This ‘ere’s bakin’ day!

Yesterday was once again my annual baking day for the Rice Lake Preganacy Help Center’s bake sale booth at the Cedar Mall craft sale. I’ve done this for two years now, and it’s definitely a tradition I want to continue. Not only do I get to spend the whole day baking (not having to limit myself to what we realistically can eat) but I get to send it all on to a good cause (and not only the “Not Onto My Own Hips” foundation) This is the day the Sugar Nazi in me is sent on vacation as I measure out cup after cup of the offending substance into my mixing bowl with wanton abandon. I even let the kids help!

Every year I make a Friendship Bread starter 10 days before baking day, and then on “the day” I mix up all of it (instead of sharing it with friends, like you’re supposed to do) and make a dozen loaves (although honestly, they should call it “Enemy Bread” because it’s so bad for you – it’s got enough sugar to kill a horse!) This year I kept it simple and just made 6 vanilla/cinnamon and 6 chocolate/chocolate chip (in former years I’ve made lemon poppy seed, lemon cranberry, and even pistachio!) I also decided to share some of my zucchini bounty from this summer (barely making a dent in the pile in my freezer!) and made 6 zucchini breads.

The kids of course were begging to get in the action, so I told them they could pick something to make, too. Elaina picked Snickerdoodles (I think mostly just because she loves to say it! Is she her mother’s daughter or what?) and Hannah picked brownies. Sam joined in with Elaina, and Naomi helped Hannah, so we made two batches of each. Elaina was very upset when I told her we were giving “her” cookies away, so we saved a few for after supper Unfortunately, one of our batches of brownies didn’t bake thoroughly, so we had to save that for later ice cream sundaes (yes, we’re pretty broken up about that!)

The day was not without its snags, however; I had put the first two ingredients for the friendship bread into the mixing bowl when I decided I was not going to use up all of my cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil making sugary desserts for people who really don’t care anyway, so at 8 am we headed to our little local grocery store and picked up 3 quart-size bottles of Vegetable Oil (Ingredients: Soybean Oil). Now, ordinarily I would not allow soybean oil within 100 feet of my kitchen, but Healthy Girl was on vacation with the Sugar Nazi, and I kept it my own dirty little secret.

An hour later I was out of cinnamon and ziploc bags, and I also realized that I needed some meatballs for church on Sunday, so we were off again to the grocery store, where they are beginning to know me on sight!

The one thing we didn’t run out of was eggs. I tallied it up later, and we used 37 eggs over the course of the day. Thankfully, my pullets are now laying around 18 a day, so this was no problem! I even sold 5 dozen this week, and still had enough left over (I wasn’t able to make waffles this morning, though, because I only had 3 left after my baking spree. It’s now 4:00 the next day, and we are up to 18 again!  Yup, I’m a happy chicken farmer!)

At 4:30, the last six loaves of friendship bread came out of the oven, but for some crazy reason I had decided to use up some of the meat in the freezer from the 1/2 cow we bought last fall – which just happened to be beef tenderloin! I found a recipe online for bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin (I had leftover bacon I really should use up . . .) (yes, it should have been raw, and it burned pretty badly, but it still gave a wonderful flavor to the meat!) It was also flavored with garlic and rosemary (which was nice, since I had just been thinking I needed to prune the rosemary on my windowsill). YUM!

But I had to eat quickly, because I was supposed to meet my sister-in-law at the movie theater to watch New Moon. So I ran out the door (thinking that I had just eaten enough garlic to scare away any vampire) and made it just in time. I was VERY glad to sit for a few hours after my day of running around the kitchen, and had fun watching the movie with a bunch of other Twilight fans (who occasionally commented on the movie while we watched – it was a blast!)

And then, to top it all off, when I got home Peter was cleaning the kitchen and washing all of the dishes from my baking spree. What a guy!

PS – no, there will be no points awarded for the Mary Poppins quote – it’s too easy; and besides, Kirsten already guessed it on my facebook page!

More bits

Peter is adamant that I must record our progeny’s cutest sayings for posterity, so here are a few more “best of” quotes:

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Every morning, as soon as he is awake, Josiah shouts, “Be Quiet!!!” repeatedly to our silent house (waking everyone else up in the process!)

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After a successful trip to the potty, Josiah generally congratulates himself by clapping and saying “Good job!” Once, to my great amusement, he followed this by singing with great gusto a few particularly pertinent lines from a favorite hymn:

“Let the people rejoice!

Oh, come to the Father through Jesus the Son

And give Him the glory, great things He hath done!”

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After lunch one afternoon, we were listening to a program on NPR in which they were interviewing a man who was a self-proclaimed “Professional River Rat” on the Mississippi River, and had written several books about his experiences.

Considering this a bit, Sam declared, “I want to be a River Rat when I grow up. No, wait – I want to be a Sea Dog!”

To which Naomi replied, “I want to be a Pool Cat, so I can stay home.”

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Elaina has some very distinct views on cuteness.

One day I told her she was cute, to which she replied, “I’m not cute, I’m a big girl!”

“What about Sammy? Is he cute?”

“No, he’s a big brother.”

“What about me? Am I cute?”

“No, you’re a big Momma!” (How could you be so silly?)

“What about Daddy? He’s big and cute!”

“Yeah. Daddy is big and cute.”

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As we were driving home one morning, Sam mentioned that he wanted brats for lunch.
“Can Dad grill them?”
“No, it’s kind of cold and foggy, and he’s got work to do.”
“Well, can I grill them then?”
“What? You know you can’t work with fire!”
“I can put it in a ring, and then it will just burn!”
“What??”
“You know, it will ‘burn, burn, burn/the ring of fire/the ring of fire!”
OK, my little Johnny Cash, Jr.!

This ‘n That

Apparently Joel is pining away for news from The Westendorf 7, so here’s some bits and pieces of what’s been happening:

Our pullets continue to lay, slowly building up numbers as more start – we averaged 5 eggs a day last week, and 10 a day this weekend. They’re still small, so I’m not selling any, but prospects are looking up!

Homeschooling is going wonderfully well, now that we have a new schedule. Previously, I had each child doing their math first, since they could do this independently while I was getting chores done. Unfortunately, this led to getting no other school done, since I have one extremely talented dawdler who can take 8 hours to do one workbook page! Now we do all of our other subjects first (Bible Study, reading, greek, science, geography, grammar, and spelling) which works out much better, since I have all of the kids doing the same lessons at the same time. We all sit down at the table together and do these subjects (which usually takes under 2 hours total), then break off and each child does his or her math lesson for the day. This goes MUCH smoother (although I did resort to bribery in one case – I told my 8-hour dawdler that I would buy him a toy (under $10) if he got his math page done in under an hour every day for a week. He did it! Yesterday we went to pick up his toy – and *surprise* he chose a new light saber

Unfortunately, we did so well with school Monday-Thursday that I decided to rest on my laurels and have a “Teacher Inservice” day on Friday - otherwise known as “Mom works on other things” – other things meaning yardwork on a gloriously warm and sunny November day! I fixed the lamp in the chicken coop (which was on a timer so the hens get their required 16 hours of light, but hadn’t been working because they kept knocking it down) and installed extra roosts (fun with power tools!), cleaned up the scrap wood lying behind the garage, which was getting wet and beginning to rot, so I stacked it upright so it could air out (and of course made plans to use it for new chicken runs . . .), and organized and swept the garage. A very productive day (and only  minimal damage to the house while I was outside!)

Saturday we went up to our friends’ new house on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was the perfect day for it – in the 60s and not too breezy. The kids had a wonderful time picking out rocks from the lakeshore:

Naomi found several heart-shaped ones, and one shaped like a breadstick (which I am saving to hold my books open while I read!) Our friend Matthew was there, too, and although Naomi’s heart-shaped rocks may not keep her warm, we couldn’t find any furnace-shaped ones for him . . .

Sunday was catch-up-on-all-the-cleaning-that-didn’t-get-done-while-I-was-busy day, with a brief break to take the kids shopping for Sam’s Math Booty (and also get the kids away from the house while Daddy dispatched Hannah’s chicken, Clara, who had a lethal respiratory infection).

And now it’s Monday. School is almost done (only math left), laundry is moving through the system, and it’s almost time to make lunch. Many homeschool moms have been asked, “What do you do with the younger children when you’re trying to do school with the older ones?” Well, in our house, they have their own studies to occupy them:

Jobiwan Kenobi trains his padawan, Princess Laina

So there you go, Joel. I hope you’re happy now