Rhubarb Bread

Bread
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs, beaten
2 cups sugar
½ cup applesauce
½ cup oil
4 tablespoons sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup chopped nuts

Topping
4 cups flour
4 tablespoons butter
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Sift flour, soda and salt together. Add sugar, eggs, oil, applesauce and sour cream. Fold in nuts and rhubarb. Pour into two greased bread pans. Cut sugar and cinnamon into butter into crumbly. Sprinkle with topping. Bake at 350° for 60 minutes. This recipe makes two loaves.

June 13: Garden Update

This weekend brought a lot of rain, a lot of weeds and a lot of garden progress. This coming week will be full of weeding and mulching to cut down on future weeding. I don't think I'll be watering anytime soon.

The potatoes are starting to flower. They need to be weeded and hilled with straw this week. If they aren't hilled the potatoes will form above ground, have a green color from exposure to the sun and be poisonous.

There were some germination issues with the sugar snap peas so they are a bit behind. They are just starting to flower.

The yellow wax beans are on the verge of flowering. The green beans also had to be replanted so they are a couple weeks behind.

The strawberries were plentiful this year and should be done this week. Each year I contemplate tearing them out. They always surprise me and making me change my mind.

Who I am.

A few weeks ago we had a staff development day in our college. As part of the day, we were asked to take a strengths inventory based on the books Strength Finders 2.0 and Strengths Based Leadership and attend a workshop. The idea is to find out what you are good at and develop those strengths rather than working to develop the areas in which you fall short.

My strengths were:

1. Positivity: I generally have a positive outlook on life and look for the best in people.
2. Includer: I enjoy meeting new people and am quick to include them in the groups I am part of.
3. Achiever: I am quick to act, like to feel engaged in my activities, focus on processes and like to accomplish things. I am a list person. I have eleven years worth of notebooks to prove it.
4. Competition: I like to win in situations that are important to me. No surprise here.
5. Futuristic: I am a goal setter and love to talk with visionary people.

I love personality profiles like this. I've done DISC and Myers-Briggs and going through this exercise was just as interesting. How could a quick inventory do such a good job at describing me?

It was even more interesting when a friend described who she was on her blog this week and asked who 'we' were.

Too often I tie my answer to that question to the roles I am playing at the moment. Just look at my blog header. So I am going to use what I learned from Strength Finders and answer her question without thinking about the roles I am currently playing. My roles are not what define me. It's who I am at my core that defines me and those attributes shine through in all of the roles I play.

I:
am happy.
like to try and succeed at new things.
like making people feel more comfortable in any given situation.
am always looking to the future.
like to control what I can.
always try to find the bright spot.
am structured.
am versatile.
am a life-long learner.
am creative.
am emotional.
am a builder.
am a good listener.
am faithful.

The second part of my friend's post described what she wasn't. In concert with Strength Finders, I am not going to focus on what I'm not. That list is way too long and it will make me feel bad about myself and quite overwhelmed. I know I am far from perfect so I'll just try harder to build on what I am.

Garden Progress

It seems like just last week the garden looked like this.

Pretty hairy and pretty scary.  It gave me nightmares.  Then things finally started to come up and I could weed without disturbing ungerminated seeds.

And, now I finally have a clean garden with plants I can row.  I am finally at peace.

Rhubarb Butter Crunch

Church recipe books are one of the best things about living in a rural area. All the country cooks (a.k.a. Church Basement Ladies) submit their best recipes. I received this cookbook from my husband's great aunt as a wedding shower gift.






I discovered one my favorite springtime recipes inside. I've been known to eat the entire baking dish of this delectable dessert. I hope you enjoy it just as much as I do.

10 Random Things

I haven't been posting regularly but I have been busy! Here are ten random things I've been up to:

10. Hauling kids to basketball, dance and soccer.
9. Starting a new job! Hooray!
8. Avoiding the gail force winds that blow through my yard. When will the wind stop blowing?
7. Running.
6. Cooking a meal at Ronald McDonald House Charities. It is such a great place!
5. Mowing the lawn. It started a month early this season. YUCK!
4. Training (ok mostly yelling) at the puppy. I need professional help. For the puppy, not me.
3. Planting seeds in my basement. Veggies and flowers.
2. Not cleaning my house. I need professional help here, too.
1. Applying to grad school. I will start working on my doctoral degree in the fall. YIKES!

Pizza Night

My Friday nights as a kid were spent watching Dallas and eating popcorn with my family. It was a family ritual that I remember almost as well as Christmas Eve, Christmas morning and Easter morning.

When I had kids, I decided I wanted to do something similar. Unfortunately, and much to my husband's chagrin, Dallas reruns are hard to find.

So I decided that I would try my best to make homemade pizza on Friday nights. Do I do it every Friday? No, but I probably make it more Fridays than not.

Recently my husband's cousins and their significant others came to the farm to visit on a Friday. It was suggested that we order pizza. On a Friday night. Those words were like a knife straight through my heart.

Even though I would be feeding 15, I decided to make my pizza rather than take the easier, cleaner way out. And, it was a success! So much that cousin Mandy asked for the recipe so they could recreate it at home. What a great compliment!

So here goes!

My 'go to' dough recipe is from my KitchenAid mixer cookbook. If you don't have one of these it's not the end of the world, but you should really get one. It is amazing!

If you don't have a mixer, combine all the ingredients in a bowl, then turn the dough out onto the counter and knead it until smooth and elastic.

If you do have a mixer, add the water, yeast, salt and oil and let it sit for a minute. I never measure the water temperature. I just run the tap nice and hot and add it to the bowl. My mother-in-law, the home economics teacher, is probably cringing.

Sometimes I add a tablespoon or two of honey, sometimes I don't. Just depends on how sweet I'm feeling.

Next add 2.5 cups of flour and mix on 2 for about a minute. Slowly add .5 cup of flour at a time, up to 3.5 cups, and until the dough clings to the hook and cleans the side of the bowl.

Sometimes I add a cup of wheat flour. It gives the dough a nutty taste and makes me feel healthier.

Form the dough into a disk. Drizzle olive oil in the bottom of the bowl, put the dough in the bowl then turn it over to coat both sides with oil. Cover the bowl with a dish towel and put in a draft free place to rise for an hour.

The dough should double in size.

Punch it down. If you are making the dough for the night before, put in the fridge. A few hours before you want to use it the next day, take it out and let it rise again until double, then punch it down again.

If you are ready to make the pizza, slide your pizza stone into the oven and preheat it to 450 degrees.

Divide the dough and form a disc. Roll it out to about 1/8 inch thick.

It absolutely does not have to be a perfect circle.

Take your pizza stone out of the oven and sprinkle corn meal on top to prevent the dough from sticking.

One of my many secrets is to use tomatoes rather than tomato sauce. I prefer tomatoes from my garden that I have canned, but alas, I used them up at the cousin party. Walmart tomatoes also do the trick.

Spread the tomatoes and as little juice as possible over the crust. Sprinkle the tomatoes with Italian Seasoning, then have some fun. I put all sorts of stuff on pizza: garlic, pepperonis, sausage (browned before), bacon, prosciutto, blue cheese, mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, brie, whatever you think sounds good. Finish it with some fresh ground pepper and oregano on top.


I made this pizza last Saturday. I didn't realize until I got to the cheese part that I only had 2 cups of mozzarella left. Cheddar worked just as well.

This week's crust turned out super crisp. Every week is different.

I didn't have too many complaints!