Honey Whole Wheat Bread

This is a recipe for homemade bread that my Mom used to make when I was little. I didn't appreciate it then. I hated it when I had a sandwich in the lunch box made from homemade bread. It crumbled too much. Now I love homemade bread. My kids don't love it for sandwiches either but they love it hot out of the oven or toasted with butter and honey.

1 cup milk
1 cup water
1/2 cup honey
3 T margarine
3 1/2 cup bread flour
2 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 pkg. active dry yeast
1 egg
1 T salt

Heat milk, water, honey and butter until warm about 120 degrees F. add yeast and let sit. Combine all the other ingredients in bowl. Then add the milk mixture. Mix thoroughly. Knead until smooth. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch down and divide into two equal parts. Shape loaves and place in 2 greased 9x5x3 pans. Cover and let rise in warm place until doubled, about 45 min. Bake in a 375 F. oven for 10 min. Reduce heat to 350 F. and continue to bake another 30 minutes.

Another Week

I can't believe it is Friday already. This week flew by. Maybe because it was sunny all week. Lovely sunny weather for a change. My kids were outside a bunch and loved it. Wednesday was spent almost entirely at the park with friends. And we have had a bunch of bike/scooter rides around our neighborhood and even some time climbing trees and gathering rocks, leaves, and weeds.

As far as academics go I can't claim a whole lot.

Math - 1 section of our new Singapore 1B book. Soph didn't fight it too much and caught on to the concept. So I feel good!

Language Arts - Pronouns. Sophie really enjoys learning about sentence structure. She loves it when we read a story and she gets to point out all the different parts of the sentence. She keeps asking when we will get to verbs. She is enjoying First Language Lessons for the time being. Some weeks she likes them and other weeks she can't stand them.

History - Mostly we reviewed. We listened to the CD of last few chapters of Story of the World about Sparta and Greece. We read a book about the Parthenon. We also looked at our Great wonders of the World book which shows what Zeus's temple in Olympia would have looked like.

Science - Another week of not really doing a whole lot. I need to do better about scheduling in Science. We read a number of Rain forest books but that is about it. We did make it over to OSH today to look at plants. My kids can't wait to plant our garden in a few months. Sophie was in tears when we left the store without buying anything.

Artist - Vermeer - I introduced our new artist and we looked at few of his paintings. We read the Vermeer book written and illustrated by Mike Venezia. I also found this book at the library when looking for other books about Holland. Rembrant is mentioned in it not Vermeer but at least it gave us a look at Holland.

Musician - Vivaldi - We listened to the Four Seasons a few times this week as well as the classical Kids Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery We read a book about Vivaldi but there really wasn't a whole lot in the book. Mostly it spoke about Venice. I think we are going to have to Row Papa Piccolo (as soon as I can get it from the library) and study all about Venice again. I did find There's a Dolphin in the Grand Canal when at the library this week. It is one of our favorites.

That is about it. We really had a light school week. We of course read a ton and played a ton.

At Target today Ian bought, with the money from his piggy bank, the game Zooreka. It was on sale and Sophie has wanted it for a long time. We played it this afternoon and the kids couldn't get enough of it. They asked to play it again. I told them we can play it again tomorrow with their Dad. I am sure we will be playing this one a lot.

Wordless Wednesday

Sunshine and Airplanes

We ran some errands this morning and next to one of the stores we had to go to was the dollar tree. My kids love the dollar store. So we went in and wandered through the store. Ian spotted some slingshot airplanes. The package had three planes and was Ian rather convincing on why we had to have them. I decided one package could come home with us.

Ian put them together the moment we got home and the kids went out into the driveway to fly them. It took them a little while to get the hang of them. Soon, Ian could shoot them pretty well once I showed him how to hold it and let it go.

Henry became a pro. His planes were going far and high. He could get them shot off really quickly. I was surprised at how well this little guy did with the planes.

Sophie for some reason never could get the hang of it. Sometimes her planes flew well and a lot of the time they didn't. But she had a good time trying.
It was all fun until one of the planes ended up on the roof of the house. It took a bit of work (a step stool and a mop) to get it back down but we did. Then Henry, the muscle man, broke his rubber band and I couldn't find another one.

We had a great time enjoying the sunshine today. I hope it will last for a bit. We hope to get to the park sometime this week for a change. We haven't been in ages because either it is raining or it is muddy from the rain. Enjoy it while its here I guess.

We actually finished.

It is hard to believe but on Friday we actually did the last review in the first Singapore Math book. We get to move on to 1B on Monday. Math has been a big struggle for us but I think we are moving along finally. Sophie enjoyed the last few sections that weren't adding and subtracting. She doesn't know all the math facts but she does remember a few and is getting less frustrated so that is a major step forward. She enjoyed playing with tangrams and comparing weights and lengths.

As for the other subjects of study. We actually took it kinda light this week. We have had a lot of rain and that has made the kids a lot more crazy being cooped up inside so much. But we still read more greek myths and made the paper dolls from the Story of the World Activity book.

Sophie loved this book I picked up from the library this week.

She also had a great time coloring this week. I broke out my Masterpieces coloring book and copied the two Degas paintings that are included. She love them and asked for more. This surprised me because I have brought out this book a few other times and she didn't want to do it. But I copied some of the pictures from the artists we have already studied and she colored some them and she still wanted more so I gave her some of other impressionists since they in the same style as Degas. So now we have some Renior, Cassatt, Manet and Van Gogh paintings scattered about the house. Here is one of her masterpieces.

We have read a lot of rain forest books this week too. My kids are determined to save the rain forests. Every book tells them that the forests are being destroyed and need to be saved. They are worried that there won't be any rain forests left and that all those animals will be without homes. The books fail to tell us how we can help save them. I told them that that was why we recycle all our papers, plastics, tin cans and glass and use what have wisely and not waste. Any other ideas how we can save the rain forests? I was at a loss. One afternoon Sophie decided she needed a project so we made a rainforest collage for her wall. We broke out the construction paper and glue and cut out trees and leaves and a few animals to go in her rain forest. She love this and keeps wanting to add more animals by drawing them on or cutting them out. This may be an ongoing project for a bit. We also watch a movie about the rainforests which the kids enjoyed.

I can't really recall what else we did this week. We have been playing a lot of games and having play dates with some of our friends. We are always busy and Sophie especially is always doing something. She is writing lists and drawing pictures non stop. We go through a lot of paper (good thing we recycle!) and colored pencils.

Oh I picked up a audio book and we have been listening to it. Me more than the kids probably, it is a more advanced story, but It is very interesting. I picked it up because it is Persian and we have been reading a lot of Persian books lately.
I don't know how much the kids are getting out of it but they always know when the next disk needs to be put in and say they want to continue with it when I ask them. But they are in and out and doing other things while we listen. I am usually folding clothes, baking or making dinner while we listen.

I am looking forward to a new month. I have picked Vivaldi as our composer of the month and Vermeer as our artist. Very different then the artists and composers we have studied the last few months. Our timeline is crammed in on spot with all the ones we have done so far. So I thought it was time to move to a different time period. And being Valentine's month the V names seemed to fit.

How does it taste?

I have had a number of skeptics ask how the yogurt tastes. So let me just explain that this is kid tested. Not just any kids, but my kids. My very picky, wont eat most things, kids. They love it!

It does stink like spoiled milk when you are moving the warm yogurt to the fridge but after cooling down in the fridge over night it smells just fine. It is a little runnier than store bought yogurt but if you want it thicker then just leave it in the crock pot longer. I have been told it makes it thicker but also makes it sharper tasting.

As for taste.....It is plain yogurt without any sweetness so we mix in a spoon full of jam and it tastes great. I usually just dump a bunch of jam in the whole batch and we have apricot yogurt for a bit until the next batch when I make it strawberry or what ever jam we have on hand. You can make it as sweet as you like by adding in as much jam or other sweetener or leave it as sour as you would like. Plain, it can even be used as a substitute for sour cream too.

Homemade Yogurt using dry milk

My family eats a lot of yogurt. My kids don't like to drink milk (unless it's chocolate or in cereal), so yogurt is almost a daily food for us. The price of yogurt at the store keeps going up, so I have been looking into making my own. I found a system that works for me with which I can use my food storage dry milk.

This is all that you need:

4 cups water
1/4 cup of plain yogurt (or starter)
1 1/2 cups of dry milk

Put it all in a blender and mix it well.

Pour the mixture in your crockpot.

Leave in the Crockpot on warm for 10 hours. My crockpot has a low, high and warm setting. Low is too hot, but warm is just right. After 10 hours in the crockpot, put yogurt in the fridge to cool overnight. That's it. Very easy!

We have been stirring in some jam to sweeten and flavor it, but I plan to experiment with other flavorings like honey and fruit.
We have really enjoyed it in our home-made smoothies.

I love that I don't have to heat anything to a certain temperature or boil the milk before the fermenting process. I think because the milk is dry you don't have to boil it to get rid of the bacteria that may exist in regular milk. That is my theory at least. All I know is that this is what I do and it works well. My kids love the yogurt and I love that I am not paying so much for yogurt and I have total control over what additives are in there.

Here is a much harder way to make it.