This year, I've decided to try something new. It's called getting up before I have to. I tried it before the break. I don't like it, and consequently stopped while on the break. All of you morning people that wake up excited about life and a new day, and I mean this in the most loving Christian way possible, I can't stand you. Or, at least I can't stand the part of you that makes you that way, the DNA I didn't inherit. I suppose it's jealousy.
I've often thought life would be so much easier for me if I could wake up and start the day with as much energy as my dad used to. Poor man. Morning person to his very core, and always so happy to see us when we emerged from our slumber. My mom, myself (obviously) and my brothers, not so fond of mornings. The rest of us made a rule that my dad couldn't talk or sing until we had been up for half an hour. This was honestly for his own protection. Some mornings, it seemed to kill him to be quiet. After all, he'd been up for hours and had so much to share about what he'd been reading or thinking. Many mornings, after the allotted time had passed for us to get used to the fact that we were no longer snuggled warm in our beds, he would begin conversations with vibrancy and go on about his day like the world was his to conquer. That right there is what I wish I had inherited. If he had to wake us for anything, usually church because he was off to work before the sun rose most weekdays, he would enter our rooms with inhuman joy, playing some military wake up call on his pretend finger trumpet or singing Patch the Pirate's Rise and Shine Lazy Sleepy Head until we rose from our beds just to get away from the sound. [And, now you know why I am the way I am. That crazy (albeit awesome) man tortured me every weekend and holiday my whole childhood.]
I used to pray that my children somehow inherited that trait from him. Then I came to my senses and remembered that they already rise with the sun, why on earth would I pray that they would continue to torture me after their baby wakefulness came to an end. Needless to say, God knows better than we do, and He in His providence did not grant my early prayers. However, I will say that it is unbelievably hard for an adult who doesn't want to get out of bed to wake children who don't want to get out of bed. We're talking about serious battles before the sun comes up. Who wants to argue with a 6 year old about the importance of school or the reason we should go to church before the sun comes up? Every part of me except the mom part wants to say, "you're right, let's just crawl back into bed until noon."
The thing is, I'm always complaining about not having enough time to myself, time for reading and study, journaling and blogging, design and art projects, exercise and planning, things you can't do with three kids around. I'm usually spent at the end of the day. By the time I survive the day, get the kids to bed, lay out clothes, make lunches and pack back packs, the only thing I feel like doing is to crawl in bed for the best kind of alone time, sleep. So, waking earlier in the morning, is really my only option.
School starts back tomorrow for Jackson, the next day for my other two. We will resume leaving the house before the sun, and all that goes with it, minus an hour or two of sleep for me. I'm trying to get happy about my new morning person trial and having time to wake up myself before I have to wake the kids. Then maybe I'll have kinder answers for when they whine about how tired they are and ask why they have to go to school.
Have I ever mentioned I don't like coffee? In order to make this work, I might need to start. Maybe I'm gonna need to switch from my yummy green tea with honey to something stronger like chai, or I guess I could get back to my roots with a little earl gray or Irish breakfast tea. Or, I could just suck it up, grow up and make it happen without the use of stimulants.
I'll let you know how it goes. This has the potential to be a life changing resolution. Of course, it also has more potential to be one of those resolutions that gets scrapped by February. We'll see.
a collection of recipes and encouragement
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Cinnamon Rolls [Whole Wheat, Low Sugar]
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| Drizzling maple syrup over the roll in stead of icing adds sweetness while keeping it natural. |
Something he considers a big treat is cinnamon rolls. Since I make these from scratch with yeast, they're more labor and time intensive than say muffins or pancakes. That's why he considers them a treat, they don't happen very often. I love how easy it was to healthen up the recipe and provide him something he loves that's good for him, too. Someday, when I get him over his texture issues with nuts, I'll add them to the filling for protein and crunch.
Here's the recipe:
Dough:
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (or one yeast packet)
1/2 cup warm water (between 90 and 105 degrees F)
1/2 cup scalded milk (it is very important that you scald the milk)
1/4 cup natural sugar (I use Florida Crystals organic cane sugar most of the time)
6 Tbsp organic butter, melted
1 tsp salt
1 egg (I use my mom's free-range, corn-free eggs)
3 to 4 cups flour (I usually mix whole wheat pastry flour and all-purpose flour in a 60/40 mixture. I've found that the more whole wheat flour I use, the more dense and less sweet the roll tastes, but obviously the more healthy it is. You could go more or less on the mixture depending on your purpose for the rolls.)
Filling:
My current go-to filling is homemade apple butter sweetened with honey. I've found that Cracker Barrel has a natural unsweetened apple butter with good flavor to use in a pinch. You could use a pumpkin or banana filling, too. If you're not using sugar and butter (like the usual cinnamon roll filling), though, you need some kind of fruit to make it work.
Apple Butter
3 cups apple cider
2 lbs apples, peeled, cored and chopped
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp ground cinnamon
In a large saucepan over medium heat, bring the cider to a boil. Stir in the apples and reduce the heat to low. Cover and simmer, stirring frequently for about 1 hour or until the apples are tender. Remove the apples from the heat and mash. Stir in the honey and cinnamon. Return to heat and cook uncovered on low until thick, stirring often. Allow to cool before spreading onto rolls. You won't use all of this recipe on the rolls, so have a container ready to put the leftovers up in the fridge. I'm not a canner. So, I'm not sure this recipe is safe for canning.
Pumpkin Filling, combine ingredients and mix well.
1 15oz can pumpkin (not the pie filling, just the pumpkin)
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
Directions:
Have filling prepared and cooled. Scald the milk and melt the butter (in separate containers).
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and set aside. In a large bowl mix milk, sugar, melted butter, salt and egg. Add 2 cups of the flour and mix until smooth. Add yeast. Mix in remaining flour 1 cup at a time until dough is easy to handle. On a well floured work surface, knead the dough for about 5-10 minutes. Place in a well-greased bowl, cover and let it rise until it's doubled in size, usually 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
After the dough has doubled, punch it down and roll it out on a floured surface. You're going for a roughly 9x15 inch rectangle. Spread the filling over the dough. You want to get enough on there, but not so much that it all squeezes out when you roll up the dough. Jackson likes cinnamon, so I will often sprinkle more over the filling after I'm done spreading. Beginning with the long side, roll up the dough into a log and cut 10-12 slices.
Grease and flour a round 9 inch cake pan like you would for baking a cake. Place the cinnamon roll slices close together and bake for about 30 minutes or until nicely browned. If you want to, you can use a bigger pan or a square or rectangular pan, place the slices close together and let it rise one more time (about 45 minutes) before baking. I'm always so tired of waiting by this point, I just put it in the oven.
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| Yummy! |
For the 'icing' I just warm some maple syrup and pour it over the top. Jackson will eat it without the syrup or icing, too, especially if we're running late for school, and I like not having the stickiness in my car. The pumpkin filling is from my homemade pop tarts, and you could use the same icing recipe on these. You would probably have to double or triple it, though, to make enough for a dozen rolls.
Now, I'm going to have to make these while we're still on break.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Chicken and Dumplings
It's New Year's Day, and I currently have a ham in the oven for our traditional lucky meal. However, I decided I would sit down and go through my photo app to see what I cooked, photographed and never blogged. This one stood out to me because of how cold and rainy it is outside right now, Chicken and Dumplings.
I LOVE this old Southern staple. I always have. It is one of those comfort foods that fills me with warmth and helps sooth whatever is ailing me. One of my favorite restaurants to eat chicken and dumplings at was the Whistle Stop Cafe in Irondale, Alabama. Cracker Barrel's aren't that bad, either. My kids think mine are better than theirs. They haven't always been that good, though. When I first started trying to cook this, like a lot of things in my life, I had a tendency to over complicate it until I ruined it. I would use chicken breast, and pre-made stock. It would be bland. I would add veggies and herbs to add flavor, but then it wasn't chicken and dumplings, at least not the kind I had grown up on. It was chicken soup with dumplings. I would use Bisquick for the dumplings and I would drop them in. They would usually disintegrate into the broth. Then Jackson's food allergies began, and suddenly I became a chicken expert.
One of the few things I could feed him without complication was chicken and rice. Once we cleared wheat as an allergen, I began making chicken and dumplings for him, too. Now, I think they are as comforting to him as they are to me. My daughter loves them, as well.
Some of the things I learned from my mother in law, my Memaw and from my favorite cooking blogs/websites helped me figure out how to make them perfect every time. I learned that the flavor is in the bone and started using whole chickens. I learned that to maximize that flavor, it needs to cook a LONG time. If you use a whole chicken, fill the pot with water just until the chicken is covered and cook it on low heat for a few hours, the broth won't need anything but a little salt and pepper. I cook mine in my pasta pot with the colander part on. Once the chicken is cooked until it is literally falling apart, I lift up the colander part (the part for draining the pasta), and I let the broth drain out. Then I flip it over, dropping the chicken out onto a plate. Then I pick the meat off the chicken dropping it back into the broth as I go. This way, I don't have to strain the broth or fish through it with a straining spoon to get all the boney bits out. I add milk to the broth, too. I couldn't tell you how much since I just go until it looks right, but if I had to guess it would be about half of how much broth is in the pot, maybe 4-5 cups.
Then there's the dumplings. I roll mine out and cut them into squares. I've heard of several different ways to mix up the dough, but I've started using 1 part whole wheat pastry flour, 1 part all-purpose flour and 2 parts self rising flour. Sometimes I ditch the all-purpose and just split the whole wheat pastry flour and the self rising flour. My husband doesn't like it when I do this. He says I'm ruining a good thing with too much whole wheat flour, but my kids haven't noticed. They gobble it up like they always have. After I mix up the flour, I use 2 parts flour mixture to 1 part milk, give or take a little bit until I get the right looking/feeling dough. It should feel like biscuit dough, not wet and sticky, but not hard and dry like cookie or pastry dough. Then I dump it out onto a floured work surface, roll it out to about a 1/4 to an 1/8th inch thick rounded rectangle and cut it into squares with a pizza cutter. For my family of five, that translates to about 5 cups flour to about 2 1/2 cups milk and a nice long sheet of dumplings.
After I have pulled the chicken off the bones, returned it to the broth and discarded the bones, I add the milk along with some salt and pepper to the broth and bring it to a boil. While it's heating, I make my dumplings. I turn the broth down to a simmer and then add the dumplings one handful at a time. I cover it and let it cook for about ten minutes. Then I uncover it and let it cook for another ten minutes. I use a ladle to push the dumplings down, stir and separate them as they do tend to stick to each other.
This is the best way to cook chicken and dumplings, but I rarely have the time these days. I've found some short cuts that have helped me manage to have this comfort food even during the busy school week. One is to unwrap the chicken, remove the insides and freeze it inside a slow cooker liner (inside a freezer bag, too), the day I want chicken and dumplings (or chicken pot pie or soup) I can just pull it out and stick it into the crock pot in the morning (out of the freezer bag, but still in the slow cooker liner). If I use the liner and a frozen chicken, I don't worry about adding water. It seems to provide enough for itself, but I would keep an eye on it to make sure there is enough liquid for it to cook appropriately. After several hours on low, I pull the liner out with the chicken, hold it over a stock pot or a bowl and cut a few holes in the liner for the broth to drain out. Once I've drained it enough, I set the bag onto a plate and pull the chicken off the bones dropping it into the pot/bowl with the broth. If I'm going to cook it right away, I just add water to the stock pot and continue as always. But, another thing I've learned is to put this slow cooked chicken and concentrated broth into a freezer safe tupperware container and freeze it for later. The fat will rise to the top and it will look separated, but it will all mix back together when you get ready to cook it. When I pull it out of the freezer, I run hot water over the bowl part loosening the contents. Then I drop it into a stock pot on my cook top, add enough water to cover it and turn the heat onto medium low. Then once it comes to a boil, I add the milk, bring it to another boil and add the dumplings. Cooked meat never freezes as good as raw. The texture and the flavor seem to suffer greatly, but I've found that with plenty of broth to cover the chicken, it works for meals like this. I freeze my own pot pies, as well, and they freeze ok, too.
Now, I'm wishing I could have a bowl of this to warm up today, but we'll soon be having ham, greens, corn bread and black eyed peas. So, I guess I'll save this for another cold wet day this year.
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| It was dark out and all I had was the light above my cook top. |
I LOVE this old Southern staple. I always have. It is one of those comfort foods that fills me with warmth and helps sooth whatever is ailing me. One of my favorite restaurants to eat chicken and dumplings at was the Whistle Stop Cafe in Irondale, Alabama. Cracker Barrel's aren't that bad, either. My kids think mine are better than theirs. They haven't always been that good, though. When I first started trying to cook this, like a lot of things in my life, I had a tendency to over complicate it until I ruined it. I would use chicken breast, and pre-made stock. It would be bland. I would add veggies and herbs to add flavor, but then it wasn't chicken and dumplings, at least not the kind I had grown up on. It was chicken soup with dumplings. I would use Bisquick for the dumplings and I would drop them in. They would usually disintegrate into the broth. Then Jackson's food allergies began, and suddenly I became a chicken expert.
One of the few things I could feed him without complication was chicken and rice. Once we cleared wheat as an allergen, I began making chicken and dumplings for him, too. Now, I think they are as comforting to him as they are to me. My daughter loves them, as well.
Some of the things I learned from my mother in law, my Memaw and from my favorite cooking blogs/websites helped me figure out how to make them perfect every time. I learned that the flavor is in the bone and started using whole chickens. I learned that to maximize that flavor, it needs to cook a LONG time. If you use a whole chicken, fill the pot with water just until the chicken is covered and cook it on low heat for a few hours, the broth won't need anything but a little salt and pepper. I cook mine in my pasta pot with the colander part on. Once the chicken is cooked until it is literally falling apart, I lift up the colander part (the part for draining the pasta), and I let the broth drain out. Then I flip it over, dropping the chicken out onto a plate. Then I pick the meat off the chicken dropping it back into the broth as I go. This way, I don't have to strain the broth or fish through it with a straining spoon to get all the boney bits out. I add milk to the broth, too. I couldn't tell you how much since I just go until it looks right, but if I had to guess it would be about half of how much broth is in the pot, maybe 4-5 cups.
 |
| My daughter loves to help me with this part. |
Then there's the dumplings. I roll mine out and cut them into squares. I've heard of several different ways to mix up the dough, but I've started using 1 part whole wheat pastry flour, 1 part all-purpose flour and 2 parts self rising flour. Sometimes I ditch the all-purpose and just split the whole wheat pastry flour and the self rising flour. My husband doesn't like it when I do this. He says I'm ruining a good thing with too much whole wheat flour, but my kids haven't noticed. They gobble it up like they always have. After I mix up the flour, I use 2 parts flour mixture to 1 part milk, give or take a little bit until I get the right looking/feeling dough. It should feel like biscuit dough, not wet and sticky, but not hard and dry like cookie or pastry dough. Then I dump it out onto a floured work surface, roll it out to about a 1/4 to an 1/8th inch thick rounded rectangle and cut it into squares with a pizza cutter. For my family of five, that translates to about 5 cups flour to about 2 1/2 cups milk and a nice long sheet of dumplings.
After I have pulled the chicken off the bones, returned it to the broth and discarded the bones, I add the milk along with some salt and pepper to the broth and bring it to a boil. While it's heating, I make my dumplings. I turn the broth down to a simmer and then add the dumplings one handful at a time. I cover it and let it cook for about ten minutes. Then I uncover it and let it cook for another ten minutes. I use a ladle to push the dumplings down, stir and separate them as they do tend to stick to each other.
This is the best way to cook chicken and dumplings, but I rarely have the time these days. I've found some short cuts that have helped me manage to have this comfort food even during the busy school week. One is to unwrap the chicken, remove the insides and freeze it inside a slow cooker liner (inside a freezer bag, too), the day I want chicken and dumplings (or chicken pot pie or soup) I can just pull it out and stick it into the crock pot in the morning (out of the freezer bag, but still in the slow cooker liner). If I use the liner and a frozen chicken, I don't worry about adding water. It seems to provide enough for itself, but I would keep an eye on it to make sure there is enough liquid for it to cook appropriately. After several hours on low, I pull the liner out with the chicken, hold it over a stock pot or a bowl and cut a few holes in the liner for the broth to drain out. Once I've drained it enough, I set the bag onto a plate and pull the chicken off the bones dropping it into the pot/bowl with the broth. If I'm going to cook it right away, I just add water to the stock pot and continue as always. But, another thing I've learned is to put this slow cooked chicken and concentrated broth into a freezer safe tupperware container and freeze it for later. The fat will rise to the top and it will look separated, but it will all mix back together when you get ready to cook it. When I pull it out of the freezer, I run hot water over the bowl part loosening the contents. Then I drop it into a stock pot on my cook top, add enough water to cover it and turn the heat onto medium low. Then once it comes to a boil, I add the milk, bring it to another boil and add the dumplings. Cooked meat never freezes as good as raw. The texture and the flavor seem to suffer greatly, but I've found that with plenty of broth to cover the chicken, it works for meals like this. I freeze my own pot pies, as well, and they freeze ok, too.
Now, I'm wishing I could have a bowl of this to warm up today, but we'll soon be having ham, greens, corn bread and black eyed peas. So, I guess I'll save this for another cold wet day this year.
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