Thursday, June 28, 2007

Make bread for yourself...Ezekiel 4:9

Rachael called me a name last week. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I mean, she was wrong. I'm not "granola." Does she even know what that means? Obviously not. Crunchy people are those that do stuff like...like...you know...they do weird stuff. That's not me.

I didn't have much time to dwell on it because I had stuff to do. J had requested lasagna and french bread for his birthday meal we were having the next day.

First stop: The chest freezer in the garage. Now, where did The Man put those 50 lb. bags of wheat from the co-op?


Oh, there they are, right beside the oats.

Back to the kitchen with a few bowls of wheat berries, both red and white. I added some to the grinder. There on the left you can see that I also made some milk that day. Actually it was a double strength batch of almond-oat-cashew milk (it is actually much better than it sounds). Properly sweetened and chilled, it was put in our ice cream maker the next day with some fresh strawberries. Yummy.

Ok. The flour is ready. I dumped it in the Bosch with miscellaneous other ingredients
and there you go! Loaves of french bread ready to rise.
Maybe I should take a quiz. This one gave me a score of 125 which puts me up there in the "Super Nutty, Ultra-Crunchy Granola Earth Mama" range. Who? Me? Noooo...did you see how dependent I am on others and electricity? I didn't plant my own wheat, harvest it, thresh it, nor grind it by hand. My arms didn't get sore from kneading. I didn't chop the wood to build the fire to bake the bread. The Little Red Hen would have been so disappointed in me.


sigh. Maybe I am just a wee bit granola. Am I all alone? Please take the quiz and report back your results. Maybe the quiz is flawed. I can hope.
***
Later that day I went back into the garage to reprogram the sprinkler timer. This is what I saw.What did I yell?
a. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!"
b. Something that can't be published on a family-friendly blog
c. "J, run get the camera!"

Obviously, since you are seeing the picture, the correct answer is c. It was a gopher snake, so I let is slither on back next to the freezer. Yes, the freezer that I was standing in front of snapping pictures earlier in the day.

The Man arrived home soon after and we noticed it was coming out of the garage.
The Man went around to the inside of the house and came out through the garage to encourage it to slither on away from the house. I would have done it, but I was busy snapping pictures. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The snake made it to the flower bed. Do you like his forked tongue?

The boys got to pet it before it made its way out of the yard.So did Sacagawea.
It made this crunchy mama's heart proud.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh, that french bread looks good!

I'm not that great around snakes, especially after my snake-in-the-chicken-coop episode, but I'm getting better!

Rachael said...

Just to clarify, when I called you "granola", I was really only thinking about it in the breadmaking realm.....as in, I was SO very proud of myself for making homemade bread, with no breadmaker, etc. (but kind of felt like a cop-out for only having white flour to use!) Now, V~, my more "granola" SIL would have wheat flour...shoot, she'd probably grind it up herself and mix up a couple of different grains while at it. See the context -- I told you I meant granola in a complimentary way, and I was right!!!

Funny, I had no idea how right I was, you crunchy earth mama you. I took your little quiz. Alas, I'm just "sprinkled" with granola, and I got most of those points just from being vegetarian.

Shereen said...

Oh, V, I scored a 167!! lol Thanks for the fun. I didn't even know what crunchy or granola meant until not too long ago. Little did I know I was one too. ;0)

Lori said...

I only scored a 10, barely instant oatmeal. I guess thats because I don't have any kids, some of those questions I didn't even know what they meant at first. Like co-sleeping, and using a soft carrier, tandem nursing while pregnant. I guess I have a lot to learn.