"Feed The Birds"

Once upon a time, not so long ago (a couple months, really), I made bread.

It was my great idea to include some dried cherries from my cupboard. Ordinarily, this would have been a very yummy idea. As is turned out, the fruit was probably older than Joseph. The unfortunate result was 5 loaves of mostly delicious bread with a somewhat rancid taste.

It tasted best fresh (a term I can only use loosely when some of the ingredients were about 2 years past their prime). It was palatable toasted, if you told yourself not to think about it. And if you drank lots of milk.

But after the first loaf, I knew I would not be eating any more.

My husband was very kind. He used it for lunch sandwiches. When I remarked that it was nasty, he replied, "It's not bad." Eventually, the 2nd loaf was gone.

A couple of weeks ago, he pulled a 3rd loaf from the freezer. OK. Enough is enough. That bread is NOT good! Stop eating it! He said it was good. At that moment, he lost all the credit he's earned over the last 11 years of eating my failed cooking. I thought he suffered through those meals, but it turns out he really doesn't have any taste buds.

I got out a loaf of GOOD bread (don't mind tooting my own horn here) and forbade him (I'll pretend it this way...makes me look powerful) to eat the yucky one. A couple of days later, I took the kids to feed the birds...with an entire loaf of bread.


We took advantage of sunny spring day and headed for the Greenbelt in IF. This was the week Rebekah had been sick and I was tired of being stuck at home. We didn't stay too long and Rebekah was feeling pretty yucky by the time we left.

Yep...mid-April and we still have brown grass and leafless trees. But at least we can get by with only jackets and the snow has melted.

The girls were very good about sharing their chunks of bread. We thought we were going to feed the ducks, but we had more seagulls than anything. Luckily, homemade wheat bread is very filling (even for birds) and we had plenty to go around.
Joseph was more than willing to throw out the bread. I nearly lost baseball-sized chunks of bread at his doing, but grabbed his arm quickly enough...several times.

Sarah sat behind us at a safer distance from the water. She doesn't know she missed out on throwing bread. She'll get it next year.

There is a little war memorial in the park that the kids had to check out. Heavy weaponry...the perfect backdrop for a snap shot of children!

I hope no other little kids stopped by to feed the ducks this day. We filled them up so much that they had started swimming away!

Forgot

Yesterday afternoon, I pulled out some Schwann's frozen bread dough and set it in the oven to raise. It was our only bread.

This morning Chad reminded me that we hadn't actually cooked it. Nice reminder! I could have used it about 12 hours earlier.

This is what I found in the oven. I can't believe I forgot to bake the bread!


I hope we don't forget to bring the baby home from the hospital.

Accidental Cinnamon Rolls

Chad has to leave for work at 7 AM now. That is not a kind hour. We have to wake up the kids and bring them to the living room for prayer, then he leaves me sitting there in a stupor with 5 sleepy kids. From there we circle the table and wake up while eating breakfast. Ugh.

But since my day starts at 7 and there is no going back to bed until after lunch, I can get a few more things done. (I said I can, I didn't say I do.) Yesterday I decided to make bread. We were on our last loaf. At 7:30 I was dumping wheat into the grinder and gathering the ingredients I would need. I pulled out a couple of measuring cups and my measuring spoon that measures 2 Tablespoons at once. I love that! I planned to have the bread in the oven to raise by 8 and hop into the shower.

I get the 6 cups of hot water into the mixer and add some freshly ground and still warm wheat flour. Then I add the yeast, dough enhancer and gluten. The recipe calls for 2T of each. I am used to using my regular 1T spoon, although I have had this 2T measuring spoon since Christmas. So I scooped twice. Are you following along? I now have 4T of yeast, dough enhancer and gluten for 6 loaves of bread.

My brain finally catches up. GREAT! Now what to do? The lazy part of me said, throw it out and start over. The poor part of me said, that would be wasteful! So I kept going. Now it's still pretty early in the morning, you will recall. I'm not thinking clearly. But I do wish that the Bosch mixer would hold 12 cups of water and 30+ cups of flour. It would have been easier and cleaner. Alas, as the watery dough came slopping out of the bowl, I realized that I would have to do this in shifts.

I had to wash a mixing bowl to dump the excess into! GASP! I hadn't planned on doing dishes, especially by hand. But apparently, this isn't going to be a normal morning. As one half of the yeasty mixture sat and bubbled away in the extra bowl, I tried to continue as normal with the rest. By now, there is goop and white flour all over the counter. More work I hadn't planned on. I finished that batch and dumped it onto the table. Oops...forgot the salt in that batch.

The next batch seemed drier than the first. That figures. I'll be lucky if any of this mess even tastes good. I dumped the 2nd batch of dough (this one is salted) onto the first. Enough dough for 12 loaves of bread makes a really big mound! I have extra large bread pans, so I usually only get 5 loaves. This time, I was able to get 5 really big, extra large loaves! I slid them into my warmed oven to raise. I figured it would take all day with the trauma that was involved.

Now I'm out of bread pans. So the rest of the dough is going to be cinnamon rolls. Won't Chad be happy my morning fell so completely apart? I pulled out my ingredients for that. I was going to keep it simple...butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and coconut. Whoops! That's not the cinnamon! It's not a good thing that the cinnamon and taco seasoning containers are so similar. What if I hadn't caught it in time? Is there such a thing as Mexican "Cinnamon" Rolls? Thanks for the funny treat, Mommy. Please don't make any more, por favor.

I got 40+ large cinnamon rolls and a small pan of rolls out of the remaining dough. They were a big hit. Joseph kept saying, "mmmm" while he ate his. Everyone got at least 2 yesterday.

The bread rose a lot faster than I expected. I didn't give it much care as I rolled it up and threw it into the pans, so it didn't come out looking very pretty. Oh well, it's not going to last long enough to enter any contests anyway.

I was sweating by the time I got done. And then I had to clean up the disaster area. I may not make bread for the rest of this pregnancy. I'm just too lazy for such adventures! I did eventually get my shower...2 hours later than planned. Better late than never, right?

Up to no good

I've been trying to keep out of trouble lately. Here's a little of the past week or so.

A small quilt top


We made strawberry syrup and strawberry jam from a flat of strawberries. Chad is using the Squeezo. I love that thing! It gets out the juice and separates it from the pulp and seeds. Not so fun to wash it though.
A whole flat of strawberries and this is all we get??




I made a batch of bread yesterday. This time, it did not cave in and make itself into a bread bowl loaf. However, I am having a problem with the tops of my loaves sinking a bit and leaving me with a wrinkled crust. Anyone have any suggestions? Share them in the comments!

I mopped the floor tonight. I realize that some of you will not think this is anything worth mentioning. If that is the case for you, let me introduce myself. Hi. I'm Arlyn. I don't often mop my floor. When you come for a visit, please don't take your shoes off.

I also cleaned up the laundry room which had been terrorized by muddy boots all winter. It was an all day effort, but it looks so much nicer!

I bought 12 yards of fabric this afternoon to make dining room curtains. It cost me just under $50. That is my motivation to actually make the curtains! When you come for a visit, please mention how cute they are! (But give me a couple of weeks to make them.)

Nathan and Joseph got shots yesterday. Nathan got his last chicken pox shot and Joseph just about got everything. Poor kid. He woke up with a little fever this morning, but slept for a good chunk of the night! Rebekah and Joseph are on the down side of ear infections.

Daniel signed up for pee wee baseball tonight. It's more like a clinic, I think. It's only about a month long. Perfect!!! He still gets a T-shirt out of it, so he'll have something to brag about until he outgrows it (in two years at the rate he's growing). Anyway, he's quite excited about it. I said I'd only sign him up if he would quit complaining about going to TaVaci for the rest of the season. He starts to get TaVaci burn out near the end of each semester. I'm not a pushy mom, though! I don't make him sign up...I just make him finish. He gets a trophy when they graduate the kids in 6th grade. Part of him wants the trophy...part of him doesn't (the vocal part).

And for those who would like to and are able to, the Spring TaVaci concert is May 10th. That's a Saturday. It would be over about 7 pm, I'm guessing. It's free and you can watch Daniel and Leah on stage. You can also watch Nathan in the seats. He gets restless about 3/4 the way through and starts asking when it's over.

I have been doing a lot of laundry lately as Rebekah is timing her bathroom trips poorly. The boys just chose to wet their pants. Leah never did. But it seems like Rebekah is creating more laundry than any of the others ever did. It's been interesting. The little spot of linoleum by the toilet gets cleaned almost daily. And you should know that goes against my cleaning nature!

Other than that, I haven't been doing much. And my house shows it. On a happier note, I have been more patient and slower to anger with the kids. We're having nicer days all around. (I still want them to leave me alone while I eat my breakfast!)

I'm so far behind!

Because I was trying to find time to type my 300th post, I kept putting other posts off and now my head is backed up with things I've wanted to share.

We've been working on a few projects around the house. A big project was getting Joseph out of our bedroom where he slept in the bassinet, and into the girls' room to sleep in the crib. Unfortunately, the girls' room is pretty small so we resorted to stacking the girls. Chad made a loft bed for Leah and we put Rebekah underneath. It was a tight fit, but we got the crib and another dresser in there. I'm extra glad that we don't keep toys in the bedrooms. There wouldn't be any room for kids if there were toys!

I recently made bread. It was not a good day for bread...as you can see. I learned a little bit about ovens, temps and yeast that day. The next day, I tried a different recipe. I learned a little bit more about ovens and temps. I am willing to post my failures to keep myself from feeling too awesome. But I have to say...even though they look horrible, they tasted WONDERFUL! I just won't be submitting these to any baking competitions.

One of the things that made me sad to leave our old house was vinyl that I had up on the walls. We finally replaced one of the things I had to leave behind...our talent wall. And this time we were able to add Joseph's frame, although it will be some time before I expect him to contribute something. I love walking by this wall (which I do countless times a day) and seeing the kids' creativity. (For instance, Nathan's picture is a truck driving into a car wash.) The phrase above the pictures is from the parable of the talents in the New Testament.





And something that has been a work-on-it-when-I-get-a-chance project is the girls' Easter dresses. I finished them Thursday night (but took the picture before that). Leah's is the purple, Rebekah's the blue. Pay no mind to the quilt on the frame behind them. I've decided that it looks so good there, it's now decoration and not actually an unfinished project. And with that decision, I am free of so much unfair guilt.



I have other things to share next time...FHE/St. Patrick's Day and Easter activities (still frozen from the community egg hunt this morning...20 degrees!) Our family gets to be the Easter program in church tomorrow. How did we ever get so lucky? The kids' talks are written and we've been practicing "He Sent His Son" since last Sunday. I still have to form my thoughts into a decent message. We're trying something new this year and inviting the Easter bunny to stop by our house today instead of Sunday, so we can put more emphasis on the spiritual meaning of the holiday. I'll let you know how it works out for us. So far, E. Bunny has not shown up!


Chad and the kids are outside with the neighbor who just put 3 calves in our pasture. Everyone is excited to put one more foot into country living. And though he probably wouldn't admit it, Chad is likely the most excited of everyone.


So Happy Easter everyone! We'll play more catch-up a little later.



It only took me 3 hours to finish this post.