Whole Wheat Pita Bread

The Girls call this Puffy Bread!

Yield:

8 whole pita pockets (or 16 halves)

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup gluten*
1 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast

Instructions:

1. In a large bowl, combine first 4 ingredients. Add the gluten and 1 cup of the flour, along with the yeast, and stir to mix. Add remaining flour and knead to make a soft dough. (Add additional flour if necessary during kneading.)

Alternately, if you have a bread machine, you can put the ingredients in the pan in the order listed and use the dough cycle. Skip to step 3 if using your bread machine! :)

2. Put your dough into a bowl, lightly oil the top, and cover. Set in a warm place to rise, until almost double (about an hour). I like to turn my oven on for a minute or two, then turn it off, and let the dough rise in there, since our house is cool.

3. Punch dough down and turn onto a lightly floured surface. Using a sharp knife, cut dough into 8 equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball. On a lightly floured surface, roll each ball into a 6- or 7-inch circle.

4. As you roll the rounds, set them aside on a lightly floured countertop or table, and cover loosely with a towel. Let rise for about 25-35 minutes, until slightly puffy. (The rounds will still be thin though! :D)

5. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Place 2 rounds, side-by-side, onto a wire rack, such as is used for cooling things. Place rack in the middle of the oven. Bake for 4-5 minutes, until puffy and just slightly browned. (If bread is too browned, it will be dry and not pliable.)

6. Remove rack from oven and immediately wrap/layer pita breads in a damp towel, to soften. Continue baking the remaining breads, layering them between damp towels as soon as they're baked. Allow breads to completely cool.

7. Cut pita breads in half, or split the top edge, and fill as desired. :)

8. Store pitas in a plastic zipper bag in the fridge for a few days, or place in the freezer for longer storage. To re-warm pitas, wrap them in a damp towel and then wrap in foil. Place in a warm (200-250 degree) oven for about 20 minutes.

Apple Pie Muffins

Apple Pie Muffins

2 C flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 C applesauce
1/2 C brown sugar, packed and a little heaping
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
6 medium apples, finely chopped

Topping
1/3 C brown sugar
1/2 C oatmeal
1 tsp. cinnamon


Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Then, mix together brown sugar, eggs, vanilla and applesauce. Add diced apples to the flour mixture, and pour the applesauce mixture into the same mixture. Stir to moisten the dough.
Fill muffin tins 3/4 of the way full with muffin dough. Mix together topping of oatmeal, brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl, and spoon onto the top of the muffins. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 375 for 15-20 minutes, until muffins are golden brown. Allow muffins to cool in the muffin tin for 10 minutes before removing to cool on a wire rack.

from joyinmykitchen.blogspot.com

GIVEAWAY LOVE!

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It is about babysteps

Sometimes I like to beat myself up mentally about all of the things that I'm not doing, especially when it comes to my family. I should keep the house cleaner, I should be serving more vegetables, I should be teaching Birdy to read, the list goes on.

I try to tell myself that I can't do everything, and I can't be perfect, even though I'm an oldest child, and perfectionism is my disease of choice. I have to do what I can and leave the rest in God's hands. It's about learning to let go.

Amazing Maple Syrup Deal!

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We Drink Raw Milk

In my quest for real food, I've learned to make some concessions. Yes, I am going to pay more for a gallon of raw milk, and I will have to drive a lot further than the local grocery store each week in order to get it. But when I see my daughters looking over the fence and "our cows," I know it is worth it. I know where my milk comes from. I know the lady who milks the cows where my milk comes from. And I know my daughters are getting truly full-fat milk brimming with living nutrients. I call them "milk snobs" because they don't like to drink "store milk" anymore. At ages four and 21 months, they know something about real food. And it is worth driving 40 miles round trip to get it! Go to http://www.realmilk.com/ to find out more!

A Journey

My husband has been urging be to begin a blog for some time now. I thought it wasn't necessary because I would simply be a tiny whisper in the blogosphere: there are far more creative, talented, and knowledgeable people out there who are already blogging. Who have already acquired a measure of fame in their readership. Who have already written books. Who have already been eating healthfully, homeschooling, and birthing children before I graduated from high school. But here it is...my whisper adding to the roar that "already" exists.

What prompted me to finally break down and add my two cents to the roar? Well, I read quite a few blogs myself, and I am always so impressed by how those ladies appear to have everything figured out. They all protest it--they show pictures of their messy closets and the sinks full of dishes; they share stories of sneaking chocolate behind the backs of their kids; they admit they aren't always dressed and ready to go at 6:00 a.m. in the morning--but no matter what, it is easy to get the impression that a blogging lady has it all together. Surely, if she is sharing her latest culinary creation or the newest and best homeschooling invention, she must know what she is doing. I find myself comparing my life to the lives of these (largely invisible) women online. We may choose to write about what we want to write about, and few of us want to share the wrinkles and tear stains and sticky floors of everyday life. So I want to share my journey with you. I want to share the successes and the failures. I want to provide an outlet and a resource for other women on the journey. Women who are making choices to eat better and keep their children at home. Women who must make choices about whether to buy the conventionally grown strawberries on sale or the weedy-looking organic ones for 3 times as much. Women whose neighbors look at them strangely for deciding to keep her children home with her and educate them in the best way she knows how.

I guess by blogging, I am looking for other women who aren't afraid to be labeled weird. The world may think us crazy, but who wants to be like the world anyway?

“But ye are a chosen generation,a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light ” (1 Peter 2:9)