Adventures in cooking with food storage

I've been inspired by our friend Bob to write on our blog for the very first time. I can't make any promises after this entry, but who knows what may happen!
I've been really putting forth some effort to make good food with our food storage. It started with our wheat. In the past when making wheat bread, it has turned out yummy but very crumbly. That makes for good toast but not so good sandwiches for lunch. So for the last several years, I've stuck with a good white bread recipe. No complaints from my family.:) But I'm always on the lookout for a good wheat bread recipe. I've been following a "cooking with food storage" blog and she posted a recipe that she makes that sounded incredible. So I thought I would give it a try. A few of the ingredients were a little strange but I dove in with the hopes of making a bread that my whole family would eat. What's a little vinegar, or a cup of potato flakes? Low and behold, it turned out awesome! And you can't even taste the vinegar! And as for sandwiches, the bread is perfect for that, too.
But I didn't stop there. As we were drypack canning with our ward, one of the ladies there brought chocolate chip cookies made with white beans. Kind of weird, right? But they were really good! So I came home with the recipe and tried it. The first batch wasn't what I wanted. So I let the kids eat as many as they wanted, which they promptly did with no complaints! The next batch I made with oat flour instead of whole wheat. YUM! Now I don't have to feel bad about eating cookies for breakfast, right?:)
So on to different things. My children eat refried beans like they grow on trees, or something like that. So we thought it would be good to try the homemade kind. My first try was on Friday and even though I thought they were slightly burned, James, Matthew and Nathan loved them! 2nd try - today I added more water (in hopes of not burning them), then blended them for a short time. I became a little carried away with the salt, but other than that, they were good. I cooked 3 cups of dried beans and they are nearly gone! (It helped that it was fast Sunday and several of the kids were really hungry after church!)
What is next, you might ask? I'm not quite sure. I have a couple of very picky eaters. I'm trying to figure out how I can "hide" some of this good stuff in the foods they will eat. But I'm sure I'll come up with something soon. Until then, I'll continue to work on the spices in the refried beans. Wish me luck!!

Fifteen years and counting...

Thursday Nancy and I began celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary. Our MO is to celebrate events for several days and spend too much money. We started later Thursday evening because we had to take Daniel and Stephen to the pine wood derby races. We went to Olive Garden that night. They messed up my order, so we ended getting mine for free. Nancy let it slip that it was our anniversary and they gave us a free celebration cake which was yummy. We were happy Brent and JeNeale stopped by after we got home to wish us happy anniversary.

Friday I took the day off work so that we could go out shop or whatever. We ended up buying the kids a bunch of books and very little for ourselves, but we had a good time. We went to Panda Express for lunch; it was Nancy's first time. By the time we got home in the early evening we were beat so we just stayed home. We had a great time!