Recipe of the Week

This is a drink called Avena which is Spanish for oatmeal. It is rich and delicious. Reminds me a little of eggnog but not nearly as strongly flavored. I find egg nog way too strong. Jada is fanatic for this stuff. She calls it smoothie, "I want smoothie ". It am always excited to find a new way to serve oatmeal. Some of our favorite ways to eat it include oatmeal breakfast cookies, cinnamon bun, chocolate chip cookie dough or yogurt and fruit topped baked oatmeals, oatmeal raisin pudding (like rice pudding), just basic oatmeal with fruit and now this Avena drink. We also love to replace some of the flour with oats when making muffins, really adds to the flavor and texture for us.
My grandparents ate oatmeal every day for breakfast as I remember. I wasn't a fan as a kid but I have discovered so many wonderful ways to eat it now that it has become a favorite breakfast of mine. People call oatmeal a super food because of it's amazing health benefits. If you eat oats regularly it reduces your risk of heart disease and diabetes II, they are a nutritional powerhouse, aid in weight control and promotes weight loss. They are cheap and store well. We love them around our house.

½ cup old fashioned oatmeal
4 cups milk
1 cup water
1 cinnamon stick or 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
Pinch ground cloves or 2 whole cloves
3 ½ tablespoons sugar

Place the water, milk and oatmeal in a medium pot over medium heat and cook about 15 minutes, stirring frequently. If you use quick oats you can reduce the cooking time to 3 minutes.
Add the cinnamon stick, ground cloves and sugar and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 15 more minutes covered.
Remove from the heat and refrigerate for a least 3 hours. It is also convenient to cook it the night before and chill it overnight in the fridge and so it is ready to go for breakfast.
Discard the cinnamon stick and place the mixture in a blender and blend for 2 minutes.

Serve cold.

5 years and counting!

Last Saturday was Chelsey and mine fith anniversery! It has been a lot of fun thus far. We've had some really good adventures together, and we hope to have many more together.Each year we grow a lot together, we laugh a lot and even though there some hard spots, we stick together and become stonger for it.

Five years can seem like a long time to a lot of people, as it seems that for many marriages they are lucky to make it to this point. And to many, that is true. Couples who stop working at their relationships find that that realationship will floudner. This can happen at anytime to people when they start to coast instead of continuing try to build it up - wither it be 1, 5, 10 or even 30 plus years.  I personnaly feel very lucky and blessed to have a wife who is always working at our relationship, just as I try to do the same.

Thank you chelsey for a wonderful five years! I want to make it 50 more with you! I love you

Easter with the Girls

It was a fun easter. Unfortunately each member of our family took their turn getting sick over the past two weeks. Due to Jada getting sick the day after easter which is when we planned on doing an easter hunt we postponed it til today. We did two different hunts for the girl due to their age difference. For Makayla we made a trail of eggs that she followed an collected putting them in a bowl as she went. At the end she got a chocolate treat. For jada we hid eggs all over the house (in plain sight) and she had to find the eggs to complete a task list (find 2 blue, 4 purple, 2 green, ect.) when she had found all the eggs and counted them she got a choclate treat.
Other than the hunt they had their first experience painting easter eggs. Both girls were as excited to eat them as paint them so they didn"t sit around any amount of time to be admired but that's okay. We had a good time at the Innes Grandparents home enjoying an easter dinner and spending time with family. My mom and sister made the girls some easter themed treats and they really enjoyed that.
Mike and I both agree that even with all the responsibility, sacrafice and hard work that kids bring we are so fulfilled being parents and would never take it back. We love raising a family together. Mike is a wonderful husband and father. I am so grateful for him everyday and don"t know what I would do with out him.

Recipe of the Week

Yum Yum. For years and years I have not been happy with my cinnamon buns. I have tried so many different recipes and techniques. I am a perfectionist so I have extremely high expectations for anything I do and so it really bugs me when I don't meet those expectations. I have worked on somethings 5 plus years before I felt satisfied. This is one of those recipes. Wow. This recipe is awesome. The lemon extract in the dough is that secret ingredient that will make people say "These are sooo good" but not be able to put a finger on what it is because all the flavors compliment each other so perfectly and meld together. These are not lacking in the flavor or the moisture department. The round pan really help them all cook through evenly so they are fully cooked though and still really moist and soft. I have struggled in the past with having the outside dried out and the inside under cooked. Boiling the raisins makes sure they don"t steal moisture from the dough. Mike was requesting cinnamon rolls and I made some dough but got sick so we put it off and this dough ended up sitting in the fridge almost a week. I really like cold fermentation but doing it quickly at room temp. will still be delicious.

Cinnamon rolls

5-6c. all purpose flour

1 Tbsp. active dry yeast

2 c. water or milk

1/2c. butter

1/2 c. granulated sugar

2 tsp salt

2  eggs

1 Tbsp. lemon extract

Filling:

3 Tbsp.  cinnamon  

¾ c. white sugar

1/3 cup butter melted

Boiled raisins ( if you like them)

chopped pecans ( if you like them)

White fondant glaze:

2 cups icing sugar

1 Tbsp. corn syrup or honey

1 tsp. vanilla, lemon or orange extract

3-4 Tbsp. milk

Add warm water or milk to a large bowl and then add the yeast. Let sit for 5 minutes then mix in remaining ingredients and lastly add flour a little at a time until you have a soft slightly sticky dough. At this point you can either place in the fridge for up to a week or let rest at room temp. for 1-2 hour or until double in size. If dough has been in the fridge, remove the dough from the fridge 20 minutes before you work with it. Dust a counter top with flour and divide the dough into two. Roll out one half of the dough into a rectangle ¼ to ½ inch thick.  Pour half of melted butter over the dough and us a pastry brush to spread it out over the entire surface evenly. Sprinkle half of the cinnamon sugar mixture evenly over the top then roll up starting from the long end of the rectangle. Use a sharp non-serrated blade or string to cut into cinnamon rolls about two inches thick. Place in a greased pan. I love how they cook up in a round pan, nicely shaped and from my observations they cook more evenly as well. Do the same with the other half of dough. Let rest a room temp. until doubled in size or place in the fridge overnight. This is convenient if you want them for breakfast. Remove from the fridge and either place on the counter for 2 hours or place in an oven, preheated to 150 for 3-5 minutes then the heat turned off, for 1 hour. Remove from the oven and preheat oven to 350 F. Bake for 10 minutes then turn the pan and bake until and golden brown. Meanwhile you can make the glaze. Mix icing sugar, corn syrup and vanilla, lemon, or orange extract and then whisk in milk a little at a time until the consistency of pancake batter.  Let buns cool for 5 minutes before topping with glaze.  Using a spoon, drizzle over cinnamon buns.