Homemade Whole Wheat Thins

So yummy!

One of my cousins asked me on facebook today how I make my crackers.
Funny she should ask, as I had recently taken pictures to do this little post & share my favorite cracker recipe!

This is adapted and tweaked from the "More Food that Really Schmecks" cookbook by Edna Staebler. ( I love this cookbook series by the way. I own both "Food that Really Schmecks" and this one, and they read like a letter from an old friend.)

Here is the original ingredient:

4 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt, (optional)
1 tablespoon sugar
3/4 cup shortening
2/3 cup water or milk, more or less

I made a batch of these the other day for David- he had been complaining that we were all out of savory snacks, and we are doing our best to not buy pre-made anything if we can help it. These crackers are great for snacking on plain, or eating with cheese- I  plan on making more whenever we run out so we can always have them on hand. Today I made a batch of hummus... and hummus + these crackers made a very yummy lunch!

Edna recommends adding various seasoning to the top of the crackers while you roll them out, but this time I decided to try adding some herbs and garlic straight to the dough itself. Play around with whatever you feel like adding. That's the best part of her recipes and cookbooks- They are very chill and free- a happy framework in which you can play around with to suit your personal tastes.

Here are all of my ingredients & tools sitting out (You have to include on of those staged ingredients photos when you're blogging right? ;) )

You start by measuring out your dry ingredients- flour, herbs, salt, etc. (I didn't add any sugar to mine, and I honestly like them better this way) I used:
4 cups ofhome ground whole wheat flour
Approx. 1 Tablespoon parsley
Approx. 1 Tablespoon Oregano
Approx. 1/2 Tablespoon Basil
Approx 1 teaspoon Garlic powder
Approx. 1 teaspoon dill
Sea salt (not pictured- I didn't measure mine, but in the future I plan on a) putting in at least the recommended teaspon, and b) grinding it first- the stuff I have is a little course)

Cutest little kitchen helper ever!

Anyway, give that all a stir, and then when it is well blended, you can start working in your 3/4 cup of shortening.

If you have a food processor, you can use it to wiz the shortening and flour mixture together. If you're like me and have yet to invest in one, you can build your muscles and use a pastry blender:

Well blended dry ingredients

Next step is to add water. Edna says to add 2/3 cup of your liquid, more or less... and at least with this batch I needed to add more. I was probably closer to a 1/2 a cup. I dumped the full 2/3 of a cup to start, started mixing it with a fork, and quickly realized it needed more liquid, so I added in water a tablespoon at a time. (I always try to dump it on the flour that hadn't yet incorporated into the dough, rather than the dough itself- you end up with a more even dough that way)

This could still use a wee bit more water

Again, if you've got a food processor, this whole mixing thing should be pretty easy. If not, you might eventually give up on the fork and just use your hands for the last little bit- that's fine too.

Edna says to divide the dough into 4 parts and roll each one out as thin as parchment. I divide mine into 5 parts- my cookie sheets aren't big enough to hold 1/4th of the dough rolled out that thin. You might have to experiment with yours.

How thin?

As thin as you can manage. You should be able to see light through the dough very easily: I find it helpful to pick up the dough and flip it over frequently while rolling to prevent it from sticking, which also helps me roll it thinner too.

See all the light?

Transfer your super thin dough to your ungreased cookie sheet. If you've got random peninsulas of dough that are too wide or too long, just cut them off and use them to fill any empty spaces on the cookie sheet. Since they are all going to end up in cracker sized pieces anyway this isn't too big of a deal. Speaking of cracker sized pieces, go ahead and score them now, before they bake. I like to use a pizza cutter, and I am SO not OCD about the size and shape of the pieces. :)

One last thing that has to happen before you put them in the oven- they need to be pricked! Edna says "To prevent bubbling, prick the dough all over with the tines of a fork- let it bounce." I didn't really realize there was such a thing as a "bouncing fork technique" until I tried it thanks to this recipe- just hold your fork loosely at the end to control the bounce and let the fork fall semi-horizontally onto the dough. It's pretty fun!

Scored and Pricked!

Finally. Bake for about 10 minutes in a 400 degree F oven. They should look crispy, but not too brown on top. D Slide them off onto a cookie sheet to cool. Once they are cool, break them along your score marks and toss them into a tin or other storage container.

Or just eat them for a snack right away.

 Enjoy! Let me know if you make them- or if you have another favorite cracker recipe!

Jumping in...

I never know how to re-start something, so I'm just going to jump right in.

We're in a new house.
David has a new job as a neurology resident in Minneapolis, MN
We've got two kids now (DJ and Aniline)
Lulu has moved on to a new home, due to allergies (not her allergies, ours)
I said goodbye to the formal dyeing side of Our Humble Castle as an etsy business. I may still use the shop to sell the odd skein of handspun yarn.

So much change! So much potential!
So little time!

I've grown and changed so much over the last year, and I am excited to see where God is leading me. It's been a little crazy over the last day or so as I've been re-reading old posts on this blog as I attempted to give it a little micro-facelift before publishing this post... Who was that girl anyway? I know it was me, and I'm super glad I was so open & honest, cause now I can look back & see exactly what God has done for me!

Excuse me while I go try to get some sleep, so I can be better prepared for our family day tomorrow. I'll leave you with this picture of our kids:

 Aniline & DJ. Yes, my baby girl is wearing her big brother's hand-me downs, and no, I don't put anything in DJ's hair to make it do that. It is spiky and crazy all by itself.

Canada

Well. Look at me blog!

I know it's been a while. Summer happened. I thought I was doing pretty good at developing a schedule & sticking with it... and then it all went flying out the window.

DJ and I are in Canada now. We were being very distracting to D as he was studying for his exam, so my mom & dad flew the two of us up to Canada for a while. We're loving our time here- DJ is getting play dates with cousins, Mommy is getting some "me" time, and I'm getting inspired & invigorated to go home & work... which can get mildly frustrating at times, especially when I can't actually do anything about it right then. :(

It's also June 1st today. It's half way through the year, and a perfect point to totally start over. That's what I think anyway. Week (whatever it is, I've lost count) will end up being week one again (ish) for me. How about it? We could all use fresh starts every once and a while, right?

Right. I'm off to have devos & journal some thoughts. :)

Week 14!

This is going to be brief.  And pictureless. :(

Last week DJ caught a cold after the funeral, so he was rather sick, clingy, and an all around big mamma's boy all week.

Around Wednesday, I caught whatever he had- and if he felt as horrible as I did, I totally understand why he was so fussy.

I almost managed to keep my HBZ tidy, although it could use a vacuuming... Other than that my weekly goals were a bust-  no working out happened, and no father progress on the HTCI system. Looks like I get to repeat week 13 this week. :)

My mentor and her husband took DJ yesterday afternoon, and I spent the afternoon resting and re-cooperating after the long week. I have to say it's amazing what a few hours break can do! I feel totally refreshed and ready to get lots accomplished this week.

Week 13- HTCI Home Base Zone done!

Well, today (Saturday) is the official calendar based first day of week 13 of 2011. My main focus goal for this week is still on working through the HTCI book. I do have progress to report! It may have taken me all week, but I cleaned out my HBZ (home base zone- hereafter referred to as "HBZ").

My HBZ is the living room. In the book the three examples she gives of HBZs are 1) the kitchen sink, 2) the upstairs bathroom 3) under the master bedroom bed and the floor of the closets in the master bedroom. I really wish I had taken before pictures. I sure had a cluttered, messy living room at the beginning of week 12. But has it ever been transformed! Let me give you a guided tour:

This wall is where I started. Not too much was cluttered over here- a few things on the trunk, but it wasn't to bad:

Working clockwise we come to the piano. She talks about how easy it is to set things on anything with a horizontal surface- the piano was no exception.

She suggested hanging signs so that you don't feel badly when people come over and find your house torn apart as you are working through cleaning and organizing:

The rest of the wall:

DJ's toys aren't quite as neat as I'd like- I'm hoping to get one of those toy trunks eventually- something with a lid that we can close and have completely out of sight. The wires for the TV need some work too... but that's more David's department. We need to brainstorm together to find a solution for those.

The fireplace wall. I rearranged the pictures on top of the mantle- I painted them with the idea that they would get switched around every so often. I particularly like the way they look now!

Couch wall:

My knitting. This was the biggest source of clutter. I took a huge bag of yarn and fiber upstairs, and left only my project back sitting in my Janet basket, along with all my interchangeable needles and a stack of patterns.

One more picture and we're back where we started!

See- there isn't even anything hiding behind the couch!

And the floor is even clear of everything but DJ's play mats:

How I got here:
1) moved everything out of the room that didn't belong.
2) moved everything off of each wall, and dusted the wall from floor to ceiling, one wall at a time. I put things back as I finished a wall.
3) Moved everything off each piece of furniture- dusted all the objects and the furniture, then put everything back.
4) Moved all the furniture and vacuumed the whole floor.
5) Put the room back together.

I'm really happy with the result! The plan is to keep this room tidy and clean as I work through the rest of the house. If something has to give as far as house cleaning, that something won't be this room. I really do feel better with this one room clean.

This week's goal: continue with the HTCI book and exercise 5 days a week.  We'll see how far I can get this week with the HTCI: up next is a prayer walk through the house, photographing everything how it is right now, evaluating the house, set up a devotional station, and then start working through the house room by room.

I leave you with one last picture of our family, taken at David's Grandma Ortiz's funeral.

Week 11/12

Hah.

I attempted to start this bog post at the beginning of last week, but I never had the time to finish it. Yikes!

For the record:
Week 10's goal: To bed by 11:00 and menu plan. I modified my bed time to 12:00, mostly cause it fits better with David's schedule... I made a menu plan, but I'm still struggling with that one.

Week 11's goal: (This last week) I focused both on having devotions first thing in the morning (This was my first goal when I started at the beginning of the year, but I haven't been taking the time for it lately, and so that meant that it was back on the table for being worked on again.) and working out 5-6 times a week. I think I only missed one day of Devotions this week, which was good, and I put in two formal work outs, with "running up and down the stairs a million times today" counting for aerobic training once, and "winding 2,000+ yards of yarn on the re-skeiner" counting as strength training once... for a total of 4ish workouts- it could have gone better.

This coming week, Week 12, my plan is to do spring cleaning. The last time my parents were here, my mom bought me a book called "The House That Cleans Itself". The big idea behind the book is changing the house to fit the behavior, rather than changing the behavior when it comes to cleaning. I'm reading it today, and I plan to start working through it over the next 2- 4 weeks as my main focus. While I'm working through that, I'll be going back and revisiting some of my old goals to make sure I'm still on top of them- like working out, devos, drinking tea (I didn't at all last week cause I was so busy and didn't have the time, and boy, did I ever miss my cuppa tea!)  and wake up/bed time etc. I'm excited.

I'll try to keep you updated with how this deep cleaning/streamlining of my house goes. To give you a little taste of how the book is set up let me share with you how the author Mindy has you CONVERT a room into the HTCI system:
C-clear out the clutter
O- open up and clean
N-neaten, organize, and solve problem spots
V- verify and set up Stations as needed
E-examine Sight Zones
R record future improvements needed
T take steps now for ongoing maintenance

So far I've read up to the "V" chapter. It's the most unique book on organization/cleaning systems that I've read. Not like there have been that many that I have read.... She talks about the different personalities of people who clutter and have disorganized lives, and how different reasons for clutter need to be approached in different ways.  She also talked about Home base zones (that one place in the house that if you've got it clean/clutter free you feel peace even if the rest of the house is a disaster) and setting up a devotion "station" with your bible, journal, pen, devotional books etc before you jump into working through cleaning out the rest of the house. I'm pretty excited! I'd like to finish reading the book tonight so that I can start working through it tomorrow morning.

Rather than leave you with a picture of DJ- here is a link to videos from the Church services at Trinity. By tomorrow afternoon (Monday, March 21st) the video from today should be up. Trinity just started a choir, and I'm in it! Not only that, but last night right before practice the director asked me to be on the "front line"- she has two people from each part sing with mics to make it easier to make sure the parts are balanced through the sound system. We really had a good time and God really showed up. It was awesome.

The link:
http://trinitywired.com/media/service  The whole service is about an hour, but the music portion is probably only 15 minutes or so. I hope you enjoy it!

Teething time!

That's the first name that jumped into my head for this post. DJ has been teething really badly today- super clingy, doesn't want to do anything but eat and snuggle. Awesome for mommy baby time, not so awesome for getting things done. He's working on his 8th tooth in 8 months! Crazy kid...

My main goal for this week was going to be getting to bed by 11:00. Last night should have been the first night for that- but I forgot to eat supper somehow, and then David made us awesome cappuccino blender drinks around 8:30 (right after DJ went to bed last night) and I had one. Caffeine on an empty stomach- bad bad idea.11:00 rolled around and David and I were in the middle of watching The Biggest Loser. I decided I'd stay up until that was done, or was it till I finished my round on my knitting? Either way, it was 1:00 before I started to head to bed, and I don't think I fell asleep until 2:30 in the morning. And once I did fall asleep, I had the weirdest knitting combined Biggest Loser dreams... very very odd.

I'm still going to try to get to bed by 11:00 the rest of the week- but I've switched my "official" weekly goal to having a menu plan.

Monday- We had Pork stew tonight, and I made bread for sandwiches to go along with the lunch meat David bought. That will be lunch for some of the week. We've got eggs for breakfasts (did you know that 2 eggs provides your minimum daily requirement for protein- in the perfect proportions?) and we've still got left overs for some lunches as well.

Tuesday night I'm making pizza,

Wednesday night we'll have LO (Left over) stew and I'll make corn bread to go with it

Thursday will be LO pizza

Friday is Friday nights (we host a knit group and one of the gals cooks for everyone)

Saturday we're having pancakes for breakfast, and mac & cheese, and any other left overs we've still got. 

Sunday officially starts a new week- I hope to go grocery shopping on Sunday, as well as make sure my next menu plan is figured out. :)

I tend to cook large portions, and it takes us a while to eat through them. The stew we had tonight probably could last us a good portion of the week if we ate it every day. I'd freeze some, but our little fridge freezer freezer burns left overs in 2 weeks time, and it gets really frustrating. We are looking at getting a chest freezer, but it might be a while before we get it... we'll see.

Ramble much? ;)

Finally, the picture you've all been waiting for: DJ kept grabbing at my knitting yesterday, so I gave him some waste yarn of his own to play with. He was concentrating so hard, trying to figure out what it is about yarn that mommy likes so much! He was even sort of making little "knitting" motions too- copy cat. ;)