Our Daily Bread

Wow, I haven't posted since Monday. That must be because we have been busy doing exciting thing! Or not, LOL. Actually, our week without Nathan and Luke has been quite mundane, filled with trips to Sams and Wegmans, as well as trying to get the basement clean for next week's visit by my sister-in-law and niece. The thrills! I did throw away a TON of old school papers and workbooks, since no one has ever come by looking for proof that Caleb did indeed finish all of Saxon 1, or Nathan did a complete year of Easy Grammer in 4th grade, LOL.

Caleb and Jonathan enjoyed this time of being the biggest brothers. All of a sudden, THEY were the ones the neighborhood boys came to the door asking for! They also got to go play with the sons of our pastor yesterday afternoon.

One new thing we've been trying this week has been baking bread. I've been interested in doing this for quite awhile, but it just hasn't happened. It's hard to find bread with no milk in it for Caleb, and with Melinda coming, who is allergic to soy, this makes it even more challenging to find good bread. I figured it would be so much easier to make our own. We tried a non-whole wheat recipe first, and that turned out pretty well. Then we got vital wheat gluten from Wegmans, and we tried whole wheat bread the next day. It turned out well! It's not Caleb's favorite, but I think he just likes the really fluffy texture of store-bought bread. Our bread really wasn't too dense though. It was good.

The idea is that Luke will become our bread baker, since Nathan is our jerky/dried fruit man. One reason we have never made our own bread is that I really don't need another thing on my list to do. But I bought this MOMYS cookbook from Carri when we were visiting, and one lady who submitted a bread recipe (for her KitchenAid even!) mentioned that her 8 year old son baked all the bread for their family. Hmmm. Luke is 10 . . . We only have a KitchenAid 6-qt. mixer, so we can only make 2 loaves at a time, but that should be enough to get us started. If it looks like we're going to keep at it, then we will buy a Bosch or an Electrolux so we don't have to bake every other day. We're going to need a stronger mixer at some point anyhow. The KitchenAid struggles with the amount of mashed potatoes we do and other things like thick cookie doughs!

One more thing of interest--Bob got an email at the end of the day on Friday saying he needed to call this guy to talk about his assignment. He'll call next week, so I'm guessing we'll know more then about what things are looking like future-wise for us. Be praying!