Imagine, See, Do: Strong start to the week

It's Sunday night and I need to go back to work tomorrow. It will be my first work day of 2013. I really have loved being at home for the past 2 weeks and focusing on home stuff.

To prepare myself to have a great week, I have made some fresh bread and blueberry compote. This is an adult compote and features a decent amount of red wine. The alcohol should boil out but I would still keep this for the adults.

Before I start on the recipes, I am going to make a confession: yeast doesn't like me. Either that or I have been cursed to never have yeast rise no matter how hard I try. I can only make a blob of dough that turns into a brick when baked. This curse has been in place since I was a mere teen and continues to this day. To combat the vile yeast curse, I finally purchased a bread machine. It allows me to make healthier bread and to experiment with various flours and grains without worrying whether the loaf will rise.

I decided on a Cuisinart because I could get it for a good price and it had a more natural looking loaf. So for the bread, I used the whole wheat recipe that came in the book and substituted soy butter, almond milk, and a little almond meal instead of all the wheat flour. When I am working with new flours I only substitute 1/4 cup at first. So instead of adding 1 1/2 cups of wheat flour, I used 1 1/4 cups of wheat flour and 1/4 cup of almond meal/flour. I added the other ingredients per the recipe, chose the correct options, pushed the start button and hoped for the best.

Now on to the compote, which I am making from scratch. I always use as many organic ingredients as I have from a local family-owned market named "Jimbos Naturally." This time the only ingredient that wasn't organic was the wine.

Ingredients:
1 lb frozen blueberries
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup red wine
1 meyer lemon - zest and juice
1/4 tsp cinnamon (I use Frontier, an organic brand)

I tripled the recipe because I had 3 bags of blueberries in the freezer. I only had 1 lemon so that is why you see the juice in the picture. I substituted. If you don't have an ingredient, either go on the internet and search for what you can substitute or use the closest thing in your pantry.

Combine all ingredients into a pot and then turn on the heat to medium. Mix the ingredients until combined. Stir every few minutes until the mixture starts to simmer then turn the heat to high and let the mixture boil for about 4 minutes.

Reduce the heat to medium and let the mixture cook for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so. The liquid in the mixture will reduce by about a third to a half when it's done. It should be slightly thickened.

If it hasn't thickened, add another 1/4 cup of sugar and simmer for another 15-20 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the mixture cool. You can taste it now too (it will be HOT), and add additional cinnamon if needed.

Put into a container to store. I just happened to have a canning jar. Tripling the recipe made a full jar and some additional that I stored in a small glass container.