Reaching goals

I was going to set the goal of blogging every day in May but then I realized May had already begun and I would undoubtedly fail. Instead, my goal is to post 10 times this month. I think I can handle blogging every third day.

Last week I achieved a goal that I set a while back - I baked bread from wheat that I ground myself!

Ta-da! Stockpiling wheat, January 17, 2009

First you grind it up

into whole-wheat flourThen mix it into your other ingredientsRoll into loaves, rise, and bake in the ovenFinally, slice and serve

I forgot to take a pic of the bread pans before baking so you'll just have to trust me that those loaves came from my dough. And yes, it tasted simply divine.

Finally baking my own bread is part of a larger goal Josh and I set at the beginning of this year; the goal to "Get prepared." What a blanket, difficult-to-measure, trite little goal. We were pretty gung ho about it back in January, but our passion died down a bit when my class and Josh's job both became more time-consuming. I waxed some cheese in February for our long-term food storage, but all of my videos and pics from that afternoon are forever locked away on a damaged memory card that will only give me error messages when I try to retrieve them. I waxed a couple of blocks again in March but didn't have Josh available to videotape it, so I only have a few pictures to show you.

Ingredients:

These cheese blocks...

...plus these melted wax blocks...

...equal these wax-covered cheese blocks!

Completely cover with 2-3 layers and you get cheese with an indefinite shelf life. Yay!

Now that I'm out of school for the summer, I've started cracking down on what still needs to be done to 'Be prepared'. We have a long way to go, but thankfully we have a pretty good start.

Finally, there's another, more exciting goal that's been in the works since Josh and I married three years ago: Save enough money to put 20% down on a home. We have finally reached the point in our finances that we are comfortable doing just that and still have a bit in savings for my dental hygiene program and any hiccups life throws our way. It's very exciting to be 'in the market' right now when interest rates are good and the federal government will give us $8k for taking someone else's house off their hands for them.

The sad news about the house situation is that we aren't planting our garden this year because we don't want to leave our boxes and decorative rock behind when we move. Especially disappointing is that a fellow ward member promised to help me can my own salsa this summer using vegetables I grow myself. Bummer. That's a goal I'll have to reach in 2010 instead.

Feedback Required

We bought a Kitchenaid mixer earlier this month and I was so excited to use it to start baking my very own whole-wheat bread. We eat Harper's Homemade Honey Wheat bread and it is soooo good. It's nice and heavy and has a homemade taste and feel. Unfortunately, this is the only thing I can find about it on google, and I don't think that's right since the packaging lists an Idaho address. But I digress...

Josh and I (mostly Josh) consume about two loaves of bread per week, so in order to avoid repeated trips to the grocery store every week, I buy 6-8 loaves at a time and just freeze them. We started wondering a couple months ago if it would be cheaper to start baking our own bread instead, and we decided to go for it. Thus, the purchase of the Kitchenaid, which is something I've wanted for a long time anyway, and we also bought the grain mill attachment to go with it. However, we heard from many people that even with the 475-watt motor our mixer has, grinding wheat may tax it too strongly, so Josh bought a Nutrimill grain mill to grind our wheat instead.

All of that is fine and well, except now our quest to make cheap homemade bread has cost us more than $500. We'll consider it a good investment, though, if we find the perfect appliance combination and I become a successful bread-maker. And we haven't used either wheat grinder yet so we can return one, so tell me...what's your take? Which would you keep and why? What have you heard about the Kitchenaid attachment, or Nutrimill, or both?

In the meantime, I bought some wheat flour from the store so I could at least start practicing the actual bread baking. And that leads me to my next question...what bread recipe is the best? We'd like to find something similar to or better than the Harper's bread we eat right now. The ingredient list for that bread is: 100% Whole Wheat Flour, Water, Honey, Soybean Oil, Salt, Yeast. That's it. The bread bag obviously doesn't list quantities, so I looked around online for a recipe and found this one, which I'm going to try out tomorrow; that is, unless all y'all have THE PERFECT bread recipe to share with me.

So let's have it - recommendations for grain mills and wheat bread recipes - I'm open to all feedback and suggestions. Thanks!