Diapers and Bread and Shopping

My sweet Thomas, sleeping all swaddled up.

A peek through the bars…

Yesterday the boys were six weeks old.  Instead of taking lovely pictures of them, I took the opportunity to photograph my six week post-partum self.  I dressed in the same clothes I wore in my last preggo post and had my mom snap a picture of me.  It was chilly in no sleeves and bare feet!  (yay!!)

I also baked bread for the first time in forever yesterday.  It feels so good to be getting reacquainted with my kitchen!

Soooooooooo good!

Back on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all that, I didn’t do any shopping.  I really didn’t have moments to sit at my computer and shop.  But I did do some shopping this week, just randomly.  I bought a few things online at Children’s Place for Joanna, a few things on Amazon, some diapers, Christmas cards… I could be in trouble.  :)  Anyway, one thing I picked up was a set of lens adapter thingies that let you get close-up and actually focus without a macro lens.  I’ve only played five seconds with them so far, but I think I like ‘em!

This is Joanna’s eye.

Also, updating my personal needs… I actually made a hair cut appointment for later this week.  I bought a pair of jeans (and fit into an old pair I already had!), and found a pair of close-toed black shoes to use while waiting on my feet to (maybe?) shrink back down to their pre-preggo size.  Feels good to be able to get dressed in not sweats.  I’m still working on the bra situation, but that’s the hardest thing.

I will leave you with a picture of most (but not all!) of our diaper stash, all folded and ready to go!

Gingerbread Men!

Joanna’s class read some gingerbread men/boy/baby stories this week.  When she came home on Friday, she and Natalie spent some time drawing gingerbread men.  They were pretty excited about them, so I thought we should try and make some gingerbread cookies.  I checked my pantry and found the only thing I was missing was ginger!  I couldn’t believe I had everything else – molasses, people-shaped cookie cutters, shortening, etc., but I didn’t have ginger.  We decided to go ahead and measure out our other ingredients and have Matt stop for some ginger on the way home.

Joanna (and of course James and Natalie) helped me gather everything and get it ready. 

I used the recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook since that’s often a good place to start.  I’m not going to type that recipe here because you all should have that cookbook.  :)  And I’m lazy.  I did make a couple of my standard substitutions.  I always use freshly ground white whole wheat flour in place of all purpose.  I also used sucanat in place of white sugar.  For the shortening, I used palm shortening, which is ridiculously better for you than Crisco or the like.

The kids were being kind of crazy so I didn’t get a second chance at this picture like I would have liked.  I thought it was so pretty how the paddle made a pretty flower in the shortening.  :)

I did not take many process shots since baking with three “helpers” is hard.

We mixed up the dough and let it chill overnight in the fridge.  It didn’t need that long, but it would have been too late for the kids to start that evening.

So this morning after breakfast we rolled out the dough and made the cookies!

Rolled out cookies are not my favorite kind to make – they’re far too labor-intensive.  :)

But this was educational.

I wasn’t going for perfection here.  I was just excited that I actually had people cookie-cutters.  In fact, I don’t even remember why I have them.

Matt took all these pictures, and I’m very proud of him!  (I set the camera on auto for him, but I think he did a great job of framing the shots and shooting from a good angle.)  Yay Matt!

This one is out of focus, but I still love the way it looks:

I LOVE how James turns to the camera to give a sideways smile whenever I pull it out.

The finished cookies!  You can see we slipped a gingerbread train engine in there as well.

I decided we didn’t really need to decorate them.  We only made half the batch of cookies, so maybe we’ll decorate the next go round.  Or, maybe not.

The leg fell off of Joanna’s gingerbread lady right before I took these pictures.  Oops!

I wasn’t really expecting the kids to like them very much (gingerbread tastes much too healthy to be dessert, if you ask me.), but they all loved them!

First I just gave James the head of the gingerbread man.

But he wanted the rest of it as well.

And this is what happened when he ate the whole thing and I wouldn’t let him have more.

He looooooooooooooves cookies!  I have no idea where he gets that.  :)

I didn’t taste them, but they were proclaimed very tasty by all the children, Matt, and my mom.  I did love how the house smelled like Christmas for a while here in September!

The other Thanksgiving Dinner

We went to Matt’s brother Mark’s house Thanksgiving afternoon for a big ol’ family meal!  Sorry I forgot to take pictures of the food before it was partially eaten…  :)

Some deliciousness: green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sausage gravy, turkey, and zucchini pie.

And some more deliciousness: more turkey and oven potatoes.  Oven potatoes are the Pence family comfort food.  Matt makes his yummy noises when he eats this.  :)

And my rolls – they turned out great this time.  (I may have cheated a bit and thrown in some all purpose flour.)  I made 72 rolls, and we came home with 16.  Which are all gone by now.  :)

There was also lots of pie, brownies, and cheesecake.  Mmmm mmmm mmmm mmm mmmmmm…

And now for some blurry action shots of people eating!

I was playing with the settings on my camera, which is why pretty much every picture is bad, but in a different way.  :)

Thursday was also Mindy’s birthday (it was a big one!)  Here she is blowing out her candles with the help of my girlies. 

I’m not really sure why I took this picture, but I like it.  :)

I brought a few toys just in case, though mostly my children are entertained by their relatives.

James LOVES to put things in, take them out, stir them around, cover them up.  It’s amazing how much enjoyment he gets out of this little pot, a ball, and a spoon.

Natalie practiced her typing with Mindy’s phone.  Oh that child typed and typed and typed and typed!

Joanna got a little tickle torture from Uncle Steve.

I can’t remember exactly what was happening here, but Joanna was running back and forth between Mindy and Steve.  (You can see Natalie is still typing.)

Natalie LOVES this stuffed bobcat (I think that’s what it is?) of Uncle Mark’s.

There is also a deer head over the fireplace, and Natalie said, “When it gets low I can touch it.”  James said “uh oh.”

A couple of different people fell asleep, and when Joanna noticed, she would tiptoe around to everyone in the room and let them know to be quiet.  It was cute.

We had a FABULOUS day of much eating and time with family.  Yay Thanksgiving!

Yet another cookie post

So if you’re tired of looking at pictures of and reading about cookies and baking, skip this post!  Last week I made some snickerdoodles, sugar cookies, and peanut butter cookies.  I hadn’t made any of these before, and I was on a bit of a sugar high after.  :)

Here are the tester snickerdoodles before going in the oven:

And all fresh and ready to eat!  I froze the rest in balls before coating them in cinnamon/sugar.  I’ll do this after the thaw and before I bake on party day!

I’m not a snickerdoodle fan myself, but I had several volunteer testers who deemed them good and snickerdoodle-y.  I don’t think they’re the best you’ll ever have, but they have some pretty great ingredients!  All my cookies are made with freshly ground whole wheat flour, real butter, farm fresh eggs, and either turbinado or sucanat for the sugar.  (Quickly – both are pretty much less-processed forms of your standard table sugar.  Sucanat is best, as it’s evaporated sugar cane juice, and it retains the most nutrients and actual natural good stuff that sugar cane has.  Turbinado is dehydrated cane juice.  It’s cheaper but does not have much of the good stuff left in it.  I think it’s still better than the white granulated sugar though.  Neither is actually a health food… just more natural than the customary stuff.)

Anyway… all of these cookies are pretty much sugar cookies, so I was curious how they’d turn out with the turbinado.  The consistency is affected a bit, but I think they still taste great!

Sugar cookies all baked up!  I went ahead and baked all the sugar cookies before freezing.  I’m hoping I don’t regret this later.  :)

Mmmmm… peanut butter cookie dough.  I froze these just like this:

I’m hoping I’ll be able to just throw them on the baking sheet, let them thaw a bit, and bake ‘em up.

I baked a few (obviously!) and they turned out just fine.

Matt thought they were great, and probably if I had one right now I would think that too.  I was on serious sugar overload by the time I got finished baking these cookies.  :)

I’m done baking cookies for a few days while I wait for my Azure standard order to come in on Tuesday.  I ordered 25lbs of sucanat.  Yikes!  I’m totally out of sugar and I don’t want to get any more not-sucanat just days before my order comes in!  I made banana bread yesterday and discovered after I’d already mixed up the other ingredients that I was short on sugar.  This turned out to be a great thing as the bread turned out delicious with almost half the amount.  Wahoo!

I found two or three more recipes today that I can’t wait to make next week!  One is a pumpkin cookie with white chocolate chips – very fall-ish!  I also plan to make some no-bake cookies (I’m drooling right now), though I will probably have to wait until the last minute so I don’t eat them immediately all by myself.  It’s really been all I can do to keep myself out of the dough in the freezer.  Ya’ll – this is some serious self-restraint for me.  My first word as a baby was cookie.  Seriously.  Just ask my mom.

More Cookies!

Earlier this week I made some candy cookies – yummo!  (And I have this total déjà vu that I already posted about them, but I can’t find a post, so I’m going to just assume I’ve lost my mind.  Pardon if you’ve already read about these cookies.)  I saw these guys on Pioneer Woman, one of my most favorite sites, and decided I had to try them.  Mine did not turn out so beautiful as hers, but I bet they taste just as great!

Ha!  I just found the post – I DID already post them!  Anyway, I finished up the dough by just plopping them on the cookie sheet instead of in a muffin tin.  Much less crumbly this way.  I don’t think I ate one though.  :)

You can see how they kind of fall apart after they come out of the muffin tin.  Still yummy though!

And much less good for you than all the cookies I’m making from scratch.  :)  I am using freshly ground whole wheat flour in all the cookies (you really can’t tell!) as well as turbinado sugar instead of the super refined white stuff.  This does affect the cookies a bit.  They don’t have quite the same zing, but they still taste good, and IMO, are better!

Today I tried my hand at snicker doodles (from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook), and I think they turned out pretty good.  I’m not a big fan of this type of cookie, but several other people ate them and pronounced them just fine.  :)

I had to bake six of course, to test.  Here they are, all wrapped in their cinnamon sugar goodness, ready to bake:

And all done – they look like snicker doodles!

The rest of the dough I froze rolled up in little balls, but not rolled in the cinnamon sugar mix.  I figure I will thaw them, coat them, then bake them on birthday day.  I’m going to need an extra oven on the 18th!

Crackers and Cookies

I ask the girls a lot of questions about school when they come home.  Joanna remembered that one of her friends had some cheesy crackers for their snack.  Joanna really wanted some, so I decided to make a batch!

I ran across a recipe that I bookmarked for some veeeerrrrrryyyy simple cheese crackers.  Here it is.  I’ve seen homemade goldfish cracker recipes before, and I will probably make them sometime, but they’re a bit of work with the dough rolling and cutting and everything.  These are pretty much “slice and bake” crackers.  Here goes!

I halved the recipe to fit in my food processor.  Into it I put 2oz cheddar cheese, 2.5T butter, and 1/2c. of whole wheat flour.

Then I buzzed it until a ball of dough appeared and started chasing itself around the bowl of the mixer.  Then I took the ball, formed it into a log and started slicing!

Then I baked them at 350 for 12 or so minutes.

Then I neglected to take any pictures.  But they were big hits with all the kids!  Even James figured out how to take bites of them.  Their texture isn’t very cracker like.  It’s more like a shortbread cookie (but not at all sweet).  They were perfect for throwing in the lunch boxes!

James’ birthday party is in just over three weeks, and I know the time will fly by!  I’m planning on having lots of cookies to go with our milk, so I’ve started mixing some up to freeze.

These are just some plain ol’ chocolate chip cookies (made of course, with whole wheat flour and turbinado sugar). 

We tried them (quality control, of course!), and they’re yummy.  I scooped them onto a cookie sheet, froze them for a few hours, then put them in the bag labeled with the baking directions.  Now I just have to keep myself out of the dough for more than three weeks!  Ahhhh!!!

Today I tried making some candy cookies from the Pioneer Woman.  Super yum, though mine didn’t come out quite as pretty as hers.  :) 

I’m going to try freezing them baked and see how they taste thawed.  Of course that means we had to try them freshly baked.  :)