Courageous Joy: Apr 19, 2007

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Whole Wheat Garlic Cheese Dinner Rolls (big recipe)

Crystal Miller

2 cups water (1 3/4 water 1/4 milk)

3 T melted butter

3 t. salt

6 T cane juice crystal’s (Rapadura)

¼ cup powdered milk (skipped)

1/3 cup gluten flour
5 to 5 ½ cups whole wheat bread flour
2 T dry yeast
½ cup butter

2 to 4 T minced garlic (I used dried)

Parmesan cheese (I used fresh)

In mixer add water, 3 T melted butter, salt, cane juice crystal’s, powdered milk, yeast, gluten flour and bread flour. Knead and add more flour if necessary. Allow dough to rest for about 15 minutes.

Divide dough into 48 pieces. I do this by cutting the dough in half with my kitchen scissors and then each half, in half again. Now you have 4 parts and each will make 12 rolls. With one piece of this dough, cut it in half, and both halves cut again. Now each piece can be divided into 3 pieces. This helps the rolls to be more of an equal size. I then repeat the process with the other 3 sections of dough.

Put the rolls on a lightly greased large jelly roll pan. Melt the ½ cup butter and mix in the garlic. Spoon this over the rolls in the pan. Now sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Let rise until doubled in size.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Chocolate Rolls

Crystal Miller

2 pieces of dough and rolled out each one.

Melt: ¼ cup butter and added 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder and ½ cup Rapadura

Pour on rolled out dough.

Sprinkle ½ C Chocolate Chips on the dough

Roll the dough up and cut it into slices like cinnamon rolls.

This filled up a large jelly roll pan. I baked them for 25 minutes.

Delicious Whole Wheat Bread - makes 2 loaves2 cups warm water
1/3 cup honey
1 T yeast
1/3 cut olive oil
2 t. salt
1/3 cup gluten flour
5 to 7 cups freshly ground whole wheat flour

In a large bowl or in a large mixer (such as a Kitchen Aid or Bosch type) combine the water, yeast and honey. Let sit for a few minutes to give the yeast a chance to start working. Add the salt, oil, gluten flour and 3 to 4 cups of whole wheat flour. Continue to add more flour until the dough does not stick to the side of the bowl and does not feel sticky to the touch. Knead for 4 minutes in a Bosch mixer or 7 to 10 in other mixers or 10 to 15 minutes by hand.

When dough has finished kneading let it rise once until doubled in bulk (unless you are using a Bosch type mixer and in this case you can skip the 1st rising). Punch down dough and divide it into 2 pieces and form into loaves and set in bread pans.

Let it rise in a slightly warm oven (this means that you turn the oven on for just 2 or 3 min. or until you can feel the heat and then turn it off, if it is too hot then it will kill the yeast) for 15 to 25 minutes or until the dough is ½ inch above top of pan. Turn oven to 350 (without taking bread out) and bake for approx. 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Afternoon/Evening...

We did get six more squares done for our history quilt.

Bus Boycott & Israel's formation

Vietnam war (wall) & School Integration

Moon Exploration & Ummm Stacia's square

Stacia explains to me HOW a paint marker got in her hand and HOW she ended up with such pleasantly pink lips!

Josiah got home from work and suggested taking the three middle children (Arielle, Nolan and Zander) to the movies. The thought was that Stacia and I could nap. What a great idea! Turned out Zander opted to stay home....and then changed his mind after they left....leading to great lamenting...leading to Stacia waking up....

I fixed meatloaf and grilled some corn on the cob, answered a few phone calls, read SHS mail, collected a few baskets for tomorrow. The rest of night we'll read a chapter for Jamin's book, set up co-op tables and baskets and finish up the co-op newsletter.....

ALICE SPRINGS CHICKEN:

This is a clone of the dish by the same name which is served at the Outback Steakhouse.

4 chicken breasts
4 slices marbled cheddar and swiss cheese
1 cup mushroom
4 slices bacon (I left this out)
honey mustard dressing for dipping

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. On each piece of chicken, carefully layer the mushrooms first and then the bacon (position the bacon on the mushrooms so that it holds them in place).
3. Cover and bake for 30-45 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.
4. Remove from oven, add cheese and bake for 15 minutes uncovered.
5. Serve with a side of honey mustard salad dressing for a real treat.

HONEY MUSTARD DRESSING:
1 1/2 cups real mayonaise (veganaise - no cholesterol)
1/4 cup Grey Poupon
1/2 cup honeyCombine and let sit for 2 hours or overnight. Serve with Alice Springs Chicken.

*THIS is my favorite dish at Outback (though our Outback has CUT BACK on their servings and I'm not sure I'll be going there much any longer). When I saw this on Cindy's blog, I knew I would eventually make it. ::snort:: You'll want to go to her blog to see photos...my crew tends to attack the food before I get it photographed!

I LOVE the sauce at Outback and laughed when I saw the recipe. I happened to have made my
Honey Mustard Dressing yesterday and noted that it seemed similar when I made this dressing last night. Sure enough...less mustard, more veganaise....

YUMMMM

School Today

Thursday is really the last "full day" of school for Arielle and Nolan. The older boys try to get some school done on Friday - but because of Produce Co-op we don't get a LOT done.

I can't believe that our math u see arrived yesterday afternoon. Wow. I ordered it on the 17th and it arrived on the 18th! Now THAT is great customer service. Of course, it turns out they ARE a TX company. ::snort:: Jared began Epsilon. He watched the first lesson and said, "Ah - I think I get it". Fractions have been a consistent problem for him. He went on to complete 5 worksheets and ACED them all. I gave him the option of taking the tests and skipping the work, but he wants to do the work. I told him to work 30 minutes a day and do as much as he can in that 30 minutes (Saxon took 1 - 1 1/2 hours a day). Arielle, Nolan and I began learning the skip counting songs. I don't think we'll ever be able to sing some of these hymns in chapel again without laughing. Arielle is on lesson 9 and Nolan is going to begin on lesson 1. He CAN do the work but I have to explain how every time...so he needs to start at the very beginning...a very good place to start. ::snort::

They zipped through their independent work. I can't believe that Nolan has lost his raceway book and reader 17 - again! I have spent the week looking for this. I hate to buy another workbook for this - but I hate to not do it either. We've spent the week reading other books I found at the library and doing Explode the Code. I'm really excited to check out Character Quality Language Arts. Thanks again, Lisa for mailing it to me to check out. I KNOW that we are doing writing, spelling, grammar...but the idea of integrating them and doing it AROUND a character study really appeals to me. I could make up my OWN units on various character traits that are part of our "parenting projects" but I'm wondering......We shall see.

*Praying Mantis* by Rebecca Stefoff - this is a COOL book. I did not plan on using ANY text book for science with my younger ones. I really believe in lots of hands on experiments, activities and nature studies for elementary age. These younger two, however, saw Jared's apologia book and wanted to do it with him....and so we've been using Apologia's elementary books. They are written around Charlotte Mason principles and so they are a great compromise between my idea and their desires. ::snort:: However, sometimes I simply have to go to the library and find tons of real living books on the topics we are doing in Apologia. This is one such book. I would class this as a LIVING BOOK. It's interesting, lots of facts, great photos and the author obviously loves his topic. This was an easy read today and we had lots of fun talking about various mantis', stick bugs etc that we've seen since moving down here. I plan to add some of the lap books that Cyndi Kinney has made that go along with the Apologia Elementary books. I think that will give us the best of both worlds. Hands on and fun for ME and the structured text book that Arielle seems to thrive on. If you are interested in the lapbooks you can either google Cyndi or follow the homeschoolestore link in my side bar....they are the "pick of the week". I know I COULD make up our very own lapbooks, and maybe we will some day, but for now I'm thrilled to find kits. ::snort::

Josiah was supposed to have today off...but called in. He asked me if I had something he had to do....and we couldn't think of a thing...so he went in. Then I thought, "you know he's in high school - he has SCHOOL to do and if he doesn't want to go in when called again THAT is enough reason to tell them to ask one of the older managers to come in." ::snort:: So....he has the van...and I forgot about getting the other boys to their ministry location today...::snort:: Cy REMEMBERED and is running home to drop them off quickly...

The younger ones and I are home bound - think we'll work on some quilt squares. We've finished 3 weeks of TOG this week. We're on a roll. It helps that they are weeks without a lot of resources listed. ::snort::