Fun New Recipe...and HEALTHY:)

I found a recipe for homemade whole wheat pita pockets that are soft and delicious, and fun to make. I can't exactly take credit though. I found the recipe on moneysavingmom.com, which my sister Mandy introduced me to. The website also has white pita recipe which I haven't tried yet, but I'm sure it's just as good! So if you are ever wanting to switch up your sandwiches, you should try this recipe:) I made a bunch and froze them to have them on hand.



Description:
Soft whole wheat round breads with a pocket inside!

Yield:
8 whole pita pockets (or 16 halves)
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup gluten*
1 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast

Instructions:
1. In a large bowl, combine first 4 ingredients. Add the gluten and 1 cup of the flour, along with the yeast, and stir to mix. Add remaining flour and knead to make a soft dough. (Add additional flour if necessary during kneading.)

Alternately, if you have a bread machine, you can put the ingredients in the pan in the order listed and use the dough cycle. Skip to step 3 if using your bread machine! :)

2. Put your dough into a bowl, lightly oil the top, and cover. Set in a warm place to rise, until almost double (about an hour). I like to turn my oven on for a minute or two, then turn it off, and let the dough rise in there, since our house is cool.

3. Punch dough down and turn onto a lightly floured surface. Using a sharp knife, cut dough into 8 equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball. On a lightly floured surface, roll each ball into a 6- or 7-inch circle.

4. As you roll the rounds, set them aside on a lightly floured counter top or table, and cover loosely with a towel. Let rise for about 25-35 minutes, until slightly puffy. (The rounds will still be thin though! :D)

5. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Place 2 rounds, side-by-side, onto a wire rack, such as is used for cooling things. Place rack in the middle of the oven. Bake for 4-5 minutes, until puffy and just slightly browned. (If bread is too browned, it will be dry and not pliable.)

6. Remove rack from oven and immediately wrap/layer pita breads in a damp towel, to soften. Continue baking the remaining breads, layering them between damp towels as soon as they're baked. Allow breads to completely cool.

7. Cut pita breads in half, or split the top edge, and fill as desired. :)





***This is for you JO***
I don't have a recipe for the raspberry jam, I just followed what was on the back of the fruit pectin box, sorry. I'm sure any recipe would be good though. And yes, I do freeze my extra loaves:) Do you?

Happy Fathers Day Reed!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I just wanted to tell my husband what a great Daddy he is. I am SO lucky to have him in my life, I really could not ask for a better man:) Macie and I love you and hope you have a good Fathers Day!

a DaY iN tHe LiFe Of MaCiE...

This little girl of mine makes me SO happy! When I take time to really play with her, every couple minutes she'll stop and give me hugs and kisses! It melts my heart:) I love those big slobbery kisses! Here are a few pictures of some things Macie likes to do...

The other day Macie kept crawling into the laundry basket, so I gave her a ride in it. She LOVED it! A little too much. Every time I would take her out she would just crawl back in and put her hands on the sides like she wanted to go again. It was so cute that I had to give her another ride. So........there were a lot of laundry basket rides that day:)

The "Lazy Susan" is a huge favorite right now. She loves to crawl in and drag everything out. But she is so cute doing it.

And of course, everyone has to have one of these dishwasher pictures, right?

Reed bought Macie this Lion and a pink blanket right before she was born. He wanted her to get attached to them because they were from him. Well........he got his wish. She doesn't have to carry them everywhere yet, but she LOVES them both. When she wakes up you can't separate her from them until she's found something else to hold her attention. This is her napping with her lion and pink blanket. Well, there you have it, a day in the life of Macie. I guess I did leave out a major part of her day, and probably her favorite....eating! Last Saturday we went to Chuck-a-Rama, and Maice thought she'd died and gone to Heaven! She ate more than I thought was possible for a baby her age! And she smiled and danced around in her seat the whole time she ate, which was the whole time we were there! Reed said her first big word would be, "Chuck-a-Rama." Haha, we love that crazy baby.

I dId It!

Last week I decided to buy a couple bags of White Wheat from the cannery so I could try to make my own bread. I borrowed my Mother-in-Law's electric grinder (thank you Donna) and then used my mom's recipe for her homemade bread. I've always kind of stunk at making bread, so I was a little nervous at how this would turn out, but it was SO GOOD! A couple years ago I had my mom come and show me how to make it because following the recipe for any type of bread was NOT working out for me. But I never had wheat or a grinder, so It's been forever since I made it. This was quite a milestone in my life, as you can tell. And guess what, I gave a loaf to Donna and she asked me to teach her how to make it:) Reed told her that was a huge honor for me...and it was. So today she came over and we made bread, and it worked again! Yay, I finally learned!

TaDah! As you can see, I still need someone show me how to shape them into pretty loaves:)

And, while I am showing off my mad kitchen skills.........I went and made TONS of raspberry jam with my mom the other week! Yum! Between this and the strawberry that I made a couple months ago, I think I have about a three year supply!