Wheat

We just got some food back in this last month, and wheat is one item we can now add to our rotation. We can have some wheat twice a week, and I have to tell you that this is very exciting for me!  I have missed pasta.  Tomatoes are still out, so a traditional Italian pasta dish is still out, but pasta is quick, easy, filling, and cheap.  We have dabbled with bits of wheat here and there, but I finally finished our new, revised schedule for foods and yesterday was our first full-fledged wheat day.  For dinner I made a great Olive Oil and Garlic sauce for pasta and added chicken and broccoli.  Oh. My. Word.  It was so good! All four of my guys asked for seconds!  I'm sure to the average person it would have just been an average dinner, but to us?  This was special, amazing, magical even.

The picture doesn't do it justice, but I was too anxious to dig right in to stop and get just the right picture for you all.  Sorry about that. No.  Really I'm not sorry.  I am a bit sorry that I'm not sorry for caring more about getting into the pasta than getting a good picture for you, though.  What? I lost you with all the sorries?  Oh.  Sorry.

I was equally excited about dessert.  I made a chocolate cake and frosted it with this frosting that I had seen on Tasty Kitchen. (I couldn't make a regular frosting since powdered sugar has corn in it and it isn't a corn day...) I don't know if it is because I bought whole wheat white flour or if our tastes have just changed that much, but we didn't really enjoy the cake that much.  Or the pancakes I made this morning, for that matter.  I am determined to keep trying, though, because wheat flour is about 1/5 the cost of spelt flour and 1/7-1/10 the cost of the other flours we have been using.  Oh, and it is already ground for me.  You know? Maybe that's it.  Maybe I should buy some wheat berries and grind them myself.  Perhaps we are just used to the taste of freshly ground flour now. 

Either way, the bottom line is the same.  We love pasta.  We've missed pasta.  We'll be adding pasta to our regular menu again with rejoicing.  However, the other wheat flour items?  Well, their just not all we remembered.