Sunday, October 24, 2010

A movie I want to watch? With my kids? Can it be??

Tonight I watched Singing in the Rain with my 4 year old. At then end she asked me if we could buy it (we Netflixed it.) Can this be true? After watching Nemo 10,000 times (give or take 5) and I love Nemo, don't get me wrong, I found a personal limit. We have a family movie night in our house where we pop some corn, have a juice box or two and pop in a flick, but it was hard to find something we both genuinely wanted to see. Okay, it was hard to find something I actually wanted to see that she would go for as well.
The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together
I came across an article years back about a book written by a dad that was in a similar boat and looked into and actually bought it for the day our kids were old enough. Totally forgot about it. Came across it on the bookshelf the other day, and found a whole list of books organized by age and listing subject material that might come up! The first suggestion was Errol Flynn's Robin Hood and I really didn't think it'd fly with her. But I gave it a good intro (Lady Marrion was like the cousin of a princess, good guys, bad guys, etc.) and she agreed. She loved it! So tonight we tried some Gene Kelly and it was a huge hit! I had to explain a few things, but I always do and there was nothing I had to "explain away" (negative), lots of great music, dancing and fun! We both enjoyed movie night! I love this book and so I must share it! I can't wait to open it up and see what's next to queue!

Monday, October 18, 2010

Fresh bread and lettuce!

I made such a beautiful bread and salad out of my garden and oven I could hardly believe it and had to take a picture for proof! I wish I had tomatoes growing too....possible project if they can be done at this point in the year. (Okay, I didn't grow the feta either ;) )

Stuffed Pancakes! Yum!

Wandering the aisles of Target, long past my shopping list and now just meandering and tempting myself I came upon some clearance pans and thought I'd take a look. What I found was an interesting pan with little dips in it called a Pancake Popper. Hmm....what's this? I take a closer look and find it claims to make easy, quick little stuffed pancakes. Well, little did they know, they already had me at "clearance" but this sounded pretty good so in the cart it went! yum. YUM. Today I made two kinds: Nutella stuffed (omgoodness) and cream cheese/blueberry. Not only did they really only take a second (and no more than a second- turn on the 'toons for the kiddies-these will over cook quickly!) but they were delicious! My kids voted for the Nutella ones, however I thought the cream cheese blueberry were pretty insane! Now add in a clearance price: score! Very pleased with myself and I've now justified myself for more Target wandering....uh oh....
This is after pouring the batter and adding the filling; before the flip.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Ah ha!

My last batch of dough was "not right." What does that mean? I don't know how to describe it, but it wasn't right. The bread was coming out heavy, not enough holes, the crust was too hard. What was it?? I finally went to the website of the breadmakers and tried to figure out what was up when I came across a video! I've been wanting a video to see if I was gluten cloaking the bread correctly and not only was I not, but I found my error. I was shutting the lid all the way on the wet dough. Ah ha! So I tossed what I had (which incidentally made my trash smell lovely, no really!) and started fresh and I'm back to my beautiful bread! The last batch of dough soured me, hee hee, and I didn't even want to make bread anymore, nothing was coming out quite right. But I'm back in the saddle again! So next is the Crunchy White Bread Loaf! I'm excited as I think my kids will like that a little better for our "sandwiches." I use quotes because they will not eat them as sandwiches, they eat all the pieces separately. Kids. It does make me think about the nutritional quality of the bread however. The authors also wrote a book called Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day that I've been adding and removing from my Amazon cart for a month. I want to buy it, but shouldn't I finish this book first? But that's healthier, then do I even need this book? Alas, I am at an impasse. My current plan is to finish at least a bit more in this book, just out of some inner need to make it "worth it" and finish what I started and then I'll get the other. I did attempt the naan out of Book 1, it was with the failed dough though and with 2 darling interrupters...
timing is everything!

Here's another picture of a better boule before it hits the fiery furnace!
This is what it was supposed to look like!