Baking

Natalie has been doing a lot better with eating solids lately. And I'm not referring to the Christmas tree needles I dug out of her mouth this afternoon. She loves little finger foods and things she can pick up and feed herself, but she's not really into things that she has to eat with a spoon. When Lissa was here she mentioned making vegetable breads and I've been looking around on the internet for a while about making breads using baby food since it's already pureed and I have it on hand. I have some rising right now and I hope it turns out. Here's the recipe that I used:

• 1 cup milk
• 1 pkgs fast-rising dry yeast
• 3 Tbsp. sugar
• 2 tsp. salt
• 2 tablespoons shortening
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 1/2 cup lukewarm water
• 1 tsp. sugar
• approx. 5 cups flour

Preparation: Scald milk. Stir in salt, 3 tablespoons sugar, shortening, and 1/2 cup cold water. Cool to lukewarm Measure 1/2 cup lukewarm water into bowl, stir in the 1 tsp. sugar, sprinkle with yeast. Let stand 10 minutes, then stir until well blended. Stir in lukewarm milk mixture and 3 cups flour. Beat until smooth and elastic. (use electric mixture if you like) Work in sufficient additional flour to make a soft dough. (approx 2 cups more) turn out onto floured board and knead until smooth and elastic approx 5 minutes. Place in greased bowl. Cover bowl with greased waxed paper. Let rise in warm place until double in volume. Approx. 1 hour. Punch down batter. Cut into two equal pieces and form into 2 loaves and put into 2 (9" X 5" ) greased bread pans. Let rise again for approx. 45 minutes - 1 hour. or until dough fills pans and the centers are well above the tops of the pans. Bake 425 deg. oven for 15 minutes, reduce temperature to 375 deg. and bake until bread is done. about 25 - 35 minutes more. Remove loaves from pans and place on wire racks to cool. Brush with melted butter if soft crust is desired.

Source

But I made a couple of alterations. First, I used butter instead of shortening because it's what I had on hand. I replaced 1/4 cup of the flour with whole wheat flour. And I added two 2 oz containers of baby food, one squash and one mixed vegetables. It would be great if these work out and if she likes them. If it doesn't work out, though, I'm going to keep trying other recipes, maybe a quick bread recipe instead of a yeast bread.

We got our Christmas tree from the Christmas tree farm yesterday and it's up and decorated. Lauren just loves it. Natalie does, too. She keeps working her way over to and then under the tree so she can reach up for the branches. She's also been trying to untie ribbon from the presents. I am starting to think we'll need to put a fence around the tree.

If anyone out there is still looking for something to get for Natalie, she needs long sleeved tops in size 12 months and sweatpants/soft pants/fleece lined pants in size 12m also.

Last year I made the resolution to read at least 12 books and I finished 18. This year I've read 18 also. I'd like to try to get one more book in this year and shoot for 20 next year. Waiting rooms certainly helped the last two years, hopefully I won't be in as many of those in 2010, but I'd still like to get 20 books in.