My Secret Ingredient!

I just have to share my favorite ingredient: pumpkin puree!

It's not just for pie, cake or bread, although you can use it for that too. ;-)

I like to add it to soups to give a thicker texture, especially a tomato-based soup since they tend to be a bit runnier. The pumpkin mixes well with tomato and helps take away some of the acidic "bite" that you usually have to add sugar or honey for.

For tomato sauce on my pizza, I add in the pumpkin puree. I really like the texture and flavor it adds to my cooked down tomatoes... that's how I make sauce. Pull frozen tomatoes out of the freezer, cook them down, and use my stick blender to make it smooth. You could strain out the seeds and bits of skin, but I don't... just another step.

I also add pumpkin puree to ground meats as well, if I'm going to do a filling like in sandwiches, crepes or tortillas, because it helps the meat stick together a bit more so it's not so sloppy. In my opinion, the flavor is plain enough to not overpower any seasoning you'd want to use.

And my ulterior motive(s) for all this pumpkin use? I've got a lot in my freezer. And it adds more nutrition. And I plan on adding a LOT more pumpkin to my freezer next year because we've got these awesome looking heirloom seeds for a different kind of pumpkin, I can't wait to get them in the garden and growing!

Okay, so it's not such a secret anymore... but I thought it was a pretty good idea, so I thought I'd share!

Freshly ground flour... sifting is your friend!

Instead of taking a nap on this fine Sunday afternoon, I'm writing a blog post. The reason for the writing itch is what I've had on my mind for a while: freshly ground flour.

I got a new grain mill last year, and have been enjoying freshly ground flour in all manner of baked goods, but it's taken me the longest time to figure out how to make decent, real sourdough bread with it. (When I say "real", I mean leavened using only sourdough, no commercial baking yeast.)

Why sourdough bread? I have a peculiar fascination with sourdough. (Read: I am obsessed.) There’s something empowering about not relying upon something I’ve purchased to raise my bread, but rather using yeast that I’ve cultivated from the air. I found this quote about sourdough and liked how it was worded:

Commercial "baking" yeast is a single kind of organism that belches a lot of gas really fast and transforms grain into something that's even less good for you. Sourdough is two organisms, wild yeast and bacteria, in symbiosis. Together they transform the grain to make it more healthful, more digestible, and also resistant to getting moldy or stale.

Okay, so do you get that sourdough is better for you? That's kind of why I'm a bit extreme when it comes to this bread baking. PLUS, I've noticed that when I eat unsoaked flour products, my nursing baby is more fussy.

So, back to my quest for the perfect loaf of sourdough bread. I'd made some sourdough doorstops the first several times I used freshly ground flour. Then I used the Urban Homemaker's 2-step soaked recipe, which worked pretty well... I had gotten a free e-book from her at some point, which contained the recipe. But not all the flour was soaked. (Remember... I'm obsessed!) Then I got a free e-book from Kitchen Stewardship which contained a recipe for Honey Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread which I liked. Still not perfect, but it was turning out better than my other sourdough version, plus, all the flour was getting a pretty good souring time.

But here's the deal...the grain mill doesn't grind the grain to a complete powder. There is fine powdery flour mixed with the crushed bran. The bran acts almost like little scissors on the gluten strands, which keeps the bread from having a bigger rise. I think that's what I've been fighting against, and have only recently had a lightbulb moment in thinking to SIFT the flour. Not sure how I came to that, but I saw this blog post about sifting out the bran, then adding it back into the bread, which some say really helped their final loaf. Somewhere else, I read to soak the bran in some type of fat, like lard or butter, before adding it back in.

Yeah... sift it. But how?

Well, I have this flour sifter that I got several years back that hasn't gotten much use. I've read that you should use these screens made especially for flour sifting... but I have this flour sifter. Soooo.... I figured I'd try it and see. Here's what the inside of my sifter looks like.

There's a handle on the side that you squeeze and it moves two wheels to sift around the flour... I mostly just end up shaking it to get the flour out. But it keeps the bigger bran pieces out, which I do one of two things with: 1. Bran goes into a recipe, like bars or cookies (or cookies that become bars because I can't seem to make cookies that don't become a flat pancake!). OR 2. Bran goes into coffee grinder, gets ground a bit finer, and gets thrown back into my pot of flour. (I wouldn't add it back into my flour grinder, because I think that's bad for the machine.)

So, it seemed to help lighten the loaf a bit, and helped it rise higher!

But, I haven't perfected this concept yet. A few notes...

--I tried soaking the bran in some soft lard and adding it back into the bread. I counted it as some of my flour, but I don't think I should've done that, because it didn't help the bread at all. Made it pretty dense.

--I have left out the bran before, which works very well.

--When grinding up the bran in the coffee grinder, it seems to work pretty well to add it back into the flour.

--I have a tendency to forget about my bread rising.... at least with sourdough, it's not quite as big of a deal as with commercial yeast, which rises a lot faster. But the last several times I've made bread, it rose longer than it needed to, so the loaves ended up falling a bit during baking.

--I need to coddle my sourdough starter a bit more before baking bread so it's at its peak performance when it gets used for bread. I'm going to try to keep my sourdough starter out on my counter a lot more so it's always ready. I found these two recipes, which call for a certain amount of sourdough starter, but no extra flour, so as long as I have plenty of sourdough starter ready, I don't have to think ahead to make these things: Sourdough Crepes (the link is to tortilla chips, but the crepe recipe is on there) and Sourdough Pancakes.

So, my sourdough bread is still a work-in-progress. I realize it will never be like the bread you buy in stores... but I'm okay with that. I don't want it to be! ;-)

Enoch-- 0 to 3 months

I haven't shared much about Enoch lately, because frankly, a lot has been happening. See previous post about our move.

So this will be mostly a picture post of Enoch over the past three months.

10-26-11 @ 2 days old

10-27-11 @ 3 days old

10-31-11 @ 1 week old

11-1-11 @ 8 days old with Big Brothers

Grandma Linda putting the "plug" in. It only worked for the first couple months.

11-2-11 @ 10 days old

11-4-11 @ 12 days old

Baptism Day, 11-6-11 @ almost 2 weeks old

Pastor John Merseth (Grandpa Merseth) performed the Rite of Baptism at Our Savior's down in Bagley on "Deer Hunting Sunday" with Pastor Mark and Marlene Faugstad as Enoch's Godparents. Here he is, screaming away. ;-)

Grandma Linda and Grandpa Allan with newly christened baby.

Me holding Enoch by cake I decorated for the occasion.

11-7-11 @ 2 weeks old

11-10-11

11-14-11 @ 3 weeks old

11-15-11

With Uncle Adam, Thanksgiving Day, 11-24-11 @ 1 month old

With Grandpa Allan, Thanksgiving Day

With Uncle Tyler, Thanksgiving Day

Aw, so sweet!

12-5-11@ 1 1/2 months old

12-14-11

Christmas Eve 12-24-11 @ 2 months old

Sorry I didn't take many pictures this month... there were so many other people taking pictures for Christmas and such that I didn't think to take many on my camera, plus we were packing and unpacking....

Photo Shoot on 1-24-12 @ 3 months old

Brothers wanted to get in on the picture-taking action

"I want to hold him!"

Mommy wanted to get a better picture of the three boys. Andrew wasn't wanting to sit still...

He really is a smiley baby.

We are enjoying him a lot! He is very alert, always watching us. A good nurser, takes good naps, has slept through the night once, has been wearing 3-6 and 6 month clothes, likes to talk to us, and always has a smile for just about everyone. I feel like I'm starting to hit my stride as a mother. No, it's not getting easier, necessarily... maybe I'm just getting used to just taking things as they come? So far, Enoch's been my easiest baby... or is it just that I know how to take care of a baby third time around? Well either way, he's a joy!

From Wannaska to Jeff City

The last post I wrote was over a month ago, and boy, has a lot happened since then.

We packed. My husband went down to Jeff City with his brother James to scope out housing while I stayed and packed up our house. They got back in time for a Christmas Eve service at our parishoners' house... and ten minutes before arriving, Judah threw up all over himself in the car. So we arrived on their doorstep needing to use their wash machine. Meanwhile, I started to feel not the greatest. Somehow, through the grace of God, we made it through the service, although Judah was sick twice more during it, and I had to play the organ and take care of a wiggly Andrew, and feed Enoch, to boot. Christmas Day we did nothing except rest and sleep and get better. Andrew had thrown up earlier in the week, but the stomach flu didn't seem to hit him as hard as Judah. We started feeling more like ourselves on the 26th and continued packing.

This is a picture of our church family in the room we were renting to hold worship services. We miss them!

Enoch is 2 months old in this picture, taken Christmas Eve. Excited for Christmas!

Boys in their Christmas present jammies. I think this was taken on Christmas Day night, after we'd had a chance to feel better.

We had a Merseth Christmas at the Clearbrook farm with Great-grandma, and were there Tues night till Friday afternoon. There was a day trip in there by the brothers to butcher and do more packing at our place.

Cousin Malia and Andrew in Uncle Chris' Polaris Ranger. Andrew LOVES Ranger rides!

More packing. Last church service on New Year's Day. MORE packing.

Family picture at last service in Minnesota

Judah got to go outside with Church Gramma and have a Ranger ride, and explore!

About 9am on Jan. 2, church members from Jeff City came to help us pack up our stuff in a horse trailer and a second enclosed trailer. That was probably the coldest day we'd experienced thus far, and of course it was on that day. ;-) Well, those southern boys dressed appropriately, anyway! Later in the day, some cousins came and played in the empty house. Grandma Merseth helped them make a sign that said "Good Bye House, we're going to Missouri!" And Malia made a sign that said "Cub Foods" below it. I don't know if they even have any Cub Foods down here.

We had a few more days till we needed to leave, though. We took Judah and Andrew to the farm on Tues the 3rd to stay, while Jeff and I went back home to finish packing up the last things.

Wednesday we signed papers for a contract for deed for our house. A family is living there now and taking care of the place, and will eventually take full ownership in 4-5 years. I hope they love it as much as we did. That night, we loaded up the last of our chickens and belongings, shoved the last items in our vehicles and quick closed the door before it all fell out, and drove to the Clearbrook farm for the night. Here we are with Great Grandma Merseth. We will sure miss being able to visit. We were only 1.5 hours away.

Thursday morning we started the trek south. Jeff was hauling my dad's gravity box wagon behind his truck, so he couldn't go real fast, and had the two older boys, plus was having some truck problems along the way. I had Enoch in a packed-to-the-brim van. We got to my folks' house that night after a looooong day of driving.

After a good night's sleep, we left Friday morning about 10am, and arrived in Jeff City about 4 that afternoon, and I got to lay eyes, for the first time, on our new home. But we were staying in a hotel that night, and the pres. of the congregation and his wife took us out to eat. Here are the boys in their bed at the hotel.

Saturday morning about 9am, with the help of kind church members, we unloaded. And I must mention here the weather was gorgeous! I think it reached 60 degrees that day!! So the boys were playing outside, it was great.

We attended church on the 8th, installation was the 15th in the afternoon. Jeff's dad was able to come and give the sermon for the installation. My parents were able to come for the service, too. The meal afterwards was most excellent!

This is a picture of all the pastors in attendance at the installation. I love this picture. Someone must've said something funny.

I am enjoying our new place. We're renting an old farmhouse that is less than 5 miles from church. It hasn't been lived in for a couple years, so we've been battling with some mice with d-con, and I haven't seen much action since they emptied one of those little boxes... although I did find that they'd moved it into one of my kitchen drawers... imagine my surprise at that! And we needed to cover some cracks.

There are several outbuildings we can use for storage and chickens. Yes, the birds came, too. The long trip didn't even make them stop laying eggs. We've even started getting turkey eggs! We hope to keep them and incubate them when the weather warms up a bit. There is even a garden spot! The washer and dryer are in a building outside of the house, and I didn't realize that you need to keep the washer from freezing, otherwise it's junk. So while the temps are cold, we are keeping a wood-burning stove going in there. There is pasture land all around this farmstead, with cows grazing on the rolling hills. It's beautiful now, so I can't wait for the other seasons!

I haven't been out exploring the city yet though. I have still been trying to tackle laundry and boxes, and finding a home for it all. Maybe I'll feel brave enough soon.

A new chapter starting soon

We had just made a long trip down to Iowa to visit my family for Thanksgiving, and had arrived back home late Saturday night. It was a slow lazy Sunday afternoon and evening as we tried to recuperate from the trip, and the hustle and bustle of church activities Sunday morning.

Then the phone rang. My husband Jeff had received a divine call to Peace Lutheran Church, Jefferson City, Missouri. Whoa. Dude. We weren't expecting that.

To make a long story short, Jeff accepted the call and we will be moving. Again. You'd think I'd be better at packing by now, after moving so many times. But it hasn't gotten any easier.

We still have a few details to figure out yet. Well, a lot of details. Like where we're going to live, because there's no parsonage. Like what to do with Albert. And the chickens. And turkeys. We have our house here taken care of, though. (We had it sold in less than a week on a contract-for-deed. Praise the Lord!)

Words cannot express the mix of emotions I've been going through these past several weeks. I can't even put into words... well... much of anything, these days. Overwhelmed. Because, truthfully, this was an answer to prayer. I wasn't sure what exactly I was praying for, but this was the answer.

And so here we are. Packing. Minimizing our possessions. Uprooting.

Ahh... uprooting. I'm one that likes to... settle down. Put down roots. Take off my coat and stay awhile, as the saying goes. And Judah is like me, I think. He's old enough to realize that things are changing, and he wants things to stay the same. He's having a hard time, poor guy. Needs some extra love. But I pray for resiliency for him... they say that young kids are resilient and adaptable. Whoever "they" are.

Here are some pictures, which don't have anything to do specifically with the move. Just some kid pictures. ;-)

Enoch, 2 1/2 wks

My three boys

Daddy and the boys having a 6-wheeler ride in the snow (gift from Gpa Allan!)

I haven't even gotten to show you the neat old old house next to our property up here. Here it is:

And so, with excitement, with some uncertainty about what lies ahead, we sojourn on. The hymn "Heaven is my home" often plays in my head as I think about all our moving around. It all points me to my eternal home in heaven that awaits me someday through faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior. This here, this is just temporary. Heaven is the real final destination. "I'm but a stranger here, heaven is my home."

Please keep us in your prayers as we move toward the next chapter in our lives. Missouri, here we come!

About those nannyberries and rosehips....

About the rosehips...

A couple weeks ago, I was reminded of something from what seems like another life... My husband dumped a bucket of shriveled up, discolored rosehips into the chicken-scrap bucket. Oops. I should've dumped those a month ago.

My mind wandered back to the end of September, warm and sunny weather, a soft breeze blowing, almost 9 months pregnant, as I blissfully picked rosehips from the wild rose bushes.

But I was jerked to the present as I looked out the window and checked the thermometer... there were a couple inches of snow, and a temp. that dared to dip into single digits.

I guess I'll have to try the rosehips some other time.

For those of you that don't know what rosehips are, they're what is leftover after the petals fall from a rose. It looks like this:

The thing about the rosehips is that they are pretty labor intensive. Most of the time, that doesn't bother me. But let me walk you through it...

• Pick rosehips after a frost when they're nice at bright orange or red. They acquire more sweetness then. The rosehips I picked were pretty small, averaging about 1 cm. in diameter.
• Cut them in half and scrape out the seeds and hairy wisps. Also cut off dried up ends leftover from the roses. Not much is leftover then. You may need to let the rosehips dry up a bit before you start cutting, otherwise the insides can stick to the seeds, and it just gets to be a frustrating mess. I started doing this with a few of them, while my husband watched. He said something like, "Um, just forget about it. That will take you forever." And since I wasn't too excited about doing it and had other things to do, I was easily convinced.
• Then you can dry the rosehips, or cook them to make jelly or whatever.

About nannyberries...

I actually did pick a big bucket of nannyberries, and even made some jelly with them. Well, it was more like sauce, since, once again, I did the long-boil method, which I detailed in my post about squashberries, and it turned out the same (saucy) since I couldn't get the temp. quite to 220 degrees. I would definitely use pectin with nannyberries, since the final produce ends up separating in the jar... the bottom half is thicker and more pulpy, while the top is lighter in color, and thinner.

Nannyberries are not quite so labor intensive, treat them like the squashberries. They look similar to the squashberries, except they are dark purple to black in color, and slightly oblong in shape, instead of circular. I just cooked them down and strained out the seeds, which looked like the squashberry seeds... flat and circular.

I did take pictures on my phone camera, but they have since been pushed out of the phone camera's memory...

And that was another adventure into wild foraging!

Enoch's Birth Story

Enoch's birth was a home birth.

There. I said it. Now the world knows.

And you know what? It was wonderful. It didn't go exactly as I imagined, but pretty darn close.

Now, I'd been telling people that I was due on Oct. 3. However, when several weeks passed, and I hadn't had the baby yet, I started to think that maybe we were a bit off on the due date. Let me tell you, October 2011 was the longest month of my life!

I had a check up on Oct. 21, and everything looked good: my blood pressure and urine looked good, the baby was measuring good, plenty of amniotic fluid, baby's heart rate good, baby was head down. The baby didn't appear to be under any stress. I was even 3-4 cm. dilated and 80-90% effaced. So things were going in the right direction.

But when a person goes against "the norm", especially when the person is like myself who doesn't really like upsetting the apple cart, life can be extra stressful. Every day that I woke up "still pregnant" was another day that I dreaded. Was I stuck in pregnancy purgatory?!

I was almost to "43 weeks" when I had a tiny bit of bloody show on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 23, and I started to have hope that things would be over soon. Now, there are certain things that a pregnant woman can do to hopefully get labor going, and let's just say, I tried many things!

I started having a few contractions between 6-8:45 pm on Oct. 23, but none with any "heat". I texted my midwife, Rebekah, to let her know that I was having some contractions, and that I'd let her know when they started getting closer together. Jeff and I put Judah and Andrew to bed at about 8 pm and turned on their "sound machine" louder than normal. We wanted them to sleep peacefully through the night (which they did).

Well, 8:45 pm was when contractions started getting between 2-5 min. apart and had some strength to them. I texted Rebekah at 9:30 pm that things were starting to get serious, and she sent her mother Joyce over, a doula, who lived closer to me than Rebekah. She arrived at about 10:30 (I think). The contractions were really getting powerful when she got there. Joyce said she could tell how dilated I was by feeling how cold my legs were. The heat all moves to uterus, so when the coolness moves further up the legs, you know you're getting closer! She told me I was about 4-5 cm dilated at that time, which disappointed me a little. Of course, I had thought I was further along by that point. But it wasn't going to be too much longer...

My husband and Joyce were so very helpful to get me through the contractions, rubbing my lower back and helping me to sway. It was most comfortable for me to kneel in front of our cushy rocking chair, so that's where I was from 8:45-midnight.

The midwife's apprentice, Rita, came between 11 and 11:30 (I think). She came from Canada. Thankfully she had no trouble crossing the border! By the time she came, the contractions were quite painful, sometimes with no break between them.

And then sometime just after midnight I could feel the urge to push. Both Rita and Joyce were encouraging me to listen to what my body was telling me. I wasn't quite sure how to do it though. My first two labors were in the hospital, so I was laying on my back, and had my legs pulled back to help me push. But I knew that I didn't want to do that again.

I tried having Jeff sit on a chair and draping my arms over his legs so I was kind of squatting. That didn't feel right. I did push in that position though, and my waters broke. The amniotic fluid was clear with no sign of meconium, so that was a good sign.

I tried sitting on the couch in front of my husband and leaning back on him. But that felt too similar to laying down in the hospital bed for some reason.

Then Jeff suggested that he sit down on the couch and stand facing him, then brace my knees on the couch in a semi-stand, semi-squat position. Just when I thought I couldn't do it, suddenly I felt the urge to push and out comes the baby's head! (He crowned at 12:13 am.) I paused while the ladies checked to make sure there was nothing around the baby's neck. I asked if I could continue pushing, they gave me the go-ahead, and I pushed again, and out the baby came at 12:14 am!

I turned around and sat down in front of Jeff while the ladies wrapped a towel around our baby. I asked, "Is it a boy or a girl?" to which they replied, "You get to check!" Imagine my surprise to find a BOY, when I had been expecting a girl all along. But he was a healthy wonderful baby with dark hair.

We checked him over for a few minutes. He started to suck on his fist right away, so I soon started to nurse him. The placenta easily came out. After the umbilical cord stopped pulsing, it was clamped and cut.

After nursing, we needed to weigh and measure!

Daddy getting Enoch dressed.

Joyce and Rita

The next morning...they woke up to a new brother! They like him!

Judah wasn't ready to hold him till that evening though. Man, do I look tired!

So the midwife wasn't actually at the birth. She was at another birth. But it all worked out well, praise the Lord!

I'm so thankful to have given birth this way. It was a wonderful experience! If I had any tears from the labor process, they were very small, and didn't cause me much pain in the healing process. I have had to take things a lot slower than after my first two babies, but that's okay. I've been able to. My husband was able to stay home for the first week, and then my mother came to help the next week.

Note: Whether or not you are supportive of the idea of home births, I wanted to share my story. I would like to write a wonderful post supporting home birth, citing lots of facts about why it can be a valid way to birth a child, but hey... I just had a newborn. I just don't have that kind of time. But I'm not the only one who thinks this way, so the information is out there. Just google it. ;-)