I kneaded it around for no more than 10 seconds or so in a small bit of flour so it isn’t as sticky.

Bread Making

To let it rise I have tried several things, just sitting out on the stove, in the sun light, under a lamp and right in the stove after it had warmed up to about 175º. I don’t recommend this last one as each time I have done this the dough rises really well but as soon as you take it out it deflates. I’d say in the sun or under a lamp over night is best.

Bread Making

Then baking it is dead simple, heat the oven to 375º and bake for 18 to 20 mins give or take. I don’t normally time it too closely as my internal clock is pretty good for the bread now.

Herb Bread

Take the bread out of the oven and remove it from the tin to cool. My bread always comes out very soft and rarely very dense.

If there is something I’d like to improve on it would be getting the dough to rise better and having the end product be a little denser (I think they are related).

White Bread Ingredients:

  • 1TSP – Yeast
  • 2 Cups – Flour
  • 1TSP – Salt
  • 2 TBSP – Sugar
  • 2 TBSP – Margarine or Shortening
  • 3/4 Cup – Water

I have also made, herb bread with fresh herbs I’ve grown, cheese bread and garlic and onion.

Back at the Cabin in the Woods

I’m once again up at Yellow Dog Lodge for the weekend, this time for some hard labour. 

The owner of the lodge, Gord, has been without a camp hand for most of the season so I volunteered to come back up and help him close out the lodge for the summer.

Right off the plane I helped him pull in the two big docks, which was no light job. Winching, pulling, prodding, prying. We did it all to get those heavy things up onto shore. So now, because it has been so long since I have done any amount of hard labour, I’m a little sore this morning and my back is tweaked. No pain, no gain I guess 😉

Cabin in the Woods

Today will be full of oil changes and winterizing all the small engines around the lodge.

Even Yellowknife has Online Brand Ambassadors

I should be putting on a Chamber of Commerce after-hours presentation about why every retail business in Yellowknife should be on Social Networks, even if it is just to monitor what is going on.

Just this evening I saw the below conversation unfolding. A local customer was upset about their product and other residents defended the store.

So even though the store wasn’t on Twitter themselves there was still people willing to defend their brand. #brandloyalty

Screen Shot 2012 08 22 at 9 41 57 PM

Could you imagine of the store had of been watching and listening on Twitter. They could have approached the person with the problem right away and turned this negative post into a positive one. So simple.

No Caffeine For Me!

'Caffeine Weapon' photo (c) 2009, Nick Webb - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/I’d really like to know how caffeine works for some people because it doesn’t work for me.

Lately I have been going at things hard. I’m out of bed at 6am, at work by 7am, putting in 8ish hours there and then onto another project, then comes some downtime with dinner and then I get a second wind and back to working on something until 12am ish. 

It is basically a go go go mentality for the entire time and very little of my energy has to do with caffeine.

I have seen coworkers come into the office and need that cup of coffee and need that caffeine boost before human interaction but I have no idea what that is like.

Lately I have tried to drink coffee in an attempt to improve my alertness in the morning but the fact of the matter is it does nothing. Whether I drink a cup or two of coffee does nothing for me. That being said first thing in the morning is my time to excel, I’m already high energy at that time. 

Where I’m not is from about 12:30pm – 3:30pm, that is when I start to slow down before my second wind. I blame this on working 8 hours straight in an office through. I don’t go get the fresh air I should.

At the end of the day I do drink a diet pepsi or two, which I’m sure has some level of caffeine in it. But again I could drink one seconds before going to sleep and it wouldn’t effect me in the least.

So how I keep operating for 17-18ish hours a day I don’t know.