Adventures in Food Storage

Ev was running a fever last night and we got to spend another night "sleeping" on the couch. I'm so tired, my back is toast. I have to admit watching my poor little one sleep while he was cuddled up next to me was a sweet experience. I have to keep reminding myself that these moments will be gone in a blink, and someday he won't need me to cuddle up to.
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Since we're stuck at home for a while I decided to work on learning how to use my food storage. I've been practicing and doing a bit of "trial and error" trying to learn how to use this stuff. There's no sense in having 100 cans of wheat if all I know how to do is look at it. It's not going to magically turn into something edible by itself. For Christmas my mom got me a wheat grinder -woohoo! I'd been wanting the hand grinding kind. Why not the electric one, you ask? I figure, if I am in the position where I have to grow my own food and grind my own wheat I probably will not be able to afford the electric bill either. More time consuming, but at least I know it will work when I need it. Check out my fancy schmancy set up: The grinder isn't wide enough to affix to my counter, so my only other option was to stick it on the bar stool. I started with making bread. Through trial and error I found out that it is better to grind your wheat the right consistency the FIRST time. Re-grinding it to make it finer is a time consuming pain in the butt.
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Also, fresh yeast and newly ground wheat rise much faster than yeast and flour that has been sitting at the store for long periods of time. If you're using a bread machine you have to watch it or it will rise too much, hit the top of your bread machine, fall and get dough goop all around the inside of your machine. That was a fun clean up... Another tip my mom was kind enough to share with me before I started, was that if the recipe calls for, say 3 cups of flour, use 2 cups of regular all purpose flour and 1 cup of ground wheat flour. Otherwise you'll end up with a wheat brick. Here is the recipe I used:
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Ulla Saunders Roll Recipe

For Bread Machines: Makes 1 loaf or 9-10 lg. rolls)

*Remember, fresh ground wheat rises faster - watch your dough!

Put ingredients in machine in order given. To make rolls, set it on dough. When done, oil hands & form balls. Put in a greased pan & let rise until 1 inch above rim. Bake 15 min. @ 350 degrees.

1 pkg. yeast (1 T.)

3 C. flour (1 C. whole wheat, 2 C. regular all-purpose flour)

1 t. salt

2 T. powdered milk

5 T. sugar

3 T. Crisco (butter flavor) or use margarine

1 C plus 1 1/2 t. lukewarm water

1 egg

...and Tadaa! Yummy rolls made from scratch. I even made a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies and added my ground wheat flour. You can't taste the difference and it adds some nutritional value. Of course, if you add up all the sugar and butter in the cookies, health is not exactly the goal but it sure helps a little to justify how many cookies you ate. "But honey, they're made with whole wheat!"