muffins, tortillas, and apples too!

yesterday i made a double batch of sourdough english muffins. half plain, and half i added cinnamon and raisins to (those are my favorites!). they turned out wonderfully and we have been enjoying them.

yesterday when my husband looked at the weekly menu i posted on our fridge, he said, "oh good! it doesn't say boiled eggs for breakfast everyday!" oops...maybe i got in a bit of a rut for a while there. this morning we had toasted english muffins for breakfast. the beauty of english muffins is that there are so many ways to eat them - we ate them for lunch yesterday topped with pizza sauce and cheese. what a treat!

for supper, i made my first batch of sourdough tortillas, which we filled with beans, cheese, corn, and tomatoes for "tacos". oh my goodness. the tortillas were so, so, good.

i also made a batch of applesauce, which really made it feel a bit like fall around here.

waffles and apples

i made my first sourdough recipe yesterday! we had sourdough waffles for breakfast - they were so so yummy!

we toasted the leftovers for breakfast this morning. yummy again!

in case anyone is wondering, the sourdough course i am taking online is here. i am really enjoying it and finding it easy to learn from. i was encouraged by the waffles turning out so well. this week i plan to make sourdough tortillas, english muffins, and maybe pizza crust. if anyone lives close-by and wants to start using sourdough, i will happily share some of my starter!

yesterday we went with our youth group to an apple orchard. it was supposed to rain, but thankfully it didn't. we got home almost an hour late, but a good time was had by all. 

this morning my hubby preached in a nearby town. this evening he is preaching in another nearby town. a busy day.

wild rice chicken pilaf

i decided it's time to share the recipe to one of our favorite meals.

wild rice chicken pilaf
(based on a recipe i ripped out of real simple magazine years ago...the original recipe was for wild rice stuffing, but i modified it to make a main dish)

ingredients:
1/2 cup wild rice
1 1/4 cups brown rice
enough chicken broth to cook the rice in (or some chicken broth and some water)
1 stick butter (or less)
1 small onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, finely chopped
1 cup chopped nuts (whatever you have on hand...pecans, walnuts, and cashews are all really good)
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped
1/2 cup raisins
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
oregano, basil, and thyme to taste
2 cups cooked chicken, shredded
splash of lemon juice

1. soak rice in water with a splash of apple cider vinegar for eight hours (optional)...makes the rice easier to digest/more nutritious
2. preheat stove to 350 F.
3. in a pot, put broth/water needed to equal amount of liquid needed to cook rice. add rice. bring to boil, reduce to low heat, cover. Simmer about 45 minutes or until rice is finished cooking.
4. melt butter in large skillet, add onion and celery and cook for ten minutes. add rice, spices, nuts, fruit, and chicken and mix. add splash of lemon juice.
5. place in buttered casserole dish. cover and bake at 350 F for about 25 minutes.
6. enjoy!

this pilaf tastes great with a simple side salad, or the other night we ate it with cooked peas and that was really yummy! this recipe is very forgiving, and really you can use whatever you have on hand. that's the great thing about a pilaf!

this recipe will serve 6 to 8 people - we always have a lot of leftovers when i make it.

odds and ends

little one had her first cup of tea this morning. i brewed a pot of decaf black tea, added some milk and honey to hers, and told her she could have tea just like mama. it warmed my heart to drink tea with my girl. i look forward to many more tea times together as she grows.

i have found several thrifting and curbside gems lately.

a like new rocking horse for $10 at a thrift store. it wags it's tail! i looked it up when we got home and found that this horse sells for $100 to $120 new!

a {free} spice rack from the curb. i washed it and it's now filled with spices.

a {free} playground from another curb. it is the perfect size for our porch and our girl. we have already spent many hours enjoying this find.

other things i am loving...

i am taking this sourdough ecourse. i really enjoy it. my starter is six days old today and is thriving. i'm going to start cooking with it soon. maybe this weekend!

this salad. yum.

our walk this morning. we went right after breakfast, in the crisp morning air. it was quiet and lovely.

i'm not loving the fruit fly problem we are having right now. but i am loving the solution i found somewhere online. pour some white vinegar in a bowl, add a small amount of dishsoap, and fill the bowl with water (do this quickly so you get a lot of soap suds on top...that's the crucial part of the whole thing, i have learned). they are attracted to it and drown. it really works.

and these little toes.

diy: bath toy holder

in our house in california, our bathroom had a nice little shelf where we stowed our little one's growing collection of bath toys. when we got home, we had nowhere to store them or let them dry out. i checked out the options at a few nearby stores, and found that the cheapest bath toy holder i could find was $8 (the most expensive was $30!). i did not want to spend that kind of money and decided to come up with something on my own. it turned out to be very simple and inexpensive.

(please ignore the dismembered doll...trying to keep her from getting moldy!)

i purchased a lingerie bag for $1.49, found some ribbon in my stash, and sewed it through the top of the lingerie bag to make a hook.

the finished hook...i just used a very large needle and sewed through several times in a few different places.

then i filled it with bath toys and hung it in the shower. we already had two hooks that were in the perfect place for me to hang this, but if you don't, you could just install some 3M hooks, or try suction cups.

i actually love this better than the options i saw in the store. it is simple, it allows the toys to dry, and i can easily throw it in the washing machine if it starts to get dirty. i call this a success!

activities with a toddler, and other things

it is so good to be home. the adjustment is taking much longer than i expected it too, but it gets a little better each day. yesterday i stocked up on some essential grocery items and right now i have a chicken cooking in the crock pot. after we eat some of it for supper tonight, i will shred and freeze the leftovers for use in future dinners and i will make chicken stock with the bones. that makes it feel a bit more normal around here. yesterday we drove out to the farm to get our raw milk and eggs - oh how we missed them this summer!

i have had a crazy urge to organize everything in our house, so i have been doing quite a bit of that. it seems a bit silly because {confession} i still haven't even unpacked all of our clothes from our summer. but...it makes me feel good about being home and it makes our house more organized, so it's actually a good thing.

my hubby had a couple of pre-semester classes this week, and he officially starts his new semester next week. i am going to be taking a class at the seminary as well! it is a class about photography and spirituality...definitely sounds like something i will enjoy. i'm also going to be taking another class specifically for spouses of seminary students, as well as taking a music class with our little one. so...with all of that going on, next week we will really start to settle into a routine.

i am loving this age with our little girl and am so excited that she is so interactive and communicative these days. since we've been home, i started doing a "special activity" with her each day. at the beginning of the week, i plan out an activity for each day and write it in my planner. if i need any supplies for the project, i will write that in there as well, but my goal is to keep the activities simple and to use things we have in the house as much as possible instead of buying supplies. we usually do our activity after breakfast and reading time, but i find that i wake up looking forward to it. when i say that it is "special activity time", our girl gets a huge smile on her face - i know i'm doing something right! i will share about some of these special activities on my blog from time to time (maybe weekly?)...hopefully they will be an inspiration for someone else. some of the ideas for activities come from my head, but many of them come from the toddler's busy book by meadowbrook press. we received this book as a gift (thanks brent and jenny!), and i find that it is a great resource for simple activities to do with a toddler.

wednesday's activity was "sticky feet" - i taped a piece of contact paper on the floor sticky side up, and we walked around on the sticky floor. it was quite fun!

on thursday, i used masking tape to make a road on the floor. this activity was a hit. i was surprised when she drove her car down the road without any prompting! we also walked on the road and she walked her wooden duck push toy down the road. she tried so hard to stay within the lines, it was cute.

i love seeing her learn through these activities, and it is also fun to have something specific to do with her, as well as having some more structure to our days.

it is so hot and humid here today. baby has been running around in just her diaper. we spent a short amount of time outside this morning. we don't have air conditioning, so it is just as hot inside our house as outside. despite the heat, i was working in the kitchen for a little while this morning, so to keep the little one occupied, i filled up a couple of plastic bins with water, gave her some towels, kitchen utensils, and her toy animals and let her at it! she had a good time.

and her curls. oh the curls!