Happy Birthday Babe...

Yesterday Chris turned 31...no longer is he teetering on the precipice of the 30's. He's officially in and I'm only 6 months behind him. All in all we're pretty comfortable with this whole aging thing, me a bit more than Chris it seems... (well, we'll see once my 31st rolls around)

We had homemade 'decorate your own' pizza's for dinner, presents over breakfast, and this heart shaped brownie cake surprised Daddy when came home for lunch (and again after dinner).

A great day of celebrating our amazing hubby and daddy.

Home Made...

Last month, for various reasons, I started baking all of our bread rather than purchasing it. Originally I was baking it all from scratch without the aid of a bread machine...then I came to my senses. Breadmaking is a simple yet time consuming process, friends. So, I am now leaving the grunt work to my faithful kitchen helper...My bread maker. I generally don't like kitchen gizmo's and tend to prefer to do things by hand...But, the bread machine is genius.

Step 1: Dump in yummy bread ingredients
Step 2: Come back in 3 hours and 40 minutes for insanely good warm bread
Step 3: Enjoy the fact that your house smells like fresh baked bread for hours

In addition to not being rocket science, it's much less expensive than an equivalent quality bread from a store. I highly recommend!

So with all of my recent bread success I decided to take on Graham Crackers. Yes, those standard toddler treats from a little cardboard box. Well, just as with bread, it is much simpler that I thought it would be and they taste infinitely better than their retail counterparts.

Here's the recipe for the Graham Crackers...

Homemade Graham Crackers

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 3/4 cups whole-wheat flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup cold butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoon molasses

1/4 cup cold water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a food processor, mix together the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add the cold butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal, about 30 seconds or so. Add the honey, molasses, water, and vanilla. Mix until the dough starts to come together in a ball, another 30 seconds. Scrape dough out of the mixer. Place it in the fridge for at least an hour, until firm.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Retrieve dough and roll until it's 1/8-inch thick. With a sharp knife or pizza cutter, cut into 2-inch squares, or with cookie cutters for fun shapes.
Arrange the crackers on greased or parchment lined baking sheets.

Bake for 15 minutes, until lightly browned at the edges. Remove from the oven and let cool on the pan.

Yield: 48 crackers

Note: If you cut the dough through but leave the squares together, you can break them up after they're baked, just like a store-bought graham!

Local Harvest...

On of our favorite breakfasts, lunches or snacks around here...Plain yoghurt, berries and nutty granola.
We use frozen local berries most of the year as we generally try to eat seasonally. In the summer we get to indulge in all of the fresh produce from our area. Living in Northern California we have so much to choose from.

We will be beginning to receive our local CSA (community supported agriculture) box in a couple weeks, at the begining of the new quarter...and I am so thrilled. We really make an effort to eat seasonally and to support local farmers. Up until now we have purchased most of our produce from the local farmers market or the Co-op (which buys from local growers). But, we have noticed that we really tend to slack off in the winter due to not wanting to brave the weather for produce.

So, this year we will be splitting 2 boxes of produce, grains and bread among 4 families. This will guarantee we eat locally, make sure we get together with some of our closest friends on a weekly basis to divvy up our bounty, and force me to get creative with recipes as we work with what we get. Another advantage to sharing boxes is that we can all share successful recipes since we are receiving the same items.

We will be working with the Good Humus Farm in our area...have you looked into a CSA where you are? If you are concerned about it not being cost effective, how about sharing your box with friends or family?