Sugarless Pizza Dough

I've been using my food processor a lot to make bread. The author of my favorite cookbook makes almost all of his bread in the food processor and he's got this really quick and wonderful recipe for pizza dough that doesn't have any sweetener in it and I thought you might like it.

Mark Bittman's Pizza Dough

3 cups flour
1 t yeast (I just used one packet)
1 to 1 1/4 cup warm water
2 t salt
2 T olive oil

Put the flour, yeast and salt in a food processor and start it. Pour in the olive oil and water through the tube and let it mix for 30 seconds. It should be sticky, but not too sticky. Dump it out on a bit of flour and knead it by hand for about 30 seconds to make it a ball and put it in a greased bowl. Let it rise for and hour or two and the make some pizza.

Just so you know, Mr. Bittman's directions were a wee bit more thorough than that; those are my condensed directions.

Thought For the Day

"All our days ebb away under your wrath;
our years die away like a sigh.
The span of our life is seventy years,
or if we are strong, eighty;
yet at best it is toil and sorrow,
over in a moment, and then we are gone.

Who grasps the power of your anger and wrath
to the degree that the fear due you should inspire?
So teach us to count our days,
so that we will be come wise.

Return, ADONAI! How long must it go on?
Take pity on your servants!
Fill us at daybreak with your love,
so that we can sing for joy as long as we live."

Psalm 90:9-14 Complete Jewish Bible


I don't really care for poetry all that much, but this is beautiful to me. I'd love to know Hebrew so I could read it in it original form.

Kitchen Capers

I love waffles. My family loves waffles, too. We eat them once a week. I have been on the hunt for a whole grain waffle recipe, but am yet to find one that I love. I like ones that have a variety of flours in them as well as oats. I really like oats in my waffles. Yesterday for lunch I tried yet a new recipe. Because I wanted to honor the Passover holiday (read: because I totally messed up), I decided to leave out the leavening. If you have ever wondered just how important baking powder is to a waffle recipe, let me tell you - it is vital. My first two waffles were totally baffling to me! The batter seemed runny and the resulting waffle was so thin and gross looking. I was beginning to wonder if we were going to actually have anything worth eating when I was done!

Fortunately, I was willing to admit that I might have messed up the recipe and looked. Sure enough, I left out the baking powder! Duh! Check out how different they look after I added leavening:

Sadly, after all of that, this recipe is nothing special. The hunt is still on. So if you have a whole grain waffle recipe to share, please do!


My love for loaded baked potatoes continues. I don't know what it is about potatoes, but I just cannot get enough of these things! I even had a potato and salad for lunch today! A while back I made a baked potato soup that was so wonderful I just have to share the recipe. You really have to try this soup!

After a week of being couped up in the house with one kid after another having a stomach virus, we got out to the park today. The kids were so happy to actually be out playing! Check out my super cute monkeys, er, I mean kids:

Have You Been To the Mall Lately?

We got the oil changed on the car on Thursday at Sears and while we waited we walked around in the mall. It was spiritually opressive. Del was trying to ask me questions and I couldn't answer and finally I said to him, "Can we please just go. I have to get out of here." So we left, post haste. It was awful.

This World of Ours

It seems like there have been so many disheartening things that I have read lately about homosexuality teaching in schools, neglect and abuse of children, and other evils in our world. It is so easy when all of this is right in my face to want to buy a secluded piece of land somewhere and hole up - protecting my children from the world. But I cannot really do this. Not only would my husband absolutely not support it, it is not practical for us and may also defeat the purpose God has for us here in this world. I have been taught that we are to be in the world, but not of the world. The is very hard at times, since the desires of the world are strong at times - but it is possible.

I started reading the book Escape by Carolyn Jessop. (I know, I know...I still haven't finished Mansfield Park. I got totally bogged down in the "should we allow this play, father would/wouldn't approve of this play..." section. Boring... I will finish it though.) It tells of her escape from the polygamist cult FLDS. It is particularly interesting to me in light of the 400 children who were recently removed from a FLDS sect here in Texas. It is constantly in the news. Anyway, she said something in the acknowledgments section that really sticks out to me. (Yes, I'm a dork. I even read dedications and introductions to books!) Anyway, one of the groups of people she acknowledges is the people who made it possible for her children to have Christmas the four years since she left FLDS. She says,

"The FLDS is constructed on a scaffolding of lies. We were all brainwashed into believing that everyone in the outside world was evil. Every Christmas, when I see the delight in my children as they unwrap presents from people they never met, I realize what a monstrous lie we were taught to believe."

Later, as she is describing the night she left, she talks about how she couldn't tell her children that they were actually leaving. They were so frightened. Once they figured it out, one of her daughters actually said she was taking them to hell.

Although I realize that this is an extreme situation in which these children were completely brainwashed, I see a warning here too. Am I making statements in which I am teaching my children to fear the world and all of the people who do not believe as I do? Or am I teaching them by example how to be in the world but not of it? Fear cannot be the answer. I know that fear is not from God, rather he is perfect love, and perfect love casts out fear. (I John 4:18) The Bible also has so much to say about being in this world. There is lots to say about not being drawn in by the world and not becoming like the world, but remaining pure and holy in the midst of the world. James 1:27 actually says not to become polluted by the world. I really like that wording. Even though we have to guard our hearts and minds and be responsible with our children, we still don't have to fear the world. The Bible also says that though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. (2 Cor. 10:3) The biggest reason I don't have to fear is that God is mighty! He goes before me and fights the battle for me, giving me the victory! (Deut. 20:4) It reminds me of one of my all time favorite verses, "You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." I John 4:4 I so badly wanted to end that verse with an exclamation point!!

I don't know if this will speak to anyone else the way it is speaking to me, but with all the yucky stuff I have heard lately, I needed to think on these things. I cannot fear. I cannot withdraw and teach my children (even if by default) that everyone in our world is evil and to be feared. Afterall, God loved this fallen world so much that he gave his own son to save it - which is far more than I would have done.

Fun and Scary (Not both for one thing...)

So for the fun first. Have you seen the serious give away at Rocks In My Dryer? I'll write a haiku for a shot at $1000 any day! Give it a try - but it is today only, so we've got to think quickly!

Now for the scary. What did you think about the link my mom sent us yesterday? Did you watch it? After watching the first one, I didn't really want to watch the second one. It is so disturbing that those classes were real and those things were really taught in an actual school. I wonder if they are still using that training video? Obviously, going to a Christian school and then teaching in a Christian school, I never encountered anything like that. As if I needed another reason to homeschool...

Funny, in a Horrifying, Absolutely NOT Funny Sort of Way

So yesterday was the day of vomit in our house. By the way, if you are reading this and are squeamish or feeling nauseated - you might want to just stop here. Fair warning! Okay, so yesterday morning, Aaron woke up early saying that his stomach hurt. I asked him where, and it was sort of low so I told him he probably needed to go potty and he should try. He did, but to no avail, so I asked him if he felt like he needed to throw up. He assured me that he did not, so I sent him back to bed and told him that he should try to go back to sleep. I got back in bed and snuggled down for a bit more sleep myself before Jerry got home from the gym. Minutes later I heard a terrified scream coming from the boy's room. I had to rouse myself out of bed and arrived in their room just in time to see a cascading waterfall of vomit from the top bunk all out of Aaron's mouth! It got on his bed, on Ethan's bed (with Ethan of course sleeping blissfully in it!), and all over the floor. While he is producing Niagara Falls, Aaron is screaming on the top of his lungs! I was thinking that the last thing we needed was for Ethan to awake, and confused in those first few moments of wakefulness, climb out of bed into the oncoming spew. So I tried to hold back my own contribution to the situation and go wide around the mess to climb up to the top bunk to comfort Aaron and get him to stop screaming! He did calm down eventually, and somehow Ethan slept through it all. I got Aaron changed, washed, and sitting with a bowl in a chair and decided that I had to do something in their room because Ethan could not currently get out of bed without rolling over into his brother's generous offering. I got large towels to cover it up, but the smell only made me sick too. Finally I was able to hold my breath long enough to at least cover the mess, but somehow Ethan still managed to push aside the towel on his bed before getting out of bed. I won't go into the details of what happened as a result of that...

Meanwhile, I called Jerry's cell, which of course he left in the car - twice. He did call back when he got in the car, and I lovingly told him that he had a huge mess to clean up when he got home! I had tried and only succeeded in adding to it, so he was on his own. He came in the house with bright green surgical gloves on that he uses when he is staining in the garage - prepared to go into battle! How I wish I had taken a picture of him doing this! He looked so funny with full protection to face the mess! He managed to strip the beds, clean the beds, and clean the carpet. He carried out the soiled linens as far from his body as possible to wash, and then looked at me very confused and had to ask how to start the washer! Wow, I've really gone wrong somewhere! While he was doing all of this, Aaron is still throwing up. Fortunately he embraced the "throw up into the bowl" method, but I still contributed when I had to empty the bowl. So Jerry worked from home yesterday morning. Thank goodness for flexible jobs in times of vomit crisis! Of course, both my parents and Jerry found this story absolutely hilarious - hardly able to contain their laughter. Aaron and I see it a bit differently. Thankfully, this morning has been vomit free so far!