Featured – Page 8

Unfolding Your Wings

There’s an email in my inbox with the subject line “Unfolding Your Wings.” It’s been sitting in there quite some time, unread.

I don’t want to read it. You see, sometimes I go through a tiny little phase where I don’t want anyone telling me to unfold my wings. That sounds like stepping outside of my comfort zone, which experience tells me is … uncomfortable. I want to stay here in my cozy kitchen in my cozy house in my cozy mountain valley. I even want to stay in my cozy pajamas! Sometimes I don’t want to unfold my wings and fly.

Because what if I crash.

I know a lot about crashing…but only because, despite my sniveling whiny attitude right now, I know a lot about unfolding my wings.

My family did a little wing unfolding last year.

We closed down our business of 13 years and packed seven homeschooled kids, a 125-pound dog, and two guitars into a 220 square-foot travel trailer and set out on the road for a trial year of running my husband’s traveling Christian music mission full-time. I guess we unfolded our wings.

Three of us wrote novels last year. I’ve been scratching at that itch for years, and I finally did it. That required a little wing stretching.

We weaned my Crohn’s daughter down to a low dose of her medication, and continued exploring and implementing dietary healing. Flap flap.

We transformed a new, colicky baby with food sensitivities into a healthy, happy, active delight through Mama’s food elimination, extended nursing, and lots of prayer. Lift off!

Now we face a new challenge. We are packing up our house for good and heading back out on the road, this time without a nest to fly back to. We leave on Saturday.

What if it doesn’t work? What if we can’t make it? What if my daughters relapse? What if we can’t manage to thrive in all our quirky uniqueness (let’s just call it charm) without a place to call home? What if…?

Because you know what? Sometimes, no matter how hard people try, no matter how hard we try, we crash.

And crashing hurts.

A lot.

But I don’t think crashing hurts as much as never trying.

This, this right here is the sole single thing that differentiates people who will fly (and yes, probably eventually crash) from the people who will stay in their cozy PJs in their cozy kitchens staring at an email they’re afraid to open.

My family, my husband and I, my children–we keep trying.

We get back up. We beat back the feeling of not wanting to ever venture again from our comfort zones. We close our ears to the critics who label us failures, tell us to get “real jobs,” or, strangely enough, call us quitters. And then we begin once again to unfold our wings.

What are you looking at in the months ahead?

Are you facing a home full of clutter or disorganization? Are you torn in too many directions? Are you overwhelmed by the apparently astronomical leaps it will require to improve your family’s health? Has your life become so complicated that uncomplicating it is too complicated? Are you struggling in the throes of young motherhood with no tangible help or encouragement?

I’m going to be here gently nudging you outside of your comfort zone in the coming months. I’m going to be saying some things about your stuff and your commitments and your schedules that maybe you don’t want to hear…okay, that you totally don’t want to hear. I’m going to be that email that you don’t open, because you know that, even though it might take you to a better place, a less complicated place, a joyful place, it might require a little discomfort, a little unfolding of the wings, to get there.

You will crash and it will hurt and people who love you will say hurtful things because of it and you might even cry in public or get mad at me, and that’s fine, but then you have to pick the gravel out of your teeth, shake off the critics, push aside the self-doubt, and break through the walls of your comfort zone (or fear chamber) and unfold your wings all over again.

Whatever it is…whatever is holding you back and pushing you down…wherever you want to be a month from now, a year from now, a lifetime from now, I have one thing to say.

Unfold your wings and just keep trying.

That’s what I’m doing. Flap. Flap. Flap.

My Four Favorite Family New Year’s Traditions

Sixteen years ago I was in labor with my firstborn on New Year’s Eve and gave birth to a very loud, but beautiful New Year’s baby. Every New Year’s Eve since has paled in comparison. Still, we try to send off the old year with a bang, so this is what we do.

Every New Year’s Eve we have a family party. I schedule different simple activities for different times throughout the evening (as well as massive amounts of food to keep Mama awake). I write each activity on a note and place it in a paper bag or envelope, or roll it up like a scroll. I indicate the time it should be opened either by writing the time on the note or bag, or by attaching a paper clock showing the time. Throughout the night, we open the bags or unroll the notes and ~~eat the cookies~~ enjoy the activity. Over the years, these four have become my favorite:

Out With the Old

We each write down something we do not want to repeat in the new year. It’s generally a bad habit or negative personality trait, although one year my young, less-than-coordinated son wrote “I don’t want to fall next year.” More introspective children (or mamas) may write things like impatience, disrespect, or laziness. Sharing our work is optional. We toss the notes in the fireplace and say a prayer as we watch our old habits burn up. It doesn’t miraculously take our bad habits away (Rats!), but it does make us conscious of a need to grow in that area. And it makes a neat little bonfire–who doesn’t love fire! Okay, Smokey the Bear, maybe, but besides him.

Time Capsule

Each year we toss something into our family time capsule, a five gallon bucket with a lid which we decorated as one year’s activity. It doesn’t matter what it is–a lonely sock from a favorite pair, a photo, a card from a relative, a lost tooth. Someone tried to talk me into saving the baby’s umbilical cord last year, but I don’t think that made it in. We may or may not jot down a note about the significance of the item…like the sock. On New Year’s Eve we sort through the contents and add more.

Predictions and Memories.

I print out a worksheet for each family member to record predictions for the upcoming year, and a second for recording memories from the previous year. We read predictions from the year before and laugh over them. Sometimes we’re amazed at how close our guesses came to reality. We save all the papers inside our time capsule, although a binder would work just as well.

If you wish to do this, the printable sheets we use are here.

Come as You Are Family Photo

We take a quick annual family photo in which nobody gets dressed up (or dressed, in some cases). Some people are in PJs, some in holey jeans or aprons, some in ballerina outfits or cowboy hats. It’s a true-to-life, just-as-we-are, someday-we’ll-look-back-and-laugh family photo, complete with some random portion of the dog in the shot.

(No, I don’t have a gold tooth, no, I have not slept in 16 years, and no, they are not twins. Did I miss anything? Oh, yes, there is only one boy.)

For more fun and simple New Year’s Eve ideas, read this idea-filled post from last year.
If you’re on Pinterest, visit my New Year’s board.

What are your favorite family New Year’s traditions?

Simple Bread Recipe

Update: I posted this simple and delicious bread recipe a year ago, and since then many happy people have written to tell me that it really is simple and delicious. I am reposting it for all my new followers…and for all of those who didn’t believe me the first time around when I said it was simple and delicious. You know who you are!

Many of you have asked me for a simple bread recipe that doesn’t “take all day.” Ask and you shall receive!

We don’t buy bread. Ever.

We make it all by hand. We make sourdough bread for its health benefits, or grind wheat for a hearty whole grain loaf. We make rolls, pitas, tortillas, flat breads, and hamburger buns. One of the hands down favorite breads we make is, fortunately, also one of the simplest. (While it is not the healthiest bread we make, it far surpasses most grocery store breads for its simple lack of “stuff.”) In fact, this simple bread recipe is the first yeast bread recipe my children follow to make bread by themselves.

Simple Bread Recipe

Ingredients

2 cups warm water, not hot or you will kill your yeasty friends
2 teaspoons yeast—a packet contains 2.25 teaspoons–close enough.
2 teaspoons salt
5-ish cups flour, all-purpose is fine unless you wish to alter it for health reasons

Instructions

Mix the yeast into the water.
Combine the salt with two or three cups of flour.
Add the flour/salt duo to the water, stirring…or enlisting younger arms to stir for you.
Add more flour and continue to stir until the dough holds together and is not wet.
Dump the dough onto a clean, floured surface and knead. (If you don’t know how to knead bread dough, just fake it. This is very forgiving bread.) Add more flour as needed, but don’t overdo it. A little sticky is fine—too dry is not so fine.
Knead until it is as smooth as a baby’s bottom. If you have no baby’s bottom at hand to compare it to, give it the stretch test. Hold the dough up to the light and stretch a portion of it. If you can see light through it before it breaks, congrats! You’re finished. If not, give it a little more tender lovin’ care. We knead this dough about ten minutes. (Sometimes we cheat and knead less. We’ve yet to be ostracized for our occasional laissez-faire kneading attitude.)
Shape the bread into two or three Italian-shaped loaves or several mini-loaves. Do this by pressing the dough flat and folding it into thirds, or by rolling it up. Put the ugly seamed side down and tuck under the ends. Place the loaves on a lightly greased pan. Optionally, shape two shorter loaves and place them in greased loaf pans for “bread-shaped bread.” Grease the top (I like butter), and cover with plastic wrap or a flour sack towel. Set in a warm place to rise—the oven is too warm for rising and will kill your yeast, but the top of the refrigerator is just fine.
Let those babies rise until about doubled in size, or until you get tired of waiting, whichever comes first. We wait anywhere from 30 minutes on a hungry, summer’s day to an hour and a half on an oops-did-we-forget-about-the-bread day. Normally, 45 minutes should do it.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. (My girls bake at 450 degrees, and I bake at 425 because I like the little time cushion for when (not if) I get distracted and wander somewhere that I can’t hear the oven timer. I won’t tell you whose bread my husband likes better.) Preheat for 20 minutes if you have baking stones in your oven.
Slash the top of the loaves several times diagonally for that authentic, fresh-from-a-French-bakery look. Put the dough in the oven. (If you want to use baking stones, slide the loaves off the pans and onto the stones.) Spritz the interior of the oven with water. (This is optional, but gives the out-of-the-pan loaf a more tender crust. Some people have had trouble with stones and a few oven doors cracking from spritzing a very hot oven with cold water, so you may opt for a heavy duty pan with a couple cups of water set on another rack in the oven. Or skip it. Honestly, I skip it. We’re going for simple here. Some of my girls spritz the loaf and the sides of the oven.) Set the timer for roughly 12 to 15 minutes, although it may take up to 20 minutes or more, depending on the size of your loaves and whether or not they are in pans.
Because all ovens, pans, doughs, and bakers are different, use this reliable test to see if your bread is done. Traditionally, cooks tap the bread; if it sounds hollow, it’s done. It always sounds hollow to me when I’m hungry and smelling fresh bread. Therefore, I take an instant read thermometer and insert it into the ugliest part of the bread where nobody will notice a hole. If the temp reads 190 to 210, it’s done.
Remove, cool briefly, slice, eat. Personally, I believe bread is a means of transporting butter to the mouth, so I say load on the butter!

Wasn’t that simple? And it didn’t take all day.

Printable Version

Tips and Trouble Shooting

If you have a stand mixer or a hand-held mixer with dough hooks, feel free to knead your bread with the dough hook instead of by hand. Give it from four to seven minutes, usually on speed two, although you should check your manufacturer’s guidelines. Seriously, you need to check. Don’t ask me why I know.

If you are a stickler, you may let this dough rise twice. We do that sometimes, shaping it after the first rise. Honestly, though, we follow this simple bread recipe when we want a fast and simple butter transporter. If we wanted to putz around with exact kneading and double rises and the like, we’d make something healthier.

Some people like to brush the top of the loaves with egg whites, water, or another “browner” before baking. I prefer to brush mine with butter as soon as it comes out of the oven. (I know—the butter thing is a little out of control.)

If your bread turns out flat, you may have let it rise too long. Punch it down, reshape and do over…but this time pay attention.

If your dough is not rising, your yeast may be old. Also, your dough may not be warm enough, a common problem in the winter. If this is a repeated problem, switch to fast acting yeast.

Simple Italian Bread Recipe You may feel like you are adding a lot of flour. We usually end up using six cups per loaf. You can always add more, but you can’t take it out, so don’t dump it all in at once.

This simple bread is perfect spread thickly with garlic butter (a recipe for another day) alongside a big ol’ sloppy slab of lasagna. (We’ll save the healthy eating posts for another day, as well.)

One last thing: if you are afraid of making bread, relax. My eight-year-old has been making bread independently (not including the baking) for about a year, and she uses this simple bread recipe.

Here’s the boring printable version.

Simple Bread Recipe

Author: Christy, The Simple Homemaker

Prep time: 1 hour

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 1 hour 20 mins

Serves: 8

Simple, easy, and delicious basic French bread.

Ingredients

2 cups warm water, not hot or you will kill your yeasty friends
2 teaspoons yeast—a packet contains 2.25 teaspoons–close enough.
2 teaspoons salt
5-7 cups flour, all-purpose is fine unless you wish to alter it for health reasons

Instructions

Mix the yeast into the water.
Combine the salt with three cups of flour.
Add the flour/salt duo to the water, stirring.
Add more flour and continue to stir until the dough holds together and is not wet.
Dump the dough onto a clean, floured surface and knead. Add more flour as needed.
Knead until smooth, about ten minutes by hand or four minutes by stand mixer.
Shape the bread into two or three Italian-shaped loaves or several mini-loaves. Do this by pressing the dough flat and folding it into thirds, or by rolling it up. Put the ugly seamed side down and tuck under the ends. Place the loaves on a lightly greased pan. Optionally, shape two shorter loaves and place them in greased loaf pans for “bread-shaped bread.” Grease the top (I like butter), and cover with plastic wrap or a flour sack towel. Set in a warm place to rise.
Let rise until about doubled in size, 30-60 mintues, depending on the temperature of the room.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Preheat for 20 minutes if you have baking stones in your oven.
Slash the top of the loaves several times diagonally for that authentic, fresh-from-a-French-bakery look. Put the dough in the oven. (If you want to use baking stones, slide the loaves off the pans and onto the stones.) Spritz the interior of the oven with water. (This is optional, but gives the out-of-the-pan loaf a more tender crust.) Set the timer for roughly 12 to 15 minutes, although it may take up to 20 minutes or more, depending on the size of your loaves and whether or not they are in pans.
Because all ovens, pans, doughs, and bakers are different, use this reliable test to see if your bread is done. Traditionally, cooks tap the bread; if it sounds hollow, it’s done. A more reliable method is to insert an instant read thermometer into the bread. If the temp reads 190 to 210, it’s done.
Remove, cool briefly, slice, eat. Personally, I believe bread is a means of transporting butter to the mouth, so I say load on the butter!

Bread was invented as a means of transporting butter to the mouth.

~The Simple Homemaker, raised on a farm in The Dairy State

This seems like an ideal time to share this link about the health benefits of butter.

So…go make bread, and let us know right here how this simple bread recipe turned out!

How to Boil an Egg: Making Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs

Today I am honored to have as a guest blogger, my lovely daughter Hannah.

It’s almost Easter! And one of the most popular signs of Easter is the Easter egg. So I’m here to tell you how to make the best hard boiled-eggs ever!

You know what I mean by “the best”? I mean a perfect bright-yellow-yolk-minus-the weird-green-color, easy-to-peel, and superbly delicious hard-boiled egg.

How to Boil an Egg: Making Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs

What you need:

A pot and cover
Eggs–as many as you want, as long as they fit in the pot with some room to spare.
Water
A stove
A timer
A good book

How to boil an egg:

First, put the eggs in the pot and cover them completely with cool water. Set the pot on the stove.

Turn the stove on high; as high as it will go, its absolute highest, and wait for the water to come to a roaring boil. (When I say roaring boil, I don’t mean a few little bubbles at the bottom of the pot. I mean roaring, so that someone else can hear it from the next room.)

When it comes to a roaring boil, set the timer for three minutes. Then wait.

After the three minutes is up, turn off the stove, put the cover on the pot, and set the timer for seven more minutes. (Leave the pot on the burner!)

Then wait. Again.

When that time is up, take the eggs off the stove and rinse them in cold water. Sometimes I get lazy and just use room temperature water. That works too. (My mother, The Simple Homemaker, cools them in ice water.)

That’s it! Yep, you heard me correctly. You’re all done!

You can peel and eat them right away, or you can store them in the fridge. (It’s probably best to eat them within a week, but it’s a popular breakfast and snack in our house, so we have no trouble with that.)

So that, my friends, is how to boil an egg, the perfect hard-boiled egg.

It was cheap, it was simple, and it only took about ten minutes.

Here’s the boring printable version:

How to Boil an Egg: Making Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs

Author: Hannah

Prep time: 1 min

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 11 mins

The perfect hard-boiled eggs.

Ingredients

A pot and cover
Eggs–as many as you want, as long as they fit in the pot with some room to spare.
Water
A stove
A timer
A good book

Instructions

Put the eggs in the pot and cover them completely with water.
Set it on the stove.
Turn the stove on high and wait for the water to come to a roaring boil.
When it comes to a roaring boil, set the timer for three minutes. Then wait.
After the three minutes is up, turn off the stove, put the cover on the pot, and set the timer for seven more minutes. (Leave the pot on the burner.)
Then wait. Again.
When that time is up, take the eggs off of the stove and rinse them in cold water or plunge them in ice water until cool.

Notes

Eat within a week.

For easy peeling, read Peeling Hard-Boiled Eggs.

Enjoy your perfect hard-boiled eggs! Happy Easter!

Hannah is my firstborn daughter. She was a “roadschooled” 15-year-old at the time of this writing, 2012. Now she is a budding photographer and a freelance writer who loves experimenting in the kitchen and cooking for people on restricted diets. She is currently working on a chocolate cookbook for people who can’t eat sugar, grains, dairy, or soy. Hannah makes all the hard-boiled eggs here at The Simple Home…the good eggs, anyway. She emphatically denies any accountability for yesterday’s batch of less-than-perfect eggs made by a certain someone (a-hem…her mother) who did not follow the above directions.