The Starving Week...

We jokingly refer to every other week in our house as starving week.  I get money to purchase food every two weeks so right before pay day pickings are pretty slim.  Tonight I was fretting over what to make that would constitute an entire meal and was pleasantly surprised with the outcome:

Wonderful rolls made from scratch by the city daughter who loves to bake,

Salad with produce from our garden and from the farmer's market topped with...

Shredded cheese, nuts and bacon,

Water or Milk to drink

It always surprises me how something comes together from seemingly nothing.  God is good to us!

Tomorrow it will be a beans and rice meal!

I was laughing with my mom tonight that we are becoming vegetarians by budget!

I still have two chickens to make into coq au vin too.

What something do you make out of nothing?

Losing it Mondays!

200 lbs must go!

Hmmm... I have some fat showing too! I'd like to drop 20.

This is the start of my husband's journey to health.  He just entered a weight loss contest at work and weighed in today at 360 lbs. His ideal weight is in the 160's.  That is 200 lbs. to lose folks.  He has been able to lose weight before successfully, however some injuries happened that made working out too painful and he gained it all back.

With the start of this contest and a new shift beginning at work it is ideal for us to begin working out again. And I do mean us... the entire family.  We do it together from John on down to Taylor. I think we will start with walking.  It shouldn't be too hard on the joints and we'll take it slow and build up.  By the time winter comes round we should be in shape enough to start our work out videos and weight training. (This will be on top of any homestead work like chopping and stacking wood.)

We don't have too much of a change diet wise.  We've already cut out most junk food and eating out and I buy mostly whole foods. (I confess to having artificially colored corn on hand for children who immediately want food when they get up.)  We will need to increase our vege intake and watch portion sizes.  One thing John has to monitor on his own is sampling the Costco samples and not being tempted by the food court at work.  The frozen yogurt isn't too bad but calories add up.

I just want to state right now, we will not stop eating eggs from our free-ranging chickens or grass-fed meat, cream and butter.  These things are healthy for you!  I will not buy low-fat anything or diet anything- it's not natural people.  I will cook from scratch the things we like and take a meat on the side approach.  I will practice and perfect catching wild yeast at home and turning it into healthy bread. I also want to research "cleanses"- not the kind bought through a program or a store but made from scratch at home.

I think our biggest challenge is just getting moving and finding more energy. And of course for me... I keep hoping to catch a joy of cooking.  I love to bake and will make loaf after loaf of bread to perfect it but there is something about cooking that just doesn't do it for me.  But I really do need to transform into a chef.  That is unless some one knows Bobby Flay and he wants to just come live with us. We've got a great spot for him in the basement... as long as we aren't working out.

So join us every Monday and see how and what we are doing to make ourselves healthier.  I'll want to know what you are doing too!

Lock Your Doors & Booby Trap Your Porch!

Is this a familiar site in your neck of the woods?

 

Zuke season has arrived and I made the mistake of planting all the seeds in the packet.  I forgot just how prolific each plant can be.  We are bursting with zucchini.   But the fun thing is there is so much you can do with it: quick breads, muffins, pancakes, cookies, stir fry, battered and fried, pickled and on it goes.  We shall not go hungry where there is zucchini.  My freezer will be stocked high!  My chickens will eat well.  And still there will be surplus...

What will I do with said surplus?  Start a cottage industry of course.  Creek Cottage Homestead (The official name of our farm.) is now offering fresh, homebaked, zucchini bread for $8 a loaf for local area pick up.  If you live in the Grand Rapids area you can place an order via the comment section.  If you don't order you run the risk of heaps of huge zukes being dumped in your car when you aren't looking and dropped on your porch steps. (Warning zukes produce like rabbits.) I know where you live! (Well, not really... some of you.) Don't let this be your fate.

Coming soon muffins and cookies and perhaps even cake.  I might try a gluten-free experiment too.  Anyone ever try quick breads with out wheat flour?

What do you all do with your zucchini?  Anyone willing to share recipes?

Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal!

This is the title of the book I'm currently reading by Joel Salatin. I recommend it heartly!

Anyone who thinks we live in a free country or that the American Dream is still within reach needs to read it. Here is my favorite quote so far..."How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convicitonal courage and said to the powers that be, 'No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don't care ifyou fire me, shoot me, pass me over for promotion, or call my mother. I will not participate in this unsavory activity.' Wouldn't world history be rewritten if just a few people had actually acted like individual free agents rather than mindless lemmings?"

My criminal thoughts? I want to be able to bake bread in my own home and... wait for it... SELL IT! How deviant is that!? It is a sad state of being we Americans find ourselves in. We have given ourselves over to the entity that is government. A government that allows women the freedome of "choice" to kill their unborn but not to sell bread from an un-government inspected kitchen. Even if I were to move to one of the few states that do indeed allow this, I'm still probably not allowed to buy or sell milk directly from... wait for it... A COW! The government thinks it's too dangerous. We must make it "safe" first. Thank you, but I think I can make decisions on my own. Certainly there is a place for processed milk but I should be able to buy a gallon of straight from the cow milk if I desire too. When did simple living go the way of the dinosaur?

Homemade Thursday (On Friday)- Daily Bread Part 2

A beautiful finished product

A cup full of ice helps form a crispy crust

Scoring of the bread

Shaped and floured loaf

A baker's best friend- Silpat

My baking set up (I don't have a baker's stone)

As promised here is the second part of my bread post. Yesterday I made the dough and placed it in the refrigerator overnight. This helps develop flavor and makes the dough easier to handle. After taking it out of the refrigerator, I shaped it and floured it right on my Silpat lined baking sheet. Then the bread rests for 40 minutes. While the bread is resting, I set up my pans in the oven: One pan on the bottom to hold ice for steaming and an upside down pan on the rack above to serve as my baking stone. When the pans are in place, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

After 40 minutes have passed, score your bread anyway you like using a serated knife. Quickly load the bread into the oven and toss a cup of ice onto the bottom pan. Shut the door ASAP so the steam from the melting ice doesn't escape. Bake the bread for 20-30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. That's it Folks. Easy Peasy! No more store bought bread for me.

Homemade Thursday- Daily Bread- Part 1

1. Gather what you need

2. Spray a spatula and bowl with cooking spray

3. Get three cups warm water

4. Add 1 1/2 Tbsp. yeast

5. Add 1Tbsp. sugar, stir mixture to incorporate.

6. Let sit until Bloom forms (5 to 10 minutes)

7. While waiting for your yeast mixture to "Bloom" add 6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose white flour to your mixing bowl (you may mix by hand, hand mixer or a free-standing mixer with a dough hook)

8. Add yeast mixture to flour and mix until just blended

9. Add salt and blend just until a sticky dough forms, do not knead (I add salt at this stage rather than earlier to avoid the salt "killing" the yeast and thus preventing a good rise.)

10. Transfer dough to prepared bowl and cover with plastic wrap

11. Let sit for about 2 hours (until dough flattens on top or starts to fall) and then refrigerate for three hours. (This is a sticky dough. The refrigeration will allow you to be able to shape the dough easier. You can shape a loaf immediately though.)

Homemade Thursday is hosted by http://shipfullofpirates.com/

I have found that with this bread recipe I can keep my family in bread on a daily basis. It is easy and requires very little "hands-on" time. Best of all- it turns out great every time! I adapted this recipe from the basic recipe in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Herzberg and Zoe Francois. I've added sugar to it and changed the directions to my liking.

This recipe makes 4 lbs of bread dough (recipe may be doubled also) and may be kept in a refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. You may freeze it also in individual loaf portions.

Check back tomorrow for part two- shaping and baking the loaves. I will also post tomorrow's post to next week's Homemade Thursday.

Lewis Daily Bread:

3 cups warm water
1 1/2 Tbsp. yeast

1 1/2 Tbsp. sugar (I find that my yeast blooms better with some type of sweetner to feed on.)

1 1/2 Tbsp. coarse kosher salt

6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose white flour

See also www.petersonclan.com/2009/02/some-seriously-good-eating.html . She just posted about making the original recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

Current Reading

Slow Cooker Classics (Reader's Digest)- to save time and money and beat the eating out or prepared food habit.

The Bread Bible (Rose Levy Beranbaum)- to master the art and eventually make saleable loaves.

Candymaking (Kendrick & Atkinson)- to master the art and eventually make saleable products.

Total Money Make Over (Dave Ramsey)- to GET OUT AND STAY OUT OF DEBT! Whoo... this is a whole other post.

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm off to bake bread and make some heart shaped sugar cookies for my kids to frost and contemplate what lucious dinner to cook the DH. We're sending the kids downstairs early tonight and having a date/movie night. (Watching Fireproof- for the second time.)

Cake Decorating and Various Ramblings

My twelve year-old daughter's cell phone cake

My four year-old daughter's butterfly cake

My ten year-old daughters flip-flop cake
(My eight year-old son didn't have a cake this year as we took him to Red Robin for his birthday.)

I'm off to take the kids to our church's weekly sledding outreach. (We serve hot cocoa and chips to the sledders and hopefully reach someone in need with the gospel.) I didn't have a chance to experiment with any bread yesterday as we were digging our mini-van out of its snow tomb so that we could take it sledding. (We keep our 4 wheel drive in the garage and my DH takes it to work. I wait till it is available to run my errands when possible.) Hopefully this afternoon when I return I will get a chance to experiment some more. I also have been itching to make some candy... chocolate covered nougat, I think.

Kara S. over at Ramblings and Writings (see my favorites) suggested Grandmother Bread from Suzanne McMinn's blog (Chickens in the Road- also on my favorites) as a good bread recipe so I hope to experiment with it soon. In the mean time I'm going to leave you with pictures of this summer and fall's birthday cakes that the girls and I created. (All inspired by Betty Crocker's book- Decorating Cakes and Cupcakes.)

Also if any of my readers has a suggestion as to what food item might go well with hot cocoa (for the sledding outreach) please leave a comment. We would like to serve more than chips. It should be easy to make and very little in the $$ department. Thanks!

The Budding Bread Artisan

Don't come near me with anymore bread! I will attack!

What I want my bread to look like




What my bread actually looks like



Overbaked and brick like- sigh!

Not bad but not good

Hi all! Among the current bees in my bonnet... besides starting to blog again... is the urge to master bread baking- and I don't mean with the bread machine. I invested in Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible. Wow! A lot of science is in a simple loaf of bread. Could that be why I'm having issues producing a "perfect" loaf? I never was any good at science. Besides a coffee cake (which I don't count because there wasn't any yeast involved) I have not had success with the recipes. I will keep trying!

I'm teaching a Titus Two meeting for my church in February on bread baking so I'm on the mission to find a great basic recipe. I'm turning my attention to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. I have heard about the book and around Christmas I picked up a copy of Mother Earth News (another topic to blog about) because the cover promised easy crusty bread in 5 minutes a day. The article was about and had excerpts from the Hertzberg/Francois book. So I'm going to give their basic recipe a try. I also have a copy of the book on hold for me at our local library.

So this weekend my family gets more bread. They aren't exactly jumping for joy. But I will keep trying until I master this process! People have been baking bread in some form since God created the earth and us so I must be able to do this- right?