Mom Photographer and The Gang

Today was such a gorgeous day. The weather is amazing. 

For the last two weeks we have had workers working around our apartments. It’s loud and dirty everywhere. They start to work VERY early so we all had to get up early as well. Most of the time our daughter couldn’t take her afternoon naps (me neither) because it’s too loud. We lived that through and today I enjoyed sleeping in while my husband got up with our Little One. I really needed it.

On Monday the noise will start again, though. Ugh.

The best thing is that today I was able to clean our patio from all that dirt, dust and everything else. The thing that was even better was my daughter  helping me like never before. She really did a great job.

She was so busy and engaged. It was great just to watch her doing her own things while trying to copy all the things I was doing. Of course, where we go the dog follows, as well. That’s natural thing in here.

Right now I’m enjoying long and quiet nap time. Finally I have chance to put together a post. I’m a little bit behind. So many pictures taken and nothing posted… . 

So today I want to share  2 great things I made a few days ago.

BUTTER – homemade. It took my 15 minutes to make it!!!

BREAD – for the first time in my life I used a bread maker, and I LOVED it.

That machine is not only big and old but very loud as well. I got it from my in-laws a month ago. When it’s working it scares our daughter and it jumps all over the kitchen counter, but it turned out it works great.

I got my bread recipe from Sonoma Garden. I made the Gingery Whole-wheat Bread.

My changes to the recipe:

I used honey instead of molasses.

I skipped the ginger.

After I took the dough from the bread maker I added about 1/4 cup of sunflower seeds to the dough. Knead it to incorporate them. Sprinkle a few seeds on top as well, just for the look because they fall off while slicing the bread.

The rest of the recipe is the same.

That’s what I ended up with.

Doesn’t it look pretty.

But believe me… it tastes even better than it looks.

While the bread was in the oven I thought that it’s a perfect time to make butter. I read about a few methods of making it and I picked one that is the easiest and the fastest one in my opinion. You won’t believe how easy it is to make your own butter, and how delicious it tastes.

To make it you’ll need:

1. Mixer

2. Heavy cream

3. Salt (optional)

Since I was making it for the first time in my life I decided not to use a lot of heavy cream. I just wanted to “check it out”. I used about 3/4 of a quart.

How to make it:

Put it in a mixing bowl and mix, first on low-speed. After about 5 minutes increase the speed. Just like you would make whipped cream. It actually will turn into a whipped cream at some point but to make the butter you need to mix it more. If you continue to mix you’ll see the mixture separating into a white milk-like water and yellow butter. You might have to pour that water out of the mixing bowl and mix the butter a little bit longer. You need to get as much of that water as you can.

The white water is called whey. It can be used for baking bread in place of water.

You could add salt to it or some kind of herbs and spices, but I prefer it without anything and add those things as I use the butter.

Tell me that wasn’t easy! 😉

All those two things goes so well with Polish cold soup and spinach pesto:

Recipe and more pictures of that delicious and refreshing soup next time! 🙂

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• Making Butter (midwestkids.wordpress.com)
• Cheesy and Yummy – Stuffed Pull Apart Bread (momphotographer.wordpress.com)