The best white bread ever!

Makes delicious loaves or soft perfect rolls. It's all about the gluten so make sure you knead it just right!


INGREDIENTS
1 envelope Active dry yeast (quick rise)
1/4 cup very warm water (tap hot)
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup scalding hot milk (microwave 1.5 min)
1 egg –lightly beaten
4 cups of sifted bread flour
2 Tablespoons of melted butter for brushing rolls

DIRECTIONS
Sprinkle the yeast over very warm water in a large bowl.  (warm water should feel comfortably warm when dropped on wrist)  Stir until yeast dissolves.

Add sugar, the 1/4cup butter and salt to hot milk and stir until the sugar dissolves and butter is melted.  Cool mixture to 105 to 115 degrees.

Add milk mixture to yeast, then beat in egg.  Beat in 4 cups of flour, one cup at a time to form soft dough.  Use some flour to dust a pastry cloth.  Knead the dough lightly for 5 minutes, working in the remaining flour (use it for flouring your cloth and hands).

Place dough in a warm buttered bowl; turn greased side up.  Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 30-45 min.

Punch dough down and knead 4 to 5 minutes on a lightly floured pastry cloth.  Dough will be sticky, but use as little flour as possible for flouring your hands and the pastry cloth, otherwise the rolls will not be as feathery light as they should be.

Pinch off small chunks of dough and knead into round rolls, well organized gluten.  Place in neat rows, not quite touching, in a well-buttered 13x9x2 pan. Cover rolls and let rise in warm place until doubled, 30-45min.
Brush tops of rolls generously with melted butter, then bake in a 375' oven for 14-18 minutes or until nicely browned.

The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

We have a tradition of going to a pumpkin patch and picking out a pumpkin to represent each of us in the family. The past three years I've gone with the kid(s) to one near my parents home. It has nice little photo spots and they have activities for kids and such, though we've always gone too early in the morning for any of that. It's been great but they're only open until 5 so Brandon wasn't able to come with us. This year we decided to go to the local nursery to get a pumpkin so Brandon could come with us. It's not as much fun picking pumpkins there but it's nice to do it together as a family.

I like this one.

No, this one, no this one, no this one

The kids' pumpkins are chosen.

This one is nice

Can we have this one?

Brandon had to find the biggest one possible. He's disproportionate to the rest of the family

To also set the mood for the coming Halloween we've been watching lots of Halloween specials like The Great Pumpkin, Garfield's Halloween Adventure, and Winnie the Pooh Halloween specials. Zoey loves 'em. I still think the Garfield one is really scary so we only watched it once.

Treacherous Threes

You hear lots about the "Terrible Twos" and when Zoey started her rebelling and tantrums at around 2, I thought oh boy I'm in for it now. You never hear about the "Treacherous Threes." Well, I'm here to warn you, it gets worse!! Zoey has recently blossomed into a flaming ball of toddler mayhem. She rarely speaks without whining, if the answer is not exactly what she wants it to be, she throws herself into full of crying and panic mode which usually results in her coughing and hacking and spewing mucus from every orifice of her face. Maybe I could deal with all that if it wasn't for what happens when she's quiet...

The other day I was making cinnamon rolls and I open one of our locked cabinets to get some corn starch and she asks if she can have a marshmallow, since she saw the bag in that cabinet. I tell her she can have one and hand her the bag, thinking she'll take a couple and then put the back on the counter, because that the way we always dish out marshmallows. I go about making my cinnamon rolls and I stop about 10 minutes later because I realized she was being suspiciously quiet. She had parked herself on the couch and had polished off the whole bag of marshmallows.

Whiling diligently working on the kids' Halloween costumes I had turned on some Max and Ruby for Zoey so she would give me a few minutes of peace to work. I notice she had come upstairs and went into the bathroom and closed the door. I thought "Finally! She's really getting this potty training thing." The minutes tick by and my suspicions are aroused. I go to check on her and she's standing on the vanity painting the mirror, the sink, and the medicine cabinet and anything else within reach with three tubes of toothpaste. I thought I should take a picture but I just rather calmly (I surprised myself, probably because I was sure she was up to no good before I even opened the door) cleaned it up and went about my day.

Then later the same day, I finally broke down and decided to upgrade my phone since the battery in my phone was giving out and it unpredictably would not receive calls or texts. We all trudged over to the Verizon store because Brandon loves getting new phones, so we had to take the kids with us. Brandon had Ian and was entertaining him with some electronics on one side of the store and I was doodling around with my options on the other side of the store with Zoey next to me. She promised me she would be good in the store, and I believed her. Never believe a 3 year old. Two minutes later Brandon calls me and tell me to look at Zoey. She had taken off her shoes and pants and was running in circles around the store. When she saw us both notice her, she started screeching like a banshee. Brandon is just standing there trying not to laugh and I am flabbergasted, I just stood there like I didn't know what to do. Needless to say once she was caught and reclothed, the kids and Brandon retreated to the van to watch some He Man while I finished my purchase.

I will certainly go crazy once Ian reaches 3 years old. He's barely containable as he is now.

I Should Blog About That

It's been days since I wrote a blog about something, it's not for lack of topics, but rather a lack of remembering my topics. Ever since I started this blog I go through the day and when I see or hear something or that something reminds me of something else I think, "I should blog about that." Then when I actually find the time to sit down and write a blog I can't for the life of me remember one of the things I tried to make a mental note to write about.  I'm just going to have to attribute that to Mom brain, which always remembers that the toddler needs to go take a potty break because it's been precisely 1.5 hours since said toddler last took one though never a glance was taken at the clock. Mom brain also remembers exactly how much of everything is left in the pantry and fridge. Mom brain can even remember a week's worth of events and appointments without writing anything down. Mom brain also knows where every "lost" shoe, wallet, keys, band-aids, etc are. However, mom brain cannot remember the list of amusing blog posts she wanted to make. Sorry folks, but here's a cute picture.

Evolution of Forever Young

 I am completely oblivious to many things, but I guess that's why I have a husband that is so observant and a brain that can store the most insignificant fact, only to recall it some months later and tie in some current event. I don't know how he manages that but can't remember that I just told him minutes ago that  we were out of milk when he pours a bowl of cereal to discover there's no milk.

While watching The Office a few nights ago Brandon makes the comment that the song Andy and his Dad are singing together is the same song that is on the Parenthood opening. I of course dispute this, they don't sound anything alike. So this launched into this huge thing that took about 45 minutes for us to track down all the variations and compare them. Apparently "Forever Young" has quite a rich history in variations. And just so you don't have to do all the tracking down, here's the history for you.

Bob Dylan - 1974 "Forever Young" - The Original

Alphaville - 1984 - "Forever Young" - New song sharing title and similar idea in different words.

Rod Stewart - 1988 - "Forever Young" - New song with similarities, he actually shared royalties with Dylan because of the songs were so close. Rod Stewart was my favorite artist for a long long long time. Love that raspy voice.

Jay Z /Mr Hudson - 2009 - "Forever Young" - Mostly a remix of the Alphaville song. Actually I'd say it's more of a mash up than a remix. I'm not much of an R&B/Rap kind of person but I can appreciate this version.

John Doe & Lucy Schwartz - 2010 - "Forever Young" - Here we come full circle, this is just a cover of the original Bob Dylan song. Though this video is from the original soundtrack for parenthood, it's not the way it is sung in the opening of the show so I included that one too, it's so nasally and annoying, what a way to butcher a good song.

Here's the office Andy Bernard's Brother and Dad version (skip to 1:50)


Andy Bernard and Dad duet


There you have it folks, May God bless and keep you always and do you really want to live forever? Forever Young! For the record, the Rod Stewart version will always be my favorite.

Conference Calls

I've been pretty excited to get back to work since my previous employer called me and asked me to come back for some future projects. I love programming, LOVE programming. I hate conference calls, HATE conference calls. Unfortunately to get to the fun programming part I have to endure many conference calls. "Requirement meetings," "System Improvement meetings," "Team Development meetings," "Feasibility meetings," "whatever the heck you wanna call this meetings." What they usually mean to me is sit on the phone for hours while several people two to three times my age decide if a dropdown should be labeled "Approver" or "Controller." All the while I'm thinking, ok you guys table that and talk about it later because the effort on my part is negligible. Then when it comes to real questions like, "Is is possible to select multiple status in the report'?" I say "yes, that's easy" and then they go on and talk about something so boring again.

I'm certain that desk toys were invented solely for the purpose of keeping yourself awake and somewhat amused during a conference call. I do not have enough desk toys! Thankfully though I don't have to endure too many long winded conference calls. It seems after 6 hours of conversing with people, you'd think I have a significantly sized to-do list. It really only tops at about 10 items, only one involving some significant work. But in the end, I get to meddle around in the code and that's where I'm happy.

Powdered Milk

Sunday morning I opened the fridge to fill the kids sippy cups with milk only to find there was just enough for two sippy cups worth. I decided I'd give each of the kids half a cup so they could have another half a cup at night, as usual. We've made many a late night trips to CVS to get milk for the next day. We go through two gallons a week, sometimes more. That's just the kids and Brandon, I only drink the occasional glass and sometimes with a bowl of cereal. Evening comes around and the kids are asking for milk only I discover that Brandon drank the last of the rations with his dinner. Great, now what? I was about to interest the kids in some Tang instead when I suddenly remembered the massive storage of powdered milk we have.

Now I grew up on this stuff. Powdered milk was all I knew until I was about 9 or 10 that I actually remember drinking store bought milk in a gallon jug. It was amaaaaazing! Whole milk totally blew me away, I had no idea milk was soooo good. We got 1% at school, no comparison. Powdered milk is not particularly tasty since it's skim milk, which isn't great even in original liquid form. It has a very processed semi sweet off taste. It never gets truly cold, even if you put it in the coldest part of the fridge. It's not too pleasant to drink plain, but it is fine in cereal or cooking when its off taste is somehow masked. 

I was pretty sure the kids would reject the milk in plain form, but we keep a giant tub of powdered Nesquick. The perfect mask. I shook up two sippy cups of powdered chocolate milk (with ice cubes for the best attempt at cold milk), and those kids drank it down like it wasn't any different from the real thing. 

I feel better all that powdered milk in my food storage might actually get some use.