Making Bread

Most Mondays growing up I would come home from school to a clean house, clean bed, a stack of clean clothes to put away and fresh hot rolls. Mom would make rolls to have with dinner for the week. My dad would always sneak a hot one and put butter on it. Mom always said what an easy recipe it is and it is about the only one I ever use.

Quick Butter Fluff Rolls

1/4 cup water
1tbls yeast
1 cup warm buttermilk
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1/4 cup butter/margerine
4-5 cups flour

soak yeast in water
combine buttermilk, sugar, soda, eggs and shortening
add water yeast
mix
add 2 cups flour and beat for 2 minutes
stir in remaining flour and knead till smooth and not sticky

Let rise in warm place till double (best spots: diswasher just after its done running and still steamy warm, oven with light on or microwave, on top of stove if you have a micowave or hood vent with a light)

Roll dough out and spread with melted margerine or butter
Cut into 2" x 4" rectangles then cut diagonally to make two triangles from each rectangle. roll up crescents and place on baking sheet to let rise.
Let them rise again until they look puffy, sharp edges softened
Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes or golden brown.

I use the same recipe for cinamon rolls too, After I butter the dough I sprinkle it with cinamon and roll it up then slice it into 1 " rolls and place them in the to raise then bake. I put 1/2 cup brown sugar mixed with 2tbsp butter and 2 tbsp corn syrup in the bottom of the pan with the rolls on top of the carmel mixture. When I flip the pan over onto foil after baking then the rolls have a nice carmely topping and it is easy.

I was catching up on blog reading and on one I read occasionally I found this great map. It is the history of the middle east in 90 sec. An unbelievable number of kingdoms have risen and fallen and held power over God's chosen people and the promised land. Right now I am studying Daniel in my Bible Study and we have come to the prophecy portion of the book. That will take a while for me to share so for now know that this map is very interesting in light of what Daniel reveals. One thing I found so interesting this week is the statement that Beth made, "For Daniel it was prophecy, for us it is mostly history." Much of the prophecy in the book of Daniel has come to pass, and it came just as God promised. Oh What a God we serve!



Maps of War site

Surprise!

A month ago, my niece got her hair cut. She had really long dark blond hair and it is straight as a stick. It was a tangle nightmare every morning, and really anytime it needed brushed. We had all been talking about Locks of Love for a while and so my sister took J to go get it done one day and presented it as a fait accompli. J colored a picture to include with her ponytail when they sent it off. Je and I have been talking about this for a few months. Sometimes she thinks she wants her hair cut and then she doesn't. Her daddy likes it long. Of course he said the same thing about my hair for YEARS until last May when I chopped it off and he says he likes it better shorter. BTW his opinion was one of the reason's I kept the same hair for the last oh 13 years.

Before that, I just wasn't ready to change it, and he wasn't around before that so I didn't care if he had an opinion, I didn't know him. Je decided last week that she would like to cut her hair for a little girl who needs it. I needed a trim so after our field trip to the pumpkin patch, with Jo still safely at a friend's house, Je and I went to the salon.Behold, NEW HAIR!!!!!
We printed off the donation form, emailed the pictures to the group and packed up the beautiful red 10 inch ponytail. It is as we speak on its way to Locks of Love. I keep telling myself it will grow back. Not that I begrudge her having short hair, its just she had such gorgeous hair and lots of styling options. I know how to do long hair, short hair is new. I HAD LONG HAIR. MY HAIR IS STILL LONGER THAN HERS! I am still learning how to style my new hair 5 months later, I can put in barretts, I can braid, I can even do that pretty halo thing pictured above, I don't know if I can do short hair. I am going to have to practice and five year olds are not known for their patience when it comes to letting their moms do their hair. AT least mine isn't. ARGHHHH!!!!

Ode to Lovies

Yesterday, Jo got some of her donut on Hippo, and she asked me to wash it. It got me thinking about lovies. Each of my children have their comfort items, Je has a bear and Jo has a hippo. They are the head and arms of the stuffed animal with a blanket body. Each child has her name embroidered on the tail of the blanket. The love the satin feel of the ribbon at the neck and along the edge of the blanket. Je uses bear as a pillow, she wipes her tears on him and I think I saw her use it to wipe her nose. You probably can't even make out bear in the picture. I can but I know where to look and what he looks like. He is the barely visible pale cream thing abouve the red hair. Needless to say, Bear is a little bedraggled. Hippo isn't quite as rough but he isn't as old either. My nephew has a dog in the same style and Dog is much much much worse. He almost never lets my sister wash him. My mother usually steals Dog when Si visits and washes him. I try to give the lovies a bath every week or two and the girls look at it as if their Lovies are getting a bath. They are pretty okay with the concept, so their lovies smell good most of the time and while I have had to resew the ribbon on Bear's neck about five times; he looks pretty good for 5. Lovies are crucial, I give them as baby shower gifts. My mother saw how expensive it was to buy the lovies that all of her grandchildren prefer and started making some. I firmly believe that every little one should have some kind of comfort thing. The other day we had several errands to run in the morning before meeting my mom for a shopping trip to KC and I picked up Bear and Hippo for the trip since if the girls are in the car for an hour in the afternoon a nap is a possibility. Jo knew what Hippo meant, and said that we didn't need to bring him because she didn't want to take a nap. Hippo and Bear are big signals for the girls that they need to settle down and rest. I never had any trouble getting them to sleep away from their beds if I had Bear and Hippo. Give them a binkie and their lovey and they settled in for a nap anywhere. Now that they have given away their binkies (remind me to share the very successful method we used), they rely on their lovies even more. Now it does require me to be vigilant in keeping track of these things but we also have a back up item or two that would do in a pinch. Every little needs a lovey, it makes for easier toddlerhood. We love our lovies!

The Easiest Supper Ever This Side of Take out

For Je's birthday she requested her favorite dinner, white noodles. That is Chicken Alfredo. It is so easy that I cannot believe to credit I get for this meal. I normally keep the stuff on hand but we were out of sauce so I stopped by the grocery store on the way home from bible study. I got the three crucial ingredients, chicken, sauce, and noodles. I like to buy the grilled chicken breast off the salad bar at my grocery store because it is easy and fairly economical. You pay the salad bar by the pound price (3.99 at Dillon/Krogers) but you don't have any waste. The chicken is trimmed, the waste is cooked out and it is already cut up so it is the easiest thing in the world. I keep some in those vacuum packs in the freezer for alfredo or quesadillas or fajiatas. I got a new vacuum sealer for my birthday so I am excited about that but before I borrowed my moms. Before that I just used a zip lock and labeled it carefully with the date. The surplus grocery in North Topeka used to carry huge packages of frozen alfredo sauce. We think they were Olive Garden surplus but recently they raised the price and stopped having it as often. I found that the Ragu alfredo is pretty good so I bought some jars of that. It was on sale this week. Now I am not a jar sauce kinda girl. I make my own tomato sauce every summer for spaghetti and chili but alfredo sauce is complicated and a jar is pretty good for this thing. I let Je pick out some fun noodles to put with the meal and we were on the road. I got some garlic bread for good measure. At 5:25 I put the water on to boil. I warmed up the sauce, added the chicken and got the bread ready to heat up. I fixed some peas from the freezer for a vegetable. At 5:50 I poured the sauce over the noodles and set them on the table. So in twenty-five minutes and probably less if I watched the water more carefully or didn't try to boil the whole bag, I had a good dinner on the table and my kids had their favorite meal. They always ask for at least seconds and often thirds. If I were really organized, I would grill extra chicken breasts when we grill and then chop them for freezing, and I do sometimes but recently, I've found it too easy to get it already done at the store and have them on hand. That and usually any extra grilled chickens get eaten for leftovers before I get them into the freezer. My husband loves leftovers for lunch at school.

Voila'! The easiest supper ever and I didn't have to call for pizza. Plus, everyone thinks you've worked hard. (Except for my mother who knows how easy this is since it was her idea)

The Lull

Today is the lull in the storm. The first week of October brings birthday extravaganza to my home. Three of the four of us have a birthday in the first four days of this month. It was almost 4 of 4 but Jo was born 6 weeks early. Oct. first is Shan's birthday, my birthday was yesterday the second, and Je's birthday is tomorrow, the fourth. She was due on the third but labor went long. I like to think of myself as 28. That is the year I had my first child, two days after my birthday (which I spent on bed rest for pregnancy-induced high blood pressure), and stopped really having a birthday. Maybe when my girls get old enough to know about other people's birthdays they will remember mine. We had company for the weekend, my mother-in-law came to celebrate the birthday. The inlaws never visited on birthdays before we had children. We went to dinner with the whole family just for fun. On a whim we went to see Cars at the cheap movie theater. Definitely worth seeing, we've gone twice now, but at $1.50 it is pretty cheap to see a movie. Yesterday we had a family birthday supper at a local restaurant. Je chose "the big 'Old MacDonald's" with the playground". Such a treat for us grownups. It has an indoor playland and the echoing gave us all a headache. There was a boy in there for a while, unsupervised, who kept shrieking and screaming. My brother-in-law told him to quiet down and he ignored him. Seth is a quiet laid-back kinda guy. A few minutes later I hauled out my teacher/lifeguard voice and got his attention. He immediately stopped and not to long later left. Tomorrow we are planning a quiet family dinner night at home to celebrate on her actual birthday. Now I need to go make butterfly cookies for treats at pre-school. Like I said, a lull.