Not a great title, but that’s what this post is about.
Bread.
I’ve been baking homemade bread on and off for a lot of years. Several years ago, I bought a hand turn grain mill, but we never had a place to keep it handy, so more often than not I’d just use store bought flour rather than haul the mill up from the basement, find the wheat berries in our food storage, and then hand grind the flour. Then I ran out of wheat berries and my old source said they were back ordered.
About a year or so ago, we decided to switch completely to homemade bread, and I decided to make it from freshly ground flour. I found a local source for hard red wheat berries. (I’m still looking for soft white wheat berries though, so if you know where I can buy them in bulk at a reasonable price let me know). I decided to sacrifice a portion of our countertop to hold the grain mill so that it would be handier, and the kids all enjoyed pitching in to help grind the wheat. There have been occasions that we just didn’t have time to make bread and we had to buy a loaf or two from the grocery store, but after eating a steady diet of home made, fresh whole wheat bread, store bought just left us feeling empty (literally).
So I saved a bit and we bought an electric grain mill. I love it. It takes up much less space than the manual mill, and all I have to do is press a button and we have freshly milled flour ready for baking.
But. (there’s always a “but”).
I’m having a hard time getting my bread loaves to rise like they normally do. I do think that the manual grain mill allowed me to get a finer finished flour than I can get with the electric mill, so that probably has something to do with it. I also read that some people screen or sift their freshly milled flour to remove some of the bran. I don’t want to do that though, because we want the whole grain in our bread. Hearty, filling, complete. A little more research showed me that an extended kneading time can help form the gluten better for whole grain bread. I still have some experimenting to do to find the best way to get a nice rise, but even the flatter loaves are still tasty, so no one here is complaining.
School Planning.
Today is day two of our homeschooling year. So far there have only been a few tears shed over math (not me, but close). I’m still working to select books for our homeschool year, but I do have a direction and have started to order what I know we want to read but don’t have in our personal library. We’ll be focusing on mostly Western European history, only going back about 500 years or so, linking back to what was happening in America during those years. We sat down and made a list of great books the girls want to read, and the majority of them are British literature, so that will work out nicely with our history program. I haven’t quite decided whether Silas will work through all the same books as the girls or if I’ll give him alternates or an entirely different focus. I can always adjust later if I need to.
Details for those who want to know. Since I had to order some books, and since I’m still deciding exactly what we want to read, we’re starting our first week with an overview of British history using an easy book – An Island Story. We used a portion of this book several years ago, so some of it is familiar to the kids, which makes it even easier to read through at an accelerated pace. I know we want to read Dracula this year (it will be a family book club read), but we want to read it closer to October, so we’re starting this week with reading through The Wind in the Willows. It’s a classic, but somehow we never read it. It’s a great way to start the school year. I added Whatever Happened to Justice to our list of books today, and grabbed it off our bookshelves to start our Government/Civics reading for the month. All three are writing a daily essay summarizing what they read. They don’t need to summarize every subject, just one per day. Depending on how this goes I may assign a subject per day (Mondays for History, Tuesdays for Literature, etc.), but I like giving them the freedom to select their own topics. I still have a few more subjects to flesh out, but I’m comfortable with this path for this year.
A Painting
I follow a good number of artists online. Some are beginners, some have years of full time painting behind them. Some paint in traditional styles, some are more abstract. I learn something from each of them. There are a few who offer classes or “paint with me” tutorials and videos. One of those artists, TJ Cunningham, has a website dedicated to teaching oil painting. I don’t know how often he does it, but some of the classes are available for a short period of time to those who aren’t paid members. I usually don’t have a chance to watch the videos before they’re moved from the free section to the members only section, and I do have plans to sign up to be a member as soon as the budget allows. One of those “free” videos caught my eye because it was a painting of a spot in Acadia – not too far away from where we live. I made sure to take the time to watch the video, and to begin the painting before the video moved to the members only community.
I made a great start with TJ Cunningham’s video, but then I got lost in some of the shadows and details and then ran out of time to finish the work. I returned to my painting with fresh eyes the other day, and was able to correct some of what bothered me. I learned more about capturing shadows and putting the movement of the sea onto a fixed canvas. I also had fun mixing the colors to capture the warm sun on the cliffs and the varying shades of the ocean. Here’s my finished painting of Otter Cove. I’m not 100% happy with it, and I have heard that we shouldn’t share paintings that we don’t love, but I loved the process, I loved the subject matter, I loved learning some things I didn’t know, and I’m content with this first attempt at a subject I hadn’t tried before.
8 x 10 oil on canvas