Cooking Stuff

The molasses bread turned out well. I still have no idea how it rose with only 1/4 teaspoon yeast in the entire two-loaf batch. It's a strong flavored bread--a mature flavor, one might say--but we all like it, including the kids.

We had great success a couple of days ago making little pizzas out of English muffins for lunch. Pizza is actually a newly "safe" (accepted) food for John. As he's accepted it increasingly over the last few months, at first he accepted only an exact kind of pizza crust cooked the right way, with the plain cheese removed. Slowly he's accepted more and more variations of pizza. I really thought he'd resist this little homemade pizza, but he thought it was great!

Also, he willingly ate cheese for the first time. We were making the pizza and he remarked of the shredded mozzarella, "I love cheese!" I didn't comment, but was thinking it was a strange comment for a child who has never willingly eaten cheese in his life. Then he popped some cheese in his mouth, remarked again that he loved it, and asked if he could eat a bowl of it. I said 'yes,' and he did!

Then today we made homemade granola (oats, wheat germ, brown sugar, butter, oil, coconut, vanilla, almond extract, raisins).

I set up the kids with Kumon workbook pages to occupy themselves while our granola baked.

The granola was delicious! The kids and I really enjoyed it (even though John picked out the raisins). I think next time I will add sliced almonds for protein. And just think of the cost savings: this one batch made the quantity in a large box of cereal, which would probably be $5 (or more for granola, which always comes in those expensive, itty bitty boxes). But these ingredients probably cost a couple of dollars. Yay!

Other than these little ventures, we've been spending a lot of time outdoors, me resting in a chair and supervising the riding of bikes, drawing with chalk, and endless digging in dirt. (By "resting in a chair," I mean hauling my huge pregnant body out of said chair minimally every five minutes to negotiate something or rescue someone.) I remain stymied about how to explain to John what an "echo" is, as he keeps asking me about it, but persists in believing it to be some kind of creature, instead of the effect of sound waves bouncing off of hard surfaces. In a potty training update, introducing stickers and prizes (prizes Mary really does want) has resulted in Mary reducing how often she stays dry in a day rapidly down to zero. Yes, zero, she is not making it to the potty at all now and she couldn't give a hoot except she asks every so often if she can have her prize now. And this is with me taking some mom-friends' advice to try giving her no reaction, positive or negative, in order to take away the power struggle. At least I know I can manage two in diapers, having done it last time!