WONDERful Bread

I just made an awesome loaf of white bread. Now I don't usually make white bread but I am out of whole wheat flour until tuesday. I am reading a great book called "Bread Matters" and I am fascinated by the history of good home made bread to what we consider bread at the grocery store. My loaf was from the recipe in the book... 4 ingredients: flour, water, salt, yeast. That's all it takes! So I looked up Wonder Bread just to compare: 11 ingredients and 3 more ingredients it may contain. WHAT!?! Now I know it has to last a while on the shelf, and making my own bread does take up a lot of time... But I am seriously beginning to question all these extra ingredients we are ingesting. Oh, and I slathered my fresh bread with my own raspberry-pear jam for lunch. Yum.

What You Need...

"What you need is a cookie!" said Beaver. "You can solve any problem with a cookie." (from "Boo Hoo Bird" by Jeremy Tankard)

Summery Sugar Cookies

I always thought sugar cookies went with christmas... well no longer! This recipe rocks.

Coconut Lime Sugar Cookies

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 ½ cups white sugar
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tbsp lime juice
½ cup unsweetened coconut
½ cup sugar for rolling cookies

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a small bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
3. Using a mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until smooth and very fluffy.
4. Beat in egg, vanilla extract, lime juice.
5. Gradually blend in the dry ingredients and coconut. 
6. Roll rounded teaspoonfuls of dough into balls, and roll in sugar. Place on cookie sheets about 1 1/2 inches apart. 
7. Bake 7-9 minutes in the preheated oven, or until lightly browned.
8. Let stand on cookie sheet two minutes before removing to cool on wire racks.

Just reading the recipe makes my mouth water.

I used green coloured sugar (that I had left over from another project) to roll them in to make them look limey.

Then I ran out of green sugar. So here is how to make your own coloured sugar:
Put however much sugar you need in a ziplock bag. Add about 2 drops food colouring for each 1/4 cup. Shake, shake, shake. Then spread on a plate to dry.
Voila! Pink sugar!

And here is my Daniel looking super cute. Jacob took this picture!

Soup's On... Or Not

Or not. So this post continues my ongoing quest to disprove certain theories about getting your kids to eat. See here or here. Jacob made soup. That's right. He did EVERYTHING. He cut the potatoes and carrots, without cutting himself or me. He opened the can of mushroom soup (that is how I make cream soup, now you know) dumped it in the crock pot. He put all the seasonings in to his taste. He learned how to turn the crock pot settings on. And... He wouldn't eat it. Not even a taste. I was so impressed with him making the soup though, so whatever. If he won't eat his own creation, why in the world would he eat mine?