wine

Hi! I am so glad you are here! I have wanted for so long to be able to share my passion for food and love of family with you! I am excited to finally be able to do that. I hope that you enjoy the stories, food and wine recommendations I have for you.

I love my family. I love spending time with my family! One of the best ways to bring my family together is food! I don’t know about your family but mine likes good food! Which is handy because I love to cook. I am terrible about writing down my recipes, however. My kids having been nagging me for years to get my recipes written down so that they can make them as well. What better way to do that than with a blog?! I get to share my recipes with my kids and with you and hopefully bring other families together over some great food and drinks.

I live in North Idaho. It is a beautiful little piece of heaven. (Shhhhh…. don’t tell anyone! We are trying to keep it a secret!) My parents, my girls, grand-kids and my siblings all live near by.

Last weekend, my granddaughter had an ice skating competition in Missoula, Montana. My husband, my two oldest daughters, my granddaughter and myself made the short road trip to watch her and spent the weekend there.

She is seriously so adorable and an excellent skater! She placed 4th in both of her events. She was up against some really good competition this year!

While we there we stopped at the Wheat Montana Bakery to buy flour. They sell flour, cereals, baked goods, sandwiches and salads. All the flour and baked goods are made from their locally grown wheat. I use their flour exclusively for for all my baking. We make special trips to Montana to buy it by the 50 pound bag. It is high quality flour and it is Non-GMO.
If you ever find yourself in Missoula Montana stop into their cute little bakery and have some of their delicious goodies!

I have always enjoyed cooking but didn’t do a lot of baking. I knew how. Just wasn’t my thing…. until I tried bread making. My mother used to make eight loaves of bread every single Saturday! Warm bread on Saturday afternoon was my favorite! I loved it! I also didn’t want to do it. She did it all by hand and I had no desire to do such a thing.

Along came my beautiful pink Kitchen Aid mixer. Isn’t she beautiful?! This is a super old picture back when she was pretty new. I believe I’ve had it for about twelve years now.

Of course, I wanted to try everything in it! That is when I discovered bread making with the Kitchen Aid! It was so much fun! Pretty soon I was adjusting recipes and making all kinds of breads for family and friends. After a few years I began to worry I was wearing my kitchen aid out making bread in it so often. I don’t think it was meant for what I was doing to it!

I switched to making my loaves of bread using the dough cycle of my bread machine and then taking it out and baking it in the oven. This seems to work well and my kitchen aid is happy and healthy making cookies, cakes, whipped cream and all kinds of other wonderful things.

This is my favorite go to bread. It is the perfect mixture of wheat and white flour so that it is not too heavy. You can mix up the grain blends, flax seeds and hemp hearts and use what ever suits your fancy just keep the measurements the same.

I have all my dry ingredients in canisters in this order in my cabinet and I can throw a loaf in the machine in five minutes. If you make bread often, that is a really convenient way to do it!

Three tips for slicing bread

My Mom taught me these great tips! I hope with a little practice they help you too!

• Look at the bread not the knife. In other words, keep your focus on the slice staying the same thickness, not focusing on keeping the knife straight. It works!

• Use an electric knife if possible, if not, use a good serrated knife.

• It is best to let the bread cool completely before cutting it.

While this is ideal…. good luck, because there is nothing better than warm bread with butter on it, especially on Saturday afternoon.

Healthy Wheat Bread

Ingredients

1 cup	Wheat Montana All-purpose white flour
1 cup	Wheat Montana Prairie Gold whole wheat flour
1/4 cup	multi-grain cereal or super grain blend of choice
1/4 cup	hemp hearts
1/4 cup	raw organic flax seed
1/4 cup	vital wheat gluten
1/3 cup	organic sugar or 1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup	instant potato flakes (NOT potato pearls)
1 tablespoon	instant yeast
2 tablespoons	instant dry milk powder
1 teaspoon	salt
1 1/4 cup	warm water
1 tablespoon	butter or olive oil
1 tablespoon	white vinegar
butter for top

Directions

Mix all dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Put warm water, butter and, vinegar in bread machine pan. Dump in dry ingredient on top. Start the bread machine on the “Dough” cycle. When done kneading and rising, work the dough a bit to get out air bubbles, shape into a loaf and put into greased/sprayed loaf pan. Heat oven to 375* and let the loaf rise to about double. Bake for 27 minutes, turn pan around and bake for 3 more minutes. Remove from oven and brush with butter. Let cool for 5 minutes and then turn out of loaf pan onto a cooling rack. Let cool for at least 2 hours before cutting. Store in a ziplock bag.