A new question

Wheat grinders.

Do any of you have them? What do you use?

For a while now I've been planning on getting this one:

The NutriMill.

My sister-in-law Heidi has one and she sold me on it. I'm particularly jazzed about the variable speed feature which allows you to adjust the coarseness of the product.

It costs $270.

However, now we have an opportunity to get a really great deal on a different kind.


The VitalMill.

It's regularly $200, and on sale now for $180. But we can get in on a group discount and get one for $120-$140. I love the price, and I've been wanting a wheat grinder for a long time. But it doesn't have variable speeds, and I guess I got my heart set on the NutriMill.

So back to my question. What do you use?

Do I need a variable speed mill? Does it matter? Is there anything I can't make with the flour produced in a grinder like the VitalMill that doesn't have variable speeds? Do you know something about the VitalMill that I should be aware of before buying it?

I have done some research into the matter, but nothing compares to hearing from people who actually use a product. I'd really like to know your experience with whatever you have.

I was (and am) so pleased with the responses I got to my baby food mill question. Now anything you know about wheat grinders would be a big help!

Celebrating Spring

Thursday was a typical dreary day in the Northwest, so we spiced it up a bit with some lemon cupcakes.

Our baking was partly prompted by Benjamin's interest of late in the book Frog and Toad Together, and in particular the story about the cookies. Toad makes some cookies to share with Frog, and after eating till they are almost sick, they commit to find some will power to stop eating cookies. When tying the cookies up inside a box and putting the box on a high shelf proves to be an insufficient formula for will power, Frog feeds the cookies to the birds. When Toad mourns their loss of the cookies, Frog consoles him by saying, "Yes, but we have lots of will power," to which Toad replies, "You can keep it all Frog. I am going home now to bake a cake." When the story is finished Benjamin always says, "Let's bake a cake!" So we did.


This weekend we had beautiful weather! Friday night we took advantage of the beautiful, clear skies and the lasting daylight to take a walk on the campus of Western Washington University. I loved the look and feel of the campus, and it was so nice to take a stroll on a university campus as finals draw near without feeling the pressure!


I had a professor once point out that peoples' dispositions often show up by looking at pictures of them during childhood. I think this is generally true based on pictures of myself and my sisters growing up, as well as Paul's family. However, we have been disappointed to take so many pictures of Rhett looking just like he does above! He really smiles and laughs quite a bit, but we have a hard time capturing it in pictures. Benjamin is definitely more of a ham, but hopefully some day soon we'll get some of Rhett's big grins on film too.


Warm weather also means it's time to pull out the Dutch oven! Last weekend Paul made a great Dutch oven barbecue meal for the missionaries (including one who we found out twenty minutes before dinner was a vegetarian). We had them over again yesterday between Conference sessions for some Dutch oven sweet and sour pork (the vegetarian came on an exchange last weekend, so he was not here this time). Benjamin is so curious and was poking around in Paul's Dutch oven stuff all afternoon.


Here's to a beautiful Easter week!

A baby food answer

It was one of those choir-of-angels sort of moments. I wish I could articulate it better, but you know what I mean? I was at Goodwill and I thought to myself, Wouldn't it be great to find a baby food grinder here at Goodwill? Just then I turned my head forty-five degrees... and there it was! What are the odds? I was planning to buy one before our trip to Utah, and I'm pretty excited about paying less than two dollars for it. So far it works like a charm! Thank you all for your input and advice!

Paul's First Business Trip

I can now check off one of my lifelong goals: Go to Alaska.

This past week I went on my very first business trip. I have been to work meetings within the state of Washington a number of times, but always returned home that evening. But this time I traveled in an airplane and stayed a night in a hotel. Yep, watch out I've hit the big leagues now.

I traveled to Juneau, AK for a couple days to get acquainted with the project I'll be working on this summer. Thankfully Volcano Redoubt and the falling ash were roughly 650 miles to the Northwest, therefore not affecting travel into Alaska's Southeast area.

Juneau is only accessible via plane or boat, but it is not on an island, just locked in by large mountains and glaciers. For a small city though I was surprised to see all that was there, i.e. Home Depot, Costco, Fred Meyer, Safeway, and others. (Walmart was there too, but since I am VERY anti-Walmart and refuse to spend any money there, I will not mention it other than this noting.)

Below is a picture of Glacier Valley Elementary School. This is where I will be all summer. Dawson Construction is completing the second phase of renovations to the school this summer. Most of my time on this trip was spent at the elementary school taking measurements and visiting with other construction professionals.
It was snowing and raining when I arrived. A little surprising to me, for some reason, there was a lot of snow in Juneau. I understand it is ALASKA, but almost the entire city sits at roughly 50 feet, +/- 30 feet above sea level. The locals told me there had been twice as much snow sitting on the ground earlier in the winter.

Juneau is home to a very large glacier, Mendenhall Glacier. My pictures below do not even come close to doing this large mass of ice justice. I am still in awe over how ginormous this thing was, and is. Maybe I should pay better respect to the glacier and rephase the first sentence of this paragraph to say: Mendenhall Glacier is home to Alaska's Capitol City, Juneau.

I am told there are a lot of bears in Juneau, AK. I guess this is probably true when I didn't see any deer crossing signs because the bears ate them, and the bear crossing signs had to be put up instead. (Or maybe there are just lots of bears.)


While at the elementary school I couldn't help but notice the children's art work. They were very creative and I most enjoyed the local Native Amercian/Regional spirit which shown through.

Totem Poles.

Alaskan Animals: Killer Whales, Grizzley Bears, Salmon, King Crab, Bald Eagles,...

A picture I took from inside the airplane as I was leaving. Notice Mendenhall Glacier in the center background. That thing is MASSIVE!

The trip was very enjoyable and I am excited to have Vicky and the boys with me in Juneau this summer. One of the major perks to working away from home is Dawson Construction will be paying all our living expenses. And although I will be pretty busy, any of you are more than welcome to come visit us and we'll even let you stay with us.


While waiting for my flight back to Bellingham, at the SeaTac Airport, I took this picture for Benjamin. And as expected, he loved it, and wants to fly on it. Kids are so great! I think I want to fly on it too!

Benjamin in the kitchen, part two

Thanks for your responses to my baby food-making question. I'd still love to hear more if anyone would like to add! Those who have the Kidco grinder, where did you get it? I'm thinking of buying it on Amazon, but are there stores that sell it? I'd like to steer clear of websites with bright flashing buttons. Any tips on good places to buy?

A baby food question

I'm hoping that someone of you who read this will be able to give me some input on this. I'm tired of feeding Rhett jarred baby food. He goes through it so quickly, and it's getting to be quite expensive. I've been wanting to buy a baby food grinder instead. Have any of you tried this? When I have searched for one on Google there is basically just one that stands out, and that's the Kidco baby food mill. It has received some pretty good reviews, but others that say it's no good, which makes me hesitant to buy it. I wonder what other options are out there. Have any of you opted to make your own baby food instead of going the Gerber route? Any tips? I know we could get a little food processor, and I'm not ruling it out, but I like the portability of the food grinder. Anything anybody can tell me about what they've done or heard of would be so welcome!

If they didn't have holes before, they do now

St. Patrick's Day

Did you get visitors at your house, too?

Ours turned our oatmeal green.


Sneaky leprechauns!





In addition....

We had our ward St. Patrick's Day party a couple of weeks ago. We were supposed to bring green desserts, but I decided (possibly against my better judgement) to get a little more creative and do something fun, but not totally green.

I've been admiring the work on several creative blogs lately. One thing I'd been wanting to try was Bakerella's cake balls/pops after seeing the idea on my friend Lori's blog. This seemed like a good opportunity to try.


They weren't as fantastic as they've been hyped up to be, or maybe after all my work I was expecting something more than cake and icing encased in candy. Probably the latter. But they were still a tasty, fun treat.

(Here's how I did it and my thoughts on the outcome, if you'd like to know.)
For the leprechauns I used vanilla- and peanut butter-flavored candy melts over chocolate cake/cream cheese frosting cake balls. The peanut butter flavor really overwhelmed the flavor of the cake, rather than complementing it as I had hoped (the candy in general made the whole thing really sweet). Their hats were made with vanilla wafers and Rolos (frozen so they wouldn't melt) dipped in green vanilla candy. Not hard to assemble, but I'm sure Bakerella's would have looked much, much cuter. I used black Wilton decorating gel for the faces, as seen on the Pioneer Woman's cake pops.

The leprechaun pops were more work than I wanted to do again, so the second batch become pots of gold. This time I used chocolate cake and chocolate frosting, and I liked the flavor a little better than the others. These I dipped in dark mint cocoa candy melts, and topped with a squeeze of yellow vanilla candy melts for the gold. Now, these I thought tasted so much better than the overly-sweet peanut-butter-chocolate leprechaun heads. I really liked the dark chocolate mint flavor because it made the whole thing seem less sweet.

I learned from this experience that Fred Meyer only sells Almond Bark at the holidays, as does Albertson's. Wilton candy melts are cheaper at Michael's than JoAnn, but I'll try to wait to do these again until I can get Almond Bark, since I think it will coat better.

Mascot Tournament Challenge

Vicky, Benjamin, Rhett, and I filled out our 2009 NCAA Tournament Brackets tonight for Family Home Evening. Rhett had some help from me. Vicky did her own. And Benjamin completed his Mascot Tournament Challenge. For each game I told him the two mascots and he would pick one. Below are his picks. (I thought this was pretty humorous, and we should have taken a video of it.) As you can see Benjamin really has the March Madness! I have never seen nor heard of so many predicted upsets. His final four mascots are: Badgers, Utes (I tried to help him NOT make this choice,) Tar Heels, and Terps. He said the Terps (Turtles from Maryland) would beat the Utes, and the Badgers (from Wisconsin) would beat the Tar Heels (of North Carolina.) And for all the marbles Benjamin chose the #12 seeded Badgers over the #10 seeded Terps. For Benjamin's sake, Go Badgers!


By request, note that I have included the unfilled mascot bracket below.

Green Eggs and Ham and Milky Carrot Sticks

I must confess, today was not my finest day as a mother. I won't elaborate because this post is not about my failings today. It's about the fact that I still feel like claiming some shred of my identity as a decent parent because of two things.

First, we had green eggs and ham for lunch.

This is not Benjamin thinking it's gross. This is him saying, "These eggs are hot."

Then he proceeded to put a whole slice of ham in his mouth.

In addition to the first point, and maybe more a credit to Benjamin than to me, this lunch of green eggs and ham was consumed after he ate half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a bite of my lunch, and some milk. Some days are good because of a couple of bites of pb&j and a swig of milk, so today was excellent in the lunch department.

Our whimsical lunch was prompted by his interest in the book of the same name this morning.

Second, after a long day of tending napless children (and everything that comes with them), I didn't lose it when I found Benjamin doing this just as we were getting ready to sit down for dinner.


He must have thought our carrots and celery needed a pre-dinner dip in a milk bath. After rinsing and wiping, there was some sort of order reestablished at our house. Or at least our dinner table.

And to make another point in my favor, I think the presence of carrot and celery sticks on our dinner table at all should count for something.