What's For Dinner Wednesday--Everyday Cinnamon Rolls

I know, I know.  I'm getting lazy.  But...we actually ate these for dinner (with waffles) and so there you have it.  This is a recipe courtesy of the cookbook my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas, "The America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook".

Filling
1/3 C packed dark brown sugar (I only had light brown sugar)
1/3 C granulated sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp salt

Dough
1 1/2 C All-purpose flour
3/4 C Whole-wheat flour (sneaky, sneaky)
2 T granulated sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 C buttermilk
5 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Glaze
3/4 C confectioner's sugar
1 ounce light cream cheese, softened
1 T buttermilk

1.  Heat oven to 425 degrees.  Spray an 8 x 8 pan with PAM.

2.  Mix all the ingredients for the filling together in a small bowl and set aside.

3.  For the dough, whisk the all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl.  In a separate bowl, whisk the buttermilk and 4 T of the melted butter together.  Stir the buttermilk mixture into the the flour mixture until the dough comes together but looks shaggy(??), about 30 seconds.  Transfer the dough to a lightly floured counter and knead until just smooth and no longer shaggy, 8 to 10 times.

4. Pat the dough into a 12 by 9 inch rectangle with the long side facing you.  Brush the dough with the remaining tablespoon of melted butter, then sprinkle on the filling, leaving a 1/2 inch border along the top edge.  Press on the filling to adhere it to the dough.

5.  Loosen the dough from the counter using  a scraper or a metal spatula and roll it into a tight log.  Pinch the seam closed and roll the log seam-side down.  Pat the ends to even them, then, using a serrated knife, slice the log evenly into 9 rolls.  Slightly flatten each roll with your palm, then arrange,, cut-side down, in the 8 x 8 pan.

6.  Cover the baking dish with foil and bake for 12 minutes.  Remove the foil and continue to bake until the edges of the rolls are golden brown, 12 to 18 minutes longer.  Remove rolls from pan and let cool for 5 minutes.

7.  Whisk all the ingredients for glaze together in a bowl until smooth.  Drizzle rolls with glaze and serve.

SO easy!  And SO good.  Even if I royally screwed everything up because I was admiring my buttermilk making skills (from the butter last week).  I thought the recipe said to mix everything together for the dough, so I just dumped everything in instead of separating the buttermilk and butter.  And then I thought it said that I needed to knead the dough for 8-10 minutes, and about 4 minutes  into that process I realized my error.  HOWEVER, it all turned out.  YAY.

Nutritional Information per roll
cal: 290
Fat: 7 g
Sat Fat: 5 g
Chol: 20 mg
Carb: 52 g
Protein: 5 g
Fiber: 2 g
Sodium: 370 mg

Picture Perfect Tuesday #2

My Camera



Josh's Camera

His batteries died and it's too much work to get new ones in there right now, so you'll have to wait to see what's on there next week.

Things I'm No Longer Going to Feel Bad About

I'm going to refuse to feel bad anymore about these things:

(1) Up until an hour ago, my Christmas tree was still up.  Yeah, that's right.  January 17.  And that's not even my record.  I think I kept it up until February 1 one year.  As a sidenote, I'm going to have to revamp my New Year's goal of becoming organized.  Organized people don't keep their Christmas trees up until January 17.  Organized people put their trees down on December 26th and neatly fold everything up into their colored totes and relabel the tops of the lids with all the new decor they accumulated over the season. 

Speaking of which...

(2) I am not a holiday decorator.  Sorry.  I don't want to be.  I have no desire.  I would rather buy a few good books or a new pair of shoes than spend the money or time on decorating.  This does not mean that I don't enjoy your efforts on decorating though so decorate away. 

(3) I am no longer going to pretend to not like football.  I will no longer participate in pretending that I'm being put out because my husband is watching a game.  In reality, I would probably prefer watching the game.  Now, football is not the be-all to Fall Saturday activities.  There are some activities that trump even football.  But on a regular weekend, when nothing else is going on, I like to watch football.  Go ahead.  Roll your eyes.  Shake your head.  Pretend that I'm somewhat inferior to you more intelligent beings.  I enjoy current events.  I read books.  I have a degree in mathematics.  And...I LIKE football.  There I said it.  And now, next football season, when I politely decline your invitation to craft you'll know why.  Oh and because I don't like to craft.

(4) I also like basketball.  But not as much.  And it's not as time consuming.

(5) I subscribe to the belief that church leaders are human, and therefore entitled to their own interpretations and their own system of doing things.  Therefore, I can find some of their ways to be faulty.  This does not mean that I don't believe in my religion.  This does not mean that I'm being disrespectful.  This does not mean that I won't do those things that are asked of me even if I think it's missing the point.  The only thing this means is that I am not following blindly.

(6) There are a few jobs I wouldn't mind having in the church.  Primary is not on that list.  I dread primary.  I teach the five year olds and I'm trying.  Really, really trying.  And every week I end with the same number of children that I started with, so no one has escaped.  And well, that's the best they're going to get from me. 

(7) I work hard at exercising.  And so I can gripe about a stubborn few pounds that won't seem to budge.  And I'm no longer going to feel bad about griping about those few pounds.  So there.

(8) We don't watch a ton of movies.  But what we do watch are documentary and reality type shows.  Like Modern Marvels and Mythbusters.  Our absolute favorite right now, though, is Goldrush.  It's a reality-type show about a group of guys who go off to Alaska to pan for gold.  It's like a train wreck.  And you know what?  I'm not even going to apologize for it.

(9) I was recently reclassified as an Aries from a Taurus due to the shifting of the earth or something like that.  I haven't heard so much commotion about astrological signs in...ever.  Everywhere I read, people are up in arms about their changed statuses.  Guess what?  You don't have to follow the traits of your "sign".  However, I recently read a description of an Aries, and it fit me like a tee.  It also fit J. like a tee and kind of explains why we ram heads so much.

(10) I took J and A to the gas station today to get a treat at 2 pm and we were all still in our pajamas.  Ha!

Book Review Sunday

Book: Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
Author: Mike Birbiglia
Pages: 191

Man, I must be on a non-fiction kick or something! 

I LOVE stand up comedy.  LOVE it.  And in my recent conversion to NPR and it's likes, I have run across Mike Birbiglia here and there.  And he's always been funny.  So funny in fact, that for a 20 mile run I was doing in marathon training this last summer, where I ran the last 10 miles alone, I had downloaded a CD of his and ran to that.  At one point, I was laughing so hard I had to stop because I couldn't breathe. 

In hindsight, I think at that point, 15 miles into a run in August at 80 degrees, anything would have been funny.

But, I'm sure it was a sight to see.  Much like the time I was crying so hard because of the book I was listening to while I was running an 18 miler (though, it wasn't ALL the book, come to think of it.)

So, I was REALLY excited when I heard he was coming out with a book.  What could be better than a book by a stand up comic that I like? 

But, sadly, the book was almost all of the stories I had already heard. :(  I was a little disappointed in that.  I was hoping for some new stories and I almost returned the book to the library without finishing it.  However, I'm still a huge fan, so I kept reading on and came across some new stuff I hadn't heard.  In the end, it was worth it.  I could hear the nuances of his voice as I read the stories and that made it just a tad bit funnier.  I like that he takes some serious issues--like religion and health--and manages to poke a little fun at the trivial things that get us all uptight. 

The reality is, though, stand up is more than just words.  There's a lot to do with how the story is told and I think the stories are funnier when I'm listening to them rather than reading them. 

So why the book review about a book I wouldn't necessarily recommend to anyone?  Who knows.  Maybe, if you're a huge stand-up fan like I am, you'll look up Birbiglia and get hooked on him too. 

Or maybe it was just because this week, I read two books and the other one was one of those books you'd never admit to reading.

Thankful Thursday #2

This picture embodies J. to a tee.  When he came home from school the day that pictures were taken and modeled his look for the photographer, I thought we would have to do retakes.  When they showed up in his backpack a few weeks later, I laughed.  He had done the exact same look for me in the living room yet, no other picture has ever fully captured the J. that I know and love nearly as much as this one did.

J. is...unique.  And I love that about him.  He's full of energy and creativity and ideas that blow me away.  His brain goes 100 miles an hour and  the questions he fires at me are sometimes a little above me on most days, but he's patient with me and my dumb answers. He'll carry on full conversations between his lego guys and makes the most amazing spaceships out of the blocks.

Stubbornness would be an understatement for this kid and I'm positive that in a few years, when he's not being forced to do things he thinks he doesn't want to do and has some more flight in his wings, that trait will pay off. 

J. makes me laugh daily and I need to be better about focusing on those moments and not on the moments that frustrate me.

Today, I'm thankful for my Bug and I couldn't imagine my life without him in it.

What's For Dinner Wednesday--Homemade Butter

Yeah, that's right.  I ate butter for dinner.

Well, on pieces of bread. 

And it was pretty decent.  Creamy.  Just like the butter you made when you were in elementary school.  And it was pretty cool to see it all come together.  And SO easy.

But why?

Well, I want to make some bread tomorrow that needs buttermilk and I didn't want to go to the store just for buttermilk so I read where you can make buttermilk by making butter and I happened to have a quart of whipping cream in my fridge...

Don't ask...

So I dumped the whipping cream in the Kitchen Aid and turned it on.  I was a little worried at some point because I didn't think it would work and then I'd be known as the person who screwed up homemade butter, but it went from being liquidy to frothy to lumpy and then back to liquidy with lumps in it.  And that was really cool to watch because it was almost instantaneous. 

Once it became lumpy I mixed it a few minutes longer than drained the liquid (the buttermilk) out in a colander.  I rinsed the butter with cold water and rinsed that.  Then I squeezed (squoze?) more liquid out by smashing the glob of butter with a spatula.  Lastly, I spun it around in the mixer for a few more minutes with some salt.

The consensus?  It was pretty good, though it's not very cost effective.  The whipping cream was $2.67 and a pound of butter is $2.78.  So will I be completely switching over to homemade butter any time soon?  Probably not.  However, it was tasty on this sourdough bread that was SO good AND only 50 calories per slice. 

And it's what I made for my dinner.  Everyone else had spaghetti.

Picture Perfect Tuesday

Oops, I forgot to post the first PPT last week.  I remembered roughly about the time I climbed into bed, so this week, you get double the pictures.

My Camera

J.'s Camera

 (there were an disconcerting number of pictures of A. in her diaper.  As well as A. "playing" with the kitty.  There will be some conversations in the very near future with both children.)