Food

What can one make with 7 pounds of rice, 6 bags of mozzarella cheese, 1 carton of heavy cream and salmon? And 32 cans of cream of mushroom soup. Ew. No food, no idea what to fix for lunch. I guess the kids will have peanut butter crackers and oranges for the 5th day in a row or pretty close to it. I am having a cup of coffee and the last Aldi brand swiss cake roll for a late breakfast. I should be eating eggs, but I chose sweets and caffeine because I was a zombie this morning. Oh! Eggs! I can make the kids eggs for lunch! If you couldn't tell, it's grocery shopping day.

We just made a cute little craft for Nannie and Pop for Christmas. It's a little box made of craft sticks. I have some more crafts to make before Christmas. We are probably going to make a gingerbread something. A couple of years ago we made a gingerbread train and it was really cute, and easier, I think, than a house. I do want to try a gingerbread house sometime though... Maybe after I get the kitchen sparkling and sanitized I will get the ambition to go forward with the ordeal. Hence the coffee.

Oh and we had hamburgers on homemade buns this week and they were awesome! I don't know if we'll ever buy buns again. We already don't buy bread, but I have been really slacking off on making it, so we have just been doing without. But one night this week I wanted burgers so I had to make buns, and YUM! The recipe was from allrecipes and the bread only had to rise once which was nice, but I think I could actually make buns with any of the bread recipes I already use and I could probably only let it rise once too. Especially my whole wheat bread, it rises so well, I could probably just let it rise once. Okay, here's my whole wheat bread recipe. Usually I just write down the ingredient list and MAYBE fragments to get me through the recipe, but I will try to be thorough for you who may actually try this:

Ingredients
8 c. whole wheat flour
2 packages (5 tsp.) of active dry yeast
2 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. milk
1 1/2 c. water
1/4 c. honey
1/4 c. veg. oil

Although I would feel comfortable substituting some water for some milk or sugar for honey if I was out, or some white flour for some of the wheat or melted butter for oil... I'm getting pretty adventurous with my bread making!

Okay back to the recipe

I use the kitchenaid, but I have made it by hand because it is past the capacity for our mixer.

1. Combine 3 1/2 cups of flour undissolved yeast and salt

2. Heat milk, water, honey and oil until very warm (not boiling!) about 120-130 degrees. Sometimes I use the thermometer, sometimes I just wait until little bubbles form around the rim of the mixture. It's usually pretty close.

3. Gradually add the warmed mixture to the dry ingredients in the bowl already.

4. Beat 2 minutes

5. Add 1 cup of flour and beat 2 more minutes.

6. Stir in rest of flour and knead 6-8 minutes

7. Let dough rise until doubled 45-60 minutes

8. Shape dough and rise again until doubled, 30-60 minutes.

9. Bake at 375 degrees for 35-45 minutes, or until it looks and sounds done.
Although if you use all whole wheat flour the bread is really dense so it takes
a bit longer than you might be used to if you use a mixture of white and wheat.
If it looks done, I usually give it a few more minutes. Sometimes I slice into
it and it's just not quite done in the middle, but we usually just eat it
anyway.