Cheese & Chive Bread for French Fridays with Dorie

I love a good savory quick bread. It's the perfect solution for those times when you must have bread, only you forgot or didn't have time to get started early enough to make a yeasted loaf.  So I was happy to see this cheese and chive bread on the list for this week's French Fridays with Dorie.

Breadhead that I am, however, when I read the recipe I had a feeling that the ingredients were going to need a bit of a boost. In my experience, savory breads like this tend to suck up flavor like a sponge, and so they need a little extra help. Now, I can't say for sure that the bread would have been on the bland side as written, but I can tell you that mine came out quite nicely.

Sweet & Spicy Lavender Honey Quickbread for the International Incident Lavender Party

Hey lavender! Are you ready for the party?

Have I mentioned how grateful I am for these monthly International Incident Parties? So often these days, my life gets overwhelmingly busy and I find myself neglecting (and missing) both my blog and the many, many food blogs I love to read. But these parties give me an assignment (the theme) and a deadline (the party date). And I always make my deadlines! Best of all, they help me stay connected with many of my fellow food bloggers. So many thanks (as always) to our awesome hostess and founder Penny aka Jeroxie!

Truthfully, at first I was a bit at a loss when I found out that this month's theme was lavender. Ironically, I had just used culinary lavender for the first time in the recent Incident Scones Party, in my lavender, cardamom, and cracked black pepper drop scones. Eek! Just how many lavender dishes can one person come up with?

Beer Batter Quick Bread with White Bean & Tomato Soup

It was 6 pm on a weeknight. I am (almost) ashamed to admit that I had already changed into my comfy pajamas.  In contemplating dinner, I realized that all I really wanted in the entire world was some home baked bread and a hot bowl of soup.  Running to a bakery was out of the question, and I was too hungry to wait. What to do?