Grandma Mary rolls

I had a request to share an old family recipe when I was asking a group for help on making yeast rise. Here is the recipe and the story I was told about the recipe by My husband's grandmother.  

She told me Pa taught her to cook and this was a recipe from home in Kansas. Pa was her father in law that lived with Mary and Grandpa on the farm that was bought right after the land run in the early 1900s.

Ingredients

2 cups of milk
1/4 cup Luke water
3-4 Tbs vegetable oil
3-4 Tbs sugar
1/4 ts of salt
1 package of Fleshmans yeast
Flour


 Scald milk. (Heat milk to a simmer and then bring to Luke warm). Mary said that she did not think it needed this anymore but when Pa taught her with fresh milk it was necessary.

 While the milk heats up put yeast in very warm but not boiling water. This was to make sure your yeast was good.

When the milk cools. Mary taught me to check it like a baby bottle style by dropping a few drops on your wrist. Add the vegetable oil, sugar, salt, and yeast water. Wait a minute to make sure it activates.

Start adding flour by the tablespoon until it is the consistency of white gravy. Let rise to twice as tall.  Around here that is about an hour. (The fb group told me to heat the oven to 200 degrees and turn oven off. Then put a pan of water in the oven with the bowl of doe)

After it rose, add flour till very stiff. Where you can't stir it. Barely Oil it to be glistening.
At this point you can put it in the ice box with a cover til morning or continue on.

Let it rise for 1-2 hours. It should be double the size.

Knead the dough about 20 times in flour. Make into rolls and dip tops in oil. Put on a pan about 2 inches apart. Let rise to 2.5 times bigger than started.

Bake at 350 degrees for 12-20 minutes until lightly brown. 

This is a recipe that my husband insisted I learn to make. I enjoyed learning to make it and still treasure the time I get to spend making rolls with her. 

Enlarging a Picture

I have always worked with a grid to transfer the image to the paper. This helps to keeps my proportion accurate from a small image to the big paper. When I started doing this I used PowerPoint to grid out my pictures. It's easy and I will take you step by step how to use it.

1.Open PowerPoint to a blank page.

2. Draw a square that is 5 x 7 inches by going to INSERT.

• Click on shapes and find the square. Drag a square on your blank page don't worry about the size. 
• Double click on the square you drew.
•  At the top of the page to the far right is the size. Type in 5 tall and 7 wide
• Also look for the square that is outlined with no color in it to make your square see through but with a perimeter.

3. Inside the 5 x 7 square make a 4 x 4 table.

• Back in INSERT tab
• On the far left is the table tab
• Click and it and hold the mouse down to highlight 4 squares wide and 4 square tall. 16 total squares are highlighted.When you let of the mouse it will magically appear.
• Click on your table that is random colors and a Table tool will appear. click it.
• Click on the Table and hit Control and the A key at the same time. 
• While the whole table is highlighted, In the Shading tab (about the middle of the page)  click no Fill.
• In the borders section click all borders.
• Resize it by dragging the edges to be the same size as the square.
• SAVE it now!!!

4. Adding the Picture. 

• Insert is the place to be.
• Click the picture icon and go to where your pic is located. Select it
• Right click on your picture and hit go to back
• (If white box appears that means you have a fill in your square or your table) see note
• Resize with the little balls on the edge of your picture. Use the ones on the corners only or it will distort the picture. 

5. Print and work from anywhere. 

NOTE

Click on the table and go to the table tab. Click on the back ground and click no fill.

Click on the square (sometime you have to move the table) and click draw tab. Click the background and click no fill. Move table back.

I also have printed these on transparency to take and lay over printed pictures to work from.

  This is a great way to resize your drawing and get to know your subject better while sketching it. 

(if I am drawing to an 10 x 14 or 16 x 20. True the large size is not a perfect match it converts to a 15 by 21 but you can add background to the edges or crop to make it fit the standard canvas.)

Double bonus is my daughter likes to use the grid drawings for coloring sheets later.

What do you Dream about

This week as my students at school watched a movie the main character told a true story of a long jumper for the olympics that on his boat ride over to the event. Sat the whole trip looking at a line on the deck that was two inches farther than the world series. The athlete never practiced on the trip just sat and focused on the rope. When he competed at the Olympics he broke the world record.

I had heard this story more than once in my life. It got me thinking; what do you dream about?

We used to laugh at my husband's grandpa when we came in for a snack or dinner. He was bedridden at the time and we could hear him in the living room yelling at the cattle, or cussing the tractor. He dreamed what he did all his life. He dreamed about the farm, its animals and the crops.

What do I dream about? I mean not only when I am sleeping but even when I catch myself daydreaming. Do I dream about my passions. My husband laughs at me because sometimes I give test in my sleep, or teach a lesson in my sleep. When I wake up in the morning I am tired but I still go and teach art.

Then I started noticing that I do not dream about painting. Is this because I don't have the passion or the drive? Maybe I don't have the focus. Maybe I am still learning. My goal is to paint more and I try to work toward that each day.

What Do You Dream About? What drives you?

Cooking on the Open Fire

A few weeks ago my brother and sister-in-law cooked lunch over an open fire pit. They were practicing for a cowboy cookout competition. I was glad to be a taste tester because their cooking was great.

I learned something about cowboy cooking

1. I am glad that today I have a stove. It took a long time to get coals started and add the ingredients. Yes they tasted great but daily I would get nothing done but 2 miles on a fire

2. In Oklahoma summer cooking would have killed me. The hot sun and then to stand next to a blazing fire is not an idea of romantic western life

3. Biscuits can burn easily and need lots of TLC. Brother worked hard at getting his biscuits to keep warm coals under them and then warm coals on top. He was turning them  a few times and rotating the lid to cook them evenly. In my electric stove I dump them in and go load the washing machine.

Do you have any other thoughts to cooking out doors. It was great food and an even better cobbler. I am glad I can throw something in the oven and get other things done while it cooks without worrying my fire is going out.

Time Flies and All those Exuses

There is no good reason for not getting back with you. I can honestly say that this last month has been a blur. You know the kind. You are left feeling like a cartoon character standing in the middle of the road when two cars come racing by. The dust settles and here you sit with little birds flying around your head.

We have started school, in a blur. I have taught class and came home, cooked, washed a child and read a bedtime story. Other than that I believe I am lost.

I added an Etsy store to my list of credits and wondered if you have ever bought from a Etsy or other artist site like it. What was your thoughts? Please help me out because with out some feedback I do not know what works.

God Bless

Cutting Hay

Being a farmer's wife I had planned after a long day in the City to go and make supper, play with my girl and rest. I even promised a swim in hr grandma's pool before we went home. Then my phone rings, Tractorman asked if I could help him cut hay while he raked hay so that we could get it baled before the rain next week.

I took my girl for a swim and her grandma offered to keep her all night so she did not have to ride in the tractor that long. Out to the Bermuda pasture I went. Tractorman took me one round and gave me the instructions on how to turn this corner and watch out for branches.

Well with the tractor to my self and the radio on I love the time alone. As all mom's know that is rare. I had made about four rounds with the 16 foot swather out to one side. Read about driving the tractor to understand my challenge with this. I look back to see the bar in front of the swather broken and bouncing like a kid on a trampoline behind me. I shut the whole thing down and make my favorite kind of phone call. "Honey I broke it" is how that call starts. He had went to get the rakes about a mile away. "Meet me at the front gate" he told me after I detailed my mess. 

For the most part he is good about fixing my breaks I just get to hear (teasingly) about them forever. When he saw my mess he told  me that it was the same spot I used to hit the back of his 1 ton truck with flat bed with. I dented the bar into the reel and cracked his rear brake light. I still don't live that one down.

Well with a few welds I was back on the go again and finished the patch at midnight. The thing I like about field work is once done than I have a few months unlike dishes which have to be done nightly. Ever feel like everything you try to help with breaks? Please comment and tell me I am not the only one.

Oh I started a Etsy Page. Check it out and Tell me what you think.

My Artwork in Different Uses

I love to paint with watercolors. The paints are transparent and show off more little highlights better than anything else I have ever painted with. So from the paintings I enjoy making them into different items for you to wear, coasters magnets and prints. Here is some of what I do.

Here are my coasters drying. They are 4 inch tile with a cork back. Then have a protective coat on them and will not fade or peel off. 

 My glass magnets are very durable. I have a daughter and if a artwork can be broken by her I look for other options. These have been dropped and stay in great shape.

On  of my favorites is the necklaces. They are 1 inch around on a 16 inch chain. I love the way the colors glow under the glass.

The way I create all my items is a great photograph. Then I Photoshop it to make it into the size I need. When that is done I print them at a local print shop on matte paper. (Gloss does not work.) From there I cut them down and Modge Podge them 3 times on both sides. From there each project is different. I would be glad to tell you all about it. What project would you like to know about?