Thursday, January 31, 2008

passing of the boogers

Last week Kelli told me she was sick. Her symptoms?

the cough-es
a sore "neck"
boogers
and the "bless you's"

Not quite medical terminology but descriptive nonetheless.

Now Jack E has snot running down his face. And a fever. And he just hid behind the couch to poop. Like the green cloud isn't giving THAT away!!! LOL

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

how things have changed!

Twelve years ago yesterday, I became a mama for the first time. It was the first time I nursed a baby. The first time I held a little being that had just moments before been inside of me. The first time I felt such incredible love for a person I had just met. The first time I had that feeling of "I am so strong...I am a mama who just gave birth to a wonderful baby!" The day I joined the club of mamas everywhere.

Nine years ago today I became a mama for the 3rd time. D and I were suddenly outnubered by our children. We had 2 kids in diapers again after about a 2 month stint of only having one in diapers. It was the beginning of a kind of chaos I had never known. And I began to love.

Happy day to Aleena who is now a beautiful 12 year old girl. Yesterday a boy hurt her feelings by saying he didn't know why a boy would like her. D failed in trying to explain to her that he was probably freaked out by how much there is to like about her.

And happy day to Clay-Clay. My sweet guy. I think he is finally getting the fact that school work is not a suggestion but really an expectation. And he hasn't cried since like Saturday!!! Actually.

Something else that has changed. This has nothing to do with our family, but with the area of food that is so important to me these days. For Clay's birthday, he wanted banana chocolate chip muffins to take to school. I have a recipe that I use that is from a scholastic cookbook from when I was a kid. It was published in 1977 in fact. When I compare this recipe to ones from today, one of the huge differences is the amount of sugar. Only 2 T of white sugar and 2 T of brown sugar. And it is supposed to make 24 muffins. Notice I say "supposed to" because I make this batch into 12 muffins. And they are just regular sized muffins then. It would 24 small muffins.

So what does that say about the way we have changed how we eat in the past 30 years? We add a lot more sugar...and our portions are much bigger. No big secrets there, but still just surprising when I see it in print like that.

Monday, January 28, 2008

can I tell you what a dork I am?

Wait...I think I already made that confession here before.

Anyway. This morning I was pulling off my jammy top (man, can you tell I'm a mama?!) and my necklace went UP MY NOSE. And it hurt a lot. And it even bled.

How do I explain that one?

Guess it's a blonde thing!

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Jumping back in here!!!

Yesterday afternoon I just felt like it had been the best day ever. I had cooked some really amazing foods. Chicken and barley and vegetable soup. Roasted root vegetables. I ground some more wheat and had yeast bread rising and another loaf of quick bread to go with dinner in the oven.

I felt so on top of it. The wheat germ bread we had with dinner was so AMAZING. The yeast bread wasn't so great. I used the recipe for basice whole wheat bread from Laurel's Kitchen. The dough seemed really soft. The recipe says it will be, but I think that mine was TOO soft. It did great on the first and second proof, but it just didn't rise anymore once it was in the oven. Aleena had 4 pieces of it for toast this morning so it can't be all that bad, huh?

That has been my concern with getting into milling my own flours. What if it's not good? But then I realized that it's BREAD. How bad can it be honestly? It's flour and yeast and water and a little fat and a little sweet. How bad can that be really?

So I've been jumping in and just trying to figure it out as I go along. I realized today as I was reading Flour Power that I have used all my soft white wheat in really the wrong way. I guess that's best for cookies and quick breads and the like. I have just used it in hte mix with my hard red wheat which should have been the base for my flours for my breads.

So I am off to look for more grains today. I'm kind of excited. It's really fun...and it's not like the kids don't devour bread around here! And now that D is doing more construction type work, he's eating more carbs. Not a ton, but he's taking sandwhiches in his lunch. And a loaf of bread with dinner sure does make the meat and veggies go farther! Plus it's still good bribery to get Kelli to eat her dinner.