Bread

October 28, 2018

I have long enjoyed baking fresh bread, rolls, cookies, muffins and assorted other things. I do not do anything gourmet, just basics, but I enjoy it.
Lately I have been learning about other types of baking. Gluten free for my brother, and sourdough for my husband.

I have dabbled a little in each in the past, but yesterday I had a good baking day.  I made "San Francisco Sour Dough Bread" It took several weeks to grow a starter, then 3 days of mixing and waiting to have the bread ready. I think my sweetheart felt it was well worth it. I do think it turned out well and the loaf was gone by the end of dinner....

I have been learning about Gluten Free baking. Things like Grain vrs. Starch flours, the 40/60 ratio. I was mostly successful with baking powder/quick rise items like muffins and cookies, but failed over and over in yeast breads. I found a recipe online that is literally called "Gluten Free Bread that Doesn't Suck" There are a couple sites out there with it, with very minor variations, I actually did my own variations on it. One calls for a ground Chia seed, one an dry egg substitute, I used plain gelatin. It is intended to help with the texture of the bread. Having had so many fails I did not want to totally forgo it, but I had gelatin on hand and did not have the other items that can be used for egg substitute for texture. Interesting to me, there are eggs in the recipe but the extra egg substitute supposedly is still needed. The name told the truth. It truly was Gluten free Bread that did not Suck. It was pretty good. Soft and spongy. I love that the internet has several places with similar things, and you can compare and contrast and learn different things from each. For example the Chia seed variation suggested putting one loaf of bread in a pan in the freezer and defrosting and raising it later to bake so you only have one fresh loaf at a time, but can mix up both at the same time. They also suggested mixing batches of the dry ingredients all at once to make it faster to make other times.
The egg substitute variation explained why she used it and I figured out the Chia seeds must serve the same purpose, years earlier I learned you could used plain gelatin as an egg substitute and a  binder in gluten free cooking. FYI you can also use flax seed in a similar manner.
I also learned that when the bread seemed to be getting dark, it was ok, and that Gluten free bread needs 4 minutes of mixing, no more, no less, and lots longer to raise than many other breads...

Now I want to make Great Harvest Cinnamon burst bread. I read online you can make your own cinnamon chips for the bread (and to use in muffins) for less than the ones you buy and then you don't have to worry about it if/when you can not find them in the store anyway. I want to try to make the cinnamon chips and then the bread. YUM!!!

Maybe we can even make Gluten Free Cinnamon burst bread, that doesn't suck...

I should have taken a pictures of the breads... maybe next time.

Super Brother builds again

October 20, 2018

Super Brother is building a playhouse for our youngest child. He first built it as a modular frame in the shop then this past week has moved it outside and been assembling, framing the roof, and adding a door.  You would think he has done tons of things like this but really he hasn't. His super brain just figures things out.

Panther wins my praise

October 20, 2018

This past week our outside cat won my praise. She found a small snake out on a warmish afternoon and I came outside to find her defending us from it. We grabbed a chicken to eat the snake but the chicken just ran away. We let all the chickens out and tried to get them to go for it. They just wanted to play in the bushes. We got out romen from the fridge to lure them over to the snake. Even when we dropped romen right on the snake, they ate the romen and left the snake. Ugh. I know they eat snake because my sweetheart already fed them one and they fought over it. We even picked up the snake on a shovel and put it by the chickens in the bushes and they ignored it. Thankfully the cat killed it.

Harvest

October 8, 2018

We have been blessed with far more harvest than we expected for our first year here.

We canned Cherry juice, and made a little jelly

We canned about 10 quarts of apple juice/cider and hope to do a little more

We canned a few quarts of Tomato sauce and have set some other tomatoes aside we hope will ripen for use later

We froze about a gallon of salsa and used about a quart we had in the fridge

We got a few potatoes we have already used, I still hope to be able to glean some from area fields. (potato harvest is in full swing right now...)

We were blessed with raspberries from friends and canned, froze and dried some

We canned a little apple sauce
I have dried about 5 quart bags of apples and have about 3-5 more drying now...

I feel very blessed!

Super Brother

October 2, 2018

One of my amazing brothers has been staying with us and helping out with some things. He has fixed several things for me and has built a brooding coop and is now building a goat shed.
At the end of summer with everyone going back to school, I had just accepted progress would be halted or at the very least severely slowed. In comes my Super Brother and saves the days.
He is amazing and built a coop in a fraction of the time it took us and did it mostly alone. He is flying through goat shed building too. In one day he built a little stand for the goats to climb on. In between all this he is cooking, playing, fixing, and generally helpful in a multitude of ways. I am starting to wonder if there is anything he can not do.

Enjoying Fall and Preparing for Winter

September 30, 2018

I have spent the last week enjoying "Fall". It is chilly in the morning but afternoons are nice.
I have bottles 10 quarts of assorted Crab Apple Juices. It is kind of fun, they are Pink.
I started what I hope will be two large bottles of Apple Cider Vinegar. I have long read about making your own and now have apples to spare to try it.
I have a large box of Apples to use, waiting for me in the Shop, and more crab apples on the trees.
My super wonderful brother fixed my dehydrator yesterday so I hope to dry some apples in the coming weeks.

Yesterday we spent the day Preparing for winter.
My Sweetheart chopped more wood and put the last piece of tin on the Main coop.
In the past week my super talented brother made me a brooding coop, for the hoped for brooding chicken to raise babies in the spring.
My younger children and I cleaned up fallen apples. (I am hoping in future years to have a winter pig to feed the fallen apples too. Would that make Apple bacon? Just kidding:)
It just felt like a super productive day, finishing off little things left over from summer and preparing for cooler weather to come.

As I watch potato harvest in full swing, I am hoping we can find a farmer around who will let us glean a few potatoes from their field after they are done harvesting.

Today at church I got to be part of a lesson. My part was on the Sabbath. I related the Sabbath to Celebrating Christmas and suggested that maybe we could "Celebrate the Sabbath".
Things like on Christmas we have special foods, on the Sabbath we partake of the Sacrament, but might also choose to have special meals...
On Christmas we might have special PJ's or Sweaters, on the Sabbath we might have "Sunday Best" clothes. In Sacrament meeting today one of the young men who spoke talked about maybe wearing our Sunday clothes all day to help remind us of the day.
We prepare well in advance for Christmas, maybe we should prepare ahead for the Sabbath, at least on Saturday, and maybe starting Monday Morning, or even Sunday afternoon for the next Sabbath.
We have special traditions and things we do for Christmas, perhaps we should develop special Sunday traditions.
We Celebrate Christmas to show love for our Savior and our family, shouldn't we Celebrate the Sabbath for the same reasons?
On Christmas we exchange gifts. There are gifts of the Sabbath, ones we can give to our Lord and ones He offers us.
It was really good for me to have time these past weeks to think about these things. Now I need to figure out how to apply them in my home, family and my personal life...

Easter Egg hunting

September 18, 2018

When we got our first chickens we had a few issues with getting some to lay in the nesting boxes. The Buff Orphington especially liked to lay hers in the field. We thought that was solved but a couple days ago I caught her trying to make a nest in our hay shed. Today the Rooster crowed right by the shed then the same chicken came out of the shed, on a hunch I checked, yep, she laid her egg there. Silly chicken!
We might have to keep them locked in their area until noonish to see if that helps make sure she lays in the coop.