Vitafamiliae

Let’s talk about BREAD, shall we?  I’ve discussed the benefits of whole wheat, I’ve shown you how I make lots of loaves of bread at one time, now let’s talk about the current reality that is my life:  I don’t have time for bread-making.  I have all the tools to do it in big batches, what I don’t have is all the time.  It really would only take me about four or five hours.  But in Kid Time, that translates to 8 hours. You can imagine why.

And the problem is, bread-making isn’t really flexible.  You can only let it rise so much, add so much flour, walk away from it for so long, before you have Mt. Saint Dough-saster on your hands and you’ve got to start all over.

This means that I’ve been secretly buying ONE loaf of whole wheat bread and rationing it out over a two week time frame.  I hated that I was spending money on bread when I had everything I needed to make my own.  I hated that I knew the store stuff wasn’t as good for us.  And I hated that I couldn’t seem to make the time to make bread.

Then Megan at SortaCrunchy did a review of a book called Healthy Bread in Five Minutes A Day.  I was intrigued.  I tried the recipe I found online.  And then I dug in and did some real research and experimentation.  And I am a believer.

The authors of the book devised recipes that don’t require kneading.  You mix the flour, the water, the gluten, the yeast, and the salt in a big bucket with a lid.  You let it rise, you throw it in the fridge.  When you want to make bread, you pull out a handful of dough, shape it into a loaf, let it rise once more, bake it, and voila - BREAD.  Head over here to watch videos and preview recipes.

Before I sounded off to all of you, though, I wanted to give the recipes a thorough test.  I wanted to prove that this method really was more efficient and just as healthy.  So I took my time working through the book.  I had a friend (we shall call her The Bread Whisperer) test things with me.

Here’s what I love:

- We always have bread.  I can get up in the morning, grab a hunk of dough, and set it out to rise.  (Usually I take two pounds and stuff it in a loaf pan so I will end up with a traditional looking loaf.  The book suggests artisan bread done on a baking stone.  Which is pretty, but not really practical for my gang.)  I throw it in to bake just before lunch and we can have hot bread and butter with honey every day of the week.  I look like super mom and I spent a total of five minutes on it.  Plus, the house smells fantastic.

- The dough will sit and wait for me.  When we all got sick last week, nobody ate anything for days.  When I came back to my dough, it had fermented a little, but that just meant we had sour dough bread for a week!  I don’t even have to wash the bucket in between batches, I can just leave a bit of dough in there and I’ve basically made a starter for sour dough.  (Obviously, if your dough sprouts something green or another groovy color of the rainbow, throw it out.  But it should last for up to 15 days.)

- If I forget to set a loaf out to rise in the morning, I can have hot pitas out of the oven in half an hour.  I kid you not.  Today I started my pitas at 11:30 and by noon, my gang was making sandwiches with these puffy little beauties.  It makes me happy.

- I’ve got instant gifts to take to neighbors in need.  Make a pretty loaf and nobody minds that it’s actually good for them.  Right?

Here’s what I learned:

- If you buy nothing else to start making your own bread, buy a good kitchen scale.  Even if you’re going to use nothing but white flour, buy a kitchen scale.  It will be the difference between dense blah loaves and happy perky loaves.  It becomes even more important if you’re going to use even just some fresh ground flour.  Fresh ground wheat flour measures completely different from white flour.  Even the author of the book has noticed the difference and has suggested that scales be used when using fresh ground flour.  The nice thing is, the book provides all the conversions, so you know how much your flour should weigh.

Now I have a system for weighing everything in one bucket without having to dirty multiple dishes.  I dump it in the bucket on the scale, mix, and jam it in my fridge.  The difference in rise, in texture, in everything, is obvious.

- The recipes all call for vital wheat gluten.  It’s not that hard to find, people.  Order some online if you need to.  Don’t fight it.  Just add it.

- The authors of the book originally wrote Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  They took those recipes, added some whole wheat flour, cut the fat, and called it “Healthy Bread.”  Here’s my issue with that:  I don’t think removing fat makes something healthy.  I think it makes it bland.  I’m one of those healthy eaters who likes my healthy fats.  I think good quality eggs, good quality butter, and cold-pressed coconut oil make the world go round.  So if you’re going to try the brioche or some of the other recipes that call for eggs or butter, grab a copy of “Artisan Bread” and convert that recipe to whole wheat.  Do NOT bother with the brioche recipe in “Healthy Bread.”  It may be healthy, but it’s not brioche.  Add another stick of butter and you’ll come closer to having brioche.  I kid you not, my chef friend took one sniff of my brioche dough and said, “Add another stick or two of butter.  At least.”

I never argue with a chef.  They have really sharp knives.

As the Bread Whisperer, my chef friend, and I perfect making these recipes wheaty yet tasty, I’ll share our modifications with you.  For now, if you’ve ever thought about making your own bread or grinding your own flour, I suggest you start with the methods in this book.  Buy a grinder.  Buy some wheat.  Then don’t sweat learning all about kneading and the “window pane test.”  Get you a bucket and make some bread.  The point is not whether you know how to knead, the point is that you always have healthy bread on hand.

I think at this juncture, a video of how to measure things out quickly would be appropriate.  I’ll try and put something together for you in a day or two.  In the meantime, my apologies for all the verbage.    It’s like Pandora’s Bread Box in my head.  You people should never have gotten me started…

Warning:  The following post is a merciless assault on your eyeballs with pictures of my kids enjoying more sugar in three days than they eat in a year.  Please focus on the joy (and icing) on their faces and try not to hate me for wanting to record it for all posterity.

I spent last week with two purposes:  1) keep my little brood alive and well and 2) bake a birthday cake for Adam.  His request?  A Road Runner and Coyote cake.  This posed a bit of a challenge.  Have you ever noticed how skinny the limbs of those cartoons are?  No?  Well, then you probably haven’t spent two days staring at Google images of them, wondering how to translate those characters to cake.  I pondered trying to make a 3D version of the Road Runner, but the look Andrew gave me when I mentioned him making a “form” for me to cover in fondant told me I was probably crossing the line.  Besides, I wanted the creation to still be cake.  And edible.

I hit upon my solution when I happened to grab a book by this author at the library.  In The Whimsical Bakehouse, she discussed her “chocolate method,” which is just melted chocolate, piping it into forms, letting it harden and then placing them on a cake.  It tastes better than fondant and has endless possibilities.

Did somebody say chocolate?

Suddenly, I had a plan.

Day one of cake-making, I asked our favorite baby-sitter Miss R. to come hang around.  She brought a friend and I quickly realized that I needed every set of hands they could offer.  Miss R. and Miss K. melted chocolate, broke up squabbles among the children, and handled potty duty with Ellen so that I could focus on the piping.  I printed out pictures of the coyote and road runner and placed them under the parchment paper.  Then I traced an outline onto the parchment with dark chocolate.  Later, I filled the outline in with colored chocolate.

We let it harden.  (I turned the air down to keep the temperature cool for the chocolate and the kids whined all day about “freezing.”  Poor little spoiled babies.) Once the figures were hard, I flipped them over and we had a more defined picture.  Ta-da!

I did two of each character, which worked out well since my second batch was much better than my first.  And they all broke into pieces.  I stored them carefully in a safe spot in my bedroom (about the only safe spot in the house) and left the air cooler all week to keep them from melting.  I’ve been slowly eking the temperature back up so we won’t all be whining about the heat in a day or two.

After I was done piping, I had the idea to let the kids play with the rest of the chocolate.  I spread parchment paper on the table and handed them each a piping bag.  It wasn’t, perhaps, my best idea.

Or my neatest idea.

But because I had lots of help, my head didn’t explode and the kids had a blast inhaling as much sugar as their little fingers could stuff in their mouths.  I’m a little surprised one of them didn’t just hold the piping bag over their heads and squeeze.

Eventually Adam emptied his piping bag and just stuck both hands in the chocolate and smeared it.  Tactile Boy was in hog heaven.  They all were.

Day Two we made the actual cake.  I used Smitten Kitchen’s recipe and I doubled it.  I was worried about having enough for all our guests at the party, so I bought two 12 inch round pans.  This turned out to be a lot of cake batter.  The kids didn’t mind.

The batter tasted wonderful.  I’ll be honest, the cake once baked was just okay.  Nice and fluffy, but it was just… yellow cake.  And a lot of it.

See how big those pans were?  When stacked, that cake was twice the size of my head (Not counting my hair, of course.)

Day Three, Adam’s actual birthday, was icing day.  He woke up and asked to ice his cake.  He was so excited to lick the beaters.  Unfortunately, the recipe I chose for the icing didn’t call for beaters.  He didn’t care.  He just wanted to be allowed to lick icing.  I melted all the chocolate (again, I doubled the recipe, so it was a LOT of chocolate) and then mixed it with the sour cream and corn syrup.  It seemed like a really pretty icing.

But as soon as I got it on the cake, all the chocolate hardened again and there was no time for “making a crumb layer” or smoothing it out pretty.  My goal became “cover the cake while you still can.”  I should also mention that I used the bare minimum of corn syrup called for.  The kids liked it, I liked it.

It was only after Andrew tasted it that I remembered my taste buds are sadly warped because I love DARK chocolate.  The more bittersweet the better.  But since I wasn’t serving the cake to just me (tempting as that was when the kids shook the table, fought over the spoons, and stuck their fingers in the bowls), I probably should have increased the sugar a bit.

At any rate, I stuck the chocolate figures on (in bits and pieces), piped Adam’s name, the message, and the flares for the rocket, and we called it a day.  Andrew snapped my picture while I sat and waited for my blood pressure to drop to something respectable.

Here’s an up close shot:

Adam was super excited, and not just because he was hyped up on sugar.  We talk about birthday cakes all year long.  So a finished project is a big deal.

And, alright, so there was sugar involved.

Finally, I need to give a shout-out to my neighbors for helping me with this.  You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child?  Well, apparently It Takes A Cul de Sac To Bake A Cake.  I’m pretty sure I walked back and forth to my next door neighbor’s house five times in one day to borrow things and use her microwave.  Another neighbor took the kids for an hour so I could catch up on all the stuff I’d let slip through the cracks while I was baking.  So, thanks, y’all.

And, um, you guys want any leftover cake?

I was one of the lucky recipient’s of a Monk and Neagle giveaway at BooMama’s site. Now that I’ve heard it a good fifty or so times, I feel ready to share with the rest of you.

Andrew and moved away from Huntsville seven years ago assuming we would still be able to find good Christian music. We were wrong. The stations in our area played the same stuff that had been out for ten years or more. So a few years after we left, we were disappointed to return to Huntsville and realize that the same music was playing there as well. There was indeed “nothing new under the sun.” Eventually, we have given up trying really, and stuck with old favorites or, well, with Nichole Nordeman. Beyond that, we tuned out the noise of so-called “contemporary Christian music.”

So I was very curious when BooMama started singing the praises of a group called Monk & Neagle. We missed the first album they released, so I downloaded it from iTunes. There were several songs on there I really liked, more than just the average one or two, and I knew Andrew would love it. It had a bit of a John Mayer flavor to it, but we like John Mayer, so that’s a good thing. And we may be the only people who hadn’t heard of this group until now, but that’s what living in the Beltway will do to a person.

When my new CD arrived, we stuck it in the player and listened to it all the way up the driveway. Then we sat in the car for a few minutes more. The first track on the album, “Beautiful, You,” was a keeper. It’s got a catchy, upbeat tune. And it’s all about the power and the beauty of God. My boys love it. Good dancing music.

We kept right on listening through the next track, “The Twenty-First Time.” Now that song, well, they’re just plain meddling. Very convicting. Talks about seeing Jesus in everyone, even those who are less “desirable.”

The next song, “Hallelujah, Jesus,” is a simple praise ballad. But it’s the simplicity of it that makes it so beautiful. It’s those two words together that sum up our lives here on earth and what is to come. It is all to HIS glory.

The fourth track confused me a bit. It’s a lovely little number about their wives called “Stars Would Fall.” But it’s on their first album. It sounds like they re-recorded it for their new label, and while I like it, I think I would be a bit bummed if I had bought this CD and it had a “duplicate” off their previous album. Doesn’t change my opinion about the song, which is that it’s fun and sweet, but it’s still a question mark.

Track 5 is a tear jerker called “What Soldiers Do.” It portrays a father talking to his son before leaving to war. It’s touching and has a nice melody. I like how he points his son to Jesus, no matter if he returns from war or not.

“Yours Forever” is another catchy ditty about allegiance to God. The whole CD is filled with lovely melodies, catchy hooks, and just some plain fun music. This song isn’t particularly earth-shaking, but it’s cute and a good one to dwell on if it gets stuck in your head, which it will. Because it’s catchy that way.

“More Than That” slows things down again with a contemplative melody and lyrics about how God deserves so much more than we give Him. “So I fall to the ground, because I want to be better.” Yep. It’s a good kick in the seat of the pants.

Track 8 is another love song. Sort of has a reggae kick to it, in an acoustic sort of way. If you know what I mean. A sand between your toes, Caribbean afternoon, feel good sort of song. Andrew approves, and I know any woman would be thrilled to have it written about them. Good to see these artists devoting some attention to their wives. And it’s a good thing they’re already taken, or I imagine they’d have to deal with a lot of single female groupies.

“Fallin’” is a love song to Jesus. Another keeper.

And then we go back to marital love for “Into Orbit,” which is super fun and another great one to blast as you’re cruisin’ down the road with the one who makes your heart go pitter-patter.

The last song is “What Soldiers Do” again. The album cover says it’s a remix. I’m having a hard time hearing much difference. Maybe there’s a mandolin in the back that wasn’t there before and a few more subtle differences. Maybe if I listen to them both more, I’ll hear it. But if you’re going to put a remix on the album with the original, I think the difference ought to be easy to pick up. I still love the song: “Even if you never go to war, you’re a soldier, too. And when you have a son like you, teach him to fight for what is true, because that’s what soldiers do.”

Overall, this album is a refreshing drink in what seems to be a dried up genre of contemporary Christian. The music is top-notch. The lyrics are more challenging than anything I’ve heard in five years. I wouldn’t call Monk & Neagle ground-breaking, but I respect them for producing something with integrity, something that’s more than fluff, something that’s sure to stay on the playlists… for at least ten years or so.

Thanks, BooMama and Sony BMG, for the chance to check out the record and enjoy some good tunes. Keep ‘em comin’.

Go check them out.

P.S. I did email the p.r. guy that sent me the CD to see if I could get any answers to my questions.

No response.

I tried, people, I tried. I went for the journalistic approach and got shot down by “the man.” Oh well. The music is good, the lyrics are sweet, and my toes tap a lot. I’ll keep it the album either way. You should, too.

This book is not for the faint of heart. Women who pick it up, be brave. Prepare to be “thumped.” If you’re at all familiar with the Pearl family, you know that in their various publications on family, they do not pull any punches. Debi’s new revisions to her book for wives is no exception.

Debi leaves little “wiggle room” for excuses from wives not to be obedient to what Scripture says. I was afraid to read it, because I didn’t want to be pushed any further to the “conservative right” than I already was. But it wasn’t really that kind of book. There isn’t much that’s meek and mild about Debi’s approach, or her assertions. We’re to obey our Scriptural mandate to obey our husbands, to honor them, respect them, love our children, and to keep our hearts at home. If that statement makes your toes curl, avoid the book. If it just makes you squirm, maybe you should give it a try.

What surprised me was not the call to obedience, but the freedom that it offers. Despite of, or in spite of our husbands, we are to be obedient to our call to “wife.” It’s very freeing to know that I’m not responsible for Andrew’s response, only my own. I am responsible for my job. If I’m doing my job right, I may reap reward, or I may just have to rest in the knowledge of my obedience. But I’m free from trying to get a certain response from my husband and our children.

This is not a book about how to manipulate your husband to do what you want. This is about how to manipulate yourself into a true “help-meet.” I have a long way to go. But I’d love to talk with other women who are on the same journey. And if you do read this, email me or comment and let me know what you think. This one’s especially good for pondering and pontificating, ladies. Join me, won’t you?

Crossworld: One Man’s Journey into America’s Crossword Obsession

by Marc Romano

I was incredibly proud of myself for reading this book, in its entirety, within a two week timeframe. I think it may be the only non-fiction book, that was non-spiritual, that I’ve ever really finished. I have good intentions when I start these biographies or trivial books of interest, but in my current schedule, good intentions don’t always suffice.

I suppose, then, that I should rate this book five stars just because it held my interest long enough to help me finish it, but I don’t think it really deserves that. It was mildly entertaining, not a screaming page-turner. I like crosswords, and so does the author. That was enough.

Marc Romano explores the world of quasi-professional crosswording. He looks at the competition (there’s only one, really) for what I see as crossword phenoms. He looks at the constructors, the editors, and the special vocabulary only crossworders know. His focus was mostly on the New York Times crossword, which I’ve never come close to finishing, so I had a hard time relating. But I enjoyed peeking into the world of people who are smart enough to finish a Times puzzle.

I think sometimes Romano tried hard to be funny where there really wasn’t a good joke to be had. He was also a bit long-winded in his diatribes on the “tao of crossword.” (This isn’t what he called it, but that’s what it felt like. He called it the psychology of crosswording, or some such. I forget.)

Do I recommend this book? Nope. I should have bucked up and finished some other more worthwhile book. I did learn a thing or two, and I was fascinated, but can’t say that I’d recommend this wholeheartedly. There was some off-color language here or there, so you’ve been warned.

I’ve always thought that a three star rating was pretty wishy-washy. After reading my review, I think I understand why.

Having just finished Gene Logsdon’s ‘The Contrary Farmer’ I thought I would post a quick review. Logsdon is known for his several books and magazine articles discussing his experience farming 32 acres in Ohio in a sustainable, organic, and mostly self-reliant manner.

‘The Contrary Farmer’ is a look at the aspects of Logsdon’s farming method and life. It’s a book of equal parts how-to and nostalgia about farm life, and Logsdon does a convincing job of painting a compelling picture of self-sufficient, down to earth way of life. Typical chapters deal with topics ranging from the economics of his farm to what crop rotations work and why, from the joys of raising many kinds of livestock to what tools Logsdon finds necessary or useless on the farm. While I am not quite ready to quit my job and start raising livestock and grains, it did make me stop and think about not only a different way of life, but also about the assumptions and consequences of my current way of life. I’m still processing through that, so I’m not sure I’m ready to draw any conclusions yet.

Would I recommend it? Yes, I think I would, especially if you had to the time to read a chapter at a time. It was not a book that I would sit and absorb in one sitting, but I did enjoy thinking about another way of life, and one much closer to where I grew up in western Tennessee. I do admit, reading the ins and outs of farm life, I was embarrassed by how little I knew after growing up in a rural community, though I do have a better concept of why a disker is used and how to make hay after finishing the book. A useful and enjoyable book all in one.