Saturday & Weekend Blog Hops!

Greetings everyone! Hope you are having a wonderful weekend. Enjoy your weekend. I have a neighborhood get together this afternoon, followed by getting ahead on my thesis paper. Oh what fun! (Actually, it's not that bad, my thesis is about the Harry Potter novels... Oh I love being an English major!!!)

See you around the hop. :)

And in case you are wondering where I find all these blog hops...

Who's in the Now? I am! I am!

I'm so excited to announce... I am officially employed! HELLO SPRINT! You noticed earlier this week my ramblings about "I hate waiting!" -- wait no more! This evening my NEW MANAGER called me to inform me the job is mine, "You're hired!" The sweetest, grandest words my ears have heard in a long time. To top it off, the pay is more than I thought. Whoohoo! Plus commission, plus benefits. BENEFITS! BENEFITS, I TELL YOU!!!! No more state insurance after a few months!

Excuse my rambling. I'm just a wee bit excited. We've struggled for so long with such unexpected turns from that huge economy disaster in 2008. Despite all the problems, we learned a lot from it. That collapse we experienced truly changed our family outlook. We were forced into unemployment insurance, food stamps, and later welfare. I sat there with the people I always thought were "working the system," all to find out many aren't. They just fell flat on their ass like we did. Sure, there were the obvious few that learned to live off the dole. It is eye opening to see those who are really trying to get by, but are just going through a difficult time. I'll never forget what it is like sitting in those chairs of misery. The hardness of the chairs is like the hard times we were experiencing. Those sterile, bland rooms only makes one realize how incredibly lonely and sterile life feels at that moment. Worst of all, the cubicle you have to sit in with your Case Worker. They look down on you, proudly showing off their family on the wall and the symbols of all they have earned, or showing off how wonderful their life is, while yours was just dealt the worst hand. O! And the walls of those cubicles! I would sit there and feel the world collapsing on me. Those blue walls were going to crash down on me with the weight of the world at any minute. Tempted as I was, some how I held out on the strength to run out of those hallways screaming. The husband and I constantly reminded ourselves, this is only temporary... this is only temporary...

And here we are. We pushed, we fought, we held strong. While the rest of the world may have collapsed under the pressure, we held on through the rough waves.

I start on Tuesday, in case you are wondering! :)

I suppose that means I should drop the "stay home mom" part of my title to just "mom," right?! Of course I'll miss my little ones, but the prospect of the financial pressure finally lifting off our shoulders, the reliance on state insurance, all gone... it'll be well worth the sacrifice!

By the way, I love Friday and the weekends. There are always tons of Blog Hops going around! Greetings to everyone from the hops! I love "meeting" new people, so don't be shy to comment! Click around and put your blog on some lists too... it's fun!

Homemade Fruit Leather / Fruit Roll Ups

PS - don't ask me why the formatting on this got all screwy... I have no idea! I shared this on another blog, copy & pasted and the formatting is all whacky! Oh well, I give up!

I must say… talk about easy! I really thought it was going to be difficult, but it wasn’t!
This specific fruit leather is a berry-blend… I used:

Ingredients:

2 lbs of strawberries
4.4 oz of blueberries (standard small package size)
and apx 1/4-1/2 lb of grapes (enough to make 32 oz of puree)

You can use almost any fruit. Try the fruit first, and if it seems a little tart, or needs some sweetening, add about 1 tbsp of honey or corn syrup. Taste test to see what is good for you!

Directions

Puree all ingredients (blender, food processor, etc)

With Dehydrator:

• Grease your fruit leather tray (Pam works for me)
• Pour your fruit puree on the fruit leather tray
• Set dehydrator between 130-140 degrees
• Let dehydrate for 4-8 hours (time depends on the thickness of your fruit leather, which fruits you are using, etc)Without Dehydrator:
• Set your oven to the lowest setting possible (probably around 140 degrees, or aim between 130-140 degrees)
• Place heavy duty plastic wrap or wax paper on baking sheet
• Pour fruit puree on a thin layer (or to desired thickness) on the tray
• Dehydrate for 4-8 hours.

Now, I’ve never actually done the oven method… let me know how it turns out! Here is an article with more on dehydrating with an oven

Oh technology...

I love it, I really do! Sometimes I may be a bit behind in times. I get stubborn and stuck in my favorite-sites rut, but then I branch out to others and become giddy in excitement over what I find.

Some of my latest and greatest favorites (besides Facebook, of course)...

I know, I may be a bit behind on some of these... but wow, now that I found them, I love it! If any of you would like to try Pinterest... leave a comment with your email address so I can send you an invitation!

My eyes have been opened... I keep finding SO many fun food ideas, projects, etc!

My next technology adventure shall be in Tumblr, I think!

Blog Hop!

My nose in a good book

My friends, in particular Brandie (you should go check out her blog at Handie Brandie!) finally has me reading this series called The Hunger Games. Everybody has been telling me about it and I kept forgetting... I finally downloaded it to my nook, and holy cow, this book is GOOD! I highly recommend it!!

I'm only a few chapters in, and already completely absorbed. I love when a book starts, and you are sucked in right away. Harry Potter did that to me... I got into the first page and was hooked (for life, man).

Anyone read this series yet? What do you think? Or have any other good recommendations?

This just makes me thing, I really should find a book club sometime! Come December (when I'm finished with my DEGREE!!) I'm going to hunt one down. Or start one. Whatever floats my boat!

Wednesday Blog Hop!

You have to check these video shorts out. "Move" is my favorite. Although "Eat" sure made me hungry!

http://vimeo.com/27246366

Thanks to my girl Abbi for sharing this with me... (while you're at it, you should check out her awesome photography blog!)

Homemade White Sandwich Bread

I have tweaked this recipe around from multiple different recipes and this variation is my favorite, by far! Just ask anyone. They'll tell you my bread recipe rocks your socks off.

Marlana's White Sandwich Bread

Ingredients

• 2 envelopes yeast (or 4 1/2 tsp if you use the jar)
• 2 cups warm water
• 1/4 cup honey
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 6-7 cups all purpose flour

Directions

• Sprinkle yeast over warm water
• Add honey, butter, and salt; whisk until yeast is dissolved. Let stand until foamy (5-10 min)

Yeast and ingredients mixed.

Foamy appearance.

• Add 3 cups flour, mix until incorporated and mostly smooth (with spatula or on low speed with mixer)
  
• Add 3 more cups of flour, mix until incorporated
• **Make sure your dough stays slightly sticky, but not so sticky it keep sticking to your fingers
• Lightly flour your surface to knead. Again, you want just enough flour on the dough and your surface to make sure it doesn’t stick to your hands. If it still feels too sticky, slowly add in the remaining cup of flour (just a little at a time).
  
• Begin kneading until smooth and elastic.
• Kneading 101, if you need help kneading: begin at the outer edge of the dough, and fold it over closest to you, and then push away from you. Quarter turn and repeat. Knead dough about 6-8 minutes. Your dough is kneaded enough when you push your finger 1/4 inch in and it rises back up.
  Push away from you with bothpalms of your hand (I have one here because I was taking the photo!)
• Fold in to your body. Quarter turn and repeat.
• Spray your bowl with Pam or lightly grease with butter. Place kneaded dough ball into bowl, and let rise until doubled in size. It helps to put in a warm place and cover with a hand towel.
  In light greased bowl.At least doubled in size. You know your dough has risen enough when you push your finger in and the imprint stays.
• After bread has risen, punch it down, take out of bowl and knead out a couple more times.
• If using 2 pans ( 4 1/2 x 8 1/2 ), divide dough in half now, and grease pans (use Pam or Pam w/ flour)
• Press or roll out dough roughly to a square or rectangle, and roll up (like a jelly roll)
  If you need to, bring in reinforcements.
  Rolled out, rectangular, apx the size of the pan.
  Begin rolling up dough.
  Rolled dough.
• To help reduce the “seams” at the bottom, pinch them together. Pull each side of the bread from top to bottom (pinch sides and the bottom) to make the “heel” of each side of the bread.
  Seams pinched together.
  Heel created.
• Let rise in the pan until doubled in size.
  Rising this much left me a nice high loaf… lots of bread! You’ll see at the end of this post. If you’d like your bread smaller, don’t let it rise as much.
• Put in oven heated to 400 degrees for 20-30 min. The bread is done when you (use oven mitts!) flip your bread out of the pan, tap on the bottom with the heavy end of a butter knife, and it makes a hallow tapping sound.
• Let cool on wire rack. (One more tip, it is best to use a serrated bread knife to cut your loaf.)
  

ENJOY!

FOR THE PRINTABLE VERSION OF THIS RECIPE, CLICK HERE!

Want a video to go with this post? Or are the photos enough? If you’d like a video for any of the steps (such as kneading, or how to tell if your dough has risen enough, etc), please let me know and I’ll make a video to add!