Home Made and Home Grown

Thought for the Day!

"Old and New may seem ages apart but when accepted and tried, usually good can be found in both!" RJM

Home Made Bread! Modern and Early Nineteen Hundreds kinds!

Last week my husband got into a baking mode (one he get's into every so often) and decided to make some raisen bread. He uses the breadmaker I got him for Christmas several years ago and he makes some of the most wonderful breads, yumm. He started out making breads with the boxed kits that were recommended by the makers but he quickly graduated into making his own recipes he's found in some of the cooking books he's bought for himself.

I'm not sure what caused him to suddenly get a hankering for baking breads but I know he was great at coming up with some wonderful meals during the stretches of time that I've been laid up with my medical stuff. This loaf raised over 7 inches and when I sliced 1/2 to 3/4 inch slices of bread I had to then cut them in half to eat or for the toaster because they were so big.

I love homemade bread like my grandma's. I got her to show me how to make her special down home bread and rolls that she raised 9 kids (six boys) and a hungry husband on. It is wonderfully full and yummy but it takes some kneading which definitely made her a strong woman. She didn't use measuring cups or spoons, only a gallon bowl and her hands and eyes to measure. She taught me her technique step by step and I wrote it down and eventually put in the "Pikes Peak Foster Adopt Support Group Cook Book" that we made years ago.

Here is her recipie for those hardy enough to try it sometime. Me and my kids and foster kids made many loaves of it one Christmas time and gave the loaves away for gifts to family and friends. Instructions: Spread with real butter, homemade applebutter or jam. Fantastic and definitely not on the list for strict diet minded.

Grandma Cline's Bread

(makes 2 large loaves)

Use a 1 qt bowl

1 qt warm water

2 pkgs fresh yeast

Use a 1 gallon mixing bowl

Pour in sifted or unsifted flour until almost full, then make a deep well in the middle of the bowl of flour.

1 Tbl shortning

1/2 c. sugar

1 Tbl salt

Disolve yeast in warm water until it rises to surface. pour the yeast into the flour well and add remaining ingredients.

Stir in - in layers from well toward outside of bowl.

After mixture is formed into a ball of dough, knead 500 strokes, adding flour as needed. (This can be done on a lightly floured table or counter top). Add only a little flour at a time as needed to keep from sticking. You don't want to make the dough too stiff.

Grease the same bowl and place dough in to rise. Set in a warm place and cover with a clean cloth.

Let rise 2 hours. Punch and pan in greased bread loaf pans or pull dough into small fist sized balls and place side by side in greased cake pans for rolls.

Let rise till double in bulk.

Bake 350 degrees

Lg Loaves - bake 1 hr

Med and Sm loaves - 45 min

Rolls - 1/2 hr.

Submitted by Reva J. McCandless

Guaranteed to be delicious

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Notes from Home:

Our young Granddaughter who is autistic spent some time with us last weekend with her little sister and we had a grand time. She sure does enjoy my exercise ball and can navigate it all over the living area.

She is doing really well in school and at home now. When I asked her to color me a picture she immediately wrote her name and her age in color crayons and then jumped up as if her school assignment was all done.

Coloring just for fun isn't really her thing so far but at least she complied and tried for me. When I asked her to draw me a happy face she wasn't too sure until I said to draw a happy face of me, then she did and asked if it was happy face and she said 'definitively', "YOU." She told me!

Notes on my son David:

He went to Denver on Friday for the results of his last Pet Scan last Monday and they said there was nothing to be found in his neck (DID YOU HEAR THAT?) There was NOTHING in his lymph nodes in his neck. There are however, some tumors in his stomach that they will have to take out on April 27th. They are apparently pretty confident so we are hoping for the best and feel much better about things since the lymph nodes are clear at this time which is the most serious and since the spots that were in his lung are gone too, he definitely has a much better chance of beating this thing all together. YEA!

Here is how my wayward cancer surviver is looking now adays, along with his almost cousin (my best friends daughter). They have known each other since Stephanie was born a little over a year after he was. Soon I will post a picture of the two of them as they were in my oldest daughters wedding as ring bearer and flower girl. You would never have guessed they'd end up looking like this. Note the green hair. Also his hair has come back in very curyly after he lost it all from the chemo treatments. Stephanie just decided to shave her's all off.

Now David is trucking around the neighborhood on his new wheels, which aren't street licenced of course but so 'cool' with all the younger teenagers. At least he's only driving in side neighborhoods and not on maid streets with lots of traffic. What do ya say to a nineteen year old with ideas of his own. Right now I just stay out of the way except to pray for him and love him and let him know I care.

Actually, I can't stand 'crotch rockets' because I not only have heard of the deaths these cause but I've witnessed what happens. Several years ago I took my kids and foster kids on a drive down my old memory lanes and went to Pueblo to show them the places and schools I went to. As I stopped to talk to a homeowner about the area we were in, we heard a revving of a motorcycle engine several times, approaching from a distance. Suddenly, as the gears rachetted up once again we heard 1/2 half a block behind us a horribly loud crash and crunching sound. I glanced in my rearview mirror long enough to see red fenders and bike parts flying and spinning on the pavement. We turned around and found an old pickup truck with an old man at the wheel looking stunned and not sure what was happening. People were around the bed of the pickup helping the motorcycle driver.

The pickup turned left across the other lane, heading for his house. He never saw or heard the motorcycle who was speeding extrememly up a darkly tree shaded street on a red crotch rocket. (The drivers are laying forward just like a bullet ready to fly). He hit the right passenger door of the pickup while still shifting up on his gears. He flew over the bike, through the open passenger window of the pickup and out the small back window glass (no helmet by the way). If he had hit the old man, I'm sure the man wouldn't have lived. The young motorcyclist had just turned eighteen and graduated from highschool the day before and the bike was a gift from his parents. He of course died the next day. I cried everyday foar awhile over that. I hoped my kids would have heard and seen the message that day on the dangers of those kinds of bikes.

Notes of my Best Friend:

Now for one more picture of my best friend that I've known for 25 years and we've done foster kids and adoptive kids together and we co-founded the 501C3 non profit support group I mentioned above and ran it in some capacity for 5 years and kept our fingers in it even longer. She is the one I made the wedding cake for that is shown at the bottom of my blogging page here. She and Ray were married August of 2007.