Come see how good looking I am

So I guess Bakersfield is really starting to grow. Hopefully soon we'll get on the map and have some real cool stores here. The latest to open is Williams-Sanoma and I am stoked. Next is Pottery Barn and Claim Jumper. Lucky just opened at the mall and so did Abby's new favorite store...LIBBY LU! No longer do I have to play beauty shop at home with her. I'll just drive her down to the mall and she can get all the hair and make-up done a little girl can handle. She was on cloud nine and got so many oohs and aahs. Just take a look.


Then I look over and wonder what Walker could be doing while waiting for his sister to finish getting all fancied up and I find him in the corner receiving his own oohs and aahs. Now he's asleep on the couch. All tuckered out from his afternoon performance.


Got to love that kid!

Time to catch some zzz's

I'd like to take a moment to give a well deserved shout out to my mom. It hit me at about 3:00 a.m. how many sleepless nights my mother had to endure while raising 5 kids. It was during the simple whisper of a child by my bedside when I realized what I had put my mother through. Flashbacks of me as a little 5 yr old girl standing by her parents bed in the dark and quietly saying "mom, I'm scared. I had a bad dream".

What do I do when it's Abby standing at my bedside? Tell her it's nothing and go back to bed so I can get back to sleep? Carry her in her room and convince her that nothing is wrong and we're just in the other room? I did what my mom did. I placed her in my bed until she was able to fall asleep then slowly carried her back to her room. Then laid there hoping I can fall asleep sometime soon. Is this the joy of motherhood? I hoped to find it in other places than my bedroom in the middle of the night. I'm just so tired and I love sleep too much. Only 18 more years of bad dreams, sick kids and sleep walking that can wake me up as early as the "got to make the doughnuts" guy.

So here's to you mom. Get a good nights sleep while the rest of us only dream of it.

No bagel, no bagel, no bagel

Yesterday was Sunday and if you have early morning church mixed with young children you know you have a long day ahead of you. What to do to fill the time? You can only color for so long, place dress up and do beauty shop so many times and tell your kids “go find something to do” over again. What to do. Hmmm, I know let’s play bagel store.

Yep, yesterday we made home made bagels. Now if you haven’t done this before as I have never done, it takes skill and precision just to get the dough the way it needs to be before molding into bagels.

The first batch (by saying that I guess you already know that one didn’t turn out) was interesting. Did the usual by starting with yeast. Letting it sit in water to “activate”. Then threw in the rest of the ingredients and mixed with the Kitchen aid mixer for 10 minutes like they said. But something just didn’t look right. It was very hard and flakey. Cordell said it might need more kneading so he took it out and kneaded it on the counter for another 5 minutes. Still no good. It didn’t look like regular “dough”. We decided maybe it just needed to sit and rise for a little while. After 20 min and still nothing and wondering where it went wrong it hit me. I had flash backs of foods class at Francis Howell and that’s where it dawns on me. The entire process went bad during the first five minutes.

You see yeast is a living organism. It feeds on the flour in the cough and multiplies, it releases carbon dioxide. It’s this gas that causes the dough to rise. I had not allowed the yeast to activate long enough in water 110-115 degrees. Then by adding too much flour all at once and mixing to high the activating ingredients had been halted. The dough became too hard and dry too fast and I had killed the yeast.

So to make a long story short, always refer to your three foods classes to remind you of the science of cooking. Who needs Alton Brown?

The second batch came out a winner. It was beautiful and we all ate the 8 bagels it made in about 5 minutes flat. We made plain, poppy seed and sesame seed. If the entire process didn’t take over an hour I would have made them again this morning for breakfast.

If any of you reading this are more confident in your bread making abilities than I was then you really need to give this recipe a try. It’s so fun to see how bagels are made and the kids will love it! Did I mention that they are so darn good? Mmmmm!!!