This would be a good one!
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We had fun celebrating Audrey’s first birthday with friends and family at our house. Kate did a great job planning the party and coordinating everything. She made some awesome cookies-on-a-stick and created some great decorations. She’s amazing!
We decorated the cake with marshmallow fondant to match the invitations and it turned out great! If you haven’t tried the marshmallow kind, I highly recommend it.
Decorations and Kate’s awesome cookies.
Sitting room only! Audrey’s bear cake, a tradition we’ve done with all 3 kids.
The big cake!
Trying the bear cake. Yum!
Birthday Girl
Total cake decimation! It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to!
We celebrated Audrey’s birthday twice. We were planning a party for her later in the week but still wanted to celebrate on her actual birthday. Kate, with Grant and Norah’s help, made and decorated a cake.
Grant and Norah decorated the cake (with help from Mom)
Candles are fun!
Good to the last crumb!
Grant and Norah like the movie Ratatouille and mentioned that they’d like to try it sometime. So, I spent several hours one evening making the recipe from the movie, Confit Byaldi, by Thomas Keller of The French Laundry.
It’s a very procedural recipe, requiring a decent investment of time to roast peppers, create endless thin slices of produce and collate said produce. The end product looked great and tasted pretty good. The kids tried a bite and decided that it was more fun to see it on the TV than to taste it in person.
Oh well, I had fun making the dish.
Peppers for the piperade.
First, the piperade went down. Then the endless slices of veggies.
The finished dish.
Instead of a birthday party this year, we gave Grant a trip to St. Louis on Amtrak. We left 2 days after his birthday after waking up at 6 to catch the train in Elgin.
Grant and I after boarding the Metra train for the first leg of our trip, Elgin to Chicago Union Station.
Waving goodbye to the womenfolk as the train pulls away from the station.
After boarding the Amtrak train in Chicago. The business class area was nice, with spacious seats, power outlets, and dedicated restroom 
Mugging for the camera.
We packed our lunch. Mom even stuck a few Amtrak napkins in our bag!
Grant watching as we pass another Amtrak train at speed.
Two thumbs up for the lunch Mom made for us.
Trying to rest. It took quite awhile for Grant to relax and fall asleep since the train was so exciting.
Finally out.
Grant and the Gateway Arch.
Our train at the St. Louis station.
More in the next installment, coming soon!
Before I left for my CISSP prep class earlier this month, I saw cheap heavy cream at the grocery store. Cheap, as in 50 cents a quart cheap. I had always wanted to make butter at home one day, so I figured that the cheap cream was a sign and we bought a few cartons.
We used the KitchenAid to make our butter. Here’s what we did:
Here is what we started with: 3 quarts of heavy cream and a mixer.
Using the whisk attachment on the mixer, we whipped the cream to a stiff peaks state and then kept an eye on the bowl as the mixture started to “break” into small butter globules and buttermilk.
After pouring off the buttermilk, this is what was left. At this point, the is still quite a bit of liquid in the butter. If left alone, that liquid will so sour and ruin the butter. The easiest way to remove the liquid in question is to fill the bowl with cold water and knead the butter until the water runs clear. I had to replace the water in the bowl several times before this happened.
At this point, my hands were getting tired from all the kneading.
Since we wanted to use this butter for eating/cooking, we added the appropriate amount of salt (1/4 teaspoon table salt for every 4 ounces of butter) and portioned it into 8 ounce “sticks”.
We wrapped our freshly made butter in wax paper and stashed it in the deep freeze.
We also froze the buttermilk (after straining any errant butter globules out) and have used it to make some killer pancakes in the weeks since.
For our $1.50 purchase of cream, we got 8 sticks (2 lbs) of butter and a quart of buttermilk. Score!
I highly recommend doing this at least once! The resulting butter is great and tastes marvelous on homemade bread or anything else you use butter for.
I’ve been baking most of the bread we eat for awhile now. I thought I’d share the recipe in case anyone else is looking for a decent white bread loaf, good for sandwiches and toast. This is a perfect partner for your homemade butter!
I’ve been trying different recipes and taking the best ideas from each and have come up with what I think is a pretty good recipe and technique. Hope you enjoy it!
This recipe produces a bread with a dense crumb, which means that it stales slowly and slices evenly – excellent for sandwiches and toast.
The second rise noted below makes all the difference – it does add an hour to the total time, but I think it’s worth it!
Recipe:
4.5 tsp (2 packages) active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water, in a small bowl
6-7 cups bread flour (you can also use 1/3 whole wheat if desired)
1 cup water
1 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
2-4 tablespoons butter / margarine
1 tablespoon salt
Instructions:
1. Sprinkle the yeast into the warm water, 1 tbsp sugar and stir gently. Leave it alone for about ten minutes, until the yeast is nice and bubbly.
2. Meanwhile, warm the milk, water and butter. Add the sugar and salt and stir to dissolve completely.
3. Put two cups of the flour into the mixing bowl of your stand mixer. Add the milk mixture and stir thoroughly, then add the yeast mixture.
4. Add four cups of flour to the bowl and turn the mixer on ‘low’. Watch the dough – you want that ‘elastic ball’, one that begins to pull cleanly away from the bowl. Cleanly as in, “there is more dough staying with the ball than clinging to the sides of the bowl”. Add flour in quarter-cup increments until you see this. The amount of flour you need is going to change from season to season. On rainy days, you might need more than on dry days.
5. Once you’ve got that elastic ball thing going, let the stand mixer knead it for 7-10 minutes. Turn it out into a rising bucket or a greased bowl and flip the dough over to coat the top.
6. If using a bowl, put a clean towel over it and let it rise for about an hour in a warm place. I often use my oven – I turn it on for 1 minute then turn it off and set the dough in there to rise.
7. After an hour, turn it out of the bowl/bucket, knead it a few times, then put it back in the bucket/bowl and leave it alone for thirty minutes to an hour – until it has doubled again.
8. Turn your oven on to 425 while you shape your loaves. Punch down the dough and cut it in half. Make a rectangle out of each half, then roll it up like a jelly roll, pinch the ends and tuck them under.
9. Then put it into a greased loaf pan, cover with a damp towel and let rise for between 20 and 30 minutes. When they’ve risen up over the edges of your pans – but before they are ‘blossoming’ up over the top – slip them into the 425 degree oven and set the timer for ten minutes.
10. In ten minutes, turn the oven temperature down to 350 and set the timer for another 20 minutes. They should be getting nice and dark on top, and sound hollow when you tap the tops of them.
11. Let them cool in their pans for about five minutes, then pull them out of the pans and set them on wire racks to cool the rest of the way.
12. Enjoy with your homemade butter!
Notes:
You can skip that ‘knead and let rise again’ step if you’re short on time – but I find that it helps quite a bit.
My, how time flies. I can hardly believe that 5 years have passed since I became a dad. These have been some of the best years of my life. Every day is an adventure!
My prayer today:
Lord, I thank you for my children and for the blessing of being a father. Today, on Grant’s fifth birthday, I take a moment to thank you for the gift of Grant. Thank you for his safe delivery, infancy and toddlerhood. Thank you for protecting him during his preschool years. Thank you for drawing him to yourself and to me. Thank you for building strong and precious bonds between me and my son. Lord, continue to build and strengthen Grant’s relationship with You and with me. Keep him safe and healthy. Surround him with godly friends and role models. Amen
Grant, I love you more than I could ever explain in words. You are my son, my firstborn child, and an awesome big brother to your sisters. You are so special to me, more than you will ever know. Happy 5th birthday my boy!
We had a fun time celebrating Grant’s 5th birthday. Kate gave him the choice to either go out to dinner and make a cake at home or to have dinner at home and get a cake of his choice from a store. He chose to have his favorite dinner (cheeseburgers, sweet potatoes) at home and wanted a Costco cake (blank, so Mom could decorate it with a train theme). Kate did a great job decorating the cake.
His primary gift from us this year was an overnight trip to Saint Louis on Amtrak. We’d never ridden Amtrak before, so it was going to be an adventure!
