The Happy Domestic

This is not my recipe. I found it on Allrecipes.com , and it worked so well for me - and turned out no matter how many substitutions I made - that I adopted it as my permanent bread recipe.  I've substituted various oils for butter when I was out of it (just don't use anything a strong flavour, like olive oil). I've even used corn syrup instead of honey. (I imagine molasses would work too, maybe with dark rye flour and a little caraway to make a nice pumpernickel loaf!) I sometimes forget the salt, which doesn't affect the rising or texture of the loaf, just makes it a bit sweeter than my liking.You do need at least half of the flour to be all purpose or bread flour though, for the gluten to make it rise nicely. Notice that I don't use bread flour myself - all purpose requires a little more kneading, but is cheaper and more convenient for me. So, here goes: Bread From Scratch 3 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C) 1 tbsp active dry yeast (quick rising)...

Here's one recipe anyone can try - but shouldn't. You won't like it. Trust me. Baked Lobster 1 adult, lightly dressed 2 youngsters, lightly dressed 1 large bottle of 55 SPF sunscreen Liberally slather sunscreen on the 2 youngsters. That's it. Sounds like a no-brainer, eh? Or maybe I missed something... Anyway, we still had lots of fun at Riverview Park & Zoo today. :)

Here we are in the final days (I hope!) of getting ready to open our home for foster care, and the list of things to be done seems interminable. Medicals are done, criminal checks are done, bedrooms are ready, but still there are the last couple of reference letters to collect, CO detectors to buy, small handyman jobs to finish, locked cabinet to pick up, and... first aid training to take! Just when I thought I had everything ready to go, I realized we don't have our CPR certification. I really didn't have any idea, going into this, how much it was going to cost all at once to get up and running. It certainly can be a deterrent for anyone looking at fostering as just "a job". For us, however, it has if anything given us an opportunity to reaffirm that this is something we feel is a real calling. Whatever it takes, we will make it through, because of our convictions. Being parents is an enormous privilege, whether of biological children or otherwise. It's worth i...

I've been thoroughly enjoying making curries lately, blending my own spice pastes and hot oil to release fragrant aromas throughout the house. In fact, I've been doing a lot of from-scratch cooking in the last while: baking bread, scones, brownies, creatively using pantry staples, and finding new ways to use clearance produce. In the midst of my foodie euphoria, however, I am having some trepidation. Right now our family has adventurous palates. My husband will eat anything I make, and usually love it. My toddler will eat almost anything (except for some reason she doesn't like meat much), and my teething baby will try to eat ANYTHING she can get her hands on. And me, I love food. If it's edible, I'll eat it. But soon we will have new mouths to feed, who will probably be unused to many of the foods and flavours that we enjoy. Take lamb for instance. I don't know a whole lot of people who like lamb. We love it! It has such a great, full-bodied flavour, and is nut...

Yesterday was what Anne Shirley would call a "Jonah Day" for me. It wasn't the large cup of coffee that my toddler dumped behind the couch at 8:00 AM, it wasn't the 29°C heat in my house, it wasn't the food that got thrown on the floor at every meal... but these things didn't help. Things really started going downhill when I went to get Boo up from her morning nap and found her diaperless, smearing poop all over the crib, her body, her face and hair. Now don't get me wrong, I love my kids, and I can even see the humour of the situation - when it's happening to someone else - but at this particular moment, I felt like I was losing it. This little girl got an earful and besides that was forced under the shower despite her aversion to getting her head wet. If it's the only way to get her clean, I'm sorry, but she will just have to cry! After she was clean, dressed, and hair done up pretty, I put her downstairs in the playpen and went back up to st...

One of the reasons my posts have been sparse and oft interrupted in the last month or so is that we are in the processing of taking a big step towards opening our home to more children. That is, we are soon to be foster parents. Having passed through the rigours of psychological testing / personality profiling and an initial home inspection, we are now in the process of getting our home fully safety compliant, going through medical screening, criminal background checks, and character references. On one hand almost anyone can be a foster parent, but on the other hand, it sure takes a lot to get to be one! All the rigamarole, far from being burdensome, is just getting me more excited about being a foster parent to the kids we will have in our care. My Prince Charming and I have felt for some time now that we would like to adopt an older child who might have difficulty finding a good home. Ever since we started thinking about raising children, I knew I would love to have a big family...bu...

One of my favourite bloggers runs a "Wifey Wednesday" posting, and this week's was about the idea that a man who makes his wife cry is not worth having. The point of Sheila's post was that we need to get over the idea of a fairy-tale life with Prince Charming and value our real-life marriages. I saw the Disney movie Enchanted just last night (and loved it). I found it more humourous than anything, and took it to be poking fun at our tendency to expect fairy-tale endings. (All the spoofs involved were hilarious!) The premise is that Gisele, a fairy-tale girl, is waiting for her Prince Edward to sweep her off her feet, complete love's duet with her, give her True Love's Kiss, and marry her for a happily-ever after ending. Unfortunately, the jealous evil queen interrupts her plans and sends her to the real world of New York City, where "there is no happily every after." There she learns about love in real life, where she can actually get upset, get hu...

I made a new friend this month, who is as interested as I am in eating healthy, living on a dime, and family matters. You can visit her blog here , which is a fairly recent initiative. Deep in conversation with my new friend, however, I felt convicted of not having spent enough energy blogging about the OTHER "green". While a lot of my blog posts have focused on low-cost living, not so many have talked about our environmental impact. The fact is, my husband and I are both very concerned with living sustainably and practicing good stewardship, and finances are only part of the picture. Maybe I don't blog about eco-friendly living mainly because most of our household choices naturally tend in that direction without much thought. For a large part, frugality is synonymous with sustainability: For instance, buying in bulk reduces waste AND saves money. Cutting down on energy consumption reduces your carbon footprint AND saves money. Saving food scraps for soup and composting r...