Amish Friendship Bread Starter

I became obsessed with this bread after my friend's mom gave me a baggy of starter. It got to be too much for me, though, because I never gave away the starter and didn't know that I could cut down on the "feedings" to produce less.

Recently, I started craving it again, but had no idea how to get a hold of some of the starter. I started searching online and found a recipe to make my very own starter. I was so excited.

Here is the recipe that I followed the first time. You will wind up with about four cups of starter on day 27. I kept one cup in a glass jar, so that I can keep it alive. Then, I baked the other three cups. With one cup, I made pumpkin bread, with the second cup, I baked lemon poppy seed bread, and with the third cup, I made the traditional Amish bread. This will make SIX loaves.

However, now I am going to cut down on my feedings. I will only add 1/4 C each of flour, sugar, and milk. That way, I can just bake one cup and save one.

I doubt that any of you will be interested in doing this, but I just love doing it. Plus, the results are SUPER tasty! It really isn't as daunting as it seems. If you forget to stir it for a couple of days, it isn't a big deal. If you happen to be going out of town, you can refrigerate it and ignore it for up to a week.

PS- all that stuff about not using metal is crap. Use whatever you have.

Amish Friendship Bread Starter

1 c. sugar
1 c. milk
1 c. flour

Combine ingredients in a large, deep glass or plastic container. Cover lightly. If the container has a lid, leave it slightly open, or place a piece of cheesecloth over the container and secure it with a rubber band. Store at room temperature.

Stir every day for 17 days.

On the 18th day do nothing.

On the 19, 20 and 21, stir.

On day 22 stir and add 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk. Stir again.

On days 23, 24, 25 and 26 stir.

On day 27, add 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk and 1 cup sugar. Stir. You should have about 4 cups starter. Give 1 cup each to two friends and keep the remaining two cups for yourself.

Use one in Amish Friendship Bread recipe (which follows) and use the other to keep the starter going.

When you give away the starter, include these instructions:

How to keep a starter going:

Do not refrigerate and do not use a metal spoon when stirring.

On day 1 (the day you receive you starter) do nothing.

Days, 2 3, and 4, stir or squeeze the bag.

On day 5, stir in 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk.

Pour mixture into large glass mixing bowl; cover lightly. Mixture will rise.

On days, 6, 7, 8 and 9, stir.

On day 10, stir in 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk and stir. Give 1 cup each to two friends, keeping one cup to make the bread and one cup for your starter.



Amish Friendship Bread

1 c. starter
1 c. oil
2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. milk
3 eggs
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 c. nuts, chopped
1 lg. box instant vanilla pudding


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two loaf pans. In a small bowl, make a cinnamon and sugar mixture to sprinkle inside pans. Reserve some.

2. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. Pour into prepared pans. Sprinkle some reserved cinnamon and sugar mixture on top.

3. Bake for 40-50 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before removing from pans.

To freeze: wrap tightly in plastic wrap, then in aluminum foil.

Tasty Pizza Dough

I found this recipe on Cookin' Canuck's site. It was super easy to make and absolutely scrumptious! It is something that we will definitely make often. :)


Pizza Crust


1 package dry yeast
1 cup warm (105-115 degrees F) water
1 tsp honey or sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
Cooking spray
Flour for kneading and rolling


Pour the yeast into a large bowl. Add water and honey, and stir. Let the mixture sit until foamy bubbles appear on the surface of the water, about 10 minutes. Add the flours, salt, and olive oil and stir with a wooden spoon.


Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic, about 5-6 minutes. Spray a large bowl with cooking spray, place the ball of dough in the bowl and lightly spray the surface with cooking spray. Cover the bowl with a dish towel and let the dough rest in a warm, draft-free room for 1 hour.


Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. After 1 hour, the dough should have doubled in size. Punch down the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough into a circle. Place it on a cookie sheet or pizza paddle. If you are using a pizza stone, place it in the 500 degree oven for 15 minutes. Cover the dough with desired toppings and either place it in the oven on a cookie sheet or slide it from the pizza paddle onto the stone.


Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is bubbling.


Makes one 12-inch pizza.

Just Me Being Honest!

It's Sunday night. I have absolutely no ambition to go to work tomorrow. Last week was terrible. I know that I'm not the only person in the world that hates their job, but I honestly don't know how much longer I can do it. It's getting worse and worse. My supervisor just keeps bringing in new participants.

There are mornings when I get there and there are already 25 people and several days when we have over 30 for the day. That is insanity. In the dining room, we are really cramped for space. Staff can hardly even walk around. At what point will she stop and realize that there are TOO MANY people?! We fight every day to people able to seat everyone. The noise level is too much. Everything we do is wrong. It is much too overwhelming. On Thursday, I was so stressed that I came home and bawled my eyes out to Jeff.

We have two rooms for activities. Both rooms have an activity scheduled in it at any given time and my supervisor doesn't want all the participants in one room. She wants them spread out. However, the other day one of my coworkers decided that instead of doing her activity, she'd dump ALL of the participants off on me so that she could sit on her ass and do paperwork. Excuse me?? The room I was in didn't even have enough seating for everyone. I wanted to deck her. I am not there to do her job, too. She has special time set aside at the END of the day - when there are less people there - for her to do paperwork. She already does way less than we do. Now she is just pushing it.

I sometimes complained about working as a CNA because my supervisors ran us thin. We were always understaffed. If State had known how short we worked at times, we could have been cited, or worse. It was hard work. However, I had coworkers that I could turn to for help and support. We were a team. Aside from that, I actually liked what I did. I actually looked forward to going to work most days. I don't have that at work now. Being a CNA was physically taxing, but I'd take that over a mentally and emotionally taxing job anyday.

I will no longer being taking care of people after this job. I am done, worn out, and COMPLETELY over it. Working with the elderly was much more rewarding than what I do now. Everytime I take the participants on an outing, some stranger will stop me to tell me that I'm a "saint", or something like that. No, I'm not. To be completely honest, I hate my job and I'm pretty sure that my supervisor knows it. I've been miserable there for about 8 or 9 months now. I have really done my best to try to hide it, but it is the same thing day in and day out. I think that the happy, bubbly facade that I've been wearing is starting to become see through, the thinner my patience wears.

I probably sound like a terrible person for saying that, but I challenge all of you to just give it a whirl. Some of you are probably MUCH better people than I am and would find it to be the best thing ever. I suspect that after enough time, though, that a lot of you would know exactly where I'm coming from.

I won't be going anywhere anytime soon, though. I haven't seen any job openings that I qualify for. I pray everyday. I pray for both a new job opportunity, as well as the patience that I need to make it through another day at work. I pray to become a better person. No answers yet. I'll continue to send them out, though. Eventually He will answer, right?

---

I had a really good weekend. Well, except I overdid it all weekend with food. Big time! I feel fat and sluggish. Ugh. I hate this feeling. Next weekend won't be much better, what with Halloween AND Jeff's birthday. I will be good this week, though.

Last Sunday, I made homemade pizza crust with a recipe that I found online. It turned out really well. It is something that we do frequently. However, I think that the next time we will let it bake just a few minutes longer. I will post the recipe on here, I think - in addition to anything else that I try from now on.

I made banana bread this week, since I had everything on hand and I got free bananas from work. I sent it to work with Jeff. He loved it.

It is really nice to have all the baking ingredients that you could possibly need around the house. Yesterday we made homemade waffles with another recipe I found. They were really good.

Today I made oatmeal cranberry cookies.

Tomorrow I get to bake my Amish Friendship bread that I've been waiting 27 whole days to make. I will be making pumpkin, lemon poppy seed, and the traditional Amish bread. That will make a total of six loaves! I'm sending half with Jeff and freezing the rest for a later use. :)

Jeff leaves for Texas on Saturday the 21st. His cousin is getting married. I fly out on Tuesday the 24th. One day of work that week. Thank God! I'm really scared to meet his family, though. :|

On Friday, Jeff and I just bummed around the house. On Saturday, he did yardwork, while I cleaned up the house. Then, we went out to eat at Bayrischer Hof, a German restaurant right down the road from us. It was really good! We had a party of about 20 people from his flight. It was fun.

Today we did nothing. I slept in. We watched "Confessions of a Serial Killer" (that Jeffrey Dahmer interview) together - even though I've seen in at least two other times. We fell asleep and took a nice, long nap. I woke up in time to watch ALF. :)

Tonight, Jeff is making Crawfish Etoufee, something that he had in Louisiana and has been dying to make for me. I made homemade cornbread with a recipe I found online. I hope it is good.

That is all I have to say for now. I'm not sure what we will do for his birthday, but we will have fun!

Love,

Me!

I'm Back.

Wow, it has been forever! In fact, the last time that I wrote was while Jeff was TDY in Louisiana. I stopped writing when I received news of Owen’s health problems and flew to WI. I was more concerned with keeping up with April’s blog about my nephew than I was writing about the trivial problems of everyday life here in AZ.

So much has happened, but I’m going to sum it up for you.

The weekend after Jeff returned from LA, we went to a retirement party for his good friend, Bayer, who he met in Italy. It was a fun night.

A couple weekends later, we went to the Arizona Science Museum. It was a place mostly for kids, with some neat stuff for adults. I’d love to go again to go to the planetarium. It was super cheap to get it and was something fun for us to do. The most exciting thing for me was the scaled-down version of Lego Land. What it had to do with science, I’m still trying to figure out, but that is okay.

After the museum, we took the scenic route home. We went off-roading for several hours to a place called Crown King. It is literally in the middle of nowhere, atop a mountain. The population was literally about 10 people. They managed to keep open a chapel, a bar, and two little shops, though. It was a really neat place. So, we decided that we would go camping there. Jeff invited several of his friends, but we were going no matter who could make it.

The next weekend, Jeff, a guy named Wasson, Al, his two kids and myself camped overnight there. Jeff let me drive, which was so much fun. We ate at the little bar, and enjoyed beer from mason jars. It was soooo Podunk, in fact, that even Toby got to come eat with us.

Labor Day weekend, Jeff and I went to San Diego. We left early on Saturday morning and arrived around 12. We went out for lunch at a small Mexican restaurant. Then, we went and walked by the ocean. He was so excited for me to see it. It was amazing.

Jeff took me shopping for something nice to wear.

We went back to the hotel and got in our suits, so that we could go swim. We played in the ocean for a bit. Then, decided to go get ready to eat somewhere nice.

On our way back, Jeff made me stop at this little cliff that overlooked the ocean. We had been there earlier to take pictures, so I didn’t understand why he asked me to take more. Well, until I heard him call my name. I turned around and he was down on one knee. It was the sweetest moment in my entire life! He had picked out a beautiful ring for me. I could write forever about this, but I'm sure no one except Jeff and I really care that much. :)

We couldn’t wait to tell everyone the news. The next few hours were filled with texts and phone calls. We were in heaven. Due to all of the excitement, we ended up leaving too late to go where we wanted to for dinner. So, instead we went to an Italian restaurant. We shared a bottle of wine and had some pretty good food. The waiter gave us a free box of the restaurants chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

The next day, we went kayaking on the ocean. It was so much fun; I’d highly recommend it to anyone. We didn’t even tip over!

We got dressed and walked around for a little bit. We saw the USS Midway. It was closing, though, so we couldn’t go inside. Another time.

We were going to go to Sea World, but I opted not to. We plan to go back before we leave AZ, though.

We went out to eat at Fidel’s Mexican Restaurant. He had eaten there when he went to San Diego in March to visit his cousin and brother. He raved about it. I got a crab enchilada. OMG! So tasty!!

We were very sad to leave San Diego on Monday morning. The drive home was fun, though.

Not much else has happened with us. We are having fun and doing a little wedding planning when we can. We set our wedding date for August 7, 2010. :)

My mom is coming in January to visit. I can’t wait!

I’m sure that I’m forgetting a ton of stuff, but that is okay. You get the gist.