Homemade Wheat Bread

Several of my friends saw my post on FB about making bread and asked for the recipe. So here you are guys!  This is my go to recipe. I have tried several others but still go back to this.

Yummy Homemade Wheat Bread 

This recipe came from a Relief Society meeting on self reliance. I don't have the name of the lady and I don't remember the ward I was a guest speaker for. These are proportions for a Bosch mixer. If you have a Kitchenaid, just cut it in half and that will work.

Bake: 350
Yield: 4 large loaves
Time: about 2 hours including rise time

Ingredients
14-16 cups whole wheat flour
2 rounded Tbs yeast
1/2 cup high-gluten flour
1/4 cup dough enhancer (or 2Tbs lemon juice or 500 mg Vit C)
6 cups very warm water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey or brown sugar (honey is best)
1 1/2 Tbs salt

Directions: Place 9 cups fresh flour into mixer with kneading arm. Add dry yeast and gluten. Pulse to mix. Add water and mix for 1 minute. Turn off mixer, cover, and let dough sponge for 10 minutes. This makes the bread have a lighter texture. Add oil, honey, lemon juice, and salt. Turn on mixer, and quickly add remaining flour, 1 cup at a time until dough forms a mass and clean the sides of the bowl. I generally use a mix of wheat and white flour. Turn mixer to high and knead for 8 minutes. If kneading by hand, knead at least 12 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic.

Preheat oven to 150 during this time. Lightly oil hands and counter surface. Divide dough into equal portions. Shape into loaves and place in greased bread pans. Turn off oven. Place bread in oven, arranging pans with space to allow heat to circulate freely. Set kitchen timer and watch closely. Let rise until almost double in bulk, about 20-30 minutes. Leave bread in oven and turn heat to 350. Bread will continue to rise a little more. Bake for 30 minutes until light golden brown. Immediately remove from pans and let cool on wire rack. Beware of ravaging children. Use extreme caution if there is butter or jam nearby!
Enjoy all the Yumminess!

Recipe Organization

Project 9 of 52

Ever notice how much of a difference even little things can make in our lives. The crazy thing too, is sometimes it doesn't take that much time to accomplish. It's more a matter of just sitting down and doing it.

Well, this is the dilema I have been facing for a while. I love to try new recipes. You know the down home kinda cooking recipes. The ones with ingredients I have in the pantry; NORMAL ingredients. I print them off and give them a try. Most of the time they are successful. There have been a couple that we tossed and ordered pizza but hey, we tried something new. And my boys are great sports about it too. They have their favs and eh, not so favs but all in all the taste it all.

I toss the recipes that are anything but a big hit. I just put them in a sheet protector in a 3-ring binder. Until recently that binder was quite a mess. I didn't have enough sheet protectors and too many untried recipes. So I sat down one day, soaked in the vitamin D and fixed my problem. I didn't take a before picture but trust me...it wasn't pretty!

 I added the sheet protectors....tossed unwanted recipes...added page dividers and labels....

 I even typed them up in a fun goofy font.

 

 Such a simple thing but ahhh, it feels so good to have my recipes neat and tidy. It makes me smile to pull it out and use now.

 

I also love to plan my menu. I always have, even before we had kids. It frustrates me to start a recipe and find out I am missing 1 ingredient. Not to mention how it helps the budget and grocery shopping. 

I found these menu plans on Pinterest. They are 4 weeks at a time and slip in the front of my binder. 

I put the current menu plan on the fridge and leave the blank ones in the binder to be filled out next time.

I even color coded it with corrdinating tabs. I had to make it simple for my hubby and oldest son. They help stick with the plan more if I make it easy for 'em. ;-)

Now I just have to grab the post it for that week and do my shopping.

LOVE IT!

The 52 Week $ Challenge

You know how some years are spendy and then you have some where you save?! We have had a couple of spendy years so one of our goals this year is to pay of debt and build our savings. There are lots of ideas on how to do this, we are doing Dave Ramseys debt snowball but also this idea.

I found this on Pinterest. The idea is each week you add money to the jar. $1 for week 1, $2 for week 2, $3 for week 3 etc. By the end of the year you will have over $1300 in savings. It could get tricky come next November and December but we are committed to the challenge. Think of how good it will be to have that in savings!

 I quickly learned that I needed a way to keep track of the weeks and if my hubby had put in the weeks savings yet or not. I simply printed the plan off, put the Sunday dates by each week then put it and a pen in the jar. I keep this on our bathroom sink so we see it all the time. We are several weeks into this challenge and still going strong. I get psyched to see the dollars building up in the jar.

Here is the original pin if you want to give it a go too. The great thing about this challenge is you can start anytime, just go for 52 weeks from when you start. And don't forget to add the dates so you can keep track.

Top 10 Go To Recipes....

So I noticed a fellow blogger commenting about having no clue what to fix for dinner and asking for suggestions. It got me thinking what my "go to" recipes were. You know the ones....where you don't have to pull the recipe out....where you can make it without much thought and even less time....

YEAH!
Those dinners!

You know we all have them. 

The moments you go Awe Crap!

 Is it time to fix dinner already?!?

....Unless your clan is like mine and never stop eating. My kitchen seems to be an endless cycle of snack and meals. Kinda expected with 4 boys. Add in the friends (boys) that are always hanging around (and welcomed) and yeah, the kitchen never seems to close....

Anyway, here is my go to list. I hope it helps get you outa that awe crap rut....

In no particular order:

1. Spaghetti- the boys all love it and score, it's cheap too. Easy to fix from the pantry.
2. Fruity chicken salad- salad, grilled chicken, mandarin oranges, grapes, Parmesan cheese tossed together, topped with poppy seed dressing and you are ready to go. Yep, even the boys enjoy it.
3. Hamburger Casserole- browned hamburger, shell pasta, green beans, corn, carrots, olives, cream of mushroom soup. Mixed together and enjoy. Great cooking from the pantry.
4. Pinwheels- browned hamburger rolled up and baked in biscuit dough like cinnamon rolls, topped with tomatoe soup or gravy. One of my favorite meals.
5. BBQ- anything thrown on the grill= easy, yummy summer meals
6. Taco Salad
7. Chicken Salad wraps
8. Roast- or anything tossed in the crockpot
9. Steak or chicken Fajitas- A1, Worcestershire sauce, onion, peppers, cheese, tomatoes, shells= YUMMY
10. Breakfast for dinner- my boys LOVE pancakes. It's a pantry staple and quick to fix. Add eggs or bacon and my troop is happy.

We buy beef and pork from a rancher friend (the only way to buy you meat!) and keep it in a big chest freezer. Just add vegis and we are good to go. 

So there you are. I have a few others but these will cycle round the month to fill the last minute holes or maybe just fill the hole until I go shopping again. I love to keep recipes on hand that come straight from the pantry. Helps my preparedness skills too.

Homemade refried beans

I had heard about making refried beans in your crockpot but I had never tried it. Sometimes you just have to say, hmm I am gonna do this and then DO IT RIGHT THEN!

Take 1 small crockpot

1 bag of beans (yep, just the bag of dried beans)

(I tried pinto and black, both were great)

Throw in some garlic salt and sliced onion

Add some chicken boullion or a can of chicken broth

Top it off with water (you may have to add more as the beans soak it up)

Let cook for about 4-5 hrs on high. Just until the beans are easily mashed.

Drain off the juices but save it. Pour the beans in your mixer and mash away. Add juice to get the right consistency.

 

Such a simple and cheap recipe. Made better by being a long term food storage item. No more need to resort to cheap PB&J when you haven't made it to the store!

My boys loved it! It was a perfect after school snack. Just spread on a tortilla and sprinkle with cheese.

It stayed good for a week in my mason jar.

Case lot sales....

I love fall cooking AND the case lot sales. I love to know that I won't need to go to the store every week, I can just cook from my storage. This is the best time to stock up on those basic cooking supplies. The recipes that we enjoy are the ones with the supplies I stock up on. PYP is a fabulous resource to pick from each of the case lot sales coming up. Prepared LDS Family has a wonderful spreadsheet of cost comparisons. I just pulled it up and WOW! I'm impressed. I didn't get the flour at Macey's- they were out- but I'm glad I didn't, I will wait for the baked goods in Novemeber like she suggested. I just had to share. She has spent over 100 hours putting this together and is being so very generous to share her efforts.

Robin LOVES scones. She posted a yummy looking recipe for scones- using home storage of course. I plan to make some as a nice surprise for the love of my life to come home too.....

Simple Scones

1 Tbsp yeast

1 cup water

1 Tbsp sugar

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

Combine yeast and water. Let sit. Add remaining ingredients. Deep fry until golden brown. 

I plan to double this recipe. Scones disappear quicly around here!

ENJOY!

72 hour kits

PYP had a discussion here about 72 hour kits. I liked how one lady had broken each meal down and had light weight simple meal ideas so we copied her idea. I don't come up with many of my own ideas but I am good at copying/benefiting from someone elses ideas. Her blog "Prepare Every Needful Thing" was a great resource. I had to do some shopping first though. Before we have had a lot of dry food that needed to be reconstituted or heavy cans of chili and stuff. As our family has grown we also had an increasing problem with portability. We wanted to go to just backpacks type of a system. Easy to carry if needed. We gathered enough backpacks for each family member and sorted through clothes and hygiene items a few weeks ago. Hopefully Matthew will be older if we ever need them ;-p. I will be glad when we can cross diapers off the packing list. They take up a lot of room. I guess the smaller size clothes make up the difference.
Tonight we gathered the food I had gotten. We placed each day's meal in a ziplock bag labeled with the menu for that day. The boys were helpful- except Matthew, he more closely resembled a tornado but dad had the job of redirecting, he, he, he! Even Tyler got each item in the correct bag without help or being told several times. I have to say I was impressed. I have a couple more food items to get. Main courses are the most difficult. What do you get that doesn't need to be cooked per-se but that is also portable. Since I am used to buy in bulk or making it from scratch I had to think and search a bit more. Still, the suggestions from Every Needful Thing helped. How about you? What do you do that works well? We have just about everything we need in 6 backpacks sitting on a shelf (or soon to be) down stairs. Just grab and go. We will be perfectly set if we can take our camping gear. Guess that's an added benefit of enjoying outdoor activities. You have most of the supplies you need in an emergency already.