Easter feaster

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter.  We did.  There was some egg dying and some cookie making and two very excited kids while we got ready for bed Saturday night.  My kids are used to doing egg hunts inside because it's usually too cold to go outside, but not this year.  We didn't tell them it would be outside though, so they spent the morning searching all over the house and were very worried that the Easter bunny hadn't come.  We finally told them where to look and headed out to the yard. 

Sunday afternoon, we enjoyed a feast, as my son likes to say whenever I remember to fix a side dish.  Leg of lamb, hot potato salad, deviled eggs (since the baby threw a few hard boiled eggs when she found them) and pickled beets.  As I sat whining about how full I was, I couldn't help but think about family holiday traditions.  Growing up, I always knew what to expect for each holiday and good food was always to be expected.

My family generally had lamb for Memorial Day, as we spent it with the grandparents who raised sheep.  Thanksgiving was always at great aunt Allene's house-on my Mom's side of the family.  Christmas Eve with Dad's parents, then Christmas afternoon we went to the other grandparent's.  Easter was always at my mom's mom's house and it was always ham.  I associate ham with Easter because of that.  Now that we've all gotten older, and most of the hostesses have passed on, those traditions have died too.  And since there was no ham to be found in my freezer, we started a new tradition... lamb.  Okay, I don't know if it'll be a tradition, but it sure was good.  Not as good as how my grandma used to fix it, but I think I'm improving.

I was inspired by Resweater to make these little eggs.  I used scraps from my baby slippers project, so the kids thought they were slippers the entire time.  I wanted to make more from another sweater, but I just didn't get to it.  Maybe next year I'll make some more.  They sure are cute.

Cards

I like cards.  Maybe it's because I come from a family that doesn't express feelings well, so we need to write them down.  I don't know, but I come from a card giving family.  I have often spent well over an hour in the card section of a store, just reading, looking for that one card that captures exactly what I would want to say to someone.  I love that feeling of finding one, or more that are just perfect.  I remember the checkout lady starting to cry once when she read the card that I was buying for my mom.  It was my first year away from home at college and her daughter had also just left home. 

One day, I was burning a bit of time before some appointment by reading cards and I bumped into my cousin, doing the exact same thing.  It was kind of funny because we usually didn't have much to talk about.  Apparently, card reading is a strong family trait.  My Grandma has the talent of making a birthday card arrive exactly on your birthday.  Even now at 90, my baby's birthday card arrived her right on the day. 

These are a few cards that I liked, but haven't sent to anyone yet.  Sorry it's a little blurry on the words.

I keep lots of cards that were sent to me, especially ones that meant something special.  I have shoe boxes stashed away that I sometimes look through and remember how much it meant to me to get that one from my sis when I was feeling down, or whatever. I like to keep them to remind me of my other Grandma and how she would underline the parts that she really agreed with.  Sometimes she would underline the whole message...or maybe that was my Grandpa fooling around with her.  I can see him doing that.

My husband, on the other hand, is not a card person.  He tries because he knows I like them and he has purposefully gone out just to get a card for me for our anniversary.   I think it's cute that he tries and I love him for it.  He apologized to me this Valentines Day for not getting me one.  What's funny is, I have quit getting cards for him.  He doesn't know what to do with them, and I'm not going to keep them for him.  So, he who doesn't understand the card thing is looking for them, and she who loves cards is no longer looking. 

Marriage, ain't it grand?  :)

Grinding wheat for baking day Tuesday

I did it.  After several phone calls to my mom and a practice run last night, I successfully ground my wheat flour this morning.  It brought back memories of "helping" when I was a girl.  The rumbling and shaking of the counter, pouring the wheat berries in and chasing them around to get them down the hole and the amazement at the finished product.  It was fun showing my kids the progression from the "seeds" to the flour, to the bread.

Here's a shot of the wheat going down the hole to be ground up.

 This is how it looks without that metal plate on top...before I got serious about grinding anything.  The stone toward the top of the picture (toward the back in real life) spins really fast against the stone in front.  The berries drop down the hole and fall between the two stones.

 Here's what it looked like after grinding.  Flour everywhere.  I learned not to blow into there. 

I started with a quart of hard white wheat and about 1 1/2 cups of hard red wheat.

 I ended up with a pint of the hard red.

The quart of hard white wheat yielded a generous six cups, filling both the quart jar and a pint jar.

Something I really didn't like as a girl was how heavy and tough the whole wheat bread was.  My mom's generation is all about hard red wheat and I didn't realize that there was anything else.  Last year, as I was attempting to slowly move my family from white bread to wheat bread, I discovered white wheat flour, which has the same health benefits and usefulness, but is a much lighter, easier to swallow wheat.  At least for me it is.  I don't think anyone actually noticed that it was wheat bread at first.

For my wheat today, I used a half and half mix of hard white and hard red wheat.  You can kind of see the different colors in this picture.

I don't know if it was the white wheat, or being freshly ground, but the bread turned out really nice today.

I also tried the bread recipe I found late last week.  It looks a bit rough and we haven't tried it yet because we ate almost an entire loaf of the pretty bread, and we're kind of full.

I also burned the heck out of my left thumb while getting this one out of the oven, so it's not really endeared to me.  The blister is showing up much better now, but I don't really feel like taking another picture. 

Due to my injury, my husband volunteered to finish off the day, which wasn't really baking, but it included bread, so it fits.

We made some scones, topped them off with taco fixings and called them gorditas.  My kids were very excited and are planning to open an eating store to sell them.  The store will consist of two camp chairs set up behind a cooler on the sidewalk outside.  We informed them that a store already exists that sells them, so I think I am off the hook for now.

It was a long day in the kitchen and now I need to get in there and clean it all up.  I think I set a record for pictures in a post with this story.  Sorry about that.  I usually struggle to find just one pertinent picture, but this one went the other way  See you tomorrow, when I'm back to my almost picture less posts!

It's my Dad's birthday

He's turning 70 today. For his present, we are all writing up some memories to put in a book. I wrote mine like I was telling a story to my kiddos. His life has been anything but ordinary, so it will be fun reading what everyone comes up with.
Haying is not Grandpa’s favorite time of year, but it’s a job that needs to be done, even if it can’t be done from the back of a horse. All of Grandpa’s kids were needed to help in the hay fields at some time or other. With so many older siblings, the youngest girl was not needed in the hay field until she was in her teens. She started out driving the truck and trailer to haul bails for Grandpa to put in the stack yard. Then she was moved up to the rake tractor.
For some reason, the youngest, most inexperienced driver is given the worst tractor to work with. The first tractor she used was an old John Deere that had to be started with a screwdriver touched to a certain place on the starter. Grandpa didn’t show her where or how to start it, he just started it for her and sent her on her way. The hydraulics would get hot and cause the bucket to sag down, so the driver had to be aware and raise it every once in a while. After a few hours of raking, she was feeling hungry and wanted to stop for lunch. She realized she had no idea how to stop the tractor, so she just kept going, hoping someone would come along to help. Finally, the bucket sagged too far without her noticing, and jammed into the ground, causing the tractor to die. After lunch, she had to try to figure out how to get the tractor started again. It took a while of banging around with the screwdriver, but she finally got it going again
Another summer, this same girl was raking again, and again given the worst tractor. This time, it was a Belarus with no clutch. That meant she had to start it in the gear that she wanted to drive in, and stay in that gear. It was a scary thing to do! The tractor would jerk and jump when she tried to start it, and she had to use the throttle to slow down or speed up. As she neared the end of a wind row, she would push the throttle way down, pull the rake up, swing around very quickly to head the other way, drop the rake back down and then pull the throttle back up. It was a difficult thing, but they got the hay raked in record time that year.
One of her favorite haying memories is when she was the only one working with Grandpa that summer. They were haying the Johnny Popper at the Z bar. Grandpa would bring a little lunch for them to share, like tuna fish on a cracker and a pickle slice on top. They would sit on the bank of the empty ditch, in the shade of the trees and eat lunch and visit for a while. Then it was back to work. The two of them got most of the haying done that year and had a little fun while doing it.