Easter Break

We are on Easter break this week from homeschool work.  Mary is having lots of fun.  Her piano teacher has this little adorable dog, Bella.  She is Pomeranian and Shi Shitzoo.  She reminds me a lot of our dog, Mackie, only she has a much softer bark.  lol  Mary just loves her and when we were at her lesson at her teachers house, Bella jumped up on the piano bench next to Mary and put her little paws on the keys and looked at Mary's music.  So cute!  Mary is practicing a piece called, "Green Frog Hop".  It is a very cute and whimsical piece that I will be doing an accompaniment with her and then Rich will be adding in a a wooden Ribbit sound with a little wooden frog we got a couple of years ago.  Mary is so excited to do a family piece at the recital. 

We have been reading the book, "The Secret Garden".  Mary fell in love with the story and would sit on pins and needles for me to read each new chapter.  So we decided to do her school room bulletin board like the Secret Garden.  She had so much fun making the different paper flowers.  We also have been working out in our garden.  Our Sugar Snap Peas that we planted in our last post, are coming up.  We cut down our grapevine that we brought up from California.  Our neighbor's fish pond right over the fence made it too damp and the vine kept being damaged by the mildew that grew on it.  So we cut it down.  We had it there for 9 years and the trunk was huge!  We transplanted our smaller Thompson Seedless Grape vine that Rich started from a cutting a few years back.  We planted up by the front fence where it is nice and dry.  It is a good little producer so we are excited how well it will do in it's new spot.  Slowly but surely we are getting our garden into shape.  We have been loving the spring weather with light rains and lots of sunshine.

 

Mary is doing well with her guitar lessons.  She has been borrowing her teachers classical guitar.  We were so happy that her teacher was able to find a really nice second hand guitar for $80!  As you can see by the next picture she was just a little bit excited.

 

Rich has started making homemade sausage and it is so yummy.  He has made breakfast sausage and Italian sausage.  He uses top grade pork loin and grinds it up really fine in the food processor and then adds the spices.  It is soooo much better than the store bought sausage that is full of fat and preservatives.  He has been looking around for an American Made meat grinder but they were all over $100.  So he went to Ebay and found this Chop Rite American Made grinder for 25.00, such a deal, pictured below.  He is so excited.  Now is he going to make summer sausage and pepperoni sausage.  I will use the pepperoni in my pizza bread recipe.  I will share the recipe for that maybe on my next post.

 

 

Our sewing project this week is to make some summer shorts for Mary.  When we went to the fabric store it was so hard to pick from all the lovely spring prints.  We finally decided on a denim, 2 plaids and a cherry print.

Sugar Snap Peas

We have been having some glorious spring weather.  It has been a little warmer and dryer than usual but we got some much needed rain here and snow in the mountains this weekend.  Rich has been working the soil in our back yard near the fence to plant some sugar snap peas.  He loves the peas that grow in a delicious pod that can be used in stir fry and other dishes.  We sprouted some seeds a few days ago and then today we planted them.  We went to the Grange Co-op and bought some really good soil conditioner.  We have good soil with lots of earthworms but it is a little heavy on the clay.  So, we got some conditioner to add some fertilizer and lighten the soil up a bit.  We had a light rain after we planted, so that should really help things a long.  We are going to have them vine up the fence.  Mary gets so very excited when we work outside and plant things.  I can remember the same excitement as a child when my folks planted the garden.  She is such a big help to us.  She weeds and picks up old chucks of grass and clippings and puts them in the green bins.  She saves a lot of our back muscles by doing all that stooping.  lol  We are hoping for a bumper crop of peas!

 

Birthday Blessings

I had a wonderful birthday. We celebrated it a day early as Monday is Rich's day off. He and Mary spoiled me with some new clothes and a movie. Rich, Mary, the folks and I all went out to Olive Garden for lunch. I will enclose some pics of my day and also some pictures of the bread I baked with the improved sourdough bread recipe that I wrote about in my last post. This is the second batch I have made since I changed it a little and it is working out really well. I like how it rises higher now but still has all the wonderful goodies in it that is so good for your tummy!

 

 

 

Sourdough Bread Recipe

I want to share my latest changes to our sourdough recipe.  This has been a 2 year journey.  Rich made the starter in January of 2013 and we started making buns and cinnamon rolls.  Last year I wanted to start making loaves.  I used the same recipe as the buns, but it didn't have a lot of lift, so our bread was pretty yummy but a dense bread.  We enjoyed it because of the flavor and that it was really good for you.  I made some cinnamon bread and learned that rolling the dough out thin, spreading egg white on it and sprinkling is generously with cinnamon worked the best.  All my little technics came from trial and error.  I got some info from the internet but most of it I discovered on my own.  I am writing this all down for Mary.  I wished I could of learned this from my mom but most bread making art was lost because of the commercial breads.  Well, about a month ago I started adding extra yeast to give it more lift and then I thought how wet the dough was, which made the bread moist but it was too heavy.  So instead of adding 2 cups of starter, I just added 1 cup of starter and kept everything else the same.  I hit the jackpot!  The bread would rise quickly and dome up above the bread pan and still kept its wonderful ability to stay fresh because of the benefical bacteria that kills mold.  It has a wonderful, tender quality with just a tiny bit of tang.  So, I think I have finally found what I was looking for.  So without further ado I will post the recipe:

 

Sourdough Bread Recipe
Ingredients:
1/2 cup of real butter
1 cup of milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 eggs
1 cup sourdough starter
3 3/4 cups white unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsps of proofed bread yeast (put in a 1/4 cup warm water and let it foam up)

 

Combine milk and butter in a glass cup and heat in the microwave for about 1 minute 40 seconds, stir milk to get all the butter to melt.  Put 3 eggs into a small bowl and whip with a fork.  Add the eggs to the milk.  The cold eggs will bring down the temp of the milk (this mixture needs to be 110 degrees or lower or it will be too hot and kill the yeast in the starter).  Add 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.  Put in a bigger bowl and add 1 cup of starter and the proofed yeast and mix it, then add 1 cup of whole wheat flour and one cup of white flour and mix. Put this mixture in a the bread machine pan, Then put the remaining 2 3/4 cups of flour in and set the machine on the dough cycle. Make sure the machine completely mixes the wet material with the flour.  Once it is finished put the dough into a greased glass bowl, cover with foil and let it sit in the fridge over night.  The next day take the dough out, flour the board and roll out each half to about 1/4 inch thickness and then roll up and place in bread pan that has been greased with butter.  This makes a nice even lump.  If I want to make cinnamon bread, I cover the dough after I have rolled it out with egg white and then sprinkle generously with cinnamon and then roll it up and put it in the bread pan.  Put pans in a cool oven with a bowl of hot water so that the dough can rise for an hour or so or place it on the counter with a heating pad on high under it and cover it with a damp cloth.  Make sure the cloth does not touch the dough.  I have a wire rack I put over the bread pans that holds the damp cloth and keeps it from touching the dough.  It should almost double in size.  Take out of the oven.  Heat the oven to 350 degrees and bake the bread for about 30 minutes or until dark brown on top.

 

Beginning Guitar Lessons

Mary and I are so excited to start guitar lessons. We gave her a child's guitar for Christmas. I talked to her piano teacher about finding a guitar teacher.  Turns out that her son's major in college was guitar and he teaches.  So we set up lessons.  It took quite a few weeks to begin as working out a time, then being sick and then he was sick.  So all that to say we started lessons last week.  I was able to get a guitar and a really great close out price.  So we are learning together.  I also have a video of her playing.  She is using her teacher's guitar.  He took hers this week to put nylon strings on it and make it a little easier to play.  He is a great guy, has kids Mary's age and is a Christian.

  

 

Here is the link to the video: http://youtu.be/e7AoNiA7PnQ

 

 

Field Journal

Mary has fallen in love with the idea of making a field journal. She has been watching a Disney movie about the fairy, Tinker Bell, meeting a little 9 year old girl that loves fairies. With the help of Tinker Bell the little girl, Lizzy,  makes a field journal about fairies. It is a wonderful story of trust and friendship and love.  Such a great story. 

 

Mary made one entry of our visit to Lithia Park last Fall and then she made an entry of what she found in our back yard yesterday.  She was so pleased to find 2 ladybugs and some wild flowers already beginning to bloom.  Spring is just around the corner!

Valentine's Weekend

We had fun Valentine's weekend.  Rich worked Saturday morning, so I made a surprise Valentine's breakfast for Mary with heart shaped eggs and eggs in a nest.  She was thrilled.  That evening Rich came home with flowers, candy and cards for us.  He also brought a shrimp ring.  So we enjoyed the cup cakes she frosted and decorated and had shrimp and sparkling grape juice.  I got Rich the Hobbit music sound track CD and Mary got the musical, The Music Man.  So after our desserts and shrimp we watched the Music Man.  Today for lunch Rich and I went out to Roadhouse Grill and had a great Valentine's weekend special there.  Mary had lunch with Grandma and Grandpa and then she is spending the night and she is so excited!!