Six Word Saturday!

It's that time again...Six Word Saturday! To find out more about 6WS and to participate, check out Call Me Cate's great blog by clicking the button below.

My words:

Long weekends make this mama happy.

It'll be so nice to have hubby home on Monday! We're going to hang out with some friends that day. I'm not sure whether or not we'll do anything special Sunday for Independence Day. Going to a community fireworks show sounds good until I think about parking and the craziness of big crowds and a toddler who likes to run. Sitting at home relaxing that night doesn't sound so bad either!

What are you doing this weekend?

Of dinosaurs and butterflies

I decided yesterday I was ready to go buy the paint for Chickie's room. I'm going to paint one accent wall. (I don't really like painting walls, so one wall is preferable to four!) I was also planning on painting butterflies and flowers to match her Dora bedding.

I asked Chickie what color she wanted the wall to be. She told me purple, which somehow is a color that doesn't appear at all in her colorful bedding. But she really wanted it, and I figured that while it may not match her valance and comforter, at least it won't clash.

"And you want butterflies and flowers on the wall, right?" I asked.

"Well, Mommy," she said, "You already put butterflies and flowers on the curtains." Apparently this meant they shouldn't be on the wall, because she continued, "I want dinosaurs on the wall."

Dora...and dinosaurs? I groaned inwardly, trying to decide if I should stick with the flowers and butterflies, which actually make sense, or indulge her rather eclectic taste. I tabled the issue for a little while.

On the way to the store to get paint, I decided to ask an open-ended question, to see if perhaps her opinions had changed again. "What do you want me to paint on the wall?" I asked her.

"I want letters," she said. That's fine; I was planning to paint her name, which just so happens to be comprised of letters. "And dinosaurs, and trees, and flowers, and butterflies." She paused. "Oh, and I want you to paint a blue car too, Mommy!"

Who was the idiot that thought of asking her an open-ended question? Since I am not a surrealist mural artist, I told her, "Chickie, that's going to be too much painting." Realizing that there could indeed be a worse theme than Dora and dinosaurs (namely, Dora and everything else), I asked, "Do you want flowers and butterflies, or dinosaurs?"

"Dinosaurs!" she replied happily.

So behind her Dora bed will be a purple wall that doesn't match anything else in the room, and on it will be painted dinosaurs. But they will be dinosaurs in lovely shades of pink, turqoise, green, orange, and yellow...the colors that just happen to appear on that bedding. Score 1 for Mom's sense of order. (And score about a million for Chickie's sense of creativity.)

The room won't win any decorating contests, but if it's a place where my girly tomboy feels at home, I'll be happy!

Blueberry Streusel Bread: The whole wheat version!

It's blueberry season! Last July I posted a recipe for Blueberry Streusel Bread. It's super-yummy, but not the healthiest bread in the world (to put it mildly.)

This week I got a good deal on blueberries at Costco, so I decided to make the bread again. But I wanted to make it a bit healthier. Instead of using regular challah dough (with all white flour) I used the dough recipe for Braided Challah With Whole Wheat and Wheat Germ from pages 258-261 of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

I'm not going to claim the bread is now healthy. It still has a lot of fat and sugar, and I'm a little scared to know what the calorie count is. But now 5/8 of the flour is whole wheat, which adds healthy fiber. (I used White Whole Wheat which is just as healthy as regular whole wheat, but has a lighter color and flavor.) And it's got a bit of wheat germ in it, which gives you folic acid, vitamin E, and more fiber. I also made this challah dough with canola oil instead of butter (though the streusel topping still has a lot of butter in it!) In other words, it's still a treat, but it's a treat with more nutritional value than the original had!

As for taste...it was delicious. The original is so sweet and I liked that the sweetness was tempered with the hearty taste of whole wheat flour. I'd feel confident serving this even to people who don't normally eat a lot of whole grains. (If you have a Fourth of July party to attend, you might be the host's favorite guest if you bring this!)

Luckily, the recipe for the dough is on the Artisan Bread in Five/Healthy Bread in Five blog. So I can share this recipe with you even if you don't have the book! (But if you don't have it...it's a great one for your cookbook library!)

First I'll tempt you with a photo of the finished product....



Now I'll give you the modified recipe, and below that I'll include the photos I took for the original blog post. Just know that your dough will look darker than the dough in the photos, thanks to the whole wheat flour.

Blueberry Streusel Bread with Whole Wheat and Wheat Germ

Ingredients:

1 to 1 1/4 pounds Challah With Whole Wheat and Wheat Germ dough (See #1 in Instructions below.)

Blueberries (to taste, about 1 to 1 1/2 cup)

Streusel topping

Streusel topping ingredients:

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup old fashioned oats

Instructions:

1. Make dough in advance--it should be refrigerated for at least a few hours prior to using. The recipe can be found in pages 258-261 of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Or you can use the recipe for Whole Grain Challah With Cranberries and Orange Zest from the Artisan Bread in Five blog--just don't use any cranberries or orange zest. The dough recipe makes a LOT. If you make the whole dough recipe, you'll need about 1/4 of the dough for this bread. The rest can be stored in the fridge for up to five days and used for delicious braided challah bread, using the instructions from the book or the blog. Or you can just divide all the measurements by 4 and only make as much as you need.

2. Lightly grease a full-sized loaf pan.

3. Make the streusel topping. Mix flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Use pastry blender or food processor's "Pulse" mode to cut in butter until crumbly.

4. Stir oats into streusel topping.

3. Sprinkle dough surface with flour. Break off a 1 to 1 1/2 pound piece of dough (grapefruit-sized or a bit larger.) Cover with flour, then quickly form into a ball. Place on flour-sprinkled surface.

5. Use hands and rolling pin to stretch/roll dough into a rough rectangle. You may need to roll it out partially, then let it rest for a few minutes, if it's "bouncing back" too much as you roll. Short side should be about as long as the loaf pan; long side should be about 12-16 inches.

6. Liberally sprinkle dough with blueberries.

7. Liberally sprinkle blueberries with streusel topping.

8. Carefully roll dough, starting with short side. When done, gently pinch edge to the body of the roll to seal it.

9. Place roll in loaf pan, seam side down.

10. Let loaf rest for 1 hour 20 minutes. Near the end of this time, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

11. Liberally sprinkle loaf with streusel topping, gently pressing the streusel into the top of the loaf. If some topping falls in between the loaf and the pan, even better!

12. If your bread is near the top of the loaf pan, place pan on a cookie sheet to catch any streusel that falls off when the bread rises in the oven. Bake about 55 minutes; it should be nicely browned. Let cool a bit on a rack.

13. Cut...and enjoy!

Photos:

Making the streusel:


Streusel before oatmeal has been added:


Streusel with oatmeal added:


The ball of dough:


Rolled-out dough:


Dough + blueberries = Yum. (But do try to avoid including any blueberry stems unless you want to add even more fiber. Can you spot the one I missed?)


Dough + blueberries + streusel = Double yum.


Big ol' roll of yumminess:


In the pan!


Sprinkled with streusel and ready to bake:


Cooling: