My life 2012
Posted by creining | Filed under Personal
In my post a year ago My Life 2010 to 2011 I wrote how I did not want to have any goals for 2011, I simply wanted to be. In retrospect I think I need both goals and the ability/cognizance to be. I had a great 2011, filled with change for the better, a found myself upon a new and brightly lit path – finally the right path – with a deep commitment to self improvement. At this point I have never been happier! I want to jot down a few things I want to do this year and I have every intention to do them:
1. Renew my GCFW and GCIA certificates
2. Go camping in Wisconsin, either Sidie Hollow County Park or Wyalusing or both!
3. Complete my Biannual Flight Review
4. Visit Austin, TX
5. Travel to Argentina, specifically Buenos Aires, and possibly Chile too
6. And I really want to stay at the Elysian in Chicago, it is so dope
Biennial Flight Review
Posted by creining | Filed under Flying
I need to do a Biennial Flight Review (BFR) for my Private Pilot License (PPL). I am starting to get some materials ready to review. There are a number of great resources available online for free:
Airplane Flying Handbook from the FAA
Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge from the FAA
Learning Center Courses from the FAA which includes a Flight Review Prep Guide.
Happy flying!
Invest What I Save
Posted by creining | Filed under Financial Independence
In my last post, Save More I outlined how I save money. A professor of mine once said “poor people work for their money, rich people have their money work for them”. I liked that then and I like it now. I want to grow my portfolio so that it gets to a point where I can generate an income off of it. Traditionally, people would save money their whole life and then have this beautiful nest egg they draw down during their golden years. My goal is to grow my portfolio to an amount that I can generate an income from without impacting the principal. The only way I can do this is to invest in stocks. There is no way I can do this by saving my money in a savings account or “investing” in CDs.
I started investing in 2006. And what I’ve learned over the years is that I like to invest in consumer companies that offer something tangible and that I personally use. I really like Retail/Restaurant and Technology sectors. For instance, some of my holdings are Apple, Amazon, Chipotle, Coach, Google, Netflix, Priceline, Panera, Whole Foods and Starbucks. I like these companies because I use and am familiar with their products. I have an Apple laptop, I shop at Amazon, I eat at Chipotle, I use Google search products, I get hotel rooms from Priceline, I shop at Whole Foods, I drink Starbucks. This makes investing in these companies fun! I can walk into an Apple Store and say to myself, I own part of this company! One of Buffet’s quote is “invest in what you know” and that’s true for me.
I currently hold positions in 20 companies. That is the maximum I want to have as it takes time to follow that many companies. How much time? I would say I spend 2-4 hours a week following the companies I’m invested in, watching the market and deciding when, where, and how much money to invest. Investing to me is something I really enjoy doing so I make the time for it. Some people have told me that they don’t have the time to invest, or it’s too complicated. While I can buy the complicated argument, although it is simply something to be learned, I think it’s about priorities. I have made it one of my life priorities to be financially independent 10 years from now. In turn I spend the time it takes on investing to reach that goal. Some of these people will spend hours watching sports and reading the sports page. I am not much of a sports fan and the time I would spend watching sports I can spend on my stocks. I can make way more money with my stocks than watching sports, so that’s an easy decision for me.
Another Buffet quote is “only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years”. I can say that is true for my holdings. The companies I invest in generally take care of themselves so I don’t have a lot of work to do. I only have to find points in time to invest more in them. This happens when the markets and people are most fearful. I think that when the markets can no longer grip you in fear is when you’ve truly become an investor. Fortunately, I have been through a recession now so I understand when and when not to be fearful. In 2008 my portfolio peaked on September 22 and it dropped to its lowest point on November 24, taking a haircut of 40% – ouch! This year, 2011, my portfolio hit an all time high on July 8 and it dropped to its lowest point on August 8 taking a haircut of 14%. Not bad; it seemed worse than that without doing the numbers. I was a bit more concerned with the recent drop because my portfolio is much higher compared to 2008 therefore the paper loss was much more this time. In fact the 14% paper loss I just experienced is far larger in dollars than the 40% paper loss I experienced in 2008. What am I doing? I am doing the same thing now I did during the downturn in 2008, invest a set amount of dollars every month. My horizon is 10 years out so I am not sweating the ups and downs in the market. I sweated it in 2008 a bit as it was my first recession experience – I started investing in 2006 – but I can see that my investments came out of 2008 super strong because I kept investing in great companies at great values and didn’t pull any money out of the market.
I’ve read a handful of books on investing. My favorite is One Up On Wall Street. This book is good for a new or seasoned investors. I’ve also read and recommend Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Your Money and Your Brain and Debunkery.
In Your Money and Your Brain the author suggests writing an Investment Policy. This is an excellent idea and is a way to take the emotion out of investing. Having emotions tied up in investments is a dangerous trait. I have written and use an Investment Policy, and I revise it as needed at the turn of the year every year. The other beneficial habit I have is keeping an investing journal. I have an entry for each stock in my portfolio that I use to jot down the date I purchased shares, how many shares I purchased and at what price, along with the P/E ratio and/or cash flow yield. I also note the reasons why I purchased more shares and how I felt about the company as an investment at that time. This has been really useful in order to look back over previous purchases of a particular stock and reflect on my decision to invest at that point and to notice and fix any investing mistakes I’ve made. I also use the journal to look at the multiples of past purchases to be able to set a target for additional positions at a better value points; meaning more attractive multiples. That is a principle of how I invest.
I may write another post on investing in the future; I have just scratched the surface of how I invest.
Save More
Posted by creining | Filed under Financial Independence
In my previous post I covered spending less. It follows that after you spend less you now have money saved. Personally I have always been a saver. I remember when I was 15 working in my first job as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant and I would do calculations on how many hours I would have to work in order to buy things. I would ask myself if it was worth it to exchange 4 hours of steamy dishwasher labor for that Blind Melon CD at Kmart. Typically the answer was no, so my paychecks piled up in my savings account. My parents played a role as well as because they were penny pinchers. As far as I know they did it because they grew up with Depression-era parents. With that in mind I understand why they lived like that but I feel like they were not working towards any financial goal. I have a goal around why I am saving and that is to be financially independent. I look at it as a sacrifice now for a better tomorrow.
Someone looking at the way I save would probably wonder what the point is. I sometimes hear the “well you only live once” to justify spending fat wads of cash and making it rain. Well what I do know is that by spending more money I was never that much happier. The key I found is to think about the things you spend money on that do not make you happy and eliminate those. After that think about what things spending only a little bit of money makes you really happy and/or improves your quality of life immensely. This is a better payback. I found that I would eliminate spending money on certain things I thought I did not need but they adversely affected my quality of life so I added those things back in. For instance coffee. Yes, a lot of people stop drinking coffee and survive. However, I really enjoy the taste and ritual of drinking coffee in the mornings and since I brew it at home it costs me around $5.00 a week.
Granted going down this path can be a brain shift in realizing what out of life makes one happy and undoing the money factor inevitably tied into it. Over time I realized that buying stuff does not make me happy. Going out and blowing money on crap I don’t need will not make me happy. My things, the material possessions that I do currently own, do not make me happy. Walking a dog makes me happy, cooking a dinner with a special someone makes me happy, visiting with friends and family makes me happy, doing yoga makes me happy, reading a book (from the library of course!) in bed makes me happy, taking a bath makes me happy, having a full belly makes me happy, riding my bicycle around the lake makes me happy, strolling the farmer’s market makes me happy.
So how do I save money from a money flow perspective? Well I use the age old adage of “pay myself first”. This means before anyone else gets my money, I get my money. Automatically on the first of the month I have a set amount of money withdrawn from my checking account, where my paychecks end up, and deposited in my brokerage account. This money I use to invest in stocks on a regular basis. My money needs to work for me and that is why I invest it. My goal is to pay myself 50% of my after-401k and after-tax pay per year. I can say that I have been meeting this goal, less 23 dollars! I can’t say that it has been easy because it hasn’t but it has been fun! Meeting the goal and watching my wealth build is exciting to me. Also I have been transitioning over to this model from early 2010. This year I have made a lot of changes with my various personal finances in order to get them lined up how I wanted. Starting in early 2012 everything will be humming along with less time I will need to devote to my future financial independence.
Spend Less
Posted by creining | Filed under Financial Independence
In my previous post Becoming Financially Independent I covered my overall vision. Next I will cover spending less. For me spending less means being frugal or thrifty. I think that I live a fairly frugal life. It does not mean I wear potato sack outfits, eat cat food, and collect aluminum cans for extra cash. It means I make coffee at home rather than getting it from a coffee shop and buy summer polos when they go on clearance in the fall. I do spend money on things that I think help me live comfortably. However, that is a fine line and I know that everytime I spend money I am a bit further away from retiring.
When I think about what it means to be frugal it not only means making my dollars stretch but it also means living a low impact lifestyle. It means walking or riding my bicycle when possible (this means living in an urban area), not wasting food, eating healthy local and organic food (I am vegetarian), bringing my own mason jars and containers to the Coop to fill up on staples from the bulk aisle, washing my clothes in cold water and drying them on a rack (they last longer too), living in a sub 1000 square foot space, and drinking water from a reusable stainless steel bottle.
Frugal also means using the least amount of services. You know, the whole cable, internet, phone stuff that Charter sends me a piece of junk mail about weekly. I have been able to cut out paying for most services.
Television: I do not have any television service anymore after I ditched DirecTV for Plex. I do have Netflix which I pay $10 a month for which is well worth it! I both watch DVD’s I get through the mail and have an enormous streaming catalog available on my plasma.
Phone: I am thankful my employer pays for my mobile phone (seems to be the norm in I.T.) so I do not have that monthly recurring cost. I do not have a landline, does anyone without gray hair?
Internet: Internet service is included in my monthly condo fee so while I do pay for that it ends up being included in my housing cost bucket. I would not live without it though.
Gym: I do have a gym membership but I do not necessarily pay for this. My high deductible health plan from my employer includes a debit card that gets loaded with money every year to pay for health costs. I use this money to pay for my gym membership so it is not money that comes out of my pocket directly. Also, I get reimbursed $30 a month for going to the gym a certain number of times per month so that is essentially extra income.
Two other things that I pay for on a regular basis are my subscription to The New Yorker and haircuts. I really enjoy The New Yorker; I read it almost cover to cover every issue. I recently renewed it. While they charge $69.99 a year to subscribe on their website I called and asked them what the best deal they could give me and they offered 2 years for $59.99. Clocking in at 47 issues a year each magazine costs me $0.64! I can live with that. Haircuts. I like a great haircut. It is my one and only recurring splurge. I spend $45 on my haircut every 5 weeks. It hurts to write that!
When I do buy things I usually make sure I need it. I noticed an interesting consumer behavior within myself. Let us imagine there is something I think I need. I put it on my Amazon Wishlist as a way to keep track of “the things I need”. A couple months pass. I have not bought that thing yet. I realize I have lived without that thing for those two months and got by just fine. So I remove it from my Wishlist. This has happened quite a bit. I think by putting it on my Wishlist it satisfies some deeply hidden retail therapy I need.
For something I do actually need, for instance a new fleece to replace the old well worn one, I will research and pick out a high quality and well reviewed product. I will then go to Google Shopping and find the retailer with the lowest price on that item. I will then hit up a site like RetailMeNot to look for additional coupon codes I can use during checkout. I don’t think I ever pay retail anymore for anything besides groceries. Additionally, I subscribe in my RSS reader to Slickdeals which has, as the name implies, great deals on various items. Right now I do need a couple things and I am waiting for a deal to pop up on that site for those items – I need a backup drive for my MacBook and a new pair of Converse. I do not need those things right this minute so I am fine waiting for a deal. A side note on the Converse, I buy one new pair every year and it is my primary shoe. For travel, I use Priceline’s Name Your Own Price. You can game that system a little, check out Better Bidding. I can’t remember the last time I paid a rack rate for a hotel room I usually pay half of what someone coming in off the street would pay.
When making a purchase I also must get good quality for the price. I like to buy quality items, take care of those things really well so they last a long time, and then replace them when they are worn out. This applies to most everything I buy. For instance I bought these quality Turkish towels from Restoration Hardware 5 years ago. They look the same as the day I got them. I am sure they will last for many more years. The same with sheets. I have a pair of quality flannel sheets from Garnet Hill that I have had for years now and have lasted through tons of washings and still look great with no pilling.
Things that I do not use anymore I sell. I have a clothes rule that if one year goes by that I do not wear something I will get rid of it. I typically donate clothes but I will sell other things on Craigslist. If I can get $20 for something I will sell it, less than that and I do not think it is worth my time and I will donate it. My place is extremely uncluttered as anyone who has come over can attest to! I have one bookshelf full of books and about 10 DVDs. I sold long ago my CDs and recently sold the majority of my DVDs. I will never purchase those items again. I sold most all of my small kitchen appliances – my electric coffee maker, my deep fryer, two popcorn poppers (I use a large saucepan now). The other thing I have come to realize is that if I go and buy something today from a store, in a year I can sell that thing but nowhere near what I bought it for. So there is a cost to going to a store to buy something.
I try to do most things myself that I could pay someone else to do for two reasons. One, I like to figure things out and to feel a sense of accomplishment in performing a job I have never done before. Two, it saves me a lot of money! Recently I got a quote to replace some engineered wood flooring from a local store and it was $1,000. I had never replaced flooring before but with help from the internet and some Youtube videos I did a respectable job for less than $250. I had never changed the serpentine and A/C belt on my car before. I got instructions off the internet. I ordered the parts off the internet for $36 (less than the dealer wanted for the parts). I spent an hour of my time doing it and saved the $200 the local shop wanted. Is an hour of my time worth $164, yes!
Wrapping this up, these are some of the things I do in order to spend less, so I can save more, so I can invest those savings and become financially independent. I think we live in a society where we continually spend more time at the office along with more pay but what we trade in order to do that is needing to pay other people to do the things we once did ourselves. As I alluded to before, some people do not have the time to mow their lawn so they pay someone to do it. Or walk their dog so they pay someone to do that. Or to cook their meals so they eat out. When the nation industrialized, and we did that very very well, every worker did their 40 hours of the same task. I think that is when we lost the ability of doing these things ourselves. Before industrialization, people worked a little, played more, spent time with family, relaxed, hunted, gathered. It was simple. That is the time I am trying to get back to.
Becoming Financially Independent
Posted by creining | Filed under Financial Independence
It has been 10 years since I joined the workforce. As a bright eyed and bushy tailed college grad I signed up for a 40 hour a week job soon after graduation; my start date was June 11th, 2001. That puts me at 10 years, a whole decade, in the rat race. My thoughts around having a job, which to me means trading my time (and expertise) in exchange for money, started changing a few years ago. I realized a few things then, mainly that I didn’t want to work straight until I was in my 60′s only to realize that life had passed me by, along with all those years of good health. Then last year I stumbled upon and read a book entitled Your Money or Your Life. It was one of those books that really excited me and made me think that yes, the idea of leaving the workforce early is a reality. The book is written as 9 steps and demonstrates how people are making a dying rather than a living.
I did not do all the steps of YMOYL although I read the book and each step carefully. Three steps stood out for me. First, Step 2 makes the point that the monetary cost of working can add up when you think about commuting with a car (cost of the car itself, gas, maintenance, parking), eating out for lunch, snacks and sodas, the right clothes and shoes. And then you are paying for things you can no longer do because you spend all your time working. Things like childcare, house cleaning, car washes, food preparation and eating out, lawn services, house maintenance, dog walking. And because of all the stress of dealing with work and these other things you need to get away so you pay for a vacation to the Caribbean. You come back relaxed but soon enough you are stressed again and are paying for a psychiatrist. And you eat out quite a bit for dinner because you do not have time to cook let alone time for exercising so you have to pay for the latest diet fad and then a personal trainer. I can go on and on with this but you get the point!
Second, Step 5 in the book makes the case for keeping track of income and expenses and charting these. I had been using a spreadsheet to keep track of these things since 2006 so all I had to do was begin charting. This is a great visual tool! I chart my expense, my income, and the capital income I am projecting to make. I would love to share it someday but it is a bit personal for the internet. Another option not mentioned in the book is to use an online tool like Mint to accomplish this. I signed up for Mint about 6 months ago and have all my accounts hooked up to it but I found that I do not log into it. I love technology and Mint being right up there as a high tech financial tool I would have thought I would be a quick convert but for tracking these things I prefer a spreadsheet. For me, simple is better in this case.
And third, Step 6 delves into spending less meaning being frugal. I have been on both sides of the spending fence. I think I have always been frugal because my parents were cheapskates. For a bit of time I switched over to the other side where I was spending a lot of money needlessly, dipping my toe in the conspicuous consumption pool. I realized that it was not me. And you know what? Needless spending did not provide me with more happiness! I switched back to being frugal. The step is great, however I did not learn much from it because I had been practicing these things for years.
The whole book is a fascinating and inspiring read. With what I learned from the book in combination with my own pre-existing philosophy around finances I can say that I want to live a life where I spend less, save more, invest what I save.
Buttermilk Pancakes
Posted by creining | Filed under Food
My go to for recipes has shifted dramatically from Allrecipes to Smitten Kitchen. I’ve always used a great recipe I had found on Allrecipes for pancakes but when the mood struck to make them on a recent Sunday morning I found a recipe on Smitten Kitchen and it was, plainly, much better. I think her (Deb’s) recipes are just a cut above anything else.
Deb adapted this recipe from Martha Stewart’s Original Classics Cookbook. Martha yielded 9 6-inchers, Deb yielded 16 4-inchers, and I yielded 8 6-inchers.
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 cups buttermilk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus 1 tablespoon extra for brushing griddle
1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen and thawed (optional)
1. Preheat an electric griddle to 375°F, or place a griddle pan or cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl. Add the eggs, buttermilk, and 4 tablespoons melted butter, and whisk to combine. The batter should have small to medium lumps.
2. Test the griddle by sprinkling a few drops of water on it. If the water bounces and spatters, the griddle is hot enough. Using a pastry brush, brush the remaining 1/2 teaspoon butter onto the griddle. Wipe off the excess with a folded paper towel.
3. Using a 4-oz. ladle, about 1/2 cup (for a 6-inch pancake), pour the batter in pools 2 inches apart. If you wish to make blueberry pancakes, arrange a handful over the cooking pancake, pressing them in slightly. When the pancakes have bubbles on top and are slightly dry around the edges, about 2 1/2 minutes, flip over. If any batter oozes or blueberries roll out, push them back under with your spatula. Cook until golden on bottom, about 1 minute.
4. Repeat with the remaining batter. You can keep the finished pancakes on a heat-proof plate in the oven at 175°F. Serve warm.
Recipe via Smitten Kitchen.
Replacing subscription TV with a HTPC
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
I got rid of my subscription to DirecTV on 12/22/2010. It has been a bit over three months without television. Granted I still own a television just no more programming (or monthly bill!). After that fateful day in late December, I found not having television was uncomfortable for only a few days, maybe a week. Cutting the cord to subscription television had been on my mind for awhile yet I was still apprehensive about doing it. I was in the habit of turning the television on when I got home from work or the gym and found myself a lot of times not even watching it. It was functioning as a pacifier. So when I couldn’t flip on the television on anymore, I found myself doing the things I had always done just more of them. I would listen to music and to Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) more, I would spend a bit longer at the gym doing yoga after the workout, I would cook from scratch another night a week and bake more, I would finish books quicker. This was all very good because those are the things I clearly love to do and now I got to do more of them! Over the weeks I felt more relaxed and at ease not having television noise blaring at me and filling space. I feel that having it on (when I’m around one) emits a lot of negative energy. If I were to ever have television programming again I would only turn it on for a specific program that I wanted to watch and then turn it off. However, I don’t think that will ever happen as I discovered and started using an awesome HTPC (Home Theater PC) solution called Plex. Here’s what happened.
Sometime in the third month being subscription television free I thought I should be utilizing that plasma hanging over the fireplace for other entertainment besides the one or maybe two DVDs I watch per week from Netflix. This thought coincided with a recent purchase of mine, a new MacBook Pro to replace my five year old Macbook. With this new MacBook Pro I knew I could easily drive that plasma. There were only two things I needed to decide – what exactly did I need my MacBook Pro to do and how would I do it? Well, I figured that I would need these functions at a minimum:
-Ability to play DVD/Blu-ray discs. I could get rid of my standalone DVD player then! I’m a minimalist…
-Hulu support in order to watch The Daily Show
-Netflix support for streaming movies and television shows
-Native Apple Remote support so I didn’t have to have a keyboard and mouse
And these things would be nice to have:
-iTunes integration for music
-iPhoto integration for photos
-Ability to stream music from Pandora
Now how would I do all this? I had no idea what HTPC software was out there let alone written to run on Mac. Researching this I quickly found out that HTPC users were primarily using three things – XBMC (the original), Plex (an XBMC fork) or Boxee (also an XBMC fork). XBMC I didn’t look at because it doesn’t support Hulu or Netflix natively. Boxee I didn’t look at because I got the impression most users didn’t like it compared to Plex, which seemed to provide all the things I needed, plus the nice to haves and ran on Mac.
Now that I had to decided to run Plex on my MacBook Pro I needed to order a couple things to connect it to my plasma and receiver. I went to MonoPrice and ordered a 3ft Toslink to Mini M/M 5.0mm OD Molded Cable and a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter for about $10 total. The cable is to provide digital audio to my receiver. The MacBook Pro analog headphone jack can output digital 5.1 audio using the S/PDIF protocol if you plug in a Toslink to Mini cable which is pretty neat. The adapter is to provide video to my plasma via HDMI by simply plugging one end into the Thunderbolt port (it doubles as the Mini DisplayPort) and the other to the HDMI cable that was already run to the plasma.
I had already installed Plex on my MacBook Pro and had been playing around with it but I was excited to try it on the plasma. Once I got my order from MonoPrice I got everything hooked up and made sure my MacBook was in clamshell mode. That means it can be closed on my shelf but stays powered on and usable. A really nice behavior is that by using the Apple Remote – from the couch of course – I can go from having the MacBook Pro sleeping on the shelf to waking it and launching Plex. I am really happy with the way Plex looks on the plasma, the interface is gorgeous and watching content via Hulu or Netflix or Youtube is the same quality as DirecTV was.
Plex is a great application. It can have quite a bit of tweaking – I enjoy doing that though – and I’ve run into various bugs but overall it has done everything I have wanted it to do. I could warrant writing a whole post on my Plex configuration and perhaps I will do that next. I can watch DVDs, use Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, Pandora, iPhoto, iTunes plus there are literally hundreds of other plugins that can be installed.
Right now this set up works for me. In the future though I could see making two improvements. One, purchasing a separate system to use as a HTPC like a Mac Mini. Two, the Apple Remote works okay but using programs like Remote Buddy or Sofa Control offer a lot more functionality and flexibility.
Cedarburg, Wisconsin
Posted by creining | Filed under Travel
We spent the weekend in small, quaint Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Our accommodations were at the Washington House Inn in the historic downtown. We stayed in the Frederich Hilgen room 305. I spent some time choosing a room as they have such a wide variety. My other favorites were 210, 212, 214 and 216 (next time!). The Inn was neat because they had a hosted wine and cheese hour in the early evening and then a big breakfast spread that we opted to get delivered to our bed. Nothing beats sitting in a robe eating breakfast in bed. The shops downtown were great, our dinner at Anvil was spot on and spending the time on rest and relaxation was well worth it. I’d love to go back sometime.
Banana Bread
Posted by creining | Filed under Food
I had 3 overripe bananas so decided to make this banana bread. It turned out so delicious it’s one that I’ll be sure to make more of in the future!
Recipe:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/3 cups mashed overripe bananas
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.
Recipe via Allrecipes.