Tortilla Success!

I am Norwiegn and Lefse is an ethic food of mine. I have made Lefse and its just like tortilas only Lefse is flour and potatoes. I have wanted to make tortillas instead of buying them, but I was always intimidated by the lengthy process. Then I ran across a recipe that suggested you store raw dough in the fridge until you're ready to use them. Check it out!

http://www.recipezaar.com/Pipin-Hot-Bakery-Whole-Wheat-Tortillas-7417

The same idea can apply to any tortilla dough. Just make your dough then form balls and roll the balls in flour. Store in fridge until ready to cook. Try making some dough on Saturday and then during the week take out enough dough balls for your family and roll and fry on the stove. Even faster then going to the store and buying them!

Homemade Yogurt

I finally tried to make my own homemade yogurt. It was pretty easy! I used powdered milk from the LDS Cannery, water and a little bit of plain yogurt from the store. The instructions I found say that you can buy a large container of yogurt and put the yogurt in ice cube trays. Freeze the yogurt and use one ice cube per batch. Incubate in your oven or any warm place. Read all about it:

http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/yogurt.htm

With powder milk $44.45 a 25 lb bag at the LDS Cannery, making yogurt yourself is very cheap and versatile. You can use yogurt anywhere you use sour cream. Sweeten your yogurt with a little honey or sugar. Add granola and some fruit and it makes a nice lowfat treat. Use cheese cloth and strain your yogurt to make cream cheese.

Pumpkin Pie Fruit Rollups!

After Halloween I got several large pumpkins from Food Town for $1 each. Then I cooked them down and blended the pumpkin with some of the cooking water to the consistency of baby food. Then for every 2 cups of pumpkin I added 1/2 cup honey and 1/8 tsp pumpkin pie spice. Then I pored it out thin on my dehydrator trays and dehydrated it until it felt dry. Yummy!

Tips: I didn't have pumpkin pie spice so I used a recipe for the mix.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pumpkin-Pie-Spice-I/Detail.aspx

You could also try doing with in your oven instead of a dehydrator.
http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/hgic3080.htm

The instructions I found also mention other fruit you can use, check it out!
http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/fruit_leather_info.aspx


Happy Drying! Homemade fruit roll ups make a great holiday gift!

Wheat Bread the Easy Way!

I have been experimenting and trying to make a whole wheat bread without any bit of white flour, which would be nice because whole wheat purchased at the LDS Cannery is a lot cheaper than white flour which has risen in price to over $2 a pound! There is also the added health benefit and fullness factor here in the Duffey house. With 4 boys, 2 hungry adults and an occasionally foreign exchange student or guest we have to potential of eating a loaf or more per day.

So I have found a recipe that worked pretty well, it didn't come out of the oven looking very pretty, but it doesn't taste anything like the dense whole wheat I had made in the past. The recipe comes from the book: "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day". Its called "100 Percent Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread". My homeschool friend Laura knows that I have been trying to make bread and she was nice enough to bring this to my attention and give me a copy of recipe out of her Mother Earth Magazine. Below is a link to the same article online, I strongly encourage you to read all about it. If you hit the "print" button below the title under "Article Tools", it will load the several page article all in one screen so you don't have to hit "next" over and over. Its well worth it!


http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx?page=7

A little introduction

Hi, I live in Houston Texas and I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. My current calling in the church is Provident Living Specialist. When I first started this calling, I had 3 children, pregnant with the 4th and I wrote email newsletters. Now that I have given birth to our 4th child and several things have changed, including my struggle to keep everyone's contact information current, I have discontinued doing the newsletters. I have started holding monthly classes in my home pretaining to Provident Living. Still several of the ward members here in the area miss the newsletters and some can not attend the classes. So without flooding your email inbox and struggling to keep everyone's email current, here I offer this little corner of the world wide web.

I will continue to hold monthly meeting in my home. After the meeting, I will take a few minutes and post what we talked about, that way if you were unable to come you can still hear what went on, and hopefully you'll be able to come the following month.

Also, I will be posting my own personal adventures with Provident Living and all that this calling, this church and my life has taught me pertaining to that. Even before I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I had a strong desire to be self sufficient. So the things I post are not just my current "job" in church, but also a part of my own journey.

My hope is that perhaps my own personal journey along with the classes held in my home will encourage others to pick themselves up out of debt and strive to be more self succient in all areas of life.

Let not the winds of economic or social change uproot our family trees. Let us keep our values and hold dear to the values of our forefathers. Let us learn from each other both the gospel and of its spiritual matters as well as its temporal matters.

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!