Five Minutes a Day for Fresh-Baked Bread and a trip to the zoo!

Grandma allowed us to rent her a wheelchair so that Chicka could ride on her lap. Only because Chicka wanted it - not because we would still be sitting at the entrance to the zoo today if we hadn't! We also forgot her sunhat, so she was decked out in hubby's cap. Hmmm it looks about as good on her as it does on him! hint, hint!

The day started out well enough.

We had from back left to right - hubby, IBoy, Grandma (99 years old!), my Dad, MissE and Chick-a-Dee. Grandma and Chicka really wanted to ride the train. We grumbled the whole train ride, as the only animals we saw were the back end of one tiger, about 3 seconds of an elephant and an ant crawling on hubby's arm.

In retrospect - the train ride was the best part of the day! A rare glimpse of the camera bearer (me!).

Chicka did have fun sitting in the eagle's nest.

I didn't dare remove the camera from the case after this point. We made the unfortunate decision to visit the zoo on $2 Tuesday. BAD idea. We live in the country for a reason. The reason? We must have a huge personal space need, because none of us do well in crowds. Did I mention that the zoo was CROWDED????? People shovin', people pushin', people screamin', people, people, people! It was hot (something none of us enjoy also - picky folks, aren't we?). The zoo was under construction and was thus NOT very wheelchair/stroller friendly. I think the next time we get a hair brained idea to visit the zoo, we will gladly pay full price. On a weekday. During school hours.

IBoy said that he doesn't want to even go as far as our little town for a long time! Our town consists of no traffic lights, one country post office, one church, one cafe, one volunteer fire station, one market/gas station/movie rental, one school campus (preschool - high school 300 students in all)! Enough said :-)


Five minutes a day for fresh baked bread?????? No kidding! You make up a "wet" batch of it and then throw it in the cooler. Whenever you want to make "bread" you scoop some out and in 5 minutes (or less!) you have bread rising ready to be baked!

You let it rise in a big bowl - this one obviously is NOT big enough!

Although the recipe calls for white flour - I couldn't bring myself to go all white. I added about a third of whole wheat to the ratio. It turned out great! We made 2 loaves of bread, 12 dinner rolls, 4 huge naan (if you've never had naan - try it - it is the bomb!). I whipped up a fresh raspberry, lemon juice and powdered sugar drizzle to put on top of the buttered naan for breakfast. Sure fire hit in this house!

I just made up a new batch today and figured (here we go, for those of you who know me - I can never leave a set of directions as they are - I ALWAYS have to tweak it to my whim!) that since the whole wheat worked fine last time, I would mix it up a little more to my liking! Of the 13 cups of called for flour, I did 8 white, 3 whole wheat, 1 flax seed meal and 1 bulgar. We'll see if it works as well!

I sprinkled some herbs and garlic powder on the tops before they rose. Yummy!

Here is where I got the information for the bread. Please give it a try and let me know how it works for you! This link was posted on a list that I belong to - Hillbilly Housewives! I love the name!

http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=142688