Mother Tucker

I put so much chocolate and other stuff, such as bananas, in my friendship bread mixture . . . so its still edible.  BUT about half of them didn’t rise like they were suppose to.  Kinda flat and doughy in places.  Argh! Thats a lot of time and energy (not to mention fundage) that was poured into that carp for them to turn out just ok.  I was bummed cuz I had plans of giving them away to my neighbors and J took some to school but all of them came with a disclosure of apology for the flat dense texture.  My neighbor said the humidity would of messed with it quite a bit and it was humid the last few days . . . so I blame that. hee hee. She still took it and pretended like she was gonna eat it.

Well . . . my life is not all that exciting right now, so I’m going.

God Bless!

So Justin came home late, like 11pm or so, last night with movies and icecream. I’m not sure what our thing is with icecream and movies . . . I make killer popcorn. And even with a cup of olive oil and a barrel of salt, its still healthier than a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. But, alas, we ate our pints . . . the whole of both (one each) . . . and watched Revolver. It was as good as you would expect with the name ‘Revolver’.

Anyway we are about half way through the movie, we’re lounging . . . feeling oh so gluttonous, when something lands on the floor in the kitchen. I casually ask what that might of been. But neither of us were interested in finding out. I tend to stack the dishes sky high on the drainer, when I wash them, so I assumed I lost a measuring cup off its perch . . . or something to that degree.

So onward movie watching and severe vegging!

About 20 minutes later, or so, another “something” falls to the floor in the kitchen. This time we kind of look at each other . . . I’m pretty sure we were stationary due to our over-consumption of sugar and fatty goods . . . so we just sat there and resumed watching our movie.

When the 3rd and 4th ones hit the floor in the kitchen, Hubby gets up to investigate. He laughs at the sight.

See post:   http://tuckerfamily.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/sunny/

You’ll have to copy and paste, sorry.

So, the one bag of Amish Friendship bread that was given to us over a month ago has grown to 12 . . . count with me 1,2,3, . . . 12 baggies of friendship bread goodness . . . which I just call muffin mix at home, though I bake it in bread loafs it tastes like muffins.

Yesterday was ‘add some ingredients’ day for the baggies of distilling yeasty dough . . . after those ingredients are added they are sealed for another 5 days, before baking them.  So I have them stacked on the kitchen counter, sort of . . . maybe stack isn’t the right word . . . mounded, perhaps is a better word.  I have to release the air out of them at least once a day, mostly twice a day, due the fermenting process.

Last night they were mounded on the counter, filling with air, and one by one dropping from the counter’s surface to the floor’s surface.  Neatly bagged, so they didn’t leak or bust . . . just plopped off onto the linoleum.

Hee hee . . . Hubby walked in to find 4 or 5 baggies haphazardly flumped onto the floor . . . and yes, ‘flumped’ is my made up word . . . actually resembles the sound the bags made as they met the hard floor moments earlier.

The bags were rearranged to accommodate their expanding plastic bellies and we resumed our sugar-coma stance on the floor to finish up the movie.

This morning one was hanging precariously off the counter . . . threatening to fall just seconds after I found it . . . but I placed gently back on the counter with its siblings . . . to be baked in a couple of days.

Yes, I took a picture of the flumps of friendship bread dough, just so you can get a proper visual . . .

It looks beautiful outside . . . from the view through my windows, contained in the warmth of my home.  But we ventured out this morning to be reminded that, yes, winter coats are still needed. And I find myself turning heaters on . . . hmm

I made the best bread ever . . . :)  A friend of ours . . . or of Justin’s, from school gave him a ‘friendship bread’ starter thingy. I’ve never been aware of these baggies of goodness in my whole existence on Earth, but we received one from R, oh geez, 3 weeks ago. I don’t know, about a month ago.  Anyway I made the one she gave me . . . but 4 starters were spawned from that one start.  You’re suppose to give them away . . . not horde them as I have done.  I tried, mind you . . . I tried to give them away, I did!  But to no avail . . . they remained on my counter and baking day was last Sunday.  If you aren’t aware of this phenomenon . . . you get the start and you mush the bag and add some minor ingredients for 10 days and on the 10th day you add some more stuff and bake it . . .

Ok, so I made one baggy of the mix and decided in my pea-brain that putting instant coffee in it would create a nice flavor. So, I proceed to boil 6 oz of water, dissolve the instant coffee (I do this with cookies, mmm)  and pour the boiling contents directly into my prepared mix.  Ok . . . somewhere along the line I forgot you HAVE to cool the instant coffee water to add it . . . so, as some reading this have already determined, it came out like rubber.  It didn’t rise like it was suppose to.  So I wasted that baggy.

I had to buy more flour so they other 2 baggies remained distilling on my counter (the fourth baggy had busted, yay me).

You can flavor this mix pretty much anyway you want. So Justin buys apple pie filling.  That doesn’t interest me greatly, so I go to the store and pick up chocolate chips and cream cheese.  Yeah, can we spell h.e.a.l.t.h.y.  Apparently I can’t cook healthy.  Anyhoo . . . that was the first baggy . . . turned out too good, cuz I ate the first loaf (it creates 2 loaves per baggy).  I sent the 2nd one to school with Justin today.

The second, ok . . . ok, I’ll use the apples, geez.  I did and I added a lot more cinnamon and then did an oatmeal and brown sugar topping. It turned out nice too . . . but the chocolate is what called my name. That second loaf went to school today too . . . something tells me I’m going to be pretty popular with the fireman/woman in hubby’s world. Maybe . . .

Do you like all the positive and arrogant speech I’ve written so far about my spectacular bread. :)  It did turn out nice but then if dog crap had chocolate pieces in it . . . I’d be tempted to eat it . . . so that ain’t sayin’ much.

Yay for good bread . . . actually it reminds me more of Costco muffins . . . you know, the gigantic oily lumps of goodness? Mmm!

Ok, I will end this rambling post for your sakes.

God Bless and happy bread making . . . if you want a friendship bread starter baggy thingy . . . let me know . . . right now I’ve got 12 or so distilling on my counter. :)  I can’t seem to get anyone to take them. Or maybe I haven’t tried hard enough.

Yeah, I told myself several times this morning to put the battery in camera and take pics of Tiffany and Aidrik while they were here today . . . did I do it? NOPE. She spent all day, from 11am - 5 or so pm, here at my house. We did a store run, made about 10 dozen of a variety of cookies for her friend’s wedding and just plain played the kids and caught up . . . since I hadn’t seen her about 4 months! I couldn’t believe we came to that conclusion! 4 months . . . we live an hour away from each other and thats how often I get to see her?! grrr. Both of our lives are crazy busy with kids and family, so its understandable when life just gets carried away with us, individually.

We had a great day! And, to top it off, the cookies turned out awesome. We made double chocolate chunk mocha cookies that we then dipped half way in melted chocolate, we made peanut butter cut out cookies that were shaped as hearts with chocolate drizzle, and we made chocolate and oatmeal bars with nuts on top. Oh, and my handy pb cookie recipe with choco chips. All turned out beautifully!! I was pleased and I hope the bride is pleased as well . . . if she even gets to see them . . . so maybe I should say, whoever is coordinating the wedding is pleased.

We ordered pizza and picked up Starbucks and just, generally, enjoyed the day together!  I think we both will avoid sweetened anything for at least a week (a day or two) so we can come out of the sugar-induced coma we are in at the moment.

I thank my Heavenly Father for HIS provision and grace today!!

God Bless!!

Tiffany, February of this 2007, we had traveled to Vegas to visit my parents together . . . she’s posing at Red Rock Canyon, NV.

Alright, now if you just popped in, make sure you read the blog right before this . . . note: this is page 2.

So Justin arrived home at approximately 4pm and we got a slow start but were finding our groove by 6pm.

We started with the Moussaka

Oh, I want to take this moment and apologize for zero pictures of this . . . I totally should have documented this.

Ok, so we made the base of the Moussaka . . . Justin decided to make the white sauce crust cheese thing topping (it has an official name but I can’t pronounce it, much less spell it) at the firehouse right before dinner and cook the whole thing there. Great, that cuts off about an hour and a half of work.

Ok, boys at this point are falling apart. So I quit at that point to hold them and finally get them ready for bed. So it was around 7pm. We laid them down at around 7:45pm and started up again around 8pm.

So we set off on the Cheese Moon Pies. This requires us to make our own pastry. This is my favorite thing to do. I make a lot of Quiches which require me to make pastry for the crust . . . it’s cheap, easy and delicious. So . . . I claim this task for my own and set off in anticipation. I usually make a pastry crust with normal flour, this one called for self-rising flour . . . and that’s where the differences began. Then I melted the butter and used olive oil and milk . . . ok, now WAY different than what I usually do . . . but I stick to the recipe (cuz I’m not that good of chef . . . uh, I’m not a chef at all). Anyhoo, the pastry dough is very dry, compared to my extremely limited experience with pastry prep. So, I’m worried I screwed it up but I cover it and put it in the fridge, like the recipe stated, and waited 20 minutes . . . apparently it was taking a power nap (recipe book said it was resting). Ok, I take it out and it barely sticks together at all . . . it’s dry. But I proceed, not wanting to add something that would mess it up totally. To make a, potentially, long story short . . . it rolled out very nicely. Ok, honesty . . . it looked fine and worked fine AFTER it was rolled out BUT it was tough tough tough to roll out. To say the least, my arms, mostly my triceps, hurt soooooo bad today. Anyway it took a long time to roll out thin (and re-roll and re-roll again and again and again . . . about 10 times) and cut 20 circles . . . which then Justin filled with the feta mixture, folded them in half and glazed with egg yolk. We ate three of them total . . . hey, that’s not bad. Turned out great. mmm, I do like the feta cheese.

Ok, by the time this is all done it’s nearing 9:15pm. Somehow, in that four hours of driving and shopping, Justin did not purchase the items for the Baklava or anything for the dressing to go with the salad. Heaven forbid we buy ready-made dressing. But we found a good recipe so I went with it.

Oh fantastic . . . I’m elected to go to the store. Fred Meyers is less than a mile from my house so I decide that is the destination of choice and I pray they have everything, down to the filo pastry sheets. Oh, they had that and more (of course I paid about double than that of Wal-Mart), bulk nuts, bulk herbs . . . aaahh, I am drawn to the bulk sections, no reason why. So I indulge in getting even the herbs for the dressing in the bulk section. Freddy’s had everything I need, so I paid and left. I walked in the door about 10-ish pm.

This is when we decided the Baklava needed to be made. I think that’s basically what we were down to . . . and that’s also when I started to allow sweet notions of upcoming sleep to invade my brain.

Oops, the filo pastry sheets are frozen (huh, that must be due to my getting them from the frozen section at the store) and we have to allow them to thaw prior to using them. Yeah, the directions are true, we tried to use half frozen ones, it just doesn’t work. Um, thawing takes a minimum of 2 hours . . . the sweet notions of sleep are slipping away. I take a deep breath and watch them fade in the distance.

Also, I think it’s about this time I decide I’m not really as chipper about cooking his Greek masterpiece anymore but I’m still dedicated.

Justin starts on the filling for the Baklava. Lots of honey, sugar, nuts and lemon. I sat on the kitchen counter and de-shelled Pistachio nuts (why J couldn’t of bought Pistachios without shells, not sure) But it gave me an excuse to sit down, which felt mighty good. The filling and pastry sheets were ready about the same time . . . so layered the filo pastry (very thin sheets of pastry), one by one and brushed butter over each one . . . about 8 sheets thick and then put part of the filling on that and then repeated a couple of times (mostly accurate). From there, we put it in the oven and proceeded on the syrup that makes it a finished product. Baklava cooks for an hour. :/

So we are just hanging out, starting to relax and I slowly start to allow my expectations of sleep arise from the depths to which they plummeted 3 hours earlier . . . that’s right . . . it’s now after 1am, though I stopped looking at the clock around midnight.

Justin gets quiet, which is typical when I’m just rambling on about random stuff (which is typical of me when I’m super tired) but then I look up and the expression of anxiety on his face gave away secret thoughts.

“What?” I say, a little brisker than I intended.

“I don’t think I made enough food,” he finally mumbles, almost under his breath.

Yeah, I had made my sleepy discomfort known pretty clearly for the last hour or so and my cranky level had risen a few notches . . . allowing for sudden unexpected outbursts of frustration and cynicism.

I tried my very best to convince him that he made plenty (though I had my doubts). But he was un-convince-able. Dangit!

“Do you think you can make a Quiche or two?” he asks.

Ah, the ignorance of the amount of time it takes to make a good Quiche . . . one that strangers will eat and pass judgment.

But . . . to my surprise . . . I agree to make it. Nearing 3 am.

As I’m sifting flour and cutting cold butter into one inch squares. Justin embarks on using up the rest filo pastry in a made up meat pie thing he came up with (actually parts of many quiche recipes stuck together) I finish up the pastry for the Quiche, set it in the fridge to sleep (rest) . . . wishing I could join it in it’s slumber, for 30 minutes and then help Justin with the filo pastry (pesky filo pastry).

Ok, Baklava is removed from the oven, pastry is snoozing the fridge (it has 15 minutes before I wake it up), Justin has the insides to his meat pie thing in the skillet on the stove and I sit down at the kitchen table, feeling all the day’s fatigue to it’s fullest. Justin finishes putting his creation together and puts it in the oven. I roll out my Quiche pastry (much easier than cheese moon pie pastry) and set it up to bake it blind (um, fancy way of saying pre-bake the pastry before adding the insides). This takes a total of 30 minutes. We both end up, half asleep (I’m nearing 3/4 asleep), on the couch. I don’t think we said much, that I remember anyway. But Justin announces he won’t be getting any sleep because he has to take off for the firehouse at 5:30 am and it’s nearing 4 am. We hang out, or whatever you wanna call it, for half an hour. I fry up the stuff for the Quiche and get it all put together and in the oven to bake for 45 minutes and then land back on the couch.

The house smells so good! The super-sweet of Baklava lacing the earthy scent of pastry baking . . . somehow garlic weaved it’s way in but only added to the depth of the delicious scents. My stomach growled . . . but I was denied even a taste-test of Baklava! How dare he!

Justin was in his full-awake state preparing his turn-outs, gear and food to haul to the firehouse. I believe I warned him the Quiche was still in the oven when I crashed and instantly fell asleep on the bed but I won’t swear by it. He was gone when I woke at 8:30am and so was my Quiche.

Happy eating to shift B-2 and Salem fire!

Ok, I will start this story from the beginning. Justin is in the fire program here in Salem (meaning he’s going to school A LOT and also working at the fire house). Once a term they have their turn to cook for their shift and the paid staff (total of 20 guys). Today is Justin’s turn.

Now, anyone that knows Justin knows he can’t do much of anything in moderation. He says he can, but he’s never proven it to me. Anything that he takes interest in is done to the fullest and the most extreme possible . . . sometimes to my annoyance (though annoying me is not hard to do). The other thing you have to understand about Justin’s personality or crazy people genes, is that he can stay up for several days in a row without sleep, and not in groggy mode either . . . fully functioning. Yeah, weird huh?! (His mom, the same way)

One other thing. Justin loves certain types of food . . . two of his favorites are anything seafood and Greek cuisine (not sure why I need to use the word ‘cuisine’ after Greek, but whatever . . . it sounds better). So for shift today he decided he wants to make a greek meal for the guys. Well, he decided this a week ago. So our plan, all week, was to tackle this feat yesterday (Saturday), his day off.

Friday night Justin comes in at midnight or so. I had done my nightly ritual of picking up the house and had plunked around on the ‘puter . . . I was getting very sleepy and ready for bed. He trounces into the bedroom with two big cookbooks under his arm and proceeds to discuss, excitedly, what he wants to make for Sunday’s shift. We had discussed this all week, but he had apparently come to a conclusion on all accounts and was ready to make his decisions known.

He had good choices, though it was hard peaking my interest as 12:30 in the morning. Moussaka for the main dish, Cheese Moon Pies for the bread/appetizer, Greek Salad and, for dessert he decided on Baklava. And, luckily, all these recipes were in his Greek cookbook.

Oh, but that wasn’t good enough. We had to cross-reference all recipes to ones we found on the internet . . . many times over. Just to make sure they were ‘authentic’ Greek recipes. AND lo and behold, they were all ‘authentic’ (well, as authentic as you can be living in Salem, Oregon and cooking Greek food).

We (or should I say ‘I’) got to bed at around 2-ish am. I was dead asleep, so I never saw, heard or even stirred at noise or movement, until the boys woke up. But apparently Justin proceeded to get sick about an hour later (blamed my beautiful and delicious Quiche I had made for dinner . . . though nobody else gotten sick from it) and threw up several times, seriously impeding what little sleep was left of the night (morning).

So, dragging himself out of bed at 11:30 am, still not feeling well and bit grouchy, he gets ready and leaves to purchase all ingredients for the above mentioned recipes . . . finally getting out of the house at noon ( way later than planned ). He is gone 4 hours . . . count with me . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . 4 hours! Holy monkeys! Who takes 4 hours to go pick up about 100$ worth of groceries?!

He arrives home (eventually) and comes in with, at least, three different area grocery store bags full of stuff for the Greek meal of the year. He mutters something about how long it took him and he hates driving around for hours looking for everything. Hmmm, was it really that hard? . . . the ingredients weren’t that exotic. Anyway, kind of typical of J and I’ve gotten used to it.

Ok, my story is getting super long, so I’m going to try to wrap it up . . . though I might reference it for years to come.

Anyone that has kids knows that it is hard to concentrate on cooking, baking, talking on the phone, brushing your teeth . . . ok, just about anything that takes your attention off of them for any amount of time. So as soon as Samuel and Tobias honed in on the fact that, not just one of us, but BOTH of us were engrossed in food preparation and our attention was not focused on them . . . all toddler sanity left the house and we became targets for severe whining and obvious misbehaviors . . . misbehaviors that required us to stop what we were doing at the moment and correct them.

But, nothing was to stop this mission of perfection so onward we trudged . . . through leg-clingings (Sam’s favorite move) and projectile toys (Toby’s favorite).

…to be continued