homeofthebudds

things I do on vacation - baking day

Today we went to Bob's Red Mill, among other places, and purchased a sizable amount of flour.

25 pounds.

That's a lot for a person who doesn't usually use the oven.

I'm toying with the idea of baking our bread so I thought having the flour pre-ground might be a good idea.

Today we did not bake bread.

Instead, we baked...

graham crackers! I was rather impressed with myself on this one. They're downright tasty.

The kids have awarded them the "just like the real thing" award. :)

We also baked cookies. And applesauce bread.

And then I got adventurous and actually cooked a dinner.

A new recipe.

A spinach lasagna with a fancy white sauce that I can't remember the name of.

But I can definitely tell you what goes into it. It took me a good 2 hours of solid cooking time to pull this dish together, but oh my word it was worth it.

I think I may have eaten more than my share.

birthday goodness

On my birthday earlier this week Dave and the kids made me a dirt cake.

I ate some, and then some more and promptly fell asleep. Or at least I wanted to. That sugar knocked me out.

But there was too much snuggling to do.

:)

Thanks a lot, Gladys

Isaiah checked out this book from the library approximately 2 and 1/2 months ago.

It's about a gorilla who looooves bananas.

One day she gets a whiff of something absolutely delicious smelling and goes on an adventure to find out what it is.

Turns out...it's banana bread. Of course. What else could smell better to a banana lover than banana bread?

At then end the authors so thoughtfully included this banana bread recipe. Which is the sole reason we've had this book checked out for 2.5 months. Isaiah has been asking and asking to make this bread. And...welllll....I haven't wanted to. Why not you ask? Cause it's banana bread! It's baking! It's...a sweet baked thing. This, in case you don't know, is one of my major areas of downfall. I used to bake. All the time. Everyday. Sometimes multiple times a day. And, well, it showed.

And then I went raw. And banana bread is anything but raw. And it has sugar. SUGAR. You know how addicting sugar is right?

So, yeah. I admit I was stalling with Isaiah. But the book is due today. And it cannot be renewed again. We've hit the limit.

So yesterday, I got out the Vita-mix and ground some flour.

It really is so nice to have freshly ground flour.

We found the rest of the ingredients in the cupboard and Ellen read us the directions.

Isaiah and Brennan manned the mixer.

It needed a lot of watching.

And we cooked it. And it smelled amazing. And delicious. It smelled delicious.

And then, we ate it.

Ate it right up.

If I go on a baking frenzy and gain fifty pounds you'll know right where it all started.

Holy moly.

the making of the cake

Tomorrow is Isaiah's birthday.

We've been working on the menu for a couple days.

He wants waffles for breakfast,

pancakes for lunch,

hot dogs and steamed vegetables for dinner,

and carrot cake for dessert.

We made the cake this morning 

Ellen alternated between cake fixing and taking pictures for her blog. (A girl after my own heart!)

Brennan helped clean up the leftovers.

Waffle window goodness.

Last night the kids had the wonderful idea that we should meet Dave at Waffle Window for dinner. Unfortunately for us, Waffle Window closes at 3pm. So after a quick run to the store for eggs, we opened our own Waffle Window.

Ellen took the orders and the money (Only a quarter each! What a steal!)

p>Dave and I worked the kitchen,

And the boys worked the food. Well okay everyone did.

Everyone but me that is. I stuck with the green smoothie. No more experimenting for me (at least for a while). This one is just spinach and mango and its actually not bad at all.

Vita-mixing it up!

Yesterday after much time, research, thought and conversation Dave and I decided to buy a VitaMix. I was rather nervous last night as I was unpacking it and reading through the books. It's kind of a pricey machine. I haven't spent money like that in a long long time. Everyone swore to us it would be worth it.

The kids and I initiated it this afternoon. First order of business: grinding some wheat berries...

...into flour.

I am soooooo excited to be able to grind our own flour. This is the top reason I wanted a Vitamix. It took about 45 seconds. Maybe. Its pretty loud, but Ellen and Brennan were there with me and they thought it was funny every time I turned it on.

See? I've got good help. I know you can't tell the difference from the picture - but the flour has been combined with yeast, water, honey and olive oil and kneaded. Right in the Vitamix!!

I poured it into my bread pan and let it rise for 30ish minutes, then baked it and we've been trying to let it wait for dinner tonight, but it's about half gone. Sooo easy. Hello homemade bread!

Ellen was pretty thrilled we were getting one of these since while we sat through the 45 minute demo at Costco they made us ice cream in it. Making dessert was high on her list. So we switched to the wet container, tossed in some yogurt (that we made last week), strawberries and honey...

And made a "strawberry freeze"

Ellen gave it the ultimate compliment - "I like this better than shrimp!"

weekend update

There was a very welcome adults only dinner cause some friends offered to watch the kids. (thanks Agees!)

There was some skyping with old friends that I miss. (Hi Fieldhouses!)

There was some bonding with other ladies at Imago at an incredibly well done women's forum. Totally looking forward to the next one.

There was some video game playing (that's Dave looking up how to beat a certain section.) Actually there was a ton of video game playing. Isaiah is getting pretty darn good. He's passed me up on some of the games already.

There was some knifty knitting.

There was some late into the night crafty talk with crafty friends who came over to share the crafty room with me during which I learned to knit (again) for real!! (Thanks Laura!)

There was modeling of the new hat by our friend Amy who came for lunch,

...to learn the intricacies of calzone making.

There was a lovely lovely adults only walk while Amy stayed with the kids. (thanks Amy!)

And finally there was late night knitting and old movie watching.

Good, good times.

to the moon!

we went to new season's the other day, rather randomly since that's not my normal grocery store. but! while there we saw these rocket ship shaped popsicle makers that I had seen on Blue Yonder and I grabbed them up. I was anticipating making some strawberry/yogurt popsicles for the kiddos, but after i pureed the strawberries i discovered i was out of yogurt. i was forced to use ice cream instead. (so tasty i couldn't get anyone to hold still enough for a clear shot...so consider the fuzziness an expression of the kids excitement. that and poor lighting)

The fruit bars

Here's the apple-cinnamon. It was pretty tasty. Didn't really qualify as a sweet dessert until the vanilla ice cream or heavy cool whip was added. Some liked it hot, I liked it cold (straight out of the refrigerator) I wanted to try a demarle mold to see how it would work, and I'm happy to report it worked wonderfully. So well, in fact, I started wondering why I ever use any of my other dishes. I have to be a snot for just one minute and show Chris the mold after I took the bars out.

:) nice and crumb/half-the-cake-left-in-the-bottom free. Okay, enough snottiness.

...and the side view. I stuck them it in the fridge after cooking cause I wasn't sure how well it was going to come out of the mold. But it did fabulous. Dave was watching and he was actually impressed.

The apricot-coconut. It's not bad, rather exotic tasting. Much sweeter than the apple...but it's not really a taste that people will just gobble right up. (Notice Isaiah trying to snag some during picture taking.)

Bakings and buyings

I just popped some fruit-filled oatmeal bars in the oven. Apple cinnamon's cooking up now, Apricot-coconut is waiting to go in next. (doesn't that sound...interesting? apricot-coconut? Dave's a little wary of that one.) I'm trying to decide how faithfully I'm actually going to work through the cookbooks. For instance, on this recipe there are four variations - I've done two so far. The other two are mincemeat and raisin. Neither of which sounds remotely appealing. But the point was to discover new things. Well, I suppose that was one point. Really there are just so many good things in there and I always do the same old thing. So I wanted to try some new things. But I think I'm going to have to draw the line at mincemeat.

On the way home from church Isaiah fell asleep. This is not good because it means he won't sleep at home in his bed. So we decided to stop somewhere and get him up for a while. We found a garage sale advertising "Man stuff" so we went. We didn't find anything we wanted terribly there, but there were several yard sales on that block and next door we found a Lite-Brite ($2!). That's pretty exciting.