Under the Sky: Cooking Bliss

I have been having great fun trying new things here and I have been pouring over recipes to find new and different (read that - healthier) ways of eating and feeding the children. The soaking flour to make bread has been a wild success. The bread loaves are solid (after a little tweaking of the water/acid content) and the bread is sweet and yeasty. They smell just like professional loaves! I have never been able to create that and now I know why - the bread was being made too quickly and the ingredients didn't have time to really mesh all those flavors together. I am very happy to have all the flavors, but even better, the nutritional value of the bread is higher too. :)

I have been using coconut oil for some time, but I use two different kinds. The first is the one I use for frying or sauteing when I am not using olive oil or butter, because it does not have a coconut flavor. This is the best price I have found for such a high quality oil:

1-gallon Expeller-Pressed Coconut Oil, Non-Certified

It lasts for a long time and doesn't go bad! I scoop out some of the oil and put it in a smaller container for easy use. In the winter it is a solid, but with the summer heat, it turns to an oil. So, if you want it to be hard to use in place of shortening, keep some in the fridge. I watch the website for free shipping coupons. (There is one going on right now! The number is 61113.)

32-oz. - 2-Jar Pack - Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil - 2 quarts Total

This is the *top* of the line virgin coconut oil is a truly unrefined coconut oil. It has the most wonderful coconut flavor and is rich in antioxidants. This is what we use in our baked goods, especially our whole wheat bread. It is SO GOOD. :)

Since I have been reading up on how dangerous white sugar really is for our bodies, I wanted to find something that we could use now and then for sweets. No "sugar" is going to be perfect, and I have found that we have to be careful how much we ingest of anything, but this is about is good as it gets!

Organic Whole Cane Sugar - 1.5 lbs.

It is sweet enough when you want something sweet in your hot cereal, but the sugar retains the original natural vitamins and minerals it had to help with digestion.

So these are just a few of the things we have been using. It is exciting to make these changes and I am grateful for the information I am reading. :)

The yogurt I made last week has been a huge hit! I used about 2 cups of it in a smoothie for the children and mixed it with frozen strawberries, a ripe banana, and added some milk. They said it was one of the best smoothies they had ever had. This mama loves to hear those words. :)

I managed to mess up my last sourdough starter by using a too-tight lid on the crock I have, so last night I started another one from here. I used 100% whole wheat flour so we shall see if it works for me. Making sourdough cannot be *that* hard, right? :)

What is new in your kitchen? How does your garden grow? Here are a few pictures of mine.