Pita Bread/Flat Bread

I love pita bread.  I just think it is so cool to stuff your sandwich stuff into a pocket of bread.  I love the ratio of bread to stuffing/filling with pita bread.  Kind of like Goldilocks, you know?  Not too much bread like regular bread and not too little bread like a wrap.  No, a pita is just right.

I think smearing your pita bread into some hummus gives you just the right combination of chewy and creamy in every bite.  The problem?  I don't like store-bought pita bread.  Never have.  I like home-made pita bread...the kind you find in restaurants that have gyros and falafels on their menus.   I don't go to a lot of those, which means I don't have pita bread very often.

Up until now...  (Pita and egg-salad...yum!)  Now I have the power of pita at home. 

One of my friends in "real life" gave me an awesome recipe for pita bread last week and I couldn't wait to try it.  Actually, we were kind of trading recipes...I gave her the English muffin recipe and she reciprocated with her pita bread recipe.  Seems like a fair trade to me.

With no excuse other than I wanted to, I gave her recipe a try and it was fabulous.  I confess to having messed something up and most of my pitas didn't rise to form pockets, but the flat bread I was left with was so good that no one cared.  The entire batch was gone in about ten minutes. Seriously, they were that good. 

Oh, did I mention that the recipe was simple, too?  Well, it is.  See for yourself...this is the recipe exactly as she gave it to me.  (And, see?  A few of the pockets did rise and give me pita bread...I felt so special.)

Pita Bread
by Myshell

Ingredients:

1 T. active dry yeast
1 T. sugar
1/2 c. warm water
4 c. bread flour
2 t. salt
1 c. warm water
1 T. olive oil

Preparation:

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in 1/2 c. of the warm water and set aside, covered, for 15 mins.  Dissolve salt in the remaining 1 c. of warm water.

In a large mixing bowl, add flour and make a well in the center.  Add yeast mixture and salt water.  Knead with hands for 10 minutes in the bowl.  Add olive oil and continue to knead until all oil is absorbed.  Shape into a ball in the bowl, cover, and place in a warm area to rise until doubled in volume, approximately 1 1/2 to 2 hrs.  Punch down the dough and knead for 5 mins more.

Preheat oven to 350 F, and lightly oil baking sheets.

Take pieces of dough slightly larger than and egg and roll out on a floured surface to a thickness of 3/8 to 1/4 inch.  (For larger or smaller pita bread pieces, take more or less dough).  Prick the bread with a fork in several places.  *note - this causes a flatbread, if you want pockets, don't prick.  (I didn't prick...I don't know what happened.)

Place on a baking sheet and bake at 350F on the lowest oven rack for 2-3 mins.  then turn the pitas over and bake for another 2-3 mins.  *  Note:  I find they taste so much better if they are brushed with a little melted butter or olive oil and seasoned with a little garlic salt before baking.  Remove from oven and place on a tray covered with a clean dishtowel, with another clean towel on top.  When thoroughly cooled, pitas can be stored in plastic bags in the fridge, or frozen.

Before using/eating, brown on both sides in a lightly oiled frying pan for a few minutes.


P.S.  Did I mention I'm making another batch today?  It was that good.

We did it ourselves! Installing a Dual-Flushing Mechanism on Your Toilet

Saw this post on Young House Love.  (This couple is so creative...I am humbled by the stuff they dream up.)  Anyway, as they were preparing for the arrival of their first child, they were doing all kinds of fun things...who knew the bathroom would be included?  John's pictures were so clear and his instructions even made sense to a non-plumbing kind of girl.  When I saw them, my used-to-live-in-So-Cal-always-conscious-of-water-self thought, "Hey, I can do that!"  I showed it to Valiant and he agreed...definitely doable.  (Just to be clear, we ignored the diaper cleaning part of the post...we're long past that stage of life.)  Okay, actually, Valiant did the whole thing.  I just bought the thing - $24.99 at Home Depot.  It took him 10 minutes from start to finish.

This is the inside of the tank before we changed anything. (Oh, and please excuse the paint...this is the one room we haven't tackled since we moved in.  It needs to be gutted and we're scared to touch anything until we're ready to do it all.) :

This is the inside of the tank after...the flapper has been replaced:

This is my new handle.  (Which means no one could flush with feet at my house, but that is a different post altogether!)

Anyway, just as easily as he said, Valiant gave me a dual flush toilet and now I'm using less water to send some stuff through the pipes. (We pay almost nothing for water here, but I like the idea of  using as little fresh water as possible. It is precious.  In So Cal, water was EXPENSIVE.)   Now that we've taken it on a test run, we're planning to do our two other toilets. 

I think Superman will approve.

(What?  You're not quite sure what I'm talking about with this whole dual-flush toilet thingy?  Okay...fair enough.   Head back to Junior High and think of it this way:  Number 1 wastes go down with less water than Number 2 wastes.  No major changes, just adjust how much water is used depending upon your needs.)

Dingy Whites? Sunshine Orange!

I had some seriously dingy white shirts.  Just keeping it real.  Actually, whites are the bane of my existence.  I've tried everything to keep my whites white.  You name it, I've tried it, with little measurable success.  I think we need a water softener, but, until then, we'll just have to deal with dingy whites.  I hate them.  I feel terrible that we stop wearing clothing that, with the exception of the color, is in really good condition.  But that is what happens because this is my real life.  My whites don't stay very white and become dingy.   The dingy clothes stay in the closet in favor of brighter, cleaner-looking clothing.

$1.62 later, I had this beautiful box of RIT dye.  Sunshine Orange, to be exact.

A quick jaunt to the utility sink and I had those dingy whites in a lovely orange bath.  I even threw in a Trader Joe's bag for good measure.  Impulsive, aren't I?  (I'm boycotting TJ's because they won't come to my city and they should.  Even worse?  They teased us by shopping properties and then pulling out.)  Anyway, back to my story.

Half an hour later, I put the formerly dingy clothes into the washer for a rinse/spin cycle and ran out to add them to the clothesline.

Look at these!  Four different fabrics (3 of which were 100% cotton), netted four different results.  Buttercup's cami seems more golden, doesn't it?  (It is not actually splotchy...the fabric was dryer in some places than others!)

Oh, the TJ's bag?  I love the way the dye highlighted the crinkles in the linen.  Now I'm going to line it and sew some abstract patch over the logo and start using it again.

Food for Thought

"The greater danger for most of us is not
that our aim is too high and we miss it,
but that it is too low and we reach it."
- Michelangelo

Blogging is Such Hard Work!

When I was typing up my blog about our "stick chores", Bean was "helping me".  After chasing after the mouse pointer on the monitor and helping me with the keyboard, she quickly realized that blogging is hard work.

It took her a few adjustments, but she finally got herself right in the heat cast by the halogen bulb in my recessed light and went to sleep.

A well-deserved nap.

"It's Not My Job!"

I think two of my least favorite phrases to hear my children utter are:  "it's not my job!" or some version of "I didn't leave it there."  There are variations of both, of course.  There is the every popular, "that is Buttercup's chore" or "I took mine, he obviously didn't put his away" or "well, it is mine, but I didn't leave it there/use it/take it out".  All of these phrases are thrown at me as I question how my very intelligent, very capable children can step over something on the floor without picking it up, ignore messes in common spaces, and walk away while a task is only half done.  Seriously.

You'd think they'd not been taught.  Yet, these are the same children that will (rightly) mentally denigrate those who walk away from a fast food table filled with trash ("Look, Mom, why didn't they just clear their table?  That is so rude."); children who always, always put the shopping cart in the shopping cart area ("Mom, we used it, we should make it available for others.") and run to get the door when entering public places ("After you.  Oh, no, after you.")  Proof positive that they have been taught and, even better, have absorbed the lesson of sharing this world with others:  When you're done with something, leave it ready for the next person.

At home it is a different story altogether:  Bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, family room, floors, stairs, trash cans, garden tools, DVDs...really anything that might be shared in the home.  These things have been a problem.  "Valiant, would you please pick up the book from the floor rather than stepping over it? " would always be met with "Buttercup left it there."  Um, okay, she shouldn't have left it there, but you shouldn't have just ignored the fact that it was there and stepped over it!  "Buttercup, did you remember to hang the bathroom rug on the shower door?"  is met with "Valiant left it there after his shower, so even though I took the last shower, since he took it down, he should be responsible for putting it back".


I could spend three days coming up with examples and still not scratch the surface, but you get the point.  It all translates to one simple idea:  It is not MY job, so I'm going to pretend it doesn't need to be done.


Look, my kids do a terrific job at taking care of their personal spaces.  They've learned that I won't do it for them (or maybe they've learned they really don't want me to do it form them), and they keep their stuff presentable.  It is the common spaces that no one wants to take ownership of and it makes me crazy.

In an effort to get my kids to understand the idea that everyone has to be willing to do everything, I borrowed an idea from first grade classes everywhere.  I remember the teachers would have the kids draw sticks for assigned tasks - room monitor, passing out papers, saying the Pledge, etc.  The jobs belonged to everyone, not just one person.  I thought, why wouldn't this work at home?  After two months, I'm happy to report that it does and I decided we'd been successful enough with this little experiment to share it with you.

 
First I picked 10 relatively balanced tasks so that no one got overloaded and no one got underloaded:  vacuum main stairs is balanced by vacuum basement stairs; clean upstairs bathroom is balance by clean guest bathroom, and so on.  Then, to begin with, I put out 5 piles of two sticks each , each with pairs of chores, but face down, so the kids couldn't see the chores they were choosing.  Then the kids took turns picking from the pile.  If Buttercup picked first from pile one, then Valiant would get the stick she didn't choose and then he'd get to pick first from pile two, leaving her with the unchosen stick.  Whatever 5 sticks you got, you did...no complaining and no whining.  After awhile, I stopped putting them in five piles and just had them take turns pulling sticks until all the sticks were chosen.

And, it is working!  Seriously.  The kids are starting to understand that leaving something undone is the same as saying, "I'm expecting someone else to clean this up."  They're also understanding that all the chores have to get done, not just the ones that are their personal chores.  They're learning that if everyone does a little, no one person is done doing the bulk of the work.  Finally, the kids are learning to look around and see things that need to be done and actually do them, before they're asked to. That, my friends, means Mom isn't doing everything and the help she is receiving is actually help.  How cool is that?

In fact, I'm getting ready to add a few more things to the stick chore pile.  Things like "change litter box", "brush dogs", "brush cat", and "add water to turtle tank".  Hey, more pets means more work for everyone, including the kids.

Stick chores!  Doesn't your house have a few?

Should We Tell Her She's Not a Puppy?

I think Bean is confused.  She sees a tennis ball and, well, she chases it.

Look...

First, she chases it.

Then, she tries to grab it.

She wrestles with it.

Finally, she begins to chew it.

Seriously, should we tell her?

Keeping Myself Honest and Saving Fabric for Specific Jobs

Since we're in the midst of aggressive debt reduction, I have to be very careful about any money we spend.  One of the things I cannot do anymore is buy fabric just because it is pretty.  I cannot troll the fabric aisles at Walmart or head to JoAnn's  or Hancock's to see what might be on sale.  Without a project in mind, I "just say no".  Any fabric I buy these days must have an assigned purpose.  (Tragic, I know.)

What I still can do, however, is take advantage of a sale before I'm ready to tackle a new sewing project.   For example, I found the perfect fabric for my new dining room seat covers when I was at the fabric store looking for a new piece of hardware for my overalls. It was an awesome deal on the right color on the remnant table and I nabbed it.   I haven't been ready to sew said seat covers, however, and keeping the fabric in the plastic bag from the store isn't very useful.  So, what do you do with fabric that you've assigned for a certain task, but you can't tend to right away?  You have to put it somewhere, right?  You want it protected.  You want to remember where you stashed it. You don't want to forget why you bought it, right?

Well, if you're like me, you probably hold on to weird things, such as these zipper pouches that curtain panels and sheets often come in.  (Oh, come on, you know it is so difficult to throw away something that looks like it should be so useful!)

I had a zillion of these at one time, but I did break down and donate most of them.  Still, I held on to quite a few because I was certain I could come up with something amazing and I did!

Ta Da!  These zipper pouches are perfect for special project fabric.  Most of them even have this little pouch that the labeling was housed in.  I just turned the label around and wrote my own label.   Not only do they keep the fabrics safe, they keep me honest.  I can't very well say I "need" fabric, when I've got some these fabric pouches waiting to be used, now can I?

P.S.  They're also terrific for wet bags, impromptu diaper/wipe stashes - even an extra baby outfit if you have a big enough bag (like one from a duvet cover or king-sized sheet set) - when I had babies, I had diapers, wipes, and a change for clothes for baby stashed in each car, each bag, and really anywhere I could think of.  They saved the day more times than I'd like to admit.