Pita: Five-Minute Magic

You know what I love about making pita bread with the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day method? It literally takes five minutes to bake. OK, that's assuming you already have dough in your fridge, and your oven is preheated to 500 degrees already, and you've already rolled out your little pita rounds. But seriously! They bake in five minutes! And it really is kind of like magic.

First, preheat the oven to 500 degrees, with a baking stone set on a rack in the middle of the oven.

Now pull your dough out of the fridge. If you already are using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day method, then most likely you have some kind of dough in there already. So far I have tried a good half-dozen different dough recipes for pita, and the only one I found that did not work was the olive oil-enriched whole wheat from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. If you have the basic recipe from either book, or a close variation (like European peasant bread, for example), it should work fine.

Dust your pizza peel with whole wheat flour. (It provides the best stick-prevention.)



Dust your rolling surface with whatever kind of flour you like, and grab a plum-sized hunk of dough.



Roll it out with a rolling pin on your floured surface until it is about 1/8 inch thick. It needs to be pretty darn thin in order to puff properly. Carefully transfer to your pizza peel, and repeat until you've run out of space on your peel.



Now you're going to very carefully slide your pita circles onto the hot baking stone. Don't burn yourself! (I say that because I burn myself nearly every time.)



Now shut the oven door and wait five minutes. If you peek after two or three minutes, you should see this:



Exciting, isn't it? When they're puffed and browned (roughly 5 to 7 minutes), use the pizza peel to slide them back out of the oven.



Aren't they lovely? We had them with our Persian sloppy joes last night, and they were about 1000% better than the pita you can buy in the grocery store. Five minutes! Love it.

In the Ground

Just in time for the 90-degree weather around here (in early April??? I'm so confused), we got our first crops actually planted in the ground! Woohoo!

We'll be growing Amish Snap Peas, whose seeds look exactly like little dried peas, quite high on the cute-o-meter. Thankfully, I had a five-year-old to help me with the row-marker signs.



And then we planted our blue potatoes! My theory was, if you're going to go to the trouble of growing your own potatoes, they might as well be ones you can't buy in the grocery store. Thus, All-Blue potatoes from Seeds of Change. The potatoes had chitted nicely while waiting for their bed to be ready, so hopefully they will make themselves right at home. Unfortunately, my assistant had moved on to more exciting activities, so I was left to make my own row-markers.



In other kitchen garden news, the seedlings have stayed out all night the past two nights. I wasn't intending to harden them off so early, but it's been so warm, I'm all thrown off. They seem happy, but I'm going to have to bring them back in later in the week -- hope they don't rebel.

Funny how much gardening and parenting are alike.

Sunday Seedlings Update #6

It's been an exciting week for the kitchen-garden-in-progress. For one thing, the raised beds finally got some soil in them! But... it's not enough. I need to top them off a bit so I'm comfortable with the soil depth, and then... I need to plant! I have peas and blue potatoes that are just begging to be put in the ground. Very exciting.

And on to our seedlings...

The leeks have become a tangle of grasses. Anyone know what to do with them at this point?? I'm out of my depth. I assume they need to be thinned, but I'm too chicken to do it. I know they're supposed to be transplanted when they're "the size of a pencil, maybe a bit thinner," but it's hard to imagine how they're going to get to that point.



The thyme is also a bit of a tangle, but herbs being what they are, I'm not too worried about it.



Look! The parsley is starting to look parsley-ish! First true leaves have appeared in the last few days, very exciting.



Eggplant is coming in nicely. Last year I only had one surviving plant from the seeds I started -- hoping for a better yield this year!



I planted the basil in eggshells. Just because. I'm a big fan of cute, and a big fan of eggshells in the compost, so I thought this might be a cool combination. I have had very good success with basil for many years running now, so I hope this year doesn't disappoint me. Especially considering how much I start to rely on it for my cooking...



Broccoli! It's so cute, I can't stand it.



Tomatoes have come up nicely, need to get some more varieties. I'm thinking just one is too limiting, even if they do well. Any heirloom recommendations?



And this silly sage sure has kept me waiting, but all of a sudden it's had a growth spurt! It looks so lovely, reaching for the sky...



Our weekly summary:

Leeks: Planted 6 weeks ago, has become a thicket.
Thyme: Planted 5 weeks ago, finally has first leaves.
Parsley: Planted 4 weeks ago, first true leaves!
Eggplant: Planted 4 weeks ago, looking good.
Sage: Planted 3 weeks ago, wowie! Getting tall.
Broccoli: Planted 3 weeks ago, tall and hearty-looking.
Basil: Planted 1 week ago, just emerging.
Tomato (red calabash): Planted 1 week ago, coming up nicely.

Check back every Sunday (or sometimes Monday) as we follow the progress of our kitchen garden from seed to table!

Abundance

It is Easter afternoon, and I'm going through the photos we've taken in the past few days and just feeling so incredibly blessed. Healthy children, beautiful weather, delicious food, and time to enjoy it all.

Here are some glimpses of our Easter preparations and celebrations. I hope everyone is having a joyful day, whatever you are celebrating on this fine Spring day.



















Exciting things afoot with the kitchen garden, so stay tuned tomorrow!

This Moment: Meditating

No words, just a moment from this past week that I want to remember. Check out all the moments being shared over at SouleMama.

Cultivating Joy

A few years ago, when I really started gardening in earnest, my mother asked where my sudden interest in growing things had come from. "I'm cultivating joy," I replied.

Of course, gardening was only part of it. But it really was a shift in focus of my life, to turn my energy towards things that I found sustaining and nourishing, and away from those I found draining or painful.

I struggled with depression of various degrees and manifestations for many years. But it wasn't until just a few years ago that I feel I really kicked it for good. I can say with relief and gratitude that it has been years since I felt anything like the despair that was all-too-common in my younger years. What changed?

It sounds like an over-simplification, but in some ways, it was just this simple: I stopped waiting for joy to arrive in my lap, and began to cultivate it. I assumed complete responsibility for my own happiness. I let go of negativity as much as possible, not allowing myself to be poisoned by anger or resentment.

I realized that happiness doesn't just happen. It is the result of conscious effort. I no longer pick at my scabs. It does me no good to dwell upon the ways in which the world has wronged me. Instead, I have made choices that have brought me here, to this place in my life. A place where my energy is spent caring for my children, nurturing my own creative spirit, loving and being loved by my life's true companion, and tending to my garden.

Cultivating joy.

This post is part of the Moms' 30-Minute Blog Challenge, hosted by Jamie over at SteadyMom.

Sunday Seedlings Update #5

My seedlings are feeling camera-shy. Really it's that it's been so cloudy, all my pictures look terrible. So you're going to have to take my word for it.

Oh, fine. We all need to be humbled now and then. Here's what the 99.9% of pictures I take that you don't see look like. It ain't pretty.

Broccoli is surprisingly tall and willowy in seedling form:



And the parsley continues to thrive, which is good because I have cooked two recipes that included parsley this week and I'm just so excited about getting to use my own soon. (Also, did you know that parsley attracts butterflies? Especially when planted near a butterfly-attractive flower like verbena? We had black swallow-tail butterflies and caterpillars the last time we grew parsley -- quite an exciting addition to the garden.)



OK, seriously, that's all I'm showing you. They're doing well, I promise! Scout's honor!

And this week we planted basil and tomato. Red calabash tomatoes, to be precise, which for some reason makes me start singing "Rock the Casbah" in my head every time I read it.

Anyhow, basil seeds:



And tomato seeds:



We have six weeks until my planned planting date, and still no soil in the raised beds. I know! I need to get cracking, but I was trying to calculate the amount of soil needed and my head exploded. Got to get on that this week, though, because my peas are begging to be put in the ground.

And now, because I have some kind of obsession with growing things, I must show you... the wheatgrass! I saw a fabulous tutorial on Simple Kids, showing how to grow wheatgrass in the kids' Easter baskets. I was totally charmed, and ran out to the grocery store to buy wheatberries. I soaked them overnight, lined the Easter baskets with containers from the recycling bin, filled with potting soil, and planted my wheatgrass. But I had all these extra wheatberries. So I kind of got carried away...











Basically, I started planting wheatgrass in anything that would sit still. But now... look!



Roots and shoots! Ah, these are the things that feed my soul.

Our weekly summary:

Leeks: Planted 5 weeks ago, looking spindly.
Thyme: Planted 4 weeks ago, seems to have stagnated.
Parsley: Planted 3 weeks ago, lookin' good.
Eggplant: Planted 3 weeks ago, tall stalks.
Sage: Planted 2 week ago, finally emerging.
Broccoli: Planted 2 week ago, tall and willowy.
Basil: Planted today.
Tomato (red calabash): Planted today.

Check back every Sunday as we follow the progress of our kitchen garden from seed to table!