Kitchen Chaos

Sometimes when developing recipes, it has to be tried several times and tweaked. Other times it just all falls into place but you never quite know which way it will go. A few weeks ago, Living Without sent a newsletter with a recipe for a sourdough bread and we had been wanting a sourdough. Yum. So I called Daisy in to help me mix up the starter, mainly so she could see that it wasn't a big deal. It isn't a long complicated thing, it just takes a few days. Four days later we had a loaf of sourdough bread with supper and Daisy took one bite and said "contest bread!" We had been experimenting with some yeast bread and had pretty much picked one out but once she tried the sourdough, she loved it. I had seen a beautiful round loaf on Pinterest that had herbs baked onto the bread crust as decoration. Daisy and I thought it looked beautiful and since the judges won't actually taste the food (worries of food poisoning), it needs to look as good as possible....

Each year my kids have participated in our county's 4-H Food and Nutrition contest where they make a food and then have to tell how healthy it is. Its a long list of stuff they need to do and know since they need to know the calories per serving, which food group it goes with and how that fits into a healthy diet, could it be made healthier, as well as explaining how they made it. They have to know what primary nutrients the dish provides (ie protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals) and what those nutrients do. They also have to tell what community service they did, what sort of leadership they did, what they have learned in the project and what sort of activities they did to learn those things. This was Junior's first real year to compete. In previous years he would make the food and the older teens would ask questions but he would get a ribbon just for showing up. He could say he didn't make it, his mama did and he would get a ribbon. He could say he didn't even ...