whole wheat pita bread

Monday is my busy day.


Well, every day of the week could qualify as my "busy" day, but Monday is the day I catch up on housework, laundry, and whatever else needs doing to get the week in order. So Monday is my really busy day.


But why am I talking about Monday? I'm supposed to be posting about pita bread, for goodness sake.


Well, today is Monday, and today I am making pita bread. So there you go.

On to pita bread.

On my menu for today are tuna salad sandwiches and pita bread. Since I don't have any store-bought whole wheat pita pockets, I'm going to make them.

So, this morning after bathing, feeding and dressing the kids (and cleaning the kitchen and starting laundry, and making my bed, and helping the girls clean their room, and taking a shower and... oh yes, the pita bread...)


Ahem. This morning after breakfast, I gathered all my ingredients:

• 1 1/4 C warm water- The water needs to be 110 to 115 degrees in order to activate the yeast. I generally use a candy thermometer to get the water just right, but sometimes I "cheat" by testing the water on my wrist. When it's a little warm but not too hot, it's just right



• 2 tsp active dry yeast- Just plain old yeast will do.



• 3 C whole wheat hard red flour- Hard red flour has higher contents of gluten than pastry flour, making it a great choice for making yeast breads. The brand I use is "Bob's Red Mill", but you can also use freshly ground wheat flour, or half white flour and half whole wheat flour. I don't recommend using all whole wheat flour unless it is hard red flour, since the bread tends to turn out heavier and too coarse.



• 1 1/2 tsp sea salt- Sea salt is rich in essential minerals lacking in regular "table" salt. Don't make the mistake of buying the "coarse" sea salt- it does not dissolve well and you'll end up tasting SALT in everything you bake! I always look for "fine" sea salt.



• 1 TBSP wildflower raw honey- I prefer wildflower honey over clover honey because it is less apt to contain pesticides or other harmful chemicals. More on the many benefits of raw honey.


• 2 TBSP olive oil- I removed all hydrogenated oils (including shortening) from my pantry several years ago. Olive oil is much more healthy for our bodies and can be used in place of vegetable or canola oil, cup per cup. I usually buy light tasting, extra-virgin olive oil for the best flavor. You can replace the 2 TBSP of olive oil in this recipe with 2 TBSP melted butter (no margarine!).

To active my yeast, I poured the water into my mixing bowl and sprinkled the yeast on top. Within a few minutes, it began to bubble. Sometimes I sprinkle a teaspoon or so of sugar on the yeast to help it activate.

Here is what the yeast looked like once it started to activate. See the little bubbles starting to foam?

Once the yeast was good and bubbly, I added the flour, salt, honey and olive oil. I stirred the ingredients with this pretty red spoon.





After the dough was well mixed, I formed it into a ball. Next, I attached the dough hooks to my electric mixer, spun the dial to "knead", set my timer for ten minutes, and let my pretty red machine do all the work! Have I told you how I love red?





While the dough kneaded, I changed Keith, put him down for a nap, and worked on some laundry. And did I ever mentioned how much I love my stand-up mixer???? A busy mother's best friend.

Once the dough was good and kneaded, I placed the ball into a large, greased glass bowl, turned the dough once to cover it with oil, and set the bowl in a slightly warm oven (about 100-degrees) to rise.

The dough needs to rise for 90 minutes; this is what mine looked like a little while ago with an hour yet to go:






I need to fold clean laundry and diapers, so I'll be back with the next step once the dough finishes rising.

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And this is what my dough looked like after rising 90 minutes. If you have trouble getting your whole wheat bread to rise, try adding one or two teaspoons of wheat gluten to your ingredients.

Next, I punched down my dough, separated it into 8 balls, and placed them on a cookie sheet. Back in the warm oven they went to rise for 20 more minutes.

And back I went to work on more laundry.

After the balls had risen a bit, I removed them from the oven and turned it to 400-degrees to preheat. I also placed my baking stone in the oven on the middle rack to preheat.

I lightly floured the counter and flattened the balls of dough with a rolling pin. I tried to keep them round and kept rolling until I flattened them to about 1/4-inch thick.

Next, I placed two of them on my preheated baking stone (because that was how many would fit) and cooked them in the hot oven for about 4 minutes. The pitas puff out while they cook! Be careful not to over cook them or they will turn out dry.

I baked the rest of the pita breads until all 8 were done. To make pita pockets, cut the bread in half and stuff in inside "pocket" with a filling of your choice. Today, we're having tuna salad in our pita pockets.

Now it's time to set the table!

$avvy $ubstitutes

I've mentioned before on this blog that our family budgets $50 to $60 a week on groceries. To feed a family of five on approximately $200 to $250 a month takes some fancy corner cutting, to say the least!

One of my favorite "corners" to cut is making my own "extras", such as whipping cream, half-and-half, and creamed soups. Most of the time, a carton of whipping cream ends up partially-used and forgotten in the back of my fridge- a waste of a measly two dollars, but a waste nonetheless! I've been very happy to discover that I can easily substitute many of these "extras" at the rate of pennies on the dollar.

Here are a few substitutes I use frequently:

Heavy Whipping Cream

Mix 3/4 cup milk and 1/3 cup melted butter together. Use as much as needed for a recipe, then store the rest in a small container in the fridge. When you need to use it again, heat the sauce in a pan until the butter softens. This cream will not "whip" but the consistency and taste is still great!

Creamed Soups

As a substitute for cream of mushroom or chicken soup, melt 2 TBSP butter in 1 cup of milk. Whisk in 2 TBSP whole wheat flour; boil and stir until sauce thickens. I usually add beef bouillon if a recipe calls for cream of mushroom soup, or chicken bouillon in place of cream of chicken soup. You can also add diced mushrooms or chicken to the sauce if you want it to be hearty. This substitute works great in casseroles and is SO much cheaper than store-bought creamed soups!

Meat Broths

Instead of buying chicken or beef stock for soups, I make my own by saving the broth off chicken, roast, or other meats. If I don't use the broth right away, I store it in a glass jar in the fridge, or even freeze it for later use. Homemade broth is basically free, since you've already bought and used the meat in the first place, and isn't packed with the preservatives and sodium that store-bought varieties have.

Half-and-Half

Simply mix 1 cup milk with 1 TBSP melted butter in recipes that call for half-and-half. I've used this substitute many times and am always pleased with the results!

You can find these and lots of other money-saving recipes and homemade substitutes in our ebooks, particularly our Meals for a Month volumes and Wholesome Mixes.

I'd love to hear some of your money-saving substitutes and homemade recipes!

learning to make homemade peanut brittle

I blogged earlier this week about mentoring. My girls and I were blessed to be on the receiving end of a sweet mentor a few days ago.

Sis. Margie, a lady in our church, invited us over to her home for a hands-on lesson in how to make her "famous" peanut brittle! I was thrilled for several reasons- one of them being that my only attempt at making peanut brittle a few years ago ended so badly that I couldn't even get it out of the pan!

Needless to say, I was excited about our little cooking lesson with Sis. Margie. The girls talked about it all day on Monday. After lunch, we gathered our ingredients and aprons and headed to Sis. Margie's home, which is about a mile from where we live.

The first thing Sis. Margie did was measure out the ingredients:


1 cup raw, Spanish peanuts



1 cup sugar



1 cup corn syrup

We poured all the above into a heavy pot and let it cook over medium/high heat until it began to boil. Amy and Emily were our official "stirrers"- and they enjoyed it! (Emily kept trying to touch the pot while she stirred... it wasn't hot here, but later we had to keep her hands back so she wouldn't burn herself!)

We let the brittle boil and cook, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon, until it reached the "hard crack" stage (300-degrees on a candy thermometer). Sis. Margie shared that, when she didn't have a thermometer, she learned to judge when the brittle was done by checking if the brittle could "spin a thread", which means it forms a hard "thread" when you lift the wooden spoon out of the pan and let the brittle run down. I thought that was neat! (But I'm very thankful for candy thermometers all the same!)

Once the brittle reached the "hard crack" stage, we added 1 teaspoon of baking soda and stirred until it was well blended. It foamed up huge once the soda was added!

The next step was to pour the brittle onto a greased cookie sheet.

Sis. Margie pointed out that the brittle does best when it is spread out thin.

Once the brittle was ready to set, Sis. Margie placed it in a cool place where air could circulated beneath the pan. After about 15 minutes, it was ready to crack and eat. Yum!

fillin' Daddy's shoes

front-porch mentoring

One of the things I love best about hearing tales of "the good old days" is the camaraderie between neighbors and the kinship that linked generations. Little girls learned how to be women simply by being with the women in their lives. Cooking, keeping house, taking care of babies- all the ins and outs of womanhood were learned as a matter of course simply by one generation absorbing these things from previous ones.

This old-fashioned, front-porch style of passing on values and skills seems lost on my generation; in part, because we are simply too busy to be involved in each other's lives, and, in part, because we are a very scattered generation of young folk.

A lot of us live hours- or even states- away from our parents and extended family. Our generation has more technology at its finger tips than previous ones ever dreamt possible; email, instant messaging, texting and cell phones all enable us to keep in touch with loved ones, literally at the touch of a button.

Yet we are are more emotionally distant and withdrawn from those around us than generations past. How many of us know more about our next door neighbors than their first name? How many times have we invited friends from church into our home; or visited in the homes of our pastor or church family?

One of the greatest challenges of being a twenty-first century woman is letting your guard down and being "real" with people. Since we've lost the "connectedness" of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, we somehow feel we have to live up to an image projected by Hollywood. You know what I'm talking about. The illusion that real womanhood revolves around keeping up on the latest fashions, filling your home with designer furniture, driving expensive vehicles, having picture-perfect kids and a successful, manikin-handsome husband.

If we find our lives falling short of this picture-perfect scenario, we tend to shut others out. We shy away from inviting our friends over because they might see our old, ugly carpet, or how out-dated the couch is. And since our kitchen is definitely not state-of-the-art, and our cooking expertise doesn't match Rachel Ray or Paula Dean, it's too "risky" to ask people over for dinner. They might criticize our imperfections and it's easier just to keep everyone a safe distance away.

The thought that perhaps some of the younger girls in our circle of friendship might like to spend some time in our company probably doesn't even enter our minds. I mean, teenagers don't like the type of things I like- they probably think I'm an old, worn out fogey, any way. Girls these days don't even have an inkling that they should be learning to cook or clean or take care of babies. I don't have any extra time in my day to spend entertaining, anyway.

And so we cut the ties before us and after us. Each generation is self-contained, self-absorbed. And, like a plant with shallow roots, each generation withers on the vine. We live among, go to church with, and are even related to people with whom we share very little of our lives. The results are fragmented families, churches without true unity, and young women who grow up isolated and afraid to reach out.

The Biblical mandate for passing the torch of womanhood from generation to generation is so simple and clear: "The aged women... teach the young women" (Titus 2:2,3)

I would love to see this concept of Biblical mentoring rekindled among the Christian women in our culture. However, I'm not going to sit around "waiting" for it to happen. While I obviously can't change our culture, I can make a difference in the small sphere of influence God has given me. My family, my friends, my church, my community. I can choose to reach out to those God has brought into my life, both older and younger, and offer the gift of friendship.

I love one definition of a mentor: Someone farther down the path then you, who is going where you want to go, and who is willing to give you some light to help you get there.

Accordingly, we can all be a mentor to someone.

Hmmmm... who can I invite for a little front-porch chat this week?