… starting a new phase of life.
Gingersnaps
3/4 c. butter, softened
2 c. sugar
Cream well.
2 eggs
1/2 c. molasses
2 tsp. white vinegar
Add to creamed mixture and mix well. Add:
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cloves
3 3/4 c. flour
Roll into balls… coat with granulated sugar. Place on greased baking pan and bake for about 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Completely yummy.
I love the taste of freshly-baked whole wheat bread. By making it myself, I can decide what ingredients I use, grind my own wheat berries, and make it much less expensively than I could ever buy it.
By purchasing and storing the wheat in berry form, you can safely keep it for years without spoilage. Whole wheat flour, in contrast, goes rancid very quickly. I usually only grind up enough for a couple of batches of bread at a time, using half immediately and freezing the other half.
My grain mill is a Wondermill Junior Deluxe unpowered hand mill. I decided to buy this one after getting great reviews from a fellow bread-maker in Ft. Worth. The great thing about this mill is that you get two different types of grinding stones. One set of stones is for grains; the other is stainless steel and can be used for oily things, such as flax seed, peanuts, coffee, etc. I did add my own modification in the form of a plastic bowl guard around the grinding stones. Some of the newer models have a modification built in to keep the flour from making a huge mess as the grinding is going on… my simple (and inexpensive) modification works fine, too. 
It takes about 15 minutes for me to grind up about 5-6 cups of flour. Today I also enlisted the help of my boys (free labor). The wheat we ground today was the last of the hard red wheat that I have here in Georgia. The boys actually prefer the taste of the hard white wheat. It seems to have a milder flavor.
After grinding the wheat, I use my breadmaker to knead the dough. I’m primarily interested in the bread machine for mixing and kneading the dough. I do not bake bread in the machine. The main problem with baking bread in the machine is that there is no flexibility for how long your bread needs to rise properly. That, along with the sometimes strange shape of the loaf, makes baking in the machine unattractive (at least to me).
Here’s my recipe:
Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread
1 cup lukewarm water
1 egg
4 T. oil
2 T. honey
1 T. vital gluten (this is a must for 100% whole wheat bread… makes the texture much better)
1 tsp. dough enhancer (check ingredients on this… some of them out there have weird ingredients)
1/2 c. oatmeal
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp. salt (I like kosher salt)
2 1/2 tsp. yeast (I buy SAF yeast by the pound)
Dump all the ingredients into the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer (wet ingredients first in my machine). Let the machine run through both knead cycles on the standard breadmaking cycle. This should take about 1 hour.
After the 2nd kneading, split the dough in half, form loaves, cover with a dish towel and let rise in two greased 8″ loaf pans. The time this takes will vary, depending on temperature of your kitchen… just watch until it doubles.
Bake 25 minutes in 350 degree oven. Remove from pans immediately, cover with dishtowel and let cool on a rack.
I usually freeze one loaf immediately (unless we wipe out one loaf immediately). This bread is so delicious for sandwiches.
Is it cheating to use the bread machine? I don’t know… I do know that it kneads it very well and makes it so easy to do that I rarely buy bread in the stores. To me, it’s just a good use of a useful tool. I have never cared for the result from a bread machine when the entire baking process is used. I only like it for the kneading help.
Notes: You can vary this recipe very easily to suit yourself. For example, if you would like to add in some ground flax seed for additional nutrition, you can substitute 3 T. of ground flax seed for 1 T. oil. You’ll need to either increase the water slightly, or use just a bit less flour for this. Also, if you don’t want to use honey, you can use 2-3 T. sugar instead. You can also leave out the oatmeal and just use all wheat flour, substituting about 1/2 c. flour for the 1/2 c. oatmeal. Many times I will use part whole wheat flour with part all-purpose white flour to suit my picky youngest boy. What we moms will do to sneak extra nutrition into foods kids like! When you aren’t making it 100% whole wheat, you can omit the vital gluten and dough enhancer, too. Instead of vegetable oil, you can use butter or shortening or coconut oil…the list is endless…
One thing I do plan to learn to do when we get back to New Mexico is bake bread in my solar oven. I have seen many online articles about this and will definitely make use of the techniques when I have decent solar exposure to use (where we live now our house is surrounded by huge trees — I kid you not — there is virtually no place I could place the solar oven and expect to get several hours of decent sun other than right out by the road in front of our house…).
Do you have a favorite bread recipe? I’m always looking for new ideas…
Here’s the finished product. Yum.
Shortly after I began learning about dehydration I found a great deal on Potatoes – $1.99 for a 20 lb. bag. With this being such an excellent value, I decided this would be my next experiment. Little did I know that this would become the all-time family favorite dried food.
Potatoes must be blanched* before they are dried, so drying potatoes is not quite as carefree an operation as with tomatoes.
I’ve put together a little picture tutorial on the method…
*Any vegetable that must be blanched before freezing must also be blanched before dehydration. This is a good rule of thumb. Any decent all-purpose cookbook with instructions on freezing food will give you a guide for this.
The blanching method:
After peeling (optional) and dicing or slicing, blanch the potatoes in boiling water until cooked sufficiently to heat up clear through. How long this takes will depend on the thickness of your slices or dices. I found that about 3-4 minutes was usually sufficient. After a batch or two, you can tell by looking at them whether they are done enough. It’s a bit of an art…
I soon discovered that, if improperly blanched, the potatoes were no good… 
the parts of the potatoes that were not blanched properly turned black when dried.
After blanching, cool immediately in an ice-water bath.
Arrange on dehydrator trays and dry at about 120 degrees Fahrenheit overnight. The potatoes should be completely dry all the way through for proper storage. Slices should snap when broken in two. Cubes should be dry completely to the center.
The potatoes reduce greatly in size during the drying process and store very well.
To save freezer space, you can also take dehydrate frozen hashbrowns. Since they have been prepared for freezing, you don’t need to blanch first. You can just dump a package of frozen hashbrowns right onto the dehydrator trays and dry them. These are another favorite…
After dehydration, potatoes can be easily used in soups, stews, pot pies and the like. However, our family’s favorite way is to fry them in butter to add as a side dish to a meal.
Rehydrate the potatoes by placing in a bowl, pouring boiling water to cover and let soak for 15 minutes or more.
Drain well, fry in butter until nicely browned… salt and pepper to taste and enjoy.
Once I was old enough to help with Christmas candy-making and baking, I always took part in helping to prepare this recipe. Mom always made several batches of it each year so that she could share with neighbors and friends, so there were several opportunities to learn the skill along the way. So, I never dreamed I’d have so much difficulty getting consistent results when I was out on my own.
Let me just say that I’ve had some very lackluster batches in the past years, some so soft that they could be referred to as “spoon candy”, some so dry and crumbly that they wouldn’t stick together.
This year was going to be the year I got it right. After a few long conversations with Mom, picking her brain about the finer points of deciding when to call it “ready” and add the vanilla, I got it right. I think it is now duplicate-able infinitely and want to share it.
Divinity (with notes and secret techniques)
2 egg whites, beaten to stiff peaks with high powered stand mixer
2 1/2 cups sugar (I told you about the sugar coma thing)
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
In a 2 quart saucepan, combine the sugar, syrup, water and salt. Cook to the thread stage (230 degrees). Meanwhile, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Use a stand mixer with a good motor. Don’t try this with a small hand mixer (You’ll burn the motor out). Dip out about 1 cup of the syrup and slowly add to the beaten egg whites while beating. Scrape down the sides.
Continue cooking the rest of the syrup to the hard ball stage (260 degrees). Again, dip out about 1 cup of the syrup and slowly add to the egg white mixture while beating. Scrape down the sides.
Cook the rest of the syrup to the hard crack (300 degrees) stage (if you are using a water test method, the syrup will actually make a cracking sound when you drop the hot syrup into the cold water).
Finally, pour the rest of the syrup into the egg white mixture while beating.
This is all pretty straightforward… this next part is where I always messed up. It takes a long time beating this mixture before it is ready. After you’ve added all the syrup to the egg white mixture, you have to beat it for a long while. I timed it this time and it took me fully 15 minutes before it was ready. Start watching it very carefully once it starts to show any sign of solidifying… in my case after about 8-9 minutes… this could vary a bit. I think mostly I have lacked patience to beat it long enough in most of my failed batches… THIS IS THE SECRET TECHNIQUE… don’t give up too soon on the beating!
So you ask… “How do I know when it is ready?”
When the divinity starts to hold its shape when you turn off the beaters, and just starts to set up like meringue, it is ready. At first, it is very liquid and soft (obviously won’t hold its shape)… then, gradually it will start to solidify slightly. When you see this, stop beating, add the vanilla very quickly and make haste to spoon it out in dollops onto a sheet of waxed paper.
Mom likes to press a pecan half into the top of each dollop (cuts the sweet taste a bit) and has been known to add a drop of either green or red food coloring with the vanilla for a touch of color.
I realize there have been a lot of food articles this week… bear with us — Christmas is coming.