Look what we found when we took an unfamiliar route to the orthodontist!

From the border where we park the car to the orthodontist's office, it's about 7 or 8 blocks and we usually go the same route.  However, it was chilly and Caroline didn't have her sweater, so we took a different route so we could stay in the sunhine longer.  AND . . . it happened to take us by this bakery I hadn't noticed before. 

Those $8 prices translate to about 65 cents US, so we stopped after her appointment.  I had exactly $1.26 on me, but that bought 2 pastries.  Caroline chose the front left chocolate-iced donut in the middle and I chose an empanada from the top left.  Bavarian cream and so fresh I thought it was going to fall apart and land on the sidewalk as we walked.

We will definitely be back on our next trip which is in March.

King Cake

Mardi Gras again already?  I don't celebrate it, but didn't want to miss a chance to bake something delicious.

It didn't turn out exactly the way it was supposed to (didn't read the part of the instructions that say to let it raise after forming and before baking, although that's always the way you make yeast dough products), but I'll have to say it is very tasty.

I made two, so my book club ladies will get the other one tomorrow.  Oh, I found the baby in the cake so I guess I'll plan to make another cake next year. :-)

Mardi Gras treat

No, I'm not Catholic nor am I in New Orleans, but how could I pass up a chance to celebrate with some food? Today I made King Cake, which is actually more like a cinnamon roll ring than a cake. I used this recipe, but don't look because you'll see how beautiful theirs is in the picture!

I made the dough in my bread machine but had to add quite a bit more flour. Otherwise I'd have had to pour the dough out of the bread pan. After rolling it out, putting cinnamon sugar on half, folding, crimping, and cutting in three pieces, I braided it. That's some of the cinnamon sugar you can see there at the bottom of the picture.

While it was baking, Caroline made three bowls of colored sugar and once it was out and iced, I sprinkled the colors on. Next time I must move faster though--in our ultra-dry air, some of the icing set up before I got all the sugar on!

And last of all, I put a small plastic baby into the King cake. Whoever finds it gets good luck for the coming year.

What we did this afternoon

Sophia made a tent for reading and TV watching.

Elizabeth drew pictures from a "You Can Draw Cartoons" book.

Caroline made pretzels from a recipe in the Friend magazine.

And Mom worked at the computer.

Not shown, but also done: homework.

And this is a counterpoint to the post below

Darn kids. They keep eating. Before I started my workday (which begins at 4:50 am!) I whipped up a batch of bread dough. I had the tail end of two bags of cold cereal, Kix and Cheerios, and since I usually add SOMEthing besides just flour, I dumped in the cereal. Great idea, bad execution. I should have added the cereal with the wet ingredients because the cereal would have turned into mush and disappeared into the dough. Nope, I put it in last. So what I produced was bread dough studded with cereal. LOL
This doesn't look anything like what I posted below, does it?

Ran out of bread

. . . and made more. I usually make our family's bread except in the middle of the summer when I can't bear to turn on the oven. I'm thinking it's a good thing I made this late yesterday because it's over 111F/44C today and I wouldn't have been baking anything at all. That's why I keep tortillas on hand all the time. Just about anything you can do with bread, you can do with tortillas. Plus I found out Costco has some large loaves of good bread that aren't too expensive. I relied on that bread last summer and expect to do the same this summer.

However, I did bake some yesterday. I have some lovely white wheat that I grind myself and although this bread is 70% whole wheat, it isn't very dark. More a light khaki, I'd say.

I'm not happy about how my camera is (not) focussing these days, but thought I'd post this fuzzy picture so you can see how light the bread is.

It's really tasty, too.

A little baking day

We're running out of bread plus I don't like the way my last batch turned out anyway. It came out like the bread your mother made back in the 70s (right after she made a batch of homemade granola). You know--only half raised and pretty crumbly. The problem last time was I used more whole wheat than usual (I usually use 70% ww and 30% white) and I didn't knead it the extra time I should have. Then when I went to get out my two long baking pans I couldn't find one and I ended up substituting two smaller pans for that one and it was just too much pan for the amount of dough I had. It all tasted fine, but the texture and size wasn't what I'm capable of. I make very good homemade bread.

Today I ground about 6-7 lbs of wheat into flour and used the proper amounts of my ingredients. Well, I looked at the leftover rice on the stove and thought, "What the heck?" and threw that in as well. You never know what might be in my bread, but I promise it is always delicious!

If my batteries hadn't died as I was getting ready to take pictures, I'd have some pics of the operation. Maybe later if I can get them to recharge.

In a little while I'm going to make some chocolate chip walnut banana bread. I'm probably the only one who will eat it so I might as well make it the way I like it.

Last baking project for the day will be some pizza crust dough. We're having the LDS missionaries over to join us for our usual Friday night pizza dinner, so I'll multiply the batch a bit to accomodate them.

Milling wheat and thrift store shopping

I didn't plan to go out this morning, other than taking the big girls to school, then walking S to preschool. However, when I was getting S's lunch ready I realized I was also looking at C's lunch left on the counter as we hurried out the door this morning. Oh well. That's the first time this school year so I decided to drive S to preschool, then take C's lunch to her.

Once I was out I decided to go pick up a prescription I dropped off a few days ago. For the very first time, I had a really pleasant, personable tech at the window. The service is so surly at that pharmacy I don't think I'm going back again. Why should I? But this gal was a pleasant send-off for me.

In the same shopping area is a Goodwill store and I always like to browse. I didn't find any of the several kinds of housewares I'm always on the lookout for, nor did I find any Sue Barton books for my mom, but I did find this shirt for my dd. At first I thought it was a Spiderman shirt which would make E very happy. Then I realized it was a Speedo swim shirt with boy colors, but Hawaiian flowers, making it a girl shirt in my book. Since we are moving to a warmer climate soon with lots more opportunities for swimming, at $1.59 I snapped it up. We have one other Speedo swim shirt and the girls like it. I like that it protects them a little from sunburn and they don't seem to mind that it has a bit on the arms.

One project yesterday was to mill some whole wheat flour since I was out. I needed some bread and that pushed me to get it done. Here is the mill I use. I've had it for about two years and I like it a lot. It is REALLY loud which is why I always mill in the garage, but it makes really nice, fine flour.


Here is the 25 pound bag of wheat I'm working out of at the moment. I have two more bags like this in my garage that are not packaged for long-term storage, so I need to keep using them up.



The wheat goes in the top . . . .



And if I knew how to rearrange photos on blogspot this would have been the last picture. The lid comes off and there is a big bowl of fresh, warm, whole wheat flour.



This is the second-to-last picture and it shows how the bowl comes out of the mill.


I made two large loaves of bread and trust me, they were delicious.

The "A" Family Bakery

Last night I had my Messiah choir practice so dh stayed home with the girls and made chocolate chip cookies. They are slightly caramalized and have crunchy edges. Absolutely delicious. Not that I'm eating near the number I'd like, of course--gotta keep to my diet. :-)

Today I made bread for general use--sandwiches, snacks, toast for breakfast, etc. This batch made two large loaves and they are 30% white, 60% whole wheat, and a 10% mix of oats, ground flaxseed, and sunflower seeds. I don't know if I've ever made better. As I was getting ready to close up the cookbook my eyes fell on a recipe for rye bread. Quite some time ago my mom brought me enough rye flour to make a loaf of bread but I never did anything with it. Miracle of miracles, the flour was right where I thought it was and it was just enough for the recipe. The dark brown color comes from molasses, coffee powder (we don't drink coffee so I used some coffee substitute powder), and cocoa powder. It called for optional caraway seeds and I knew I didn't have any, but I thought I had some dill seed which is similar. I'm sure I had some at one time, but I must have used it up, so I made the bread without any seeds. It is good but doesn't have the characteristic flavor I think of when I think of rye.

We are set for bread and cookies for a few days. I love it when we have the energy to bake like this. It's only been about 2 months since the last time I baked bread but it seems like a long time. After having the first bite of the crunchy heel of fresh bread dripping with honey, I have no idea why I waited so long.