Updates

My Grandpa reminded me today that is has been quite some time since I posted. Not as long as Mr. Bear, but still- quite a while! My only response was that we've been too busy doing to be posting about it!

Here's what we're up to:

1) After trying a few bread recipes, I've found one that was built around the Kitchen Aid and cooks up beautifully. I've made this into white bread, wheat bread, cinnamon-raisin swirl bread, dinner rolls, and pigs in blankets. Oh, and mashed it flat, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with garlic and Parmesan for garlic sticks. A great recipe! I'll post it over at Chow Review. I was awestruck when my friend told me she hadn't purchased any bread this year, but you know...it's not as difficult as people make it out to be. Grind the wheat while your yeast is proofing, use a kitchen aid to knead, and your bread dough is set out to rise with extraordinarily little effort on your part. Plus, the kitchen aid is MUCH better at kneading than I am.

2) The garden has a few failures, and a few successes. What worked: carrots, swiss chard, bush beans, nasturtiums, and sunflowers all sown directly in the ground. Everything else either didn't germinate, or is only an inch tall and not nearly large enough to produce anything before our very short growing season ends. Next year I'll either start them indoors a lot earlier (due to our move, nothing got sown indoors or out until late April), or just buy starts (like for the herbs.)

Oh, and funny story about the garden- I planted a flat of marigolds around the perimeter of my garden, because they're supposed to keep bad things out of the garden, right? Well 8 out of 10 of those poor things have been eaten down to their leaf skeletons! At least whatever is eating them is staying out of my garden, mostly. Poor, scapegoat, marigolds.

3) Homemade yogurt is a success, and I found out I can mix in a little sugar and flavoring along with the yogurt starter after heating the milk, and it still sets up just fine. My family likes it much better that way, obviously!

4) Most rooms in the house now sport a wildly colored swath of paint- we're trying out colors this time, before painting an entire room. Much better to put down $5 on a sample can than $25 on a gallon!

And that's what we've been doing! I'm due in 10 weeks, I think. I did too much lifting and not enough drinking yesterday, and was rewarded with a few hours of annoying contractions (which I've been having since 15 weeks, even though my doctor says that's impossible!) and one pretty big one. Yay for silly pregnant ladies who try to lift things! We'll make sure the doctors all stay in business.