e is for elaine

Elaine is a great addition to the kitchen. She loves to be in there with me while I cook and I enjoy her little commentary. It took a little while, but once she entered the world of solid foods she couldn't get enough. She loves to try new things and is rarely disappointed. Her favorites are fruit and oatmeal and rice. She does amazingly well chewing all types of food with those four little teeth of hers. My fingers can testify that they are certainly sharp enough! About a month ago I decided to try grinding oatmeal into a finer consistency for her. I stuck it in my magic bullet, which I love, and it worked beautifully. Then I got adventurous and tried adding some dried apples to it. It smelled so good I was ready to try some myself. She ate it up and it's so easy to store in those little magic bullet cups. That is one of my favorite kitchen appliances.

d is for dessert

D is almost always for dessert at our house. I love treats. I love making them, eating them, and giving them away. I love to make pretty food, and this almost always means something sweet to me. Last night we had a family over for dinner and I decided to make a fruit pizza. I have made this lots of times and several different ways and I almost always get asked for the recipe. I just combined a few different recipes to make up this one. It's really versatile and really tasty. Last night I made one big pizza and actually baked it on my pizza stone. It worked great. I had to take something to a baby shower once and decided to make individual size pizzas to take for that. I did those little ones again for our young women at New Beginnings this year. I made it once to take to a friend and used my spring form pan for a mini size pizza. They all worked great. You could make some cute ones with flower shaped cookie cutters. Hmm... I may have to try that soon.

Crust: (use your favorite sugar cookie recipe, here's one of mine)

1/2 butter

1 cup sugar

2 3/4 cups flour

1 beaten egg

Blend butter and sugar thorougly. Add flour and beat thoroughly. Add beaten egg and blend.

Shape and bake at 400 for 10 minutes.

(Does anyone else LOVE how few ingredients there are in sugar cookies??)

Frosting:

8 oz. cream cheese (feel free to use light, or fat free)

2/3 cups sugar

juice of 1 orange (you could use 3 Tbsp. or so of oj from concentrate too)

You just bake the crust as you want (one large crust, a few smaller pizzas, or cookie size) and let it cool. Then top it with the frosting and decorate with fresh fruit and berries as you like. It's delicious and nutritious!

c is for caleb

Caleb is in my kitchen as we speak. Here's a little commentary from him...

"I like basketball. My name is Caleb. I am good at basketball. I am going to mow today. I'm tan. Our kitchen is painted green. I like to eat granola in our kitchen. I go to basketball on Saturdays usually."

Love my Caleb.

b is for bread

About two years ago I decided I was done buying bread. I was going to stretch my dollar a little further by making the effort to make all our bread. Then I got pregnant and that little extra effort went down the tubes with everything else I let slide when I'm sitting on the couch trying not to be sick every day. So, I'm back on the wagon now. I've been making all our bread for about a month now and I'm still not pregnant, so I'm hoping it continues for a while. I even make our tortillas and hamburger buns from scratch, but that's another post. Today I'm going to share one of my favorite bread/roll recipes. It's from my Grandma Doxey, who is pictured above with my mother, me and my two daughters. Four generations in one super-comfy 1 1/2 chair. Anyway, it's in her cook book that we got about two years ago for Christmas. Here it is:

Grandma Lou's White Bread (which I make into wheat bread )

Combine:

2 Tbsp. yeast

1 cup warm water

1/4 cup canola oil

1/4-1/2 cup sugar

Let that rise and bubble for about 10 minutes and then add:

1 Tbsp. salt

1 cup hot water

2 cups white flour

3 cups wheat flour

Mix until the dough pulls from the sides of the bowl, adding more wheat flour as needed. Cover and let rise until double in bulk. Form 2 loaves and place in greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 until golden brown, about 25-30 minutes.

It always turns out good. I often mess with the wheat:white flour ratio, so you can be creative. We eat it as toast for breakfast, "butter-jams" for lunch (William's favorite way to say pb&j), and with soup for dinner. It's a staple around here lately.

Here are just a couple of other things I do when I make any bread:

1. Before I let the dough rise in the bowl I take it out and pour about 1 Tbsp. oil in the bowl. Then I add the dough and turn it to oil all sides. That keeps the dough from drying out while it rises. I always cover my bowl with a clean dish towel. My favorites are the ones my mom sent me from Russia.

2. I grease the loaf pans by spraying them with non-stick spray. Then I sprinkle cornmeal on the bottoms and tap it onto the sides (like flouring a cake pan). It really helps the loaves not stick to the pan and come out prettier.

3. Only add as much flour as is absolutely necessary in a bread recipe. The softer the dough is, the better it will taste and the longer it will stay soft. You know the homemade bread that is delicious right out of the oven and painfully dry 24 hours later. This helps eliminate that problem. It gets better and better with practice too.

4. Tapping on the bottom of the loaves after you remove them from the pans will tell you if they're done. They should sound hollow inside. Don't leave them in the pans long at all or they'll get soggy on the bottom.

5. To keep the tops of the loaves soft and protect the fragile corners, I take a stick of margarine and unwrap it until about a tablespoon is exposed. Then I rub that along the tops and down the sides of the loaves where it crumbles most when it's sliced. It doesn't add much calorically, but it helps with the softness. I usually end up using less than one tablespoon to soften both loaves.

I think a lot of people are really intimidated by the idea of making bread. If you are one of those people I think you should give this recipe a try. Let me know how it goes. And let me know if you have a recipe you love. Sharing makes everything more fun... That's what I tell my kids, at least.

a is for apple

Most days my kids enjoy apples with their lunch. Not too long ago I decided to save a dollar or two on a bag of apples by getting Red Delicious instead of Gala. I thought maybe I'd just been kidding myself that there is that big a difference between the two. So we pulled them out at lunch time and after one bite I knew I had made a three pound mistake. I do not enjoy Red Delicious apples. Being the sneaky mom that I am, I cut the skins off and fed them to my kids until they were gone. That still left me apple-less for about a week. After I had my fourth baby I remember eating at least one whole apple every day for about two weeks. They tasted so good and I didn't have to worry about them bothering my sensitive pregnant stomach. They were, of course, Gala apples.

Have you ever tried a Honeycrisp apple? It's like Heaven...

Lucky for me, apples also make great snack projects. You can see just a few examples in these pictures. You can make a dog using raisins and cheese. You can make lady bugs with peanut butter and raisins. We even made Lightning McQueen with marshmallows, peanut butter, and raisins. The possibilities are endless!

hello from the kitchen

There are only two options: you are here by accident or because you read our family blog. Either way, I am happy to have anyone here. Mostly I am happy that I am here. This blog is just for me and it's about my life. Yes, you may have guessed from the title, I live in my kitchen. It's where I cook, plan, eat, clean, serve, and talk. I love to read calm and casual cooking blogs. I don't like all the hype and I don't like things complicated. This will be a simple record of recipes I love and recipes I've never tried before. It will display pictures of my family enjoying or hating the food I cook. It will be a log of my successes and failures as I try to take care of my family's most basic needs. Most of all, it is an experiment. So in a couple of months I may reread this introductory post and laugh because I created a very different animal than the one I set out to make. Oh well. My family will still be fed. We'll keep it simple and see where that takes us.