Sourdough Bread

The story of baking my first sourdough bread. (I suppose it's not really a story, more of an explanation of what happened.) 

My friend, Sovina Gerber, spent her summer in MN. When she went home to begin her school  year she gave me a sourdough starter. While she was here I definitely should  have asked her to teach me her methods of making bread. 

Mom and I have been alternating between freezing apples and canning tomato juice, salsa, soup, pizza sauce, etc. 

No time for experimenting with sourdough starter - until one day when canning/freezing produce had dwindled to almost nothing. I thought,  now would  be a good time to use that sourdough starter. 

I felt like a pioneer woman as I got the jar of starter out of the fridge. 

(note to self: A pioneer woman didn't have a fridge) 

Sovina had told me there were no worries about keeping it in the fridge for a couple months. She gave me a beautiful book with all kinds of recipes and instructions for this adventure. I skimmed and read only enough to be even more ignorant. 

My mistakes would fill a small book. 

I didn't  let it warm up. 

I didn't feed it and divide it. 

I measured out 3/4 cup and put the jar back in the fridge. That was a good thing to do I found out. Later, I got it out and fed it flour and water and let it warm up in the warm kitchen. 

I followed a recipe from Sovina that was supposed to make one loaf of bread. 

In the morning I rushed downstairs expecting to see a bowl full of lovely bread dough. 

Nothing had happened. The book said I could add some yeast. Then I started a baking spree to warm up the kitchen. 

Apple pie and apple cake. The dough had risen a little bit. I ended up with two small loaves.

While it was baking it smelled Scrumptious!               Maybe it is called flat bread.

It is delicious toasted and spread with butter and honey. 

There is a small amount of sourdough starter in the fridge waiting for another experiment.

The main thing:  it is edible, I didn't have to salvage it and make pizza dough as the book suggested or feed it to the dogs at Krysta's house. I think I will try again after I ask a lot more questions. 

Rain and more rain

The rain gauge given to Mom for her 87th  birthday has been getting a work out.

Saturday morning, September 19th, I emptied the rain gauge after a night of torrential down pour. 

Friday evening, September 18th, the gauge measured this much.

Earlier in the week 2 inches were recorded. 

That seems like enough rain for one week.

Today, September 27th, rain continues to fill overflowing mud puddles and ditches, creeks and rivers.  And basements? 

Farmers wait patiently (or impatiently) to harvest vast fields of corn and beans. 

My bus route has a gravel road level with the wetlands on each side. Last week water was over the road. There were enough dry days so the road grader could get out and smooth the road - there might even have been dirt hauled in to replace what washed away. 

Maybe this time the rain is coming so gently it won't wash out roads. We can hope. 

This is the summer for making tomato soup and pizza sauce and tomato sandwiches. We will not suffer from scurvy any time soon.

A summer for chasing a sunset in MT ...

Apples

Baking bread

Butterflies 

Crocheting 

Canning Factory in Mom's garage 

Applesauce and tomato juice 

Twelve years ago we said "Good bye" to Dad.

                   September 27, 2014

Today we had lunch with family and friends 

       and remembered that summer.

Dandelions, Morel Mushrooms ... and other questionable foods

This morning I took a walk, visited a beautiful corner of Mom's yard and called a friend.  

While I was chatting with my friend I noticed the dandelions in the lawn. I remembered that I wanted to pick some and fry them in butter. Today would be a good time to experiment. I've tasted them before. If I  remembered correctly, I liked them. They remind me of morel mushrooms fried in butter.

            Magnets on my Mom's fridge. 

The first time my dad brought morel mushrooms to my mom was a disaster. Dad picked them in the lawn/woods near the little church house in Graceton. He put them in a brown paper bag and nonchalantly handed them to Mom, asking her to fry them up for supper. Mom peeked inside the bag, screamed and flung the bag across the room. She thought they were toads. 

Dad fixed supper that night. He persuaded Mom to try them. Wash, cut in half, pat dry, roll in flour and fry in butter. They were delicious. They became a family favorite.

Many years later we heard (or read) that you can eat the flowers of dandelions. Pick them, cut off the stem, wash, pat dry, roll in flour and fry in butter. Sprinkle some salt on the pieces.They taste very much like the morel mushrooms.

Of course, both mushrooms and flowers need to be fried with lots of butter. Some other questionable foods made better with butter are lutefisk and  lefse. (They say melted butter must be poured over lutefisk.)

Today, I found out the flowers needed plenty of butter and a low heat so as not to burn them. It's a good idea to pick the flowers from a lawn that has not been sprayed. 

In my own personal opinion it is good to let dandelions live because they are the first flowers for honey bees to collect nectar from after the long winter. 

If you look up the info you'll find that you can eat dandelion flowers, leaves and roots. I'm  not in favor of cooking dandelion leaves.  (Again, my own personal opinion) Instead, collect the leaves, wash them and tear them up as you would salad greens. 

There is a recipe with bacon pieces, a white  sauce made using some of the bacon drippings, chopped hard boiled eggs and the dandelion greens. Eat this on buttered toast. I think grated cheese would be a great addition to this delicacy. 

You will never go hungry at our house. We have lots of dandelions. 

Recipe from:

*Mennonite Community Cookbook 

Dandelion Salad

4 cups dandelion greens 

3 hard boiled  eggs

3 slices bacon

Wash and chop dandelion greens 

Fry bacon until  crisp, drain on paper towel

Dressing:

1 1/2  T flour 

1 tsp salt

2 T sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup vinegar 

2 cups milk

Mix the dry ingredients together.  Add egg, vinegar and milk. Stir until well blended. Cook in bacon drippings until thickened. Cool slightly. Pour dressing over dandelion leaves and mix lightly. Add chopped, hard boiled  eggs and bacon. 

I think we ate this on top of toast. Maybe with lots more chopped eggs. (I hope the milk doesn't  curdle when mixed with vinegar.)

*I didn't find a copyright in this cookbook 

The Color of Amethyst

So many purple flowers are blooming now.

             These are in the ditches. 

           Can you smell this purple iris? 

     I don't  know the name of these flowers.

              Are they wild geranium?

Even the Creeping Charlie is beautiful up close, but it takes over in a yard or garden.

My friend, Dawn Ledeboer Sheward, loved the colors lavender 💜 and purple. 

All the flowers are blooming for you, my friend.  

In Heaven Dawn skips on streets of gold with her sisters, Judith and Beverly. Maybe she has met Pearl India, our granddaughter, and twirls her around and catches her in the air. 

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.  

Revelation 21:4 KJV

There shall be no night there. 

Revelation 21:25

The foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. 

The first foundation was jasper;

the second, sapphire; 

the third, a chalcedony;

the fourth, an emerald;

the fifth, sardonyx; 

the sixth, sardius;  

the seventh, chrysolite; 

the eighth, beryl; 

the ninth, a topaz; 

the tenth, a crysoprasus; 

the eleventh, a jacinth;

the twelfth, an amethyst.

Revelation 21: 19-20

To be perfectly honest

I am not a fan of taking off down a lane beside a fence line in the hopes of observing wild life or scenery. In our past there has been some major harm done to various vehicles when we indulged in this activity.  

Wednesday, in an attempt to be very brave and curb my tendency to have an excellent memory of long ago days, I kept my mouth shut. Then I started recording what we saw and asking Ellis questions about the various birds and animals that hopped up here and there all around us.

All the while trying not to clutch my arm rest or tramp on the imaginary brake on the floor in front of me, or gasp at inappropriate times... let's just say, these activities kept me occupied. Prayers were also speeding heavenward and then I tried extremely hard not to fall into The Silent Treatment Trap that I usually somersault into.

After writing everything down and posting it on my blog I realized there were no pictures of prairie trails. The road to Clear Lake is quite a nice road and even  maintained by a road grader. So the pictures today were taken by Karla Harshbarger and shared with us.

And now you know "The Rest of the Story" as Paul Harvey used to say.

Prairie Trails

After a delightful breakfast with Ivan and Karla we packed the jeep and started on our way. Ellis wanted to get a picture of a western meadowlark sitting on a fence post.

We turned south on the prairie trail that heads toward Clear Lake.

The meadowlark didn't cooperate for picture taking. We took another prairie trail and found coots, mallards, pin tails, blue wing teal or were they cinnamon teal?

Two antelope looked at us as we drove past.

Now heading east on another trail, the grass swished under the jeep. We eased carefully between two swampy areas. If MT were having a wet spring we would not get through this wetland without getting stuck.

There was a tree row off to the left. Ears poked up, pointed noses sniffed the air and up jumped ten or twelve mule deer. They bounced away, springing across the ground, boing boing boing. Their morning rest was disturbed. 

The last we saw of them they were walking single file up a hill and then silhouetted against the sky and the next thing we knew they had disappeared. 

Our windows were open. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a ball of feathers shoot straight up into the air, and the explosion of wing beats startled us. Ellis looked through the rear view mirror and saw a Sharp -Tailed Grouse fly away.

To end the adventure a bunch of white-tail deer showed up. We finally got to a gravel road without grass growing in the middle and from there to a highway.

Through the day we drove beside many  pastures where cows were grazing.This is the chorus I thought of, a song we used to sing in Sunday School.

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills

The wealth in every mine,

He owns the rivers and the rocks and rills

The sun and stars that shine.

Wonderful riches more than tongue can tell

He is my Father so they're mine as well.

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, 

I know that He will care for me.

John W. Peterson 

Psalm 50:10

For every beast of the forest is mine,

And the cattle upon a thousand hills.

Now we are safety home to the little shack in the boondocks. 

Travels

A finished puzzle at Mom's house. We can go to the library, borrow a puzzle, put it together and then take it back. I should count all the puzzles we've done this winter. It's a  phenomenal amount. 

May 1st I was scheduled to take a bus full of 5th graders to the MN Zoo. Thankfully, I could follow another bus from Blooming Prairie driven by a skilled bus driver who has made this trip to the zoo several times. 

I thought about my dad many times through the day. He drove many grade school field trips over the years before his death in 2014. Now I've been asked to go on field trips and I found out I enjoy this part of the job. 

This time, if I hadn't signed up to take 5th graders to the zoo on Friday, Ellis and I would have gotten an earlier start on our travels to MT. 

Instead, I drove to the zoo in the morning,  drove back to the bus garage in Blooming Prairie that afternoon, climbed aboard bus 7 and drove the afternoon route. When I got back to the bus garage I parked the bus. It was now approximately 4:00 pm. I had been up since 5:00 am. because we needed to be packed and ready to leave Blooming Prairie immediately after the afternoon route. 

Ellis readjusted the seat in our jeep and we were off!

I was not much help with driving or keeping the driver awake. We drove to Jamestown ND and stopped for the night at Norway Inn.

Tillie's funeral was at 11:00 MT time at Coalridge Mennonite Church. Very fortunate for us. Because we gain an hour when we travel west. 

As we were speeding along on our way to the church we were stopped...

by a train. It was a mile long -- sitting perfectly still. Now what? If we turned around and tried a different route we would not arrive in time. 

We were impatiently waiting when I saw the train move very slowly, then pick up speed,  then at last I said, "It's not my imagination! It's moving!" We met approximately 25-30 vehicles who were backed up on the other side of the tracks. 

We arrived at Ivan and Karla's place at 10:07.

Changed clothes, brushed teeth, combed hair and drove to the church which is just a hop, skip and a jump down the road. So close we could have walked except for the wind. The wind was blowing 40 mph. (just as a guess) 

Tillie Drawbond

photo credit: Sharon Drawbond Wengerd

At the Coalridge Mennonite Cemetery the wind was still blowing. Many family members rest there at the top of a hill, no trees in sight, only prairie grasses for miles around. 

Back at the church lunch was served -- there was a baked potato bar with all kinds of lovely toppings and cookies and bars for dessert.

Also there was the delight of visiting with people we haven't seen for years.

Because we had to rush to drive to MT we have taken some days off work and won't be back to MN until Wednesday evening. 

(The dates on my blog posts are confusing because I wrote the last one April 28th. Then I noticed a mistake so I corrected it and the date changed to May 1, 2026.)