Homemade Pop Tarts

Y'all. These are so good. 

I've been trying to cook more of our snacks using whole wheat four and five ingredients or less. I'm slowly striving to make our diet 100% preservative free. I found this recipe  on 100 Days of Real Food. 

The ingredients are:

• 2 ¼ cup whole-wheat flour, plus extra for rolling out the dough
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup cold, unsalted butter (2 sticks)
• ½ cup water plus ice
• 1 egg beaten with a splash of water
• 7 – 8 tablespoons jam or jelly 

The recipe said to use a food processor but since I don't have one, I used my stand mixer. 

I mixed the dry ingredients with the whisk paddle and then I switched to the "all purpose" paddle to mix in the wet ingredients.

I rolled it out on the pastry mat about a half inch thick.

 

I used this lid gripper as a template to cut out the pop tarts. It was the only thing that I could find that was the right shape. :)

I could fit four rectangles on the mat. I figured out by the end of making them that this size is too large for the girls, and cutting this shape in half is the perfect size.

I took one of the rectangles, rolled it out pretty thin and then cut it in half.

Next, I plop some jelly in the center of one half and then place the other half on top.

I gently pressed the edges together to seal them and then crimped them with a fork.

I poked some holes in the top to let out steam,

and then brushed the top with an egg wash.

I baked them at 375 degrees for about 18 minutes.

(A lot of the jelly will leak out so you will want to line the pan with parchment paper and put fresh paper down for each batch. )

The Result? 

Yummy, delicious, healthy, crunchy and gobbled up quickly. 

Our Christmas 2012

We had our little family Christmas yesterday. We have a tradition of putting up the baby gate in the hallway the night before, and then, in the morning, the girls stand there impatiently and excitedly (or in Nora's case, angrily) as I make them pose for a picture. Then we remove the gate and they make a mad dash for their stockings.

 

 

 

We had some fun stocking stuffers this year. The silly straws were a big hit.

Claire and Eily addded to their Calico Critter's Collection.

 

It was a nice relaxing day and we had a lot of fun opening presents, playing with toys, watching Christmas movies and eating yummy food. Now on to the rest of the funtivities!!

Angel Band 2

Remember this post?


In it, I posted this picture and said I would tell you more about it later. Finally, after months of waiting, I'm allowed to "spill the beans". My oldest brother, Adam, had a wonderful idea and instead of typing and deleting, typing and deleting, I'm just going to let him tell you about it all.

In the mid-1970s, several members of the family of Asa and Lily Green got together to record an album of a cappella hymns.  It was originally on vinyl, and later copied to cassette tape.  The name of that early recording was “Angel Band.”

On August 25^th a group of 25 cousins of the family of Logan and Roberta Green gathered in Dora at Fountain Square House Studios to follow in those same footsteps.  As a result, the CD collection of hymns known as “Angel Band 2” was born.  It is intended to be a tribute to our grandparents.

The language on the CD cover is as follows:

“As long as any of us can remember, our lives have been filled and enriched with music – music such as the soft strumming of a guitar accompanying the melodic lilting of a bluegrass fiddle, or “Poet and Peasant” thundering across the keys of a Baldwin piano.  But more than anything else, our lives have been surrounded by a cappella hymn singing in our homes and in worship services.

That tradition of music has been passed down to us by our grandparents, Logan and Roberta Green.  Not only have they both been outstanding examples of what men and women of character should be, but they have loved music, and have ensured that the knowledge of the rudiments of music was instilled in their children and grandchildren.  Countless hours have been spent in their home singing, listening to singing, and learning how to sing.  We owe them a debt of gratitude that we will never fully repay.

This album of recorded hymns is just a small attempt on our part to tell them of our love.”

 

This is the insert my cousin, Dan, made for the CD.

And THIS....is the CD. Enjoy!
These are available for purchase. There is no profit being made, the price simply covers making the CD and mailing it. If you are interested in buying one, just let me know and I'll hook you up. The price is $10 if I can hand it to you in person and $12 if I have to mail it.

Also, a big thank you to Logan, who hacked into my Soundcloud account and did all the dirty work so I could easily post this CD on my blog.

Don't judge. My hand strength was completely gone by the time I got to my house.

Brown Bear and growing up

Oh my, growing up can be cruel sometimes. But growing up is necessary and the little lessons learned along the way are so very important.

 

I've decided it's more than time for Eily to break the habit of bumping. This morning I told her that if I caught her bumping during the day, I was going to take away Brown Bear and put him in a safe place until she could break the habit.

 

 

I caught her.

 

It was awful. There was wailing and crying and gnashing of teeth. Brown Bear is now resting peacefully in the top of my closet and Eily and I had a long talk about how this new way of sleeping will be hard to get used to but she's a big girl now and very strong and will succeed. 

As we left her room, she looked at me and between sniffles and shudders said, "But Mama, this is going to be worser than hard!"

And she's right. It will probably be worser than hard but we will work through it together and it'll all turn out ok.
And when she's a teenager and sleeping over at a friend's house, she'll thank me that she doesn't have to bump to get to sleep.  And if she doesn't thank me, her friend probably will.

I'd say we're related.

Not for another 100 years

It's 12-12-12, y'all. And it deserves a post.

Today was a really, really good day. We usually have our co-op school on wednesdays, but we are finished for the semester so instead, we all spent the day just hanging out with Jason until he had to leave on a little mini-trip. (When I say all, I don't mean the entire co-op, I mean our little family.) We ran some errands, ate some meals, watched some shows and had some conversations. It was really lovely and I hated to see him leave.


Totally unrelated...  Nora has woke up dry twice this week. That means potty training is in the near future. Someone hold my hand, please.

Count Your Blessings

Having good friends and close family nearby makes life pretty good.
This week we went out to eat to celebrate one of my oldest and best friend's birthday, played dress up with more recent friends, and went on a train ride with some of our favorite cousins. We are so blessed.

Candy, candy everywhere and all the children didn't sleep.

We went to two Christmas parades last Saturday. The weather was so, so beautiful which made the decision to actually go see the parades very easy. Even though it was nice outside, I put this hat on Nora. It was just too cute to pass up and since it was officially December I thought I could get away with it.

At the first parade we got a decent/normal amount of candy. Still too much in my opinion but not really a terrible amount. None of that really matters anyway because I let them eat their fill that first day and then threw the rest away or gave it away.

Here's Elaina with her empty bag waiting for the parade to start. She couldn't take her eyes off the scrolling bank marquee to look at the camera so her smile is a little distracted.

It was a good parade and really fun family time, but we had to move on because Aunt Sarah and Uncle Brad had a housewarming that afternoon and then that evening we were going to go to the Charleston parade.

 

 

 

Let me tell you something. This was the best parade I have ever been to and I've been to a lot of parades in my thirty-one years. It basically had the same participants that the Lavaca parade had (I guess these people just do a parade circuit) but the thing that made this parade AMAZING was the group of little people that I watched it with.

Audrey and Elaina VERY excited and walking quickly to stake their spot on the best corner.

Let me set the scene for you. This was the first parade that Audrey had been to in years and probably the first one that she will remember. She was so excited she could hardly contain herself. This of course, rubbed off on the other kids so the anticipation level was quite high. We parked ourselves on the corner where the parade started from and waited and waited and waited.

You know how pretty much everyone at a parade just stands there and watches and the youngsters run around gathering candy but no one really says anything? Well, we were the opposite of that, except for the watching the kids part. From the very first cop car to the very last fire truck, those kids waved and screamed and cheered and whistled as if their lives depended on it and if the person that was in front of us had their name written somewhere on their float, the kids yelled "Hello" and said their name nice and loud and waved so hard I'm suprised their arms didn't fall off. It was hilarious. Since we were at the beginning of the parade, when all the participants still had a lot of candy, and since the kids were so good at showing their enthusiasm, they RACKED UP the candy. The poor people on the other side of the street were partially ignored and while I felt bad for them, I was laughing so hard at our little group of cheerleaders and they were working so hard at being enthusiastic that I felt they were earning every single piece of candy thrown their way. I hope we started a trend because parades would be so much more fun if everyone cheered the way these kids did. It was great.

Crickets

Today, after school and laundry and babysitting and playing outside (barefoot) in this gorgeous December weather, we went to Petco and bought two crickets. They cost 32 cents. It was a good day.