The Joy of Marriage

I promise that the chocolate raspberry torte tutorial is coming soon! Right now, though, I am elbow deep in paper preparing folders for our church's marriage preparation program. This is a ministry I really like participating in, because the engaged couples bring so much joy and anticipation with them to each session. Also, because the program gives me a chance to reflect on my own marriage and how much joy the vocation of marriage brings to me. I feel so profoundly blessed to have been called to the married state and to motherhood and I love to have the opportunity to share with engaged couples about the wonderful blessing marriage is.

Talking about marriage, looking over our wedding photos, reminiscing about our wedding and dreaming about what the future of our marriage may hold, these are some of the activities of the week for my DH and me. We had a beautiful visit this weekend with the dear priest who performed our wedding ceremony. He is my uncle and very special to us both. He is also gravely ill, so I ask any one reading this blog today to join me in saying a prayer for him.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you all safe trips if you are travelling, delicious feasts when you are feasting, and many many hands to help with the dishes if you are cooking!

Chocolate Raspberry Cake-Part One

Tonight we're having a dessert pot-luck for the parents in my younger son's class. Our contribution is a chocolate raspberry torte from my all-time hands-down favorite cookbook, Cold Weather Cooking by Sarah Leah Chase. Our other contribution is a clean, welcoming house to host the party. Now, the party starts in 2 hours and we still need to dust and clean a few bathrooms, so I'll teach you all how to make the cake tomorrow.

I'd like to say I've been cleaning all day, but that wouldn't be true. I've been grocery shopping and running kids around to lessons and other places. Instead, I'm happy to announce-(all right, I guess I need to use a more honest verb) I'm happy to brag-that my husband has been cleaning all day. Maybe I could take to calling hime Mr. Clean? Our house is pretty sparkly right now. Talk about a blessing!

And (bonus!) I guess since I'm married to him I get to be Mrs. Clean, without so much as lifting a dustpan!

TGIF

Friday night's here! That's what I'm grateful for right now. A loooong week, many night meetings, kids waking up in the middle of the night, an unexpected trip to the doctor for (blessedly) minor injury, glow bowling today with the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades (this involves music, disco balls, black lights, bowling and pizza all amalgamated into in one dizzying tween fiesta), all capped off with a Cub Scout pack meeting tonight. Whew! Just typing it makes me tired.

(And, truth be told, very, very grateful for this young and energetic crowd I run around with) : )

Rainy Day Blessing

Morning started out with the sky blue, the ground wet, the air warm and damp. It kind of tricked me into doubting the weather forecast which predicted wild rain. By the time my Thursday morning mothers' rosary group had gathered though, the clouds rolled in and darkened the sky. Rain began to pour down and it lasted all afternoon.

Normally I only like sunny mild days, but every fall I find myself happy for "November weather" if I have nowhere I have to go and if the weather has been pretty nice for a while. A grey stormy day, a pot of carrot orange soup on the stove for lunch, friends visiting and drinking coffee, what could be nicer? Well, I've got the answer to that one! For me, it was my children home after school, my littlest one napping on the couch next to me and the chance to watch a movie with the 3 older ones that didn't feature princesses, an explorer and her monkey, or a ballerina mouse. Yup, we watched Open Season and it was goofy, boy-pleasing fun all around. The chance to do something so cozy and simple with just my "bigs", something that had us all laughing out loud, has filled my grateful heart right to the brim with joy.

Orange You Sweet!

I have to admit, I love to bake. I don't love for my family to eat too many sweets though, so it's a balancing act. I'll bake if company is coming, for holidays, for birthdays, and for school celebrations. I bake bread several times a week. Sweets just for us are not that common, but I think we probably end up having them once or twice a month. And... today was one of those baking days!

The last time I went to the market the grocery cart sported a little picture of some yummy looking pale cream colored frosted cookies on an ad for Land O'Lakes butter. It said something about holiday baking, but not, oddly enough, the cookie's name. Since I love love love the internet, I went happily to their web site and with a little sleuthing found Lemon Meltaways. Uh oh, one of my daughters can't abide lemon.

I pondered a few substitutes. No flavor? Too bland, I feared. Maple? Well, the same daughter only likes maple syrup, not anything flavored maple. Molasses? Ginger? No, I wanted something brighter. How about orange? As in the oranges in the fridge?

Well, that sounded just right.

Here's what I came up with.
Frosted Orange Snowdrops!
(I'm naming them that because the frosting looks like a little snow peak swirled atop the cookie).
Adapted from the Land O'Lakes recipe web site.

First I got out my ingredients.


1 1/4 c, flour
1 1/2 sticks butter
1/2 c corn starch
1/2 c powdered sugar
1 1/2 T orange juice

Then, I made the dough. Everything went into the bowl of my KitchenAid mixer and I mixed it until a smooth, pliable dough
formed.

(And meanwhile, I emptied the dishwasher. When the dishes were away, the dough was done. See? It doesn't take forever to empty it like everyone here in my house thinks it does! : ))

Then, I formed the dough into 2 logs, each about 8"x1" and set them in the fridge to cool for about 1/2 an hour.



I preheated the oven and when it was ready I sliced the dough into 48 cookies. They were a little more square than I hoped, but they rounded out a bit in the oven.

Next, the baking. Following Land O Lakes' instructions I baked them for 10 minutes in the 350 degree F oven. When they were done, they were not brown, but were set.


After they cooled, I frosted them with this snowy icing: 3/4 c powdered sugar, 1/2 stick of butter, 1 T orange juice, all mixed in the Kitchen Aid mixer until smooth and creamy.

But, they looked kind of pale.
Tasty, but boring.
So, I sprinkled a little cinnamon and a tiny bit of grated orange zest over them, and voila! These are beautiful autumn cookies!

And, everyone really loved them.

So, I'm grateful I had such a happy afternoon baking and I'm looking forward to the blessing of an autumn evening tea and cookie dessert with my husband and kids. And I feel even more blessed if just one of you readers makes up your own batch of Frosted Orange Snowdrops to enjoy with some tea. (I bet cocoa would be great too!)

A Few Ground Rules

As far as the daily gratitude posts go (see yesterday's post), I've been thinking about a few ground rules. This may evolve over the next 12 months, but for now I'm proposing each day's post will be:

1. honest: a blessing I actually am grateful for that specific day (for example, no "fun days at the beach" when it's 20 degrees outside)


2. unique: a new blessing for each day, but it can be a different aspect of something I've mentioned before (for example, I can be grateful for how warm and sunny my kitchen is and I can also be grateful on a different day for how big and comfortable it is)


3. reliable: I'll post something each day that I am home with my computer (so when I'm away there won't be any posts), and try to put in a few extras when I get back

For today, I'm so grateful that the sun is shining, that the two kids who went to the dentist are cavity free, and that my friend E. is keeping her spirits up when her brood seems determined to test her limits!

Thanks A Lot

As in, saying thanks a lot of times. Being grateful as an habitual attitude. Realizing the blessings in my life, making myself actually name them and be thankful for each one, rather than relying on a general awareness of God's generosity, or worse, taking it all for granted.

We've had a particularly frustrating day around here. I'll spare you the details but imagine 4 bored children, the best fun of the weekend over, Mama with a lot of housework and laundry to do, and hours to go until bedtime. As the day wore on I found myself getting more and more agitated with the amount of work to be done and the amount of messes that kept appearing.

The thing is, discouragement can get the better of me. I want to make our home a cheerful one and I want my children to be raised by a loving, peaceful, joyful mother. And truly, I do love being a stay-at home mom. Yet life in a family, with its spills, messes, temper tantrums and quarrels can bring on my impatience faster than a preschooler can empty a bottle of soft soap all over a counter. Exasperation, sighs, a furrowed brow, these are my characteristics more often than I want them to be.

I realized that I can allow that annoyance to color my attitude and influence my disposition, or I can find some antidote. So, in an effort to become more visibly happy, I am determined to dwell on the positive aspects of life and family and give voice to them. There are many, and I don't mean to suggest that even a day goes by without some laughs or smiles or even a prayer of thanksgiving for my family spontaneously arising from my lips. I just want to focus on them more consciously, and I want to challenge myself to do it daily, and moreover, to chronicle my attempt here at In For A Penny every day for a year.

Now, this blog post is getting long, so I'll lay out my plans and ground rules tomorrow. But in the spirit of jumping in with both feet, I'll list some of the blessings I'm thankful for today right now:

• My own cheerful mother who spent an hour on the phone with me today, helping me to lift my spirits and gain a little psychological space from the trying afternoon we were having


• Four really good kids who really did pitch in and help with cleaning up the laundry room {one of today's fun Mama projects : ) }


• My fabulously reliable husband who said he'd be home at 5:50 pm and walked in the door with a smile, right on time.

Can She Bake A Cherry Pie?

Or more to the point, can I? That's a question that I would always ponder when my mother would sing Billy Boy to me when I was little. It turns out that the girl in the song "can bake a cherry pie, quick's a cat can wink it's eye", but what about me?

Well, now that my camera and my computer appear to be on speaking terms, I can answer that question for you all.

I've been thinking or dreaming about making the iconic lattice-topped cherry pie for years. I don't like canned cherries or canned cherry pie filling though. So, this summer, armed with Rose Levy Birnbuam's magnificent guide The Pie and Pastry Bible and a few pounds of fresh cherries, I got to work.

First, I pitted the cherries and mixed them with sugar and almond extract.




While they macerated, I mixed up a batch of cream-cheese pie crust (enough for a double crust pie). Then, I rolled out the bottom crust, lined the pie pan with it,



and poured in the cherry mixture.

Next, I rolled the remaining dough out, cut the strips and wove the lattice on top of the cherry filling. This is not as easy as it looks, because the dough strips break pretty easily. Mending them results in a less then picture-perfect lattice. When you're done, though, you can get lots of satisfaction saying to your happy family "Look! Look! It looks just like a real cherry pie!" And since they are looking forward to eating it, they will smile and tell you "It does! It really does!"




Then, into the oven it went. While it baked, I happily cleaned up the kitchen and sang, several times "Can she bake a cherry pie Billy Boy, Billy Boy, can she bake a cherry pie, darling Billy?"

Guess what? It turns out that I can. And maybe with some more practice, I too will be able to bake them up before that cat can finish winking.

Does anyone else

want the Halloween Hangover to end?

One solid week of "Can I have a piece of candy?" (multiplied by four hopeful voices) and wrappers galore makes me just a teeny bit glad that I'm starting to see the botom of those cheerful pumpkins the kiddos used to collect their Halloween treats. I love tick-or-treating, I love seeing my little ones in their costumes danicing and wriggling with excitement, I even love Halloween candy. I'm just saying thouugh, I think we could all use some salad around here.

All Saints' Day

Good morning! Today, November 1st, the Church celebrates the Feast of All Saints, or All Saints' Day, to honor all of God's saints, known and unknown. Catholics have been celebrating this feast for more than a millenium! The liturgical color for the day is white. All Saints Day is also a Holy Day of Obligation, meaning that Catholics must attend Mass unless they have a "grave cause" for staying away. Grave causes include the need to care for children, to work to support one's family, sickness, caring for the sick, etc. (I'm citing these reasons as I learned them this from EWTN's website)

Tonight we'll be talking at the supper table about each of the children's patron saints and asking them for their intercessions!

Evening Song

I love the end of the day. The sun has long since gone down, the lamps are lit. The walls glow in the golden lamplight. The dinner is eaten, the table cleared and scrubbed. The floors are swept, the stove and countertops wiped and washed, quietly clean. The dishwasher hums. Children are bathed and in jammies. Teeth are brushed and shiny. Snacks are packed, lunches are planned, school clothes and shoes are waiting patiently on bedroom chairs for their owners to wriggle or jump into in the morning. My little children are picking out books and ready for stories. My older ones are quietly reading or talking to their father or me. The frantic pace of the afternoon is over. There is nowhere to go, nothing urgent to do, no next task to race to. We can just enjoy our home, our family, our blessings.

Thank you God, for the children in this house, for the walls that shelter us, and for the blessings of evenings here at home.

A Tricky Issue

When I first started this blog I thought that I had plenty to say. In fact, in my real life (IMRL - is that the right blog-speak???) I talk all the time. I talk on the phone, I talk in the van, I even talk in the library (although quietly). I talk to my husband, my mother, my brother, my friends. I talk to teachers, doctors, Scout leaders, anyone who will listen, and because I have four precious children, I spend more time than you might think talking to people who "really really don't want to talk right now!".

My chattering mind talks to itself pretty much all day long and I often find myself saying "I've got to write this down". I also tell myself "This is something I need to explore more in an essay" and "I should blog about this". I love to write almost as much as I love to talk. In fact, one of my not-so-secret ambitions is to be a working, publishing writer.

And when I began, I loved blogging. I could say whatever I wanted, and with the touch of a button I was published to boot!

But pretty soon, I began to run into a thorny problem.

With a blog, I don't get to pick who I'm talking to.

Now, I know at this point the only people who are reading this blog are the ones I already talk to. So I really shouldn't worry. But, the day may come when someone I have never met might stumble across me here at In For A Penny..., and what will I say to them? Do I want them to know my children's names? Probably not. I'd like to respect their privacy, and keep them cyber-safe. How much information about us do I share here on these pages? I'm still working this one out.

I had planned to write a blog about my life as an at-home mother. My life with children, with a husband. With meals that need to be cooked and with a washing machine that needs to be fed regularly. My life as a Catholic and how following that call informs how I answer all the other calls on my time. And now here I am, stumped.

How do you decide what to say when your words in print are not as ephemeral as the spoken word?

How do you get past page-fright?

A Mystery In The Garden

This flower has appeared in my garden. It looks like a tiny daisy on a delicate stem, and it is growing on a plant that is about three feet high. It is one of the 3 mystery plants that have popped up, literally, in my flower beds. I love how suuny and happy it looks but it makes me wonder. What is it? Where did it come from? How did it get into my flower bed?

I'm not a zealous weeder. Or even a dedicated weeder. Or even a weeder, really. I kind of admire the lush growth of June and July, the exuberant will to grow and live that plants display in the summer. I have a hard time bringing myself to rip them out just because they took root in my yard. Especially if they are as pretty as this one.

Still, I would like to know what it is. If anyone has any ideas, or suggestions about how to figure out what it is, please leave me a comment. Tomorrow and the next day I'll post pictures of the other two mysterious plants who've shown up to live at our house. One of which is 6 feet tall and referred to affectionately by the kids as "our weed".

Riding the Range Once More

The kitchen range, that is.

The bread baking is going along nicely. I'm starting to get a handle on how much we need each week. It seems like making a loaf every other day is about right for now. The breakfast foods are still a work in progress. I still need to figure out when to start the bagel dough. It seems like right before bed, which, of course, is just about right after I've cleaned the kitchen from dinner. I'm starting to understand why bakers are early risers. Even if the dough is ready when you get up, you're still almost an hour away from bread or bagels. Biscuits are definitely the quickest way to go!

In other baking departments, we're having more success. I've never been one to buy a lot of packaged sweets, and now that school is out I'm avoiding packaged snacks almost entirely. As a result, I've been trying to bake the occassional treat a little more reliably. I'm aiming to serve dessert on Sundays, and I'm letting the kids do some baking too. So, desserts are moving right along. In fact, now that the summer's in full swing, I'm trying my hand at making pies! This week I chose to make this.





If you opened it up, inside you'd see it looks like this.







If I'd been quicker with the camera, I could have shown you a picture of how it looked when it was baked. But, the pie knife was quicker than the camera in our kitchen Monday night, so you'll just have to imagine how delicious warm peach pie with vanilla ice cream was.

The Good Samaritan and Me

This past Sunday at mass, we had the gospel reading of the Good Samaritan, from Luke 10:25-37. I've been thinking about it and working on this post ever since. I've got the first part of what I want to share written and up on the blog. Part II is a work in progress.

Anyway, on to the Good Samaritan.

Here's how it opens.

'"There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it? He said in reply, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." He repiied to him, "You have answered correctly; do this and you will live." But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" '

To answer that question, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. We learn that our neighbor is not just the person like us, but any person. We are to love everyone as we love ourselves. But what about the other part of the law, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind?" The scholar doesn't ask how to do that part, and Jesus doesn't address it.

This passage in Luke's Gospel is not the only time we hear of this law. In Matthew 22:35-40 we find Jesus with the Pharisees and "one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 'Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?' He said to him, '"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.' " And so here we have what for Catholics is the Great Commandment.

Jesus tells us in the parable of the Good Samaritan who our neighbor is. We can look to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy to guide us in our dealings with our neighbor. But what of the first part of the greatest commandment? How do we love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all of all strength?

I don't know if Jesus answers that question anywhere in the Bible. I do know that I have been trying to answer it for myself for many many years. In fact, trying to answer it has been one of the driving forces in my spiritual life.

I am not a trained theologian. I am a Catholic woman, and wife, and mother. I experienced a great conversion to the faith I was born into while I was in my twenties. Up until that point, I had been a faithful Catholic. I believed in my faith and it meant a great deal to me. But I didn't think deeply about it, and I certainly didn't try and learn anything about it. In fact, I foolishly believed that because I went to all my CCD and confirmation classes (in the eighth grade!) and was subsequently confirmed I had been taught all there was to know about Catholicsm.

I knew, for example, that I was supposed to love God with my whole heart, mind and soul, and love my neighbor as myself. I just never knew how , exactly, I was supposed to do that. By going to mass and trying to do good and avoid sin, I figured. But was that loving God, really? Wasn't it just loving my neighbor? And, frankly, although I felt like I loved God, it wasn't taking up my whole mind or soul or heart. Moreover, it seemed like my experience of God was confined to weekly mass and saying my prayers. Most of life was taken up with, well, living. Taking classes, buying groceries, doing homework, I didn't see a place for God in my daily decisions and actions, beyond trying to live as a good person.

Somehow, though, I started to think, "Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there is a way to love God with your whole heart and mind and soul, and I just don't know how. Maybe only people who have vocations to religious life know how." And since my vocation was to the married state, religious life was not to be in my future. I didn't know it then, but that little glimmer of a question, "how do I do this?", was pointing me in a new direction. In graduate school I was blessed with an experience that woke me up and sent me on my journey.

I had started attending daily mass and one day a visiting priest giving his homily mentioned St. Francis de Sales and his book Introduction to the Devout Life. Somehow, I knew I had to read it. Right after mass I went to the bookstore and bought it. I read it and was captivated. It was as if St. Francis de Sales reached his hand out to me across the centuries and said "I understand what you are looking for and can teach you how to find it".

Home Again Home Again

Whew! We've had a busy 3 weeks around here. Since my last post we've happily thrown our annual summer party (complete with tiki torches and cotton candy machine), bought a new minivan, traveled to a conference (my DH and me) visited one grandmother for a week (the kids and the van), visited another grandmother and grandfather (me and the kids, and on the 4th of July my husband too) for a week, gone whitewater rafting (my husband on one son), and had 5 days of tennis lessons, at two hours a lesson, for my younger son and older daughter.

Now we are back and trying to settle into a summer routine. The luandry is under control, the house no longer looks like a tornado struck it, and we've even manged to get a homemade dinner on the table every night for the last 4 nights.
My goal for today is to make a menu for the week and then go to the grocery store. And just maybe download some music onto my ipod to jumpstart my rowing routine. If anyone has some great workout titles to share, I'd love to hear them from you.

I hope you all are having a good summer too. Now that I'm home I will be tending this little blog more faithfully!

Making Our Own Fun

Summer is officially here! It came earlier this afternoon, and I for one could not be happier. The sun is out, my roses are blooming, a warm breeze is blowing, and best of all, my kids are home with me for long stretches of unstructured time. During the school year, I spend a lot of time driving my children to school and to after-school activities. On top of that, there are homework assignments to supervise, tests to help study for, lunches and snacks to pack, clothes to lay out, baths to give, and in general a lot of real tasks that we need to fit in between the hours of "school's out" and "lights out".

But then comes summer, glorious summer, full of long sweet sunny hours when we can dive into the kinds of fun adventures that don't always seem to fit into the school-year calendar. You already know we're happily baking bread and bagels and everything else we can dream up. But maybe you didn't know we all are art lovers too. We like painting and drawing and even coloring (some of us love coloring!) and we especially like art supplies. In fact, we like them so much that we decided to try and make some of our own.

Inspired by Trish Kuffner's fabulous book The Preschoolers' Busy Book we set out to make our own crayons. Well, "make" may be too ambitious of a word, perhaps "mold" is more accurate. At any rate, this is what we did.

First, we got out the mini-muffin tin and greased it with canola oil. Then, we rounded up all our old broken crayons. Believe me, we had a lot. We peeled them, broke them into small pieces, and then dropped the pieces into the cups of the muffin tin. We set the tin in the oven at 350 degrees for 3-4 minutes. When the crayon wax melted we pulled the tin from the oven. We let the tin cool and then popped our new cool round crayons out.

And....They really work! When you color with them they make very cool varigated swirls of color on your paper. They are just the right size for little hands. And they come with great "Look what we made!" bragging rights, proudly exercised upon all visitors.

Two Breads Are Better Than One

This time I made enough dough for 2 loaves of bread, the night before we wanted it. I also made dough for bagels, but that's my next post. I used Mark Bitman's recipes for both doughs. Measure, mix, whir in the food processor, and presto-gorgeous, smooth, pliable dough! I have to say I love making bread dough. It's so simple and so satisfying.

I put the dough in bowls, went out for a board meeting, and punched it down when I returned. Then, I went to bed, letting it rise overnight in the bowls. This morning, I took it out, put ithe bread dough into loaf pans my little son had proudly greased for us, and had to let it rise AGAIN, because it has to go into the over risen. Otherwise, you end up with brick, not bread. (Trust me, this is the voice of experience). So, add another 45 minutes to the moring baking plan, over and above the 45-50 minutes I'd already planned for the baking. (We waited patiently though, and used the waiting time to form our bagels.) So, here's the lesson learned. If you make bread dough the night before and it goes through its first rise before you go to bed, punch it down and put it in a loaf pan. It will have its second rise overnight and be ready for the oven in the morning.

When the bread was ready, we slid it into the oven. Pretty quickly, the kitchen filled with the yeasty aroma of baking bread. It lured my older son down the stairs. He looked around the kitchen hopefully and then, not seeing any asked "Did I miss it?"

Well, no. Unlike the bakers at real bakeries, our baker has not gotten the knack of when to do what steps to put bread on the table for breakfast. When it was ready, at 10:50 am, here is what breakfast looked like.



What we make is delicious, but it sure takes a while.

Bagels!

After our success with the bread we decided to dive right in and tackle bagels. My kids love bagels. I usually buy frozen Lender's ones, but, wouldn't fresh ones be somehow nicer? Well, these enquiring minds wanted to know.

Here's what we've learned so far.Bagel dough and bread dough are pretty similar. Both contain flour, yeast, salt, a sweeetener (we use honey but sugar or maple syrup are also good), butter, and a liquid. The 3 main differenced between our bread recipe and our bagel recipe (both by the famous Mr. Bitman) are

• our sandwich bread dough uses milk, our bagel dough recipe called for water
  
• the bread uses 2.5 tsp yeast per 3.5 cups of flour and the bagels only need 1 tsp per 3.5 cups of flour
  
• the bread uses 1Tb of sweetner, the bagels take 2Tb
  

Like the bread dough recipe I use, the bagel dough can be (and is, at our house) made in the food processor. It is so simple and quick, you can have dough in about 4 minutes. Bagels, though, take a while.

After you make the dough, you have to let it rise. Punch it down, let it rest 10 minutes, and then separate it into little equal balls of dough. I used 3.5 cups of flour, which gave me 28 ounces of dough. So, 14 little balls, er, bagels-in-waiting.



Next step. Form the little balls into little bagels, either by flattening them and poking a hole in the center, or by rolling them into little logs and joining the ends to make circles.


Then-you guessed it-let them rise again. For about 30 minutes.

Next comes the famous 2 stage cooking process, boiling and baking. Bring a pot of water to a full boil. Drop a few bagels in, watch them sink and then float to the surface.
Cook for one minute, flip, cook one minute longer.

Then, fish them out of the water and place them on a rack to dry.

This step will make the bagels puff up and take on a funny consistency that is firmer than the dough but also sort of gluey. Don't panic. This is also what makes the bagels chewy.

Last but not least, put the bagels onto a cookie sheet and slide them into a PREHEATED 400 degree oven. I'm capitalizing to EMPHASIZE this, because otherwise you will do MORE waiting around. You've had plenty of time to preheat while you were rising, forming, and boiling! Bake for 20-25 minutes, and enjoy.

Which we did. My kids all happily tucked into the bagels, with butter and cream cheese. I heard "Delicious!"
and "Oh Mama, these are so good!" and "Thank you!" My favorite compliment, though? "These taste just like real bagels".

Why yes, they do. And they look like them too.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my little brother's birthday! Umm, I mean, my younger brother's birthday. He prefers the second, more accurate term because he's half a foot taller than me or more. But, I guess I'll always think of him as littler than me. And since I'm the older sister, and mom's not here right now.... I guess that puts me
in charge of this particular choice....

Growing up, we did just about everything togther. We played together, swam together, rode our bikes together. We went to school together. We fought together. We travelled together, seeing Washington D.C., Disney World, and every single state on the Eastern seaboard together. When he went away to summer camp I went down to visit him. When I went to college I kept cokes in my fridge for when he came to visit me, and I don't even drink Coke. We were in each other's weddings and are godparents to each other's firstborn children.

We talk on the phone together. A lot. He calls me. I call him. (although he's way better than I am at figuring out the differences in our time zones). If I want to tell someone about some funny or cute thing my kids did, I call him. If I just want to hang out with him, I call him. He's funny and fun and smart. You couldn't ask for a better phone pal. Or brother.

Our mother says that when she brought him home from the hospital I looked at him and said, "Oh, thank you mummy, thank you!" That pretty much sums up how I still feel about him today. His birth was one of the great blessings of my life.

So, here's to you kiddo! May God bless you today and always.

Happy birthday!

The Great Bread Project Begins!

I am still getting the hang of blogging. It has been almost 2 weeks (arrgh!) since my last post, but not to worry. We have faithfully begun production of our bread. Here is a chronicle of our first attempt.

To begin with, we made a loaf of sandwich white bread. We used a recipe from Mark Bitman's How to Cook Everything. It is a double rise bread, meaning that you first make the dough,

let it rise

and punch it down.

Then you shape it, put it in a loaf pan,
and let it rise AGAIN, then bake it.


This entire process is easy enough with the food processor, but as far as how long it takes, well, my official estimate on that is "longer than you want." If you want bread for lunch, you need to start early in the morning. If you want bread for breakfast, you need to start the night before. If you want bread for dinner, you need to start pretty much right after you've done the lunch dishes. And, if you want enough bread for your prayer group and your family on the same day, you need to make two loaves. Except, you didn't. Not at first.

This brings us to the second bump in the road. Fresh baked bread is more delicious than store-bought sandwich loaves. My youngest child smelled it baking all morning and announced at 10:30 am that she was "hungwee." Since I had a kitchen full of women who were visiting for prayer group and lunch, I was not sure how to proceed. I knew my little one would keep up her mournful hunger cries until I sliced the bread, but lunch was 2 hours and 5 decades of the rosary away. Moreover, in my zeal to start providing all the bread around here myself, I had NOT bought any bread at the market. Of course, I was serving sandwiches for lunch and needed that bread. So, I compromised.

I told my friends that I'd put out the bread with our coffee, but we had to resist the admittedly strong temptation to eat it all. Luckily, temperance prevailed and our grilled cheese lunch was saved. A little bread was even left over. You would think my problems were solved. Happy preschoolers had snacked on fresh bread. Prayer group ladies had lunched on fresh bread. I had enough left over to feel like everyone had eaten as much as they wanted. What could possibly be wrong?

Well, let's go back to issue number one. Now we will see why bread takes longer than you want it to. Because when you make the dough the night before you want bread, anybody who is at home will see it and know bread is coming. They will plan on eating it, right from the oven, with nice butter and maybe even jam. They will not for a second consider that you may be serving it to hungry preschoolers and luncheon guests. Before they get home from school. Or work.
That's the thing about homemade bread. You can't sneak it into the house and out again without anyone noticing.

So, after my friends left, I started again. I mixed the dough, let it rise. Punched it, let it rise again, and baked it. Dinner was served, with bread still hot from the oven. And there was even enough bread left for breakfast. For exactly two of my four kids.

Catholic Mothers On-line

Yup, that's what I am! I've just joined this blogroll, and if you check out my sidebars over on the right you'll find some of my favorite catholic mothers on their blogs - including KC at The Cabbage Patch!

I haven't visited all the blogs on the blogroll yet but I'm looking forward to doing so. Maybe I'll see you there as I'm out and about on my cybertravels!

Welcome Back!

My all-time favorite magazine, Victoria, is back! I was introduced to this wonderful publication when my 12 year-old son was in kindergarten. I was visiting with my mother-in-law and saw it on her coffee table.I immediately fell in love with it, so much so that she sent the issue home with me. The next thing I knew, I had a subscription!

I still have that issue (August 2000!), and all the other ones that came so faithfully each month in the mail. I loved reading them, poring over the pictures and articles, learning how to make our home gracious and lovely. I often found myself turning to them whenever I set out to decorate rooms in our house or beautiful tables for parties. Just this winter, I sought their help a when my older daughter and I held a mother-daughter Valentine tea for her fifth grade class. I never threw one away, because they were so gorgeous, informative and inspiring.

Turns out, that was a smart decision too, because eventually, Heast Communications stopped publishing Victoria. We faithful readers have been Victoria-less for many many months (years!), but the light is shining at the end of the tunnel! According to one of my favorite bloggers, Dawn at "By Sun and Candlelight", subscriptions are already available! The premiere issue will be a November-December one. I just reserved mine!

Bread Baking Bliss

About a year ago, we renovated our home pretty much from top to bottom. I'm now the happy owner of a beautiful, big, sunny, eat-in kitchen, complete with my dream stove , a La Canche with a 5 burner cooking top and 2 side-by-side dual fuel ovens. As a mother with 4 children, this is the room where I live most of my life. As a woman who loves to cook, it is also the room where I can get messy and create my art.

Now, anyone who is here on fish stick night might quibble with that description of my cooking, but bear with me. For the most part, I try to cook the meals I serve from scratch. I love shopping for ingredients, planning menus, and then getting to work. When I'm, chopping, dicing, sauteing, braising, simmering, baking, seasoning, and stirring, I'm creating. I'm creating something delicious for my family's table, and a happy atmosphere in our kitchen.

I'm trying to teach my children that food is not just something you grab on the run. It is a good gift from God, and we can take that good food and work with it to turn it into meals that nourish us body and soul. Even really little children love the magic of turning ingredients like flour and sugar and butter into cookies we can serve for an afternoon treat. It is a wonderful hands-on lesson that teaches the rewards of labor can be sweet.

We are losing something as people when we fill our grocery carts and pantry shelves with factory produced foodstuffs. We're losing the knowledge of how to make our foods ourselves, we're losing the chance to connect with our kids in the kitchen and pass those skills onto them, and we're losing the satisfaction and joy that come from sitting down to a table to eat a meal we've made with our own hands. More and more, I want to forestall those losses. So, to that end, I've set about learning how to make the bread and pasta that my family eats. I don't mean the occasional loaf of specialty bread, although I think that's delicious and fine. I mean I am trying to figure out how much bread my family eats each week (toast, sandwiches, bagels, English muffins, hamburger or hot dog buns) and how I can set up a baking schedule that will produce it right here in our very own ovens. I'm going to try and rotate my way through a variety of recipes to come up with our "house" varieties, and then work to estabish when I need to get baking. I'm planning on turning to my kitchen mentors Mark Bittman, Gerard Auzet, and Julia Child for their recipes.

And I'll turn here to share the progress I make as we go along.

Say Cheese!

Saturday night we hosted our first ever cheese-tasting, and here are the 5 beuaties we sampled. We tried 2 soft cow's milk cheeses from France; a Brie de Lyon and a Livarot from Normandy. Also from cow's milk were 2 Italian cheeses; a Piave Vecchio from Veneto and a Blue del Moncenisio from Piedmont. Finally, we sampled a goat's milk cheese (chevre) from Burgandy, France, a Charolais. We served them at room temperature with the 2 baguettes and some red wine. The ground rules for picking these 5 were that we try enough cheeses to get some good contrasts, not so many that we'd get fatigued palates, and that we experiment with cheeses we'd never tried before.

How were they? Well, they were all DELICIOUS. Starting with the French cheeses, though, I'll give you a bit more of a description than just that.

The Charolais (the rough cylindrical one) was smooth,creamy,and delightfully bitter. The taste is also a little sour, and not salty. This cheese is pale yellow inside, with a creamy texture more like a brie, almost melting onto the bread rather than crumbling when spread. It was very different from other chevres that I've tried, which tend to be white, thick and somewhat like a crumbly cream cheese.

The Livarot , as you can see, has an orange rind and is a soft, creamy yellow cheese. It has a sharp tang, is VERY bitter, and somewhat of a "stinky cheese", if you know what I mean. Very full flavored and strong. It was cut somewhat by the bread and a big hit with our guests.

I, however, preferred the Brie de Lyon. This is a cheese you could eat all day (or all evening, like us!). With it's white soft rind and butter color it looked like Bries I've sampled before. But it really surprised me. The cheese was not at all bitter or sour. It was mild, creamy, thick, smooth, slightly salty, and buttery. In fact, it tasted somewhat like butter, only better.


Now onto our Italians. The Piave Vecchio is a hard cheese. It looks like a Romano cheese, pale golden color with some white flecking. It is dry and a flakes easily. It is a much gentler sweeter cheese than Romano, perfect for a cheese tasting after dinner party because it is salty but also has a very fruity flavor that Iwasn't expecting. I loved this cheese and wil definitley buy more of it. I think it would taste wonderful with pears.

The Blue del Moncenisio was a knockout. I've only just grown up enough to start liking blue cheese in the past year (and I'm a lot closer to 40 than I am to 30...). but still, this is the best Blue I've ever tried./ The cheese is, like all the others on our plate, a golden yellow. The blue veins, however, are more of a soft, sagey green than a blue. The veins are large too, giving the mold the appearance of folded fresh chopped sage. Creamy, a little sour, tangy, a bit pastier than the Brie. This cheese aslo has a very floral bouquet that contrasts deliciously with its own saltiness.


If you're looking for a great way to serve cheeses and don't want to sample 5 at once, try serving a cheese course. At our house, we've been happily working our way through the recipes in this book since Christmas. So far, every one has been a hit.

Bon Appetit!

How I Feel In Spring

Just like my tree.

In For A Penny, In For A Pound

I am so happy to be here! I've been dreaming of starting a blog for more than a year now but have wondered how on earth to do it. I've decided that the best way to learn is just to jump in and begin. Since that's the way I've learned pretty much everything in my adult life, I decided to name this little blog in honor of that give-it-your-all hopeful spirit. Jump on in and join me as I figure out how to combine blogging and life here at home as the mother to 4 happy energetic kids who are sure their mother will never master the speakerphone, let alone the blogosphere.