Busy Busy Week

So many things have been going on in my head this week.
I'm so ready to go back to work and get this nursing thing going.
I've been baking more, experimenting with different breads, and looking for another hobby that I could really enjoy.
I kinda have this thing with pregnancy. It's such a beautiful wonderful time in a woman's life. I had a pretty good birth with my daughter, but it could have been different. I would love love love to have a homebirth, I already know I can deliver naturally! So this has me thinking about becoming a doula.
This opportunity has fallen into my lap recently and I think I'm going to go for it! I plan to go on for my RN, who knows, maybe I'll go to midwifery school. . .

As for today, my beautiful daughter disappeared to her playroom and came down a few hours later.  She snuck into our bedroom and left us this little surprise:

I'm a pretty lucky momma. 

Baking Day

Today is Sunday, it's also baking day. I had quite a late start to the day and didn't get as much done as what I was hoping to. I managed to crank out 2 loaves of sandwich bread, 8 pita breads, a batch of dinner rolls, and 4 pizza doughs. Pretty successful.

The key to any successful day of baking or cooking is a clean kitchen. So step one is to clean your kitchen.  Nothing stops one from having a successful day of baking quite like a dirty kitchen.

This is my kitchen. 

I also have an area above the stove where I keep all my baking goods. 

Try to keep the area well maintained, it's easier to know what you have and 

what you don't if everything is in plain site. 

The next step is to gather all of your supplies. I like to have everything ready so it can just be mixed together nice and quick without searching for supplies. 

Sandwich Bread:

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour (I use King Arthur)

1/2 cup of milk

1/2 to 2/3 cup of hot water (I used 2/3)

4 tbsp melted butter

2 tbsp sugar (organic if you can)

1 1/4 tsp salt

1 packet active dry yeast dissolved in 1 tbsp water OR 1 packet instant yeast

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in mixer with dough hook on low speed (2) for about 5 minutes until dough is smooth.

Lightly grease a separate bowl and place dough in the bowl turning to coat.

Leave the bowl covered with a moist towel for 1-2 hours depending on the warmth of your kitchen.

When your dough is ready it should look like this.

Next:

Lightly grease a clean working area and shape your dough into an 8 inch log. 

Then:

Lightly grease a bread pan and place your loaf inside. 

Cover with greased saran wrap so it won't stick and let rise again for 1 hour.

Your dough should rise about 1 inch above the rim before you bake it. 

The amount of time it takes it to rise will all depend on the warmth of your kitchen. 

When your bread is ready pre heat your oven to 350 degrees (F) and bake for 30 - 35 minutes until loaf is golden brown. I made two batches to last the 3 of us all week long. 

When your bread is done, let it sit for a few minutes to cool down, then turn onto a wire rack to cool. 

After the bread has cooled you can cut it into slices and have a yummy peanut butter and jelly

sandwich. This is in my daughter's lunch for tomorrow. 

This recipe is very simple to make, and extremely delicious. Eating healthy and organically does not cost a lot of money. Plus the satisfaction of creating something from nothing is wonderful! I love knowing what is going into my body, especially that of my daughter. I will post more recipe's in the coming days. Hope you enjoy this delicious bread recipe! 

Organic Eggs

A few weeks ago my husband and I made a visit to our local farmers market. Luckily for us it happens to be just a few blocks away from our house. We try to eat locally as often as possible. We met a woman who has a free range chicken farm right in our home town. I'm not sure how many of you went to all organic and found out a lot of meat ended up being left out of the diet. As for us, my family decided to stop eating even the store "organic meat" because it wasn't how we wanted the animals to be treated. This woman has many mobile houses for her chickens with a huge open yard. Her animals are left to run freely all day and their homes are moved every few days so they do not wear out the grass. A whole chicken in our family can last 3 to 4 meals so the rise in price is well worth it.
On this night we didn't really make many purchases, only some cantaloupe and watermelon. I decided to make homemade perogies when we got home and realized we had no eggs. Luckily for us the farmers market was still open and I was able to buy some eggs. My favorite part of eating organically has to be the pure beauty of the food. My daughter was absolutely amazed at the sizes and shapes and colors of these eggs. So beautiful I had to take a picture of it.

These are the most beautiful eggs I have ever seen. About an hour and a half later we had ourselves some wonderful homemade, completely organic perogies that our daughter loved! She raves about them all the time. Tomorrow is Sunday and is our day for baking. After church we will be coming home to make bread for the week, all our pizza dough, ravioli's and perogies. I will be making a post tomorrow about all our baking and what I like to make for our family.

The finished product.

Anyone else have any lovely organic stories?

Aching for Baby

Last night I was scanning pictures of my daughter as an infant to put on my computer. I found some precious pictures of her and some of me when I was pregnant.

 These pictures were taken the week before I had my daughter. 

I had my daughter when I was 14. She was certainly a surprise, but I have welcomed her and cherished her since the moment I found out. 

This is Emma with her older cousin Lily the day we brought her home. 

 Emma was a wonderful baby, never fussy, always content and slept through the night at 8 weeks old. 

My daughter has always been my driving force in life. She has been such an amazing blessing. 

Emma burned her hands a few days before her first birthday. She suffered severe burns on the palms of both her hands. She spent 12 days at Chester Crozer Medical Center in Crozer, PA. It was a very scary time. Emma underwent two surgeries, the first was integra which is fake skin. They put this on both of her hands, one didn't take and she had to go under again and have skin transferred from her thigh to her hand. She has healed beautifully but it has made me appreciate her even more.

Emma and I when she was 2 years old. 

So last night as I discovered all of these pictures I began to ache even more so for another child. Today my almost 4 month old niece came over to spend the day. When I took her blanket off I saw she was wearing one of my daughter's baby outfits. I remember putting it on her with such love. It's such a precious outfit. 

 (Clearly giving me a thumbs up.)

Reagan Lane is such a sweet baby. She reminds me of my Emma Grace at the same age. So even tempered. Seeing her in Emma's outfit today has made the baby timer tick faster and harder. I can't wait to have another. 

Lessons of a Housewife: Cornbread Muffins

Cornbread Muffin Recipe:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup yellow corn meal

1/3 cup dry milk

1 cup water

1/3 cup melted butter

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1 egg

Mix all ingredients together in electric mixer.

 Pour into greased muffin pan (sometimes it comes out thicker and I use an ice cream scoop so I don't make a mess!)

 Bake at 375 for 15 minutes, or until toothpick in center comes out clean.

 Cool on wire rack. Enjoy! 

Lessons of a Housewife: Pizza Dough

I graduated from nursing school August 5th 2011. After 11 months of non stop school I am finally free to spend time with my family and working on my home before beginning a career in nursing. I started by learning how to make many different things. The first thing I changed over was our pizza dough. Yes, pizza dough. It's actually very easy to make. I love to pre-bake it and freeze the dough for future use so I do not have to make dough all the time. I also make mini dough for my daughter's lunch. This is a very simple recipe:

You will need:
An electric mixer with a dough hook (or you can knead it yourself)
3 cups of all purpose flour or whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup cool water
3/4 cup warm water
1 tbsp active dry yeast (this is one packet)
2 tbsp olive oil

How to make it:
In a medium sized bowl or your mixer's bowl add 1/4 cool water, 1 tsp sugar and 1 packet of active dry yeast. Mix until yeast is dissolved and let sit for 10 minutes until foamy.
Add 3 cups of flour, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp salt,  1 1/2 tsp sugar and 3/4 cool water. You can put the dough hook on and beat on low speed for about 5 minutes or until mixture is smooth and elastic. If the dough is too sticky or not wet enough you can add more flour or water but at very small increments.
Lightly grease another medium sized bowl, place dough in bowl and rotate around to coat. Cover with a moist towel and let sit for 30 minutes.
The dough will almost double in size. Punch down. Lightly grease two plates, cut dough in half and turn to coat on plate. Cover dough with saran wrap and let rise in the refrigerator for 2 more hours.

If you would like smaller thicker pizza you can make the dough after the first 30 minute rise. It is harder to roll out as it is still very elastic and will like to shrink back small.

After the two hours lightly grease a pizza pan, preheat oven to 475 roll dough out and bake for 3 minutes until crust is puffy, add toppings cook for another 6 minutes and done = ]

Sometimes I like to make the pizza a little special by adding 5 cheesesticks around the edges, folding over and pressing down with a fork. This makes yummy stuffed crust. Before you put this in the oven brush crusts with light olive oil bake for three minutes, add toppings and coat crusts again with 1 clove fresh garlic and melted butter. Bake for 6 minutes and you will have a yummy pizza.

This recipe can also be frozen for future use. I like to use a glass pyrex baking dish lined with parchment paper between each layer. Roll dough out on a greased cookie sheet bake for three minutes, let cool and then freeze. It's that simple. You will have to increase your bake time to 10 minutes when preparing the pizza at a later time but this makes pizza time much faster. Did I mention better than order out. You can add any combinations of toppings that you can imagine. This is a great dough recipe. Enjoy!

May God Bless You and Keep You,
Jessica

First Time Post

Well, here it is. After 2 hours of searching for just the right layout to learning how to make a blog, this is my very first post. Please be patient with me as I learn exactly how to work this. I am a mother of a beautiful little girl, Emma Grace, she is 6 1/2 years old and so far my only blessing. 

My husband and I married May 22, 2010, on the most beautiful spring day. 

We have two adorable cats, Jasper and Squirt. 

Slowly but surely we have worked hard to turn our town house into a home of our own. It has been a very exciting journey thus far. Recently we have begun to transform our home even more by changing what we bring into our home. We have decided to alter our eating habits, at least that's where it started. About 2 years ago my husband and I decided that we wanted to lose weight. We went on the standard low calorie diet not really exercising or looking at what forms of food we were putting into our bodies. This did lead to us both losing 20 or so pounds but didn't really make us feel any better. The weight loss stopped, and the junk crept back into our home. In June of 2010 we decided to give it a shot again which worked for all of about 4 weeks, I lost some weight again but still didn't change my actual lifestyle. A few months ago we joined a local gym, began exercising 3-4 times a week and felt wonderful. We were back on our low calorie diet but I was really struggling with this during school. At the time I was in school for nursing and was surrounded by junk food. Added together with the stress of school, home and  the food I was out numbered. I let myself consume the junk food during the day, became very strict at night and all my attempts at the gym were futile. I finally quit all together. Over the last few months however my husband and I noticed that we were having some minor health issues, and our daughter too began struggling with her weight. This is not something I want for my daughter to fight when she is older so I feel it's my place to teach her. So in short we have switched to all organic, and all homemade food. It has been quite an experience. I really didn't think that we could do it at first, but the more we researched the easier it became. I hope my story will help inspire someone else to change their lives and help their family become healthier. This should be an interesting road. 

May God Bless and Keep You. 

Jessica