Fitting a mold or creating my own

I'm projecting. And while I run a brush up and down a cabinet, I start to think of things that I can write. I find the process of thinking so interesting. I often start blog post about when I was thinking....you know, the kitchen sink syndrome. 

Anyway, it seems there is a mold I see on the internet. Houses look like this, children act like that, rooms are organized in this precise way with this purdy furniture. I want to be that mold and I feel my insecurities creeping all around me as I look at my piles of junk here or my child doing whatever over there. As I am working to finish a project started by Yours Truly at the end of May, I am wondering why I do this. Will it really be all clean and tidy and perfectly organized once the cabinet is painted, the wall decorated, the furniture rearranged, etc.? If it's not, does it matter? 

There will always be a pile of junk on the counter. Toys will never all be put away. But the paradigm shift I had tonight helped me realize it will all be ok. That there is joy in the mess. An extra pile here meant my baby was fed when he was hungry. Laundry unfolded means I read to my daughter during snack time. And this messy-ness can be embraced and should be shared!

Now I feel too profound in all of this. My original post was going to be a sarcastic dump of what life is really like. But maybe we'll see a few more pictures of what Emily is like and why that is great, rather than trying to mimic what everyone else seems to be sharing on the internet. 

Whole Wheat Bread

May I get a hallelujah?! I have been working on perfecting wheat bread for three years and I think I have finally figured out how to get a soft, delicious wheat bread every time.

I don't even really know where to begin with wheat bread. I have learned that it is an art that takes perseverance to learn and master. We have eaten solely homemade bread for over two years. Sometimes it has been delicious and sometimes I feel tempted to throw it to the ducks. I have tried several recipes and I was always looking for the fix-all. After many flops and some pretty dense bread loafs, I present to you the all mighty wheat bread!

Let me share just a few tips.

:: Kneading wheat bread dough for 10 minutes or more is key. It allows the gluten to develop which will make it soft and delectable.

:: There is such thing as too much oil and honey. I believe this is why I have not had consistent success with recipes. I thought, "Hey, what's good is better if there is more, right?" Nope. My hypothesis is that it was making my bread too dense and difficult for it to rise.

:: Instead of doing a full double rise recipe, I prefer to allow some of the flour to rise with the rest of the ingredients for about 20 minutes and then do a full 10 minute knead and then let the bread rise fully in the pans.

:: If using a Kitchen Aid, initially mix the majority of flour in with a spatula or wooden spoon. Using the kneading hook doubles the time it takes to make the dough. I have a love/hate relationship with the Kitchen Aid as a dough kneader.

I have no words. It's just beautiful. 

Whole Wheat Bread

I have a 5.5 quart industrial Kitchen Aid. Before merrily jumping into this recipe, please know what your mixer can handle. Specifications for my mixer are found in the instruction booklet. I'm sure Google knows the answer as well. 

Also, I freshly grind my wheat. I think this makes a difference in the longevity of my bread. It will stay soft and mostly moist for longer. Store bought, pre-ground wheat results in a drier bread, but it is still good and edible. I am currently into using white hard wheat berries and soft white wheat berries. I do about a 2:1 ratio of hard to soft. Don't let this scare you - if you now feel overwhelmed, go buy pre-ground wheat at the super market and proceed.

Yields: 2 - 8 X 4 X 2.5 inch loaf pans

2 C warm water
1 tbsp active dry yeast
3 tbsp vital wheat gluten with vitamin C (Hodgson Mill can be found at Walmart)
3 tbsp oil
3 tbsp honey

6 - 7 C whole wheat flour
(This is an approximation for flour. You may use more, maybe less. The cup amount you use will depend upon if your wheat is freshly ground or store bought. Freshly ground tends to be lighter and more airy. You want your bread to come together and it generally does clear the side of the bowl while mixing once enough flour has been added.)
2 tsp salt

In the bowl of a stand mixer add water, yeast, gluten, oil, and honey as well as 1 1/2 C wheat flour. Mix with the cookie paddle (or by hand with a spoon) until everything is well combined. Remove the cookie paddle, cover the bowl and let it sit for 20 minutes.

Put on the dough hook attachment. Add salt and 2 more cups of wheat flour and begin mixing. (I suggest if you are using a Kitchen Aid to mix the dough with a spoon or spatula before putting the dough hook on. It will cut your mixing time in half.) Add remaining flour 1/2 C at a time while kneading for 10 minutes. Give the dough time to come together (it will start to pull in a stringy way - gluten is developing) and try not to over flour your dough. It should pull away from the sides, but the sides may not be completely clear and clean. Sometimes it takes more than 7 cups.

When you take a piece of your dough, you should be able to roll it around to easily unstick it from your fingers and then it should hold its form.

Divide dough into two balls, press flat into a rectangle a little longer than the length of your pan and twice as wide as your pan. Starting on the long end, roll the dough - jelly roll style - and tuck in the ends. Place in a greased loaf pan and cover with towel or greased plastic wrap.

Let rise until about 1 inch above pan. Place in cold oven and turn oven to 375 F. Bake for 25 minutes, turn the oven off and let sit for 5 more minutes in oven. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes. Remove to cooling rack to cool completely before putting in bags.

[Take a deep breath and do it! If you want to make great whole wheat bread at home, you can! It will take practice to get a feel for the dough, especially if you are not used to working with yeast doughs. But it is totally worth it!]

Adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe - Darcy's Recipe and Mom's recipe.

Snickerdoodles

I felt a little proud when I pulled these cookies out of the oven. My mood improved when they were actually soft and palatable. I became ecstatic when I managed to take a good-picture-in-natural-light photo shoot and so now I just have to share them. 

I will be perfectly honest. Snickerdoodles aren't my favorite. I like me the choco-late chip variety myself. (I also find them to be really hard to work with - sticky sticky messes - that turn out reaaaalllly flat and hard or like sugar bomb bread balls, which happens when I try to counter the sticky with a little extra flour. Anyway, back to why I made these...)

So...I'm almost out of butter (this recipe does have shortening in it) and I don't have any real chocolate chips (white don't really count) so what else can you make when the Elders are coming for dinner and you want something to sweeten the deal? Snickerdoodles. And they just so happen to be one of Erik's favorite cookie, which he hardly ever asks for because he knows they are not my cup of tea. So win, win, win, and win. Winners all around!

This particular shortening snickerdoodle recipe has been made once before in my house with limited palatability and thus allows me to give you a little tip. Tip: Shortening has a shelf life and it gets old and starts to smell funny and will make your cookies taste gross. So keep that shortening fresh - like less than a year old, ok? Ok. Now you know.

My taste tester...She approved.

Good.

Try them. (But make sure to share so you don't eat them all yourself, accidentally, even though you don't really like them.)

Snickerdoodles

Yield: 2 dozen (at least)

Dough:
1 stick (8 tbsp) butter, softened to room temperature
1/2 C shortening
1 1/2 C granulated sugar
2 large eggs

2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
2 1/2 C flour
1/2 tsp salt

Coating:
1/4 C granulated sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 F. (My oven is on the too hot side - something I just discovered after a year of using it. I baked these babies at 350 F for 11 minutes. Just to be honest, true, and real with you!)

With an electric mixer, beat the butter, shortening, and sugar together until light and fluffly, about 2 minutes. Add eggs and beat until well mixed.

In a separate bowl mix together the cream of tartar, baking soda, flour, and salt.

Stir the dry ingredient flour mixture into the butter/sugar/egg mixture until flour is just incorporated.

In a shallow dish or bowl, combine sugar and cinnamon to coat dough with.

Form into 1.5 inch balls, roll in cinnamon sugar coating and place on a lightly sprayed/silpat-ed/parchment paper-ed (you pick) baking sheet. They will spread a lot. If you want them to be perfectly round, you probably will want to space them farther than a normal cookie with fewer on the sheet. If you don't care that they run into each other then do a normal 3 X 4 placement.

Bake for 9 - 11 minutes until golden brown around the edges and slightly puffed in the middle. They flatten after removing them from the oven. Let sit 2 minutes on baking sheet, then remove them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.


From Mel's Kitchen Cafe - Classic Snickerdoodles

Clam Sauce

We eat a lot of noodles at this house. Alyssa's favorite food is "noo-nles". In fact, I am surprised she hasn't turned into a little noodle herself. Though she prefers to deck her pasta in mountains of grated Parmesan cheese, the more "mature" folks in the house prefer a little variety. And thus I present Clam Sauce.

It is a nice alternative to the typical red sauce that might often find its way from a jar to your plate, This delightfully creamy sauce offers the perfect solution to a delicious quick dinner fix! It is elegant, yet simple. The parsley and thyme do something to the taste buds that cannot be matched. It is not too seafoody, but still has a nice clam taste and the garlic brings it all together. 

(How's that for an advertisement for this meal? Have I convinced you to try it?)

So go try it. Do be careful not to burn the butter and garlic! But, please, do not be afraid! It's always good to try something new!

Clam Sauce

I usually half this recipe for our family of three. I have given you the full recipe for your own scale-able pleasure.

Serves 5-6

2 tbsp butter
6 - 8 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
2 tbsp flour

2 cans of minced clams with juice
2 C half and half
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tbsp dried parsley

1.5 lbs spaghetti noodles, cooked al dente

Melt butter over medium heat in medium saucepan. Add minced garlic and cook for about 1 minute - until the garlic becomes fragrant, but not burned fragrant...big difference. Add flour and whisk until the flour is not clumpy. Add juice from clams and half and half as well as salt, pepper, thyme, and parsley.

Bring the sauce to a low simmer and let simmer for about 10 minutes, whisking almost constantly. This prevents it from burning to the bottom of the pan. The sauce will thicken slightly.

Add clams and heat through.

Serve over spaghetti with a little bit of Parmesan or mozzarella cheese.

Add oil, egg, salt, and baking powder. Pulse until well blended.

From my childhood via my dear mum

Food Disappointment

Do you ever have disappointing food days? You know - you find that perfect recipe. The picture looks good. You can just imagine how delightful it will taste when it is all said and done. You cook or bake exactly as the recipe instructs. O! It is going to be the best thing ever!!

After heavy anticipation you open the oven door and WHAMO! disappointment hits. Your cookie, cake, bread, casserole, cinnamon rolls, soup, etc. etc. etc. is the biggest failure of the day. And then you feel sad, and never want to cook again and wonder why you just spent those however many minutes in the kitchen making your masterpiece, only to have it FAIL!

Oh my achin' back!

That happened to me. Just in case you were wondering.

I saw this recipe on the back of the Kroger graham cracker box (that should have been my first warning - I don't really trust package recipes).

Irresistible Graham Cracker Cookies.

Mmm. Perfect! They just so happened to have the same ingredients as Grandpa Nelsen's Da...ng Good Cookies (censored for the sensitive) or Magic Cookie Bars. But they were cookie form! Good, chewy, round delicious cookie form! I could only just imagine what was awaiting me through the door of the recipe!! I also thought they would be the perfect recipe to share on this blog!

But my imagination failed me, for instead of expecting the best, I should have been anticipating the worse. I pretty much thought my night was over when I pulled these out of the oven.

Flat. Too sweet. Weird with the graham as the majority of the flour. 

So let this be a lesson to all. Actually there are several lessons. 

1. Package recipes probably won't work the first time.

2. Store brand packages are probably trying to recreate the name brand package's recipes in a suspicious form. (The Magic Cookie Bars recipe appeared on the Keebler box of graham cracker crumbs that I bought.)

3. Sometimes people have bad days in the kitchen and the food turn out not very photogenic.

4. Margarine that has been in the freezer for 8 months may not be the best ingredient to use in baked goods. :)

Fortunately I didn't have to throw them away. My husband, daughter, and church peeps did me a favor and ate them on Sunday (sorry if you are reading this now and ate one).  

Blueberry Lemon Bread

The first time I made this bread, I licked the beater (yes, I eat raw eggs in the form of sugary bliss) and I knew that I must share this recipe. It is simple and straight forward. We had a quite a stock of blueberries that we had picked earlier this summer and I needed a creative outlet to use them up. This recipe was mentioned by a friend and knowing that I had tried it before at another friend's house, I was excited to try it myself.  (Rest assured, these blueberries had now been frozen so don't feel pressured to run out and buy fresh berries. Frozen work fantastically!)

The batter, all whipped up, is heavenly in and of itself. And the bread is simply divine. It is sweet enough to be desirable, but not so sweet that you feel like you probably shouldn't have eaten it. The crust is a bit crisp, while the inside is light and soft. The touch of a lemon glaze on top puts the bread into the irresistible category. The combination of blueberries and lemon are the tangy delight that your taste buds have been hoping for all night.

So just go try it.

Also, I promise I make things besides blueberry bread type things. I just can't help that they are so good!

Blueberry Lemon Bread

Yield: 1 - 8 x 4 x 2.5 inch loaf pan

Bread
2 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1/2 C butter at room temperature
1 C sugar
1/2 C milk
1 1/2 C blueberries (fresh or frozen)
2 large eggs

Lemon glaze
1/3 C sugar
1/4 C lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease your loaf pan.

In a mixing bowl beat butter and 1 C sugar until well blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating until light and creamy.

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together in separate bowl and add to the creamy mixture alternating with the milk.

Gently stir in blueberries.

Bake 1 hour 5 minutes, or until the bread no longer jiggles when you give it a little shake. You can also do the tooth pick test. The crust will brown.

Prepare lemon glaze. I suggest heating up the lemon juice in the microwave or over the stove so the sugar will dissolve.

Let cool in loaf pan for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and place on rack. Poke with holes on top and sides and coat with lemon glaze.

Cool completely (if you want it to retain loaf shape).

Recipe received from Emily S., though Katherine W. and Amy H were also mentioned upon receipt

Mountain Place, Holy Place

Now, I know God created the whole world, but He must have spent a little extra time when it came time to create mountainous areas. The air is crisp and clean. There is an aroma of pine and flowers and dirt that is just heavenly. The evenings are quiet and cool. Really, there isn't a more beautiful experience than mountain time.

I have been back to the mountains several times since moving away from Utah. But this time as we spent a week in beautiful Durango, CO, the contrast to my current location was vivid. Millions of wild flowers and tall aspens and pine trees filled my soul and reinvigorated me! 

I was reminded that the mountains are a holy place. Anciently Moses, Nephi, and even Jesus Christ went to the mountains to communicate with God. I went to the mountains summer after summer as a teenager attending church girls camps. I learned to listen, to pray, to study the scriptures, and to ponder without the distraction of the world. I bore my testimony and I was strengthened by the testimonies of others. I sang and played and laughed. The sum total of these experiences have impacted my life. The mountains became my holy place, a place that reminds me of the love my Heavenly Father and Savior have for me because I came to know them there.

Returning to the mountains this summer reminded me of those life experiences. I feel grateful for the opportunities I had then and that I can share with Alyssa and Erik now. I am grateful for the sunny, beautiful mornings that we spent observing God's creations. I am grateful Alyssa and I were able to go hiking together and talk about the flowers and sing primary songs. Heavenly Father has given us a beautiful world and by this I know that He truly loves me.