For years, we have been teasing Oli that he has a “skipping button” since he skips a lot. Oli decided that the green button is his real “skipping button”. We pressed it many times this morning and it does, in fact, work. I can’t wait to see what his other buttons do. Good thing I sewed each one on firmly — I predict they will all get a bit of use.

These were made with brioche dough. The recipe is from one of my favorite baking books — Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. When I first got my mitts on this book (from the library), I quickly memorized the basic boule recipe and have made it almost weekly. It is so good that bread is now my “assignment” for family gatherings because this bread is way better than any you can buy. I tried a few other recipes, like this brioche. After checking this book out of the library for maybe the 8th time, I decided this books makes my very select cut of cookbooks and bought a copy. Now it sits on my kitchen counter, beckoning to me to bake more bread.

So what’s a girl to do? Back to the kitchen I go!

Now, Mojo has happy, fluffy friends to go to school with her. And I sense a hedgehog obsession coming on. Good thing I have lots of yarn left over.

(yes, I put it on my porch to cool down before making it to the freezer — it was freezing outside).

Then, I plan meals based on what I have. Out of those 10 lbs of bird, I can make:
1 chicken nacho layer dip (gone)
1 meal of chicken taco stew (with bulk cooked & frozen beans, hominy, squash & home-grown veggies — all from the freezer)
buffalo chicken dip (superbowl)
chicken pot pie
chicken & dumplings
enchiladas
lots of broth for soup
and lots of chicken scraps to feed our slightly underweight doggie

Having the chicken already cooked makes meal prep so much easier — I can just assemble & cook or toss in the crockpot. Later this week, I”m planning to bulk cook some pork I have. I imagine it will become more mexican food (carnitas, anyone?). Stay tuned!

After three runs through the washing machine on hot, they shrunk down and have found a home on his feet.

He loves them and wouldn’t take them off even for a photo. I’d call them a knitting success.

The first step is to sprout the wheat. Put 2 cups of wheat berries in a jar and cover them with water. Let them soak overnight. The next day, pour off the extra water (strain through a cheesecloth or use a handy-dandy sprouting lid on your jar) and rinse them.

Rinse them a couple times each day. Mine sprouted within 2 days. When they have a tiny “tail”, they are ready.

Spread the sprouted wheat on a cookie sheet and dry it. I used my oven set on 200 degrees. I let it dry for a few hours and that did the trick. While it was drying (baking?), the house smelled so good — really malty and toasty.

After drying, grind the wheat (this is complicated, eh?). I use a grain mill. If you don’t have one, you are out of luck. Maybe you could grind the wheat a bit by bit in a coffee grinder? Or a super high-powered blender? Or maybe just skip this recipe. My yield was just over 3 cups of flour.

At this point, I had several days invested in my sprouted wheat loaf. I was getting closer to baking time so the excitement was building. I used my regular pizza dough recipe to make the loaf. I kept mixing and kneading (and kneading….and kneading). The dough had no “spring.” There seemed to be no gluten development.

At this point, I knew a loaf of soft, fluffy bread was not going to happen. Time for another plan. So, I made crackers.

I rolled the dough thin, brushed with water & sprinkled with salt and then cut them into squares & pricked them with a fork. After baking for 20 minutes at 350.

And they are good. Very good — tasty accompaniment to homemade soup. Were they worth all the effort? Not really.

The recipe came together pretty quickly.

According to the recipe, I should have had around 3 and a half cups. I wound up with way more than that.

It smelled pretty good but, man, was it salty tasting! Which should be no surprise since this is just a base — you add a teaspoon for every cup of water in your soup. I was left wondering if this would really work.

Meanwhile, I put all the veggie peelings and leftover bits in a stock pot to boil.

Then strained it and had even more stock to play with.

Finally, I made soup. Using some veggie stock and a few spoonfuls of soup base, I cooked up a pot of cream of broccoli soup.

It was the best soup ever! I think I’m going to like this homemade soup base. And, fortunately, I have tons of it so I can make (and eat) soup every day!

And just for some fun math (oxymoron?), I figured out the cost of the soup base. To buy all the ingredients cost around $10.33 (leeks, fennel & celeriac are pricey) not including the salt….but that would be cheap anyways. If you use a teaspoon of soup base per cup of water, my size batch (a little more than 6 cups) should yield around 288 cups of soup for a cost around 3 cents per cup. That seems impossible to me but, then again, I could seriously have screwed up the math. So this stuff is good and cheap and soup! My favorite things!

To mark the occasion, we needed a special lunch-box treat. Mojo helped me make them — she had the idea to use a shot glass to cut out the zeros. Our hands were covered with melted marshmallow and rice krispies by the time we were through. This was one time when cleaning up was the best part!