Knitting Failure

After getting all the kiddos in bed, I was looking through my office and I found my knitting needles. Still attached to one needle was a scarf I was trying to make like 2 1/2 years ago while I was pregnant with my 2nd son. Needless to say, I never finished it. Well I tried to cast off and finish it last night and it was unsuccessful and started to unravel, so I just set all that yarn to the side and said I would deal with it later. I was only learning for the 1st time while I was knitting that scarf so it wasn't the greatest looking thing either. So here is my 2nd attempt at knitting, casting on & doing the stiches I relearned from an online video.....but I seem to be doing something wrong. This is row 2 of the stitches and it is frustrating me. It does not look right. So I sent a facebook message to a friend of mine to come over to my house and deal with my slow learning process and show me what I am doing wrong. She has made all of my children a few scarves over the years, which were gorgeous!

Last night while I was making dinner I noticed we had 1/2 a bag of mini marshmellows in my pantry we needed to get rid of and my 2 boys LOVE this ceral so I decided to make cereal bars out of them, since we ran out and could not go grocery shopping for almost another week.

I did not follow a recipe I just threw the marshmellows in the microwave and poured the cereal in a big mixing bowl and mixed the cereal and melted marshmellows.

As you can see they did not fully flatten out....so I am thinking I should of followed a recipe, but my boys have eaten more then 1/2 of this already. So its all good. :)

While I was making those cereal bars....here is what happened to dinner.

As my Dad used to say when my Mom cooked, when the smoke alarm goes off you know dinner is done! HA HA HA I got a little distracted.

So our outside cats got an extra snack.

The rest of dinner went fine. No more burnt food. I made cream of potato soup and cheated and used the can kind and grilled cheese. As you can see one of my cats is enjoying it. :)

ALL my seedlings.

I wanted to show how I was growing all my seedlings and how they were doing.

Window 1

I used the top of the bottom window frame as well as the window sill since we don't have a lot of room with good sunlight.

My 2nd wave of broccoli seedlings

another pepper on the left, a pepper I am still trying to get to sprout in the middle with the plastic wrap on it and on the right is my 2nd corn stalk.

This is my 2nd wave of onions.

Window 2

My 1st wave of onions and broccoli. They are ones about to be transplanted...when we have nice enough weather! Not 20 degrees as our low. :(

a few more 1st wave onions and in the yogurt cup is cherry tomatoes and the rest are peppers. All but the very right one I am still waiting for them to sprout.

Window 3

2 cups on the left are 2nd wave onions, next 3 cups are lettuce, then a 1st wave onion and last 2 on the right are cabbage.

All are 1st wave onions, except for the 3rd one in, the baby food jar is my other lonely corn stalk.

Window 4

My garlic seeds on the left and roma tomatoes on the right.

I tried using newspaper cups I made, they didn't work for me at all. I am having the best results with this little baby food jars, empty egg cartons, and applesauce/yogurt cups. I put plastic wrap over top of them to make a greehouse effect, once they sprouted, I took the plastic wrap off most so they can continue to grow. Here is what I have growing so far:

31 Broccoli

29 onions

2 garlic

2 roma tomatoes

2 corn

2 peppers

21 lettuce

5 cabbage

2 cherry tomatoes

Garlic seedlings

As I was making my french onion soup last night, I was going through my garlic cloves because the recipie called for a clove and I saw 2 other cloves were sprouting. So I decided to plant them next to my onion seedlings. This is my first time growing garlic :)

My Baguette

Ingredients:
4cups flour
1 tablespoon dry active yeast
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups warm water (about 75 degrees F)
Oil for bowl

Directions:
1. In a bowl mix together the flour and salt.
2. In another bowl, combine yeast, warm water and 1/2 the flour/salt mixture. Using your hands, mix until it forms a dough. Then, cover with a dish cloth and let sit at room temperature for 3 hours. It should triple in size. Here is what mine looked like after the 3 hours:

(I did not add enough flour/salt mixture so mine didnt form a dough 100%)

3. Gently incorporate the rest of the flour/salt mixture using your hands.

4. Place on a lightly floured surface and knead for about 10 min. It should be supple and elastic when you stop kneading.

5. Lightly oil a bowl. Place dough in bowl. Cover with a dish towel, let sit 1 hour. It should double in size.

6. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Knead again. Then cut dough into 3 parts and form each part into a long baguette. Place on a baking sheet, let sit for at least 20 min. Here is what mine looked like:

7. Place a bowl of water in the oven. Bake baguette for 25 min or less. Remove water bowl after 15 min. Here is my finished baguette! :)

Be careful with the hot water bowl on the bottom of the oven. I am REALLY clumbsy and burned myself like 9 times, 2 of which were with hot water from this bowl. My bread only baked like 23 min and it was still slighty more crispy then desired. Now I also have an oven from like the 1970's and seems to cook faster then most....so just watch the bread like the last 5 min.

My kids LOVED this bread! So enjoy, we sure did. :)

New recipe today

Going to try a new soup today. French Onion Soup with a homemade baguette. I will post the recipe later when I finish it and let you know how it went. I will try to post a pic as well. :) Well the bread takes awhile so I better get started. Have preschool to do yet too.

Day One

This is a diary of sorts of my successes and failures back to the simple life. A more Godly life....I guess a pre modern life. We are in the process of making our 2 1/2 acre property into a mini farm. We have already ordered 35 chickens. 10 for egg layers and 25 for meat. Joel has gotten his fishing license and will be getting his hunting license. We are looking for a self sufficent life....well getting as close as possible to it. You may see this as a lot more work then its worth. Well it is a lot of work, but it will be worth it knowing exactly what is being fed to my kids and knowing it is 100% organic...ourganic (lol...watched the Bee Movie one too many times) It is also a one of a kind experience and it shall be interesting....as to why I started this blog. I wanted to share what we gave up and what we have gained from this journey. :)