Two Salsas and How to Deal with Tomatillos (trust me, they’re worth it) July 9, 2009

This week tomatillos and tomatoes were on sale along with cilantro, avocados, and jalapeños. MAN do I love summer!

So I made up two salsas for dinner last night. I calculated out the cost and I made 10 cups of salsa for less than $5. And let me tell you, homemade salsa just…well…how do I even begin?? It is SO GOOD. I’m not sure about shelf life on these as salsa — even ten cups of it — never lasts more than two or three days around here.

So. Here are two of my standards.

Basic Tomato Salsa
About 10 medium tomatoes, cored and quartered
6 or so cloves of garlic
1 small can of diced green chilies with juice
A rough handful of cilantro, rinsed (I use a LOT more than most folks like because we LOVE cilantro)
Juice from 1.5 to 2 limes
1 – 2 jalapeños depending on your heat preference
half a white onion, peeled and chunked
15 – 25 twists of the pepper grinder (trust me)
salt to taste

Just plop all of the ingredients into the blender and pulse until it’s the consistency you like.

Green Tomatillo Salsa
10 tomatillos, husks off and rinsed of oil
1-2 jalapeños
A rough handful of cilantro
Juice from 1.5 to 2 limes
1 avocado
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, peeled
salt to taste

Before plopping this all in the blender like the first salsa, I toast the tomatillos a bit and char some of the skin on them. You can do this under a broiler, in a hot pan, or even on the grill. I don’t know why but it just does something wonderful to the flavor of the salsa. If you DO toast them, though, you’ll likely want to chill the salsa before you serve it as the flavors really come together when the salsa is cool.

If you don’t know about how to pick out a tomatillo, here is some help:
Don’t be afraid to tear into a tomatillo husk to take a look at the fruit underneath when you’re picking them out
Look for tomatillos with a nice, even medium green color
Tomatillos don’t have to completely fill out their husk to be ripe — often if they do their already too ripe and sort of beaten up
Tomatillos are weirdly oily/sticky on the outside under the husk — that’s natural and rinses off under warm water
Tomatillos should be about the same firmness of a ripe tomato
Tomatillos are NOT green tomatoes and they have a lovely distinct flavor all their own — if you’ve never had them in salsa, you’re missing out!

Family Feasts for $75 a Week – A Review July 8, 2009

Author: Mary Ostyn

Release Date: September 2009

Price: $17.95 US

I was all set last night to sit down and write my thorough praises of Mary Ostyn’s new book, Family Feasts for $75 a Week, when my husband blithely reviewed the book better than I could have in pages with one sentence:

As I sat cackling over the money I’ve saved since reading a pre-publication copy of this book a month ago I said to Ryan, “I can’t believe how much money we’ve saved this month!  I’ve cut our budget by 50% and I think I could easily go lower if we needed to.” To which he replied, “That’s insane, because we have been eating really well recently, too!”  High praise coming from a man whose own mother (an amazing cook) dubbed him The Food Diva several years back when he commented on the amount of carrots she’d used in a favorite dish of his when we were home visiting for Christmas.

In case you aren’t already heading out to pre-order a copy of the book based just on that, let me elaborate just a little.  Because if you’re anything like me you might be thinking, “Come on, seriously.  Do we really need another book on how to save money on groceries and inexpensive recipes to feed our families?  How many tater-tot casseroles with cheese whiz and Ritz cracker toppings can a girl try?”

If that’s you, I’m with yah sister.  But let me just mention a couple of things.

1. Delicious Recipes Suited to Any Skill Level: While Mary DOES mention tater tots once in her book it is only to tell you how much better homemade fries are.  Not only that, but she upgrades the oven fries with her own homemade Ethiopian seasoning mix (and provides several other easy suggestions for seasonings if a mouth on fire is not your particular version of tasty).  And all joking about those spuds aside, her recipes are seriously good, seriously easy and seriously cost effective.
   In particular I must recommend her Thai chicken curry dish for which you can make your own curry paste and even your own coconut milk if you don’t have a can on hand but do have some shaved coconut in the freezer.  Another favorite already is her suggested recipe for making your own granola cereal.  (As I stood at the counter breaking up my first batch, chest swelled with pride, my husband gave me a smooch and seriously appreciative squeeze and raved about how amazing it was that I could make something like that all on my own.  Sorry, Mary, I took that compliment for my own and didn’t re-mention the fact that I’d learned it from the book.)
2. Flexible Ideas on Cost Cutting that Allow You to Create Your Own Plan: One of the frustrating things about many books like these is that, in order for the system to work, you have to change a million things all at once and after about two weeks (for the very strong and enduring, perhaps three), the whole thing goes out the window because it’s just too hard to maintain so much change all at once.  Mary, however, is very clear about her desire for readers not to make this mistake.  Instead you’re given four areas in which you can assess your strengths and weaknesses and then a ton of ideas to choose from in each of those areas to begin the process.  This book’s plan is laid out like an a la carte menu of great ideas that you can tailor fit to your needs and your money-saving goals.
   I hate to admit it but I’m the queen of starting strong, getting over my head, and fizzling out completely on things.  This is something I dislike about myself and have been working hard to overcome.  But ladies, this process has been seriously painless so far and the benefits have far outweighed the effort.  Oh and another thing?  You don’t have to use coupons!  (But you can if you need to do penance or something.)
3. An Easy and Interesting Read that Gets Right Down to the Issues and Lets You Start Saving Almost Immediately: I got this book on a Sunday.  Inspired, I refused to go to the grocery store until Wednesday because I could see in my own kitchen several different great meals I could already make with things I had in the house.  During that time I was able to use small portions of my time each day to figure out what changes I could make, lay out my plan, and embark.  Holding on to just a few of the ideas I’d found in the book I set out my first week and was delighted with every grocery receipt I collected because I knew I was making wiser decisions already.

I am torn between a desire to be completely honest about improvements to our grocery budget because it’s so amazing and wanting to hide from shame about how easily I have saved so much in my first month of using Family Feasts for $75 a Week.  I have literally saved several hundred dollars this month.  I thought at first that I was unique in how much waste was happening in our home but a few conversations with friends let me know that I am certainly not alone.  Some of my joking, if I’m honest, is to distract from the fact that it was painful to realize just how much room for improvement there was.  I found myself in tears at one point as I worked through my new budgeting plan and list of easy changes – it was a mixture of regret over the waste I could now see over the last 5 years of my marriage and relief to have found in Mary’s advice a workable, helpful and thorough means by which to improve so drastically.

In Titus 2, Paul admonishes older women to come alongside younger women and, among many other important things, train them in the ways of their home. Mary has shared the resulting wisdom of years of experience, trial, error and success in this new book and it’s a fantastic boon to those of us who still have a lot of learning to do. In future I plan on giving this book for wedding shower presents so that my friends can start out ahead of the game in feeding their families well on a frugal but flexible budget.

I could not recommend Family Feasts for $75 a Week more highly.  

A Monument to Joy in Loss July 7, 2009

When we knew my mom was dying — really dying and soon — family began to pour in to see her at the hospital as we waited for hospice to be set up so she could come home.  We still thought that perhaps we had a few weeks with her but there was a certain urgency in my heart to say something to her.  To say…what?  I thought a lot about the things that people say in deathbed scenes in books and movies and on TV.  So many people feel the need to plead for forgiveness for that last wrong they thought of, that last hurt that had gone buried all those years, to confess, to clear the air, to leave no potential stone of regret unturned at the end.  I felt no need for any of that with my mom at her deathbed.

Throughout the Old Testament you read about the people of Israel raising monuments as reminders to themselves and all who observed them of the glorious things God had done for them and through them.  In the beginning of the book of Joshua, after 40 years in the wilderness, the people of Israel finally were able to cross the Jordan and enter into their promised land.  The first thing they did after crossing over the Jordan was take 12 stones, one for each tribe of the people, and build a monument with them.  Joshua instructed them to do this so that when their children asked what the stones meant, the people would be reminded to tell the children of God’s mighty work of stopping up the waters of the over-filled Jordan so that his people might pass safely on dry ground.

On the one hand, it’s sort of funny to think that a people would need a monument to remember a story like that.  You know?  HOW could you forget seeing the water piled up on itself as Scripture said it was, waiting for you to cross into the new home you’d been waiting your whole life to reach?  It’s preposterous!  Well, it’s funny and preposterous until you stop and take a good look at the frailty of your own memories and how they can be changed so easily and quickly sometimes.

We’re told later on that the people fell into sin and disarray almost immediately and that it was because they did not teach their children to remember the mighty ways of what God had done to deliver them.  They did not remember themselves.

And can’t you hear it?  Imagine, say, even fifteen years later, how the story might have been twisted at first.  ”Daddy, really did God stop up the water?  Did it really pile up so high while you crossed over that it was taller than your head??” “Oh son, I was so young then and so small!  Why, I was shorter than you are now.  So perhaps the water seemed very high but…”  ”Oh son, it was so long ago.  But the water was very shallow.  Perhaps it had been a dry season that year and we were so releaved to cross over that it seemed as if the very hand of God stopped the water and dried out the sand…”

But no.  No that was not how the story went at all.  And the people all together that first day lay those stones and all acknowedged the supernatural greatness of what had been done by their mighty God.  They acknowledged it together so that later together they could help each other remember how it really happened and so that they could continue to praise their mighty God and teach their children to praise him as well.

And so this is the monument I want to raise — a monument to the joy I was allowed while losing my mother, because of the God she loved and served and who I love and serve as well.  I nearly lost this memory, it very nearly got changed in the telling, and so I want to preserve it here now.

This was the last real conversation I had with my mom:

Sitting and holding her hand while my dear husband looked on, I was able to tell her thank you for her love and for the fact that I did not feel the need to beg forgiveness for anything.  It was not my own perfection that allowed me to feel this.  Rather, I felt no need to beg because I knew that forgiveness had been freely and openly given already and I rested in the peace of that — thankful, so very thankful that because of that forgiveness I could simply bask in her love and my own love for her.

I hurt my mother deeply through the 29 years of my life with her.  Sometimes I hurt her unintentionally and sometimes I did it very intentionally.  Sometimes I did not mean to be ugly and sometimes I was ugly just to feel the power of the effect it had on her.  I was, indeed, sometimes that kind of daughter.  And we did have wonderful, sweet times together — they far outnumbered the bad times.  But they did not make up for the bad times at all.  There was real and deep hurt there.  But Christ went deeper still.

And so sitting there wanting badly to say the right last things, the most important last things, I found that all there was in my heart was love and thanks and more love and more thanks and a whole lot of expectation for the time when, after I spend the whole rest of my earthly life missing her, I would get to see her again as we worshipped at Jesus’ throne.  And so that’s what I told her and she understood me perfectly.

You see, my mom knew herself before a perfectly righteous and just God.  She knew herself to be a sinner.  She didn’t think that, on her own merit, she would someday stand before His throne and hear “You did good, kid.  We’ll call it even.”  In fact she had a sense of her own sin that was so sincere that it seemed sometimes ridiculously out of proportion to the sweetness and the love we all knew from her.  But because she wasn’t comparing herself to the rest of the world but rather to her perfect Savior, she knew keenly that she fell short.  And that made the love and forgiveness she found at the foot of His cross so precious to her.  It was so precious, so powerful, so all-encompassing in its enormity that it changed her utterly and it made her like Him.  And because she was learning to be like Him I found in my mother love and forgiveness and tenderness and self-sacrifice all wrapped in real joy that taught me about Him, too.

And so, at the end of that confession of all that was in my heart to her, do you know what my mom said?  She didn’t deny that there were things that had had to be forgiven.  She acknowledged that all of what I’d said and known of her heart was true.  And then she told me that she was proud of me because she could see the fruit of Jesus’ love for me in my life and that other people had shared with her that they could see His work in me, too.  And she told me that she loved me.  And we cried — a lot.

It was the best deathbed confession I could have possibly come up with, only it wasn’t contrived.  It was what was in our hearts and it was real.

You might wonder why I’m writing about this now, almost a year and a half later.

Over the course of a few months this last year my memory of this time with my mom began to change a bit.  What I remembered were the parts of what I’d said to her about having no regrets to come to her with.  Somehow my memory changed and left out the parts that had to do with our mutual knowledge of God’s forgiveness in our lives.  I didn’t remember at all her response to me.  Rather, what remained in my mind became a picture of me blithely and somewhat insensitively refusing to acknowledge the full picture of our relationship together and insisting that it had been good enough for me to have no regrets.  I started to cringe at myself.  I no longer thought of that time with her at the end with peace in my heart and it started to color all of the other memories of that sweet and painful time of loss over the next few days before she went home.  Suddenly, where there had been none before, I had regret.

God is faithful where our memories are not and one day in my kitchen I paused over a counter I was scrubbing and was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to remember what she’d said to me.  WHAT had she said to me when I’d so calously informed her that I had nothing at all to be sorry for?  I paused and closed my eyes and forced myself to think through the hot shame that this partial memory brought and remember what she’d said in response to me…she said…that in me she could see the work of Jesus.

And the rest of it came flooding back.

Oh what relief to see that whole picture again!  Jesus!  He is mighty to save.  He is faithful to forgive.  He lives and pleads for me!  HE was the reason we had no regret.  HE was the reason losing her was suffused with joy.  HE was the reason, He was the topic, He is our mighty God.

When I read the story of Isreal and their monument at the Jordan I though to myself, “I must raise one of my own.”

Here it is.

God brought me over the trecherous river of my faulty memory safely and reminded me of the joy and peace only He could give.

Truly, He is my Rock and He is my salvation.

Sabbath July 5, 2009

This is where my heart rejoices tonight:

³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What Food Can Make Real for Us July 4, 2009

As I sat in our kitchen one day about two years ago, feeding my one-year-old son his lunch and eating my own, I began to think about food and how much I hoped that my son would grow up with a taste for foods from all over the world.  That led me to thinking that I just wanted him to know about all the different groups of people in the world, to understand what a great, diverse, and colorful place this world is. I want him to know how these things point to the greatness, creativity and glory of God, who has “measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,” and “with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens. Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,” and “weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance.”  (Isaiah 40:12)

I grew up in a home of daily devotions around the dinner table during which my father would often pull out our copy of Operation World and allow my brothers and me to pick any country we liked.  Dad would read to us about the country, we would talk about any missionaries our family knew who might live there, and then we would pray together for the people and needs there.  On our kitchen wall we had a gigantic world map which was bordered on all four sides with pictures of loved ones and missionaries for whom my family prayed throughout the years.  Pins marked on the map the location of each person or family and I spent many hours in front of them considering the faces, work, and lives represented in each one.  I wish I could say that I sat patiently through our devotions and obediently and hungrily absorbed the things Dad was trying to teach us, but I’d be lying.  However, those Operation World lessons caught my attention and something about the thought of these different lands and different cultures excited me and made a lasting connection in my mind.

Along with devotions around the table, my mother served us many delicious meals there.  Often they were the favorites served at just about any table across our country then and now, but my mom also occasionally served us foods from other countries or with biblical significance.  One that I still serve in my home now was Jacob’s Pottage.  I can’t stir those lentils and rice, pour the lemon-paprika dressing that accompanies it, or take a delicious bite without thinking about Esau coming home ravenous from hunting, and understanding just a little bit, how he could have sold his birthright to his brother for the sake of that simple meal.  Something about the food brings the story close to home for me and I still remember giggling with delight when Mom told me that this meal we were eating could be very like the one in the Bible from so long ago.  It was history on the table right in front of me!  It made the story seem real and possible, rather than like some story from the past in some far away land with no connection to me and my life here.

And so, sitting with my son as he gleefully consumed fist-fulls of broccoli and cottage cheese, I pondered how to go about making those same connections for him.  A desire I have had since the moment I knew I was pregnant with him was to impart an understanding and love for the greatness of God and the love He holds for all of His people of every shape and size, every color and hue, and from every country.  I want the connections to be strong, the lessons to be colorful and interesting, and for him to appreciate and value the importance of the work that missionaries do in the world.  I believe that this is a desire with which any believing parent can identify.

That is going to be the goal of some of my upcoming posts over the next few months:  To give children food that nourishes their bodies, hearts and minds and that creates with each meal a picture of another place in this world.  I’d like to provide some recipes and information that brings into present focus the reality of the work missionary families are doing to spread the precious word of God around the world.  It is my hope that through this learning God will be glorified as our children begin to piece together an understanding of the greatness and mighty works of the God to whom we look for all things and to whom we owe all things.

Does this sound interesting to any of you at all?

Crazy Love – Free Download July 2, 2009

Thanks to Tim Challies who reminds us every month about the free download program over at Christian Audio.  Every month there is one audio book that they allow you to have for free.  This month it is the book “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God”.

This has been on my radar for awhile and I’ve intended to take a look at it.  Now I can do one better and listen to it on my iPod.

Thanks, Tim!  And thanks Christian Audio, too!

What is it All About? July 1, 2009

It amazes me how often both inside and outside the church, and inside and outside my own heart, the true message of the Gospel gets piled up under a whole bunch of other things.  We make checklists of things we should and shouldn’t be doing, we take ourselves to task for all the ways in which we fail or we blithely ignore the fact that there is any objective measure by which our actions could be deemed failures or successes.  There are so many myriad ways in which Christianity starts being about things other than Christ and other than the cross.

So, in the midst of my chores today, when I heard this celebration message from Matt Chandler at The Village Church in Highland Village, TX, I took note.

When my son was a bit younger, about 18 months old or so, he loved certain songs and jokes and stories, even if he didn’t get all the special nuances of them.  He’d wait until JUST the very split second past the end and then holler, “AGIN! AGIN!” until you gave in.  That’s how I felt listening to this message this afternoon.

If you’re not a Christian and you’ve heard it all before and you’re about to click on to the next thing, would you stop for one second and consider giving this download a chance?

And if you are a Christian and you’ve heard it all before and you’re about to click on to the next thing, you give it a chance, too.

Because honestly, the beautiful story of Jesus is the greatest one ever told.  And it’s true.  And it’s about Him.  And it’s about what, out of his just outright amazingness and wonderfulness, he’s done for you.  And Matt Chandler does a really, really good job of telling about it here that, even if you’ve heard it every day since you started having days, shines beautiful and fresh and new.

Complete and utter credit to http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/sermons for access to the talk and I hope I’m not breaking any rules or trust in linking directly to the audio for this the way I’ve done on here.

True Romance June 30, 2009

I have this friend who, while I haven’t known him all that long, I know is a very dear man.  Recently he met and then started dating a girl I don’t know first-hand at all.  But I have heard about her through various different trusted sources, and I’ve also heard about her family.  All of it is good news.  By every account this girl and her family are kind, loving and true people.  So it makes me very happy for my friend as I have watched him walk out the door on his first meeting with her and then in subsequent conversations we’ve had about her since then.

I have been honored to have my friend ask me, a married lady, for advice and insight as he’s pondered this relationship, and I am so touched by the care that he’s using as he approaches this whole thing.  I am touched, too, by the careful and respectful boundaries they are setting for one another, within which they hope to continue getting to know each other and finding out God’s will for this budding relationship of thiers.

And you know, it strikes me, that in seeing this happen I sense more out and out romance than just about anything I have ever seen before.  It isn’t lines crossed and passions out of control like we see so much in our culture lauded as true romance.  No, instead I am seeing this man utterly concerned with showing how wonderful he thinks this girl is by handling her as though she is precious and to be protected — and he’s doing it not only out of his admiration for her, but also his desire to honor his Savior.

I won’t go on.  I don’t want to embarrass my friend should he ever run accross this blog.  But really, it’s brought me so much joy considering his good intentions toward this girl today and it has inspired in me a desire to cover and protect them with prayer as they start out on what could be a lifelong journey.

But it brings to mind the quote from Lewis that helped me title this blog:

“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

I guess that’s some of what makes this all so deep and lovely.  He isn’t aiming for what the world is telling him would be enough to be labeled “true love.”  He’s hoping according to a different standard and that makes his aim more true.

Poorly written tonight, my friends.  But completely sincere.

What a Way to Spend a Day June 29, 2009

This is short and I’m positively flowing over with things to share but I have to use some restraint for at least a few more hours. (Nope, not pregnant…yet.)

However, today I:

Went to the park and swung with toddlers, chased my boy, and helped my niece across monkey bars.

Then after daddy got home, we watched Narnia with our son.  I was Captain Mommy and he was I Boy (we don’t know but it’s his super hero name of choice).  We held drumstick swords and every time a bad guy came on the screen we shot them with our swords.  (That’s what I said.  Stop asking questions and just go with it!)

Then we ate leftover chocolate cake with fudge icing.

Then we sang songs.

Then bed.

It’s been a good day.

3 Easy Breads June 28, 2009

So, my sis-in-law, Michele, made a great New Year’s resolution a few years back: She decided she was going to learn to make bread.  And that girl didn’t just learn to make a loaf of white bread and call it quits.  She learned to make some fantastic artisan breads.  My appetite wasn’t so great for a few months during my mom’s illness and following her death.  But I remember Michele made a loaf of sesame challah that she brought over to my dad’s house on afternoon before Easter and Crista toasted it up for us with butter and jam.  Honestly, it was like mana.  I couldn’t eat enough.  It was so good and I decided then and there that I’d learn to bake bread, too.

The three breads I’m sharing here are some of our favorie staples at home now.  One doesn’t require any kneading at all.  One requires kneading in a food processor or a mixer with a dough hook.  One allows for kneading by hand or with a hook.  All of them are easy, inexpensive and, best of all, delicious!

Tip:  I highly recommend pricing out flour and most especially yeast at a big buy store near you.  One of the no-fee stores near me, for instance, carries 2 pounds of yeast (no joke, 2 pounds!) for less than what I pay for a jar of yeast and about the same price as a set of three packets in the grocery store.  I bought mine a year ago, store it sealed in the fridge, and my little yeasties are still going strong in any dough I make.

No-Knead “Sour” Dough What you need to know about this bread is that you have to plan ahead.  If you want to eat it, start making it the day before because time replaces work here.  It is excellent sliced with butter, dipped in hummus, as a crouton for bruschetta, or dipped in oil and vinegar.  There are lots of variations of this recipe online.  Look around and get some creative ideas!  Mary at Owlhaven.net uses a different variation from the one I use.

Amazing White Bread (or wheat, if you want!) Trent, over at The Simple Dollar offers a step-by-step-with-pictures lesson on making white bread yourself at home.  You can modify this recipe to include whole wheat flour for something healthier.  I’ve also done this and then added flax meal for additional nutrition and to moisted the bread which can get a little dry with the WW flour.  Let me tell you, there are few things that make my toes curl the way a slice of this bread toasted and then buttered and drizzled with honey can.  Goodness gracious.

One note: if you’re using a stand mixer to knead this dough:  Just knead the dough with the hook for about 4 minutes on setting 2 or 4.  Much more than this can over-knead your dough and keep it from rising.  I had never used my mixer for bread before and found this advice on the Kitchen Aid site itself.  Very helpful!

Home-Made Pita Bread This recipe is the most labor intensive simply because you have to roll out your dough.  But it’s tasty and well worth the effort.  Because there is lots of standing time for the dough, I find that I can have my dishes done and the kitchen cleaned up before the last batch comes out of the oven.  This means I often get to stand at the counter and eat some warm with homemade hummus before I put the rest away as a reward for my efforts.

1/4 oz dry yeast (1 pkg or 2 1/4 tsp loose)
1/2 cup warm water
1 additional cup warm water
1 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. additional sugar
1 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. olive oil
3 1/2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
(you can use all white if needed)

Mix up yeast, 1/2 C warm water and 1 tsp of sugar and let proof for ten minutes.  It will get bubbly.

In bowl of mixer combine flour, salt, 2. tsp sugar and mix on very lowest setting.  Add yeast mixture, oil and water and mix until combined.  Remove mixing paddle and replace with dough hook.  Knead on low setting for ten minutes.  Remove, fold over on itself several times with floured hands and then form into a ball.  Place in a lightly oiled bowl (glass or porcelain is best) and turn over a few times to evenly coat with oil.  Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise until it doubles.  (Anywhere between 1 and two hours depending on the temp in your kitchen! Tonight it took barely an hour.)

Position rack in lower 1/3 of oven and preheat oven to 500.  Punch dough down and let rest 5 minutes.  Divide dough into 8 equal portions.  The best explanation I’ve found for what to do next with the dough is out of an Armenian cookbook my friend Ani gave me:  ”Taking one piece at a time, flatten and fold sides over toward the center like wrapping a package.  Seal together on all sides.  Turn sealed side down.”

Let dough rest an additional 10 minutes, covered with a towel or plastic wrap on a lightly floured surface.  Next, roll each piece of dough out into a circle and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake approximately 7 minutes or until slightly golden and puffy.  Cool slightly on racks and then place in a plastic bag for storage while still warm so that bread remains moist.

A REALLY good way to eat this (though I’m not sure how healthy it is!) is to cut pita bread into triangles (like a mini pizza) and lightly fry them up in olive oil or vegetable oil.  Lightly sprinkle with salt and then dip in hummus.  The soft bread takes on the consistency of a savory doughnut.  Delicious!

So there you are.  3 easy breads. Enjoy!