We're so happy on our little piece of bread!

I think I mentioned this before but my boy is a picky eater - not in the same way other kids are picky though. His royal mouth can only handle the gourmet tastes. Case and point - he has never been a big fan of beef until this past Valentines Day dinner when we grilled some expensive tender loin beef steaks. Well, as I've said earlier, this is good because he enjoys quality foods but it is bad because he doesn't go for simple as often as I would like.

All kids like PBJs right? (I love this PBJ song, get their CD, you wont be disappointed I promise) Well he never has developed excitement over them and for a while now I have suspected a few reasons why. But today my worst fear was confirmed - up until now I have mostly used store-bought bread and when I made some bread today and used it to make him a sandwich, he thought they were "all up ons" and demanded more, more, MORE!

I will be the first to admit that I am not a baker (I'm a stove kinda gal). I've been thinking about joining The Daring Bakers clique for some time now but I haven't felt too 'daring' in the world of baked goods so I've put it off for now. Baby steps, Jackie.

However, I do have the materials to bake and they have to be used at some point. I have been looking for recipes that use wheat berries because I make a crockpot full of berries to slyly slip in meals (although Neal is catching on) and what can't be used right away I put in the snack size Ziploc bags and freeze for later use.

So I find a recipe, make and bake. Off goes the loaf's crusty end because I remember that that is Neal's favorite although I forget that he wont be here to eat it. We peer inside to see the bitty berries and pluck one out to sneak into our salivating mouths. The wheat berry gives a soft satisfying pop but a slightly nutty flavor. A single thin slice is cut and is shortly slathered with some creamy Peter Pan peanut butter and some homemade black raspberry jelly that was gifted to us by one of Neal's lab mates. Note to self: I want to have a 'vineyard' with black raspberries someday. The slice of bread is folded in half and Aedan tentatively takes a nibble and, shockingly enough, proceeds to wolf down the rest of the sandwich.

The dark jelly marks his face as if to say "Black raspberry was here. And here. Here too." A second sandwich must be made and he smiles as he awaits round two.

Sigh... how can I turn down such a happy sandwich-eating boy now? Do I really have to bake? No. But his excitement tells me I should. So I will. And maybe someday I can join the baker ranks... if only they would accept a bit of charcoal every once in a while :)

Wheat Berry Bread

from Wheat Cookin' Made Easy

1 cup cooked wheat berries

2 cups warm water

1/4 cup honey (we use wildflower or buckwheat honey)

1 pkg. yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp)

2 tsp. salt

1/3 cup powder milk

1/4 cup vegetable shortening, melted

4 1/2 - 5 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Pour warm water into a medium mixing bowl. Stir in honey and sprinkle yeast over surface. Set aside 5 to 10 minutes until foamy. Add salt, powdered milk, melted shortening, and 3 cups of whole wheat flour. Stir well, then beat until smooth. Add in cooked wheat and remaining flour and stir to make a stiff dough. Turn out onto a floured surface, cover and let rest for 5 minutes. Knead dough 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. You may need to add surface flour to prevent sticking. Place dough in well-greased bowl and turn dough to grease all sides. Cover and let rise until doubled in size. Punch down and divide dough in half, roll out on floured surface into a 7" by 14" rectangle. Beginning at short side, roll tightly like a jellyroll. Pinch edge and ends to seal. Place dough in 2 greased 9" by 5" bread pans seam side up. Turn dough placing the seamed side down, cover and set in warm place to rise above top of pan.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake about 25 minutes or until browned. Turn out of pans. Bread should sound hollow when tapped on bottom. Cool on a rack.

Makes 2 loaves

I Have Two Little Hands

My little boy is my friend. This I have to remind myself a lot this past little while as he has been a little challenging. Maybe he is hitting the "terrible twos", I don't know, but it has been "fun" trying to keep him from getting into trouble. When he gets cranky, he can be pretty destructive with his little hands. So today, we tried to do a variety of things to keep his hands (and mind) occupied with more constructive activities. I haven't done a whole lot of reading into parenting books (stating the obvious) so just keep this in mind...

Last month we started an Aedan Craft project dealing with the letters of the alphabet. We are all the way to the letter H. So we decided to do some Hand prints. It was quite messy but as you can see he enjoyed it.

The final product, if you can tell there are hand prints there. The one on the right was kind of cute. I call it, O Tannenbaum Abstractica...

There are several things that Aedan tries to get involved in and if I don't allow him to help, the task ends up taking much longer to complete because I have to not only do the task at hand but I have to take care of an upset kid. He loves to help with the laundry, the dusting, and the cooking to name a few, and so naturally, I've wanted to encourage that while maintaining what sanity I have left after he "helps" me. I've also tried making food time a fun time for him by introducing as much variety as he can handle. This has proved to be good and bad - good because he enjoys out of the ordinary foods and bad because it has made him not enjoy some of the ordinary. Like sandwiches for example, the kid wont readily eat a PB&J sandwich. He doesn't go for a lot of convenient foods (again, pros and cons). He goes for the expensive cuts of meat and the kinds of vegetables most kids don't. Are they supposed to have such refined tastes at such a young age? So I kind of give and take a little in our mealtimes and I probably have just as many successes as failures with his eating.

Today for lunch the little chef and I made pizza bagels. I think he eats more just making it then he eats after it is cooked. We get those small wheat bagels and cut them in half and toast them in the toaster. We set the toasted bagel slices on a cookie sheet lined with foil. We then spread on some sauce, in this case, some leftover spaghetti sauce with cooked wheat berries in to sneak in some extra nutrition (I will hopefully do a wheat post soon). We top it with leftover fresh pineapple cut up into bits, with some ham or today was turkey deli meat, and some olives. Extra olives. He loves his "olips" and he eats more than he puts on the bagels.

We then scooch the bagels real close and spread mozzarella cheese haphazardly across the tops, bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, or until melted, and then broil for 2 more minutes for a nice toasted top. These freeze really well after they are cooked and cooled.

Well it is something to help meal times be more interactive right? So I've heard if you let the child help with the meal prep - even going as far as letting them help in the garden, picking the fruit, etc. - they tend to be better eaters. In some ways I can see that is the case with Aedan but if anything it has helped him become a better snacker.