Random Happenings

Another Family Day! God has blessed us by giving us each other and we love to spend time with our family. We enjoyed working around the house this morning. Talani cut the grass and edged the yard . . . it looks great! It doesn't seem possible that just a couple of weeks ago the grass was all winter-brown and the trees were bare. Now, we have a lovely green lawn and the trees are growing shady!
I stayed in the house, mostly, and worked in the kitchen. I made a big pot of red beans to use in meals later on in the week. (They take 2 hours to cook, so if I don't make beans on the weekend, we won't be eating any. And beans are too economical and too healthy to just not eat them.) I'll use some tomorrow after the evening church to make red beans and rice with sausage. The rice and sausages are also already cooked, so we'll have a quick supper before the kids have to go to bed. I made chocolate chip pancakes and bacon for lunch. Then, naptime!
After naps, we got ready for the beach. The weather is beautiful today. Warmer than last week and not quite so painfully windy. Apparently, other people noticed the nice weather, too, because the beach was more crowded today than last Saturday. We had a wonderful time flying our kites. . . I think that Talani will blog more about the kite-flying and will include more pictures. I couldn't help but include this picture of Jarod, though. He had picked up a rock to give to his sister, carried it about 3 steps, and decided to throw it in the air. He looks so happy!

I've been reading from the website www.thefamilyhomestead.com lately and have been intrigued by the homestead homemaker's philosophies of healthy eating and economics. She's inspired me to try baking bread. I used to have a bread-making machine, but got rid of it several years ago. I didn't like that the blade used for mixing was embedded in the cooked loaf so you had to rip your bread apart to get the blade out. I had never tried to make bread from scratch before, but last Sunday evening I decided to give it a go. It was tasty . . . and bread is actually surprisingly easy to make. It went so well, that I decided to make a whole batch - 3 loaves - yesterday, since I was home with the kids from school and they were napping. The following picture is the result of that attempt. I only had 2 loaf pans so I made the 3rd loaf into rolls. After they came out of the oven, I rubbed all the crusts with butter (because I remember my mom doing that; I don't know what it does.) and then rubbed the rolls with a clove of garlic and sprinkled a little kosher salt on them. We ate the rolls with our supper last night and they were so yummy. They had just a slight flavor of garlic, and the salt was perfect. We sliced on of the loaves of bread to eat with our fried rice for tonight's supper, and it was so tasty. Really, has making bread always been so easy? It's time consuming with the two rising times, but easy and with relatively little clean up. I should have started baking bread years ago.
Our fried rice was so yummy tonight. Mom, thanks so much for making summer sausage fried rice in North Carolina last Christmas. I never would have thought of that on my own, and now we rarely eat fried rice without summer sausage. I used to use lots of soy sauce and 2 ramen seasonings for flavor, but now only use a little soy and no ramen seasonings. We love the flavor the summer sausage gives and I like that we are not using so much sodium. To the summer sausage, I added 3 slices of left over bacon and 3 eggs. It was just right. (And I had enough rice left over from the pot that I made to use in tomorrow night's red beans, sausage, and rice supper.)
I hope the boys in the family don't mind reading all this kitchen talk. Sorry, guys.


Jarod was much overdue for a haircut, so we finally stopped procrastinating this week. He doesn't like to sit still for a haircut. He keeps trying to turn around to see what's making the buzzing sound against his head. I think he looks adorable all closely cut now. He looks so grown up!

The kids are in bed and dessert (and dinner clean up) are waiting for me! Talani will be adding more pictures and writing an entry shortly. Love you all!