My son, Sam, is in first grade and their assignment for the Valentine's Day party is to decorate a box to put their Valentines in. Last year, as a first time mom to a school-aged child, I completely forgot about it and he didn't even do a box. We were having a really bad year. So this year, I decided we would do something really fun. Sam loves Herbie the Love Bug and agreed that would be his theme. I got all the supplies together and encouraged him to help me. As it turned out, he was sick this week and never felt like doing much of anything. So here is the box that I made. I'm not passing it off as my son's work. I even told his teacher that I did it and thought I did a great job. Here is Sam with the box, just before I drove it over to his school so his classmates could fill it with Valentines while he was home sick today. He is so proud of the 2 heart stickers he put on for tail lights and the one wheel he cut out.
And to go with the Herbie theme, here is his pinewood derby car (3rd place in his den for speed). His dad did this one - we can't have a 7 year old using a saw, spray painting and using graphite, right?? The pink car belongs to my daughter. She got to race in the sibling race and place 4th out of 26 cars! At some point, maybe they can make their own cars.
An observation from my daughter this morning... she tells me that she thinks she is the healthiest person in our family because the older you are the closer you are to dying.
Yesterday was a snow day for many schools in the Midwest including ours. It is always an exciting day for my 4 year old when her older brother is home from school and she has an all-day playmate. They played all morning and had a great time running through the house making up games while I baked bread.
We took a break from the fun and watched a kids show on PBS about trading up. Some kids started out with a flyswatter and kept trading for better and better items until in the end, they end up with a family 4 pack to a theme park. Sound familiar? Kyle McDonald started with one red paperclip and ended up with a house after 14 trades.
There is something so satisfying about trading something you no longer want and getting something better. The other person gets that same satisfaction. I've traded a toy vacuum cleaner for a beautiful Tommy Hilfiger dress for my daughter. I've traded a bag of flour for a bag of tomatoes - our garden had not produced any enough tomatoes last year and the other person did not have a grain mill. They were both great trades.
My son is jealous of his sister who got a ladybug pillow pet for Christmas. She actually wanted a unicorn. His solution - we took some of his Christmas money and bought a unicorn pillow pet so he can trade her and get the ladybug. That was his idea - he figured he would just get his sister what she wanted and then he could have the ladybug. How sweet is that? They have made their trade and are both sleeping now with their new pillow pets.
My mom mentioned the other day that her mom used to make cornstarch pudding so I decided to try it. Wow! It is great and I know exactly what is in it so I feel better about eating it. Surprisingly, vanilla pudding does not need to be yellow - that is just the artificial coloring added to the store bought pudding. It's amazing what we take for granted when we buy pre-made mixes. I used a recipe from allrecipes.com however I changed it as I made it. Here is my recipe:
Mix all dry ingredients in a stainless steel saucepan (including cinnamon if you want). Add the milk and whisk until dry ingredients are dissolved. It is very important that you dissolve cornstarch into cold liquid. If you heat the milk first, you get lumpy pudding. Heat and stir until mixture is thickened but not boiling. To test thickness, dip a metal spoon into the pudding and if it sticks nicely and doesn't slide off, it's done. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla extract. I always use real butter. Pour into serving bowls. Enjoy warm or chilled.
Next time I will try adding some cocoa to the dry ingredients to make chocolate pudding. If you try adding anything dry like cocoa, make sure you add it at the beginning or it won't mix in well later. If you make this, I'd love to hear what variations you do.
For everyone looking for a bargain, making the pudding mix from scratch costs about 20 cents (not counting the cost of the milk).
My house is a mess as usual so this week I am really going to tackle it and get it under control. I think it is really an attempt to avoid my kitchen/wallpaper/painting project but if it gets my house clean, I'm OK with that. What I really want to do is try making bagels and to make cornbread using cornmeal milled from popcorn kernels but that will have to wait for now.
Now that the newness of making my own bread has worn off, I've gotten into a better routine. I try to only bake once a week since it takes up several hours of the day. I freeze all but what we will eat in 2 to 3 days and then get more out as needed. The other adjustment I've made is to almost always just make rolls. They don't take that much longer to make and they bake faster and more evenly than a loaf. They also don't dry out like sliced bread and aren't crumbly. When I need more rolls out of the freezer, I can just grab a few and put them in my bag on the counter. I can't do that with a frozen loaf of bread. Frozen rolls or bread don't last as long as fresh so I only get out what we'll eat by the next day.
I still love the taste of fresh bread using freshly milled flour but I've really tried to limit my time spent on it now. My kitchen is currently torn up as I'm in the middle of removing wallpaper so I can paint. Here is our latest kitchen masterpiece - my daughter and her friend are coloring on the wall before I remove the wallpaper backing:
I've decided that everything tastes better with freshly milled flour - even the toast I cover with cream dried beef. I grew up eating cream dried beef on toasted white bread and I always liked it but the white bread certainly wasn't contributing to the taste or nutrition. When you use homemade bread, it takes it to a new level. To make mine, I use the white sauce recipe on the corn starch box however I omit the salt due to the salt in the dried beef. I accidentally forgot the butter today and didn't miss it so I will just add a small amount of butter next time - the recipe calls for way more than what is needed. The beef and bread give it enough flavor already. I use dried beef cut fresh from the deli when I can but you can buy prepackaged dried beef if you want to keep it on hand for a quick meal. Make sure you break up the dried beef into bite sized pieces before starting your cream sauce since you need to stir the sauce constantly. Then you can mix in the dried beef at the end. Enjoy!
