A-Ha!

On Friday of this past week, I decided to start tracking my Weight Watcher points again.  I'm not really sure what made me think to start doing it, but I did.  I have been having a hard time keeping those few pounds above off *the two to three above my goal*, even with drinking my water faithfully.  It was getting frustrating.  I logged everything into MFP at the same time I was counting my points.  Now, I know there are some people out there that do GREAT with MFP.  Counting calories is totally their thing and they have lost big.

The beginning of my day looked like this:

For my purposes, my day was going great.  My middle kiddo had soccer practice and I came home to make pancakes *with fresh milled flour*.  Uh. Yum!  When I entered them into MFP, I still had calories to spare.  I was doing great until I figured out how many points those bad boys were.  Yikes!  Let's just say I was over by a lot and while I counted every morsel, it was an eye opening moment.  All of this time I have been under my calorie goal, but was I within my points allowance each day?  I'm not really sure.

I have continued to count my points the last few days and it's almost been a bit more freeing.  I have a WW calculator that I'm using that I can also change days on as well as track my points for each day.  I am writing it all down like you see above.  And really?  It's okay.  It doesn't take me much time to do it and keeps things real for me.

After taking last week off from exercise, I got up at *cough* 5:15 to go for my walk this morning.  Of course, because I didn't lay everything out last night before getting up, I had difficulty finding everything I needed to get out the door.  I took my 'short' walk.  I say 'short' because people laugh at me when I say my 'short' walk is 3.25 miles.  That's not short for them.  Eh, it works for me.

As I'm typing this, I'm wondering how many activity points I got for this morning's walk.  I found this neat website.  Not only does it have an AP calculator, but if you look in the left-hand 'tool bar', they also have restaurant points, a food points calculator, and a points plus allowance calculator.  A-mazing!  I wonder if WW is allowing them to have these things on their site?  At this point, who knows?  But, it is benefiting me at this point in my life.

This post isn't to say that one can't lose by counting calories, because it is completely doable.  I'm just saying that something just wasn't working for me.  Today is my 5th day of being back to counting my points and I feel great!  Yay!

Keep plugging away friends!  The journey is never over, it just keeps improving!

Fresh Milled Flour Equals...

...a-mazing bread!  We've used it in other bread.  You saw the last post about the multigrain bread.  I've also used it for our pizza crust.

But, I feel like the real test is making bread with only the fresh milled flour.  No, I didn't measure it by weight.  I did in fact measure it via the good ole measuring cup.  My oldest even helped me get it all put together.  I used my KitchenAid mixer to do the hard part for me *mixing and kneeding it*.  I am in love with the dough hook, that's for sure.

After allowing it to rise in a bowl *in my oven with the light on*, then separating it into bread pans, and allowing it to rise, it was time to bake it.

And it came out looking like this:

Isn't it pretty?  I just love it!  It couldn't cool fast enough so that we could taste test it for quality assurance.  My shortest kiddo stood at the ready when I *was* finally ready to slice it.

First?  Get it out of those pans!

No, I don't have pictures of it sliced, but maybe the next round.  It truly turned out looking like store bought bread.  The texture even resembles store bought.  The difference?  No preservatives or additives.  It's just good ole bread.  The bonus?  Not only do the girls love it, but my hubby thinks it's good enough to make a sandwich out of.  He has never and I mean NEVER said that my bread was good for anything other than toast.  Seriously.

What does that mean?  We won't be buying any bread from the store.  Woohoo!  To make these two loaves, it took a little over 1 pound of wheat berries *$.51* + $.12 *milk* + $.15 *sugar* + $.16 *oil* + pennies for salt & yeast = $.94 ish for my two loaves of bread.  I of course need to factor in usage of the mixer & oven, but what would that cost?  To get this quality type bread at the store, would cost a bit more.  The cheapest bread at the store is loaded with nastiness. 

Here's hoping everyone is still fighting the good fight.

Testing Out the Mill

I got my mill yesterday.  To say that I was excited would be an understatement.  I couldn't get it out of the box fast enough or read through the instructions any more quickly, but I did take some pictures along the way.

Here 'she' is!  Hmm...quiet design.  That was about to be tested.

When I first turned it on, just to get an idea, all 3 of the girls instantly had their hands over their ears.  It sure was loud.  In defense of the mill, I didn't have the lid on top or the collecting bowl beneath it.  The directions said to run 2 cups of berries through to kind of 'clean' it out from packaging.

So, I ran the wheat berries through.  You put them in the 'hopper' on top and put the lid on and away you go!

It doesn't take very long for the berries to run through.  After doing my first 2 cups, I ran 6 more cups through to get an idea of a couple different things.  #1--I didn't want to do the full 13 cups that I could do, but enough to give it a good work out.  #2--I wanted to see if the ratio was correct *1 cup of berries = 1 1/2 cups of flour.* 

When it is milling, the noise isn't any worse than me running the vacuum cleaner.  As it got to the end of the milling process, it was a bit louder than my vacuum.  After it finished, I pulled out my flour.

I measured it out into a 1 gallon size, freezer ziploc bag.  I put 6 cups of berries in and got 9 cups of flour.  If you multiply that out, you are in fact getting the 1:1 1/2 ratio that I had heard about.  The last test was to figure out the number of cups of berries in a pound.
After hubby and I got home from our date last night, I did some more figuring.  One pound of wheat berries measures out to 2 1/4 cups of berries.  Based on the above ratio, you would end up with 3.375 cups of flour.  After running the 1 pound of berries through and measuring it, I had 3 2/3 cups + a couple of tablespoons.  When I weighed my flour, I had 1 pound of flour.  The moral of this story, I need to start weighing my flour for recipes instead of using a measuring cup.  I have read that it's better to weigh your flour, but I've always been skeptical of this.  We'll have to give that a whirl too!

The first loaf of bread I made caved on me.  It's still good to eat though.  The bottom of the loaf is good for sandwiches and the top is good for toast.  The second loaf I made looks a bit more pretty.  I did measure my ingredients using measuring cups/spoons.  I do have to say that by using fresh milled flour, my loaf is mighty happy.

This was my second loaf.  Yes, it really is that tall *if you know bread makers, this is fairly common.*  I cut the loaf in half *from top to bottom* and it gives us two loaves instead of one.

I'd also like to make a straight whole wheat loaf.  I may even try out some of the recipes that were in the users manual.  So far, we're really happy with it.

We'll have plenty of new adventures with our new mill.  We'll be having plenty of pancakes and nummy things in the next few weeks.  The girls will be my test subjects. :)

A new adventure!

I am starting a new adventure, once one very important piece of equipment arrives.  I'm not really sure what started me into researching it, but I started looking into milling my own flour.  We use so much of it, as we bake bread *a post devoted to bread making is here*, make pancakes/waffles, bagels, cookies, etc.  We do a lot from scratch.  I like to do it and the girls love it.  If I let them, they'd stand in the kitchen and eat an entire loaf of homemade bread...plain.  Of course, being a good momma, I don't let that happen...much.

So, I ordered my mill.  I was all set to order the Messerschmidt grain mill attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer *seriously, I had it in my virtual cart* when I was reviewing the specs on it...again.  The big thing that stuck out was that you need a Kitchenaid mixer with a max wattage of 325.  I had thought that all mixers were about the same, but I figured I'd look at mine to be on the safe side.  I'm glad I did!  When I flipped my beauty over, it said 250.  Then I went about looking to see if it was necessary to have 325 watts and out of all the sites I looked at, only one said 250!  Let's be clear about something, I love my Kitchenaid mixer.  My grandparents gave it to me *and hubby...I suppose* as a wedding gift.  And really, it's mainly mine.  I'm pretty sure the only time hubby has touched it has been to wipe the top of it or around it.  Moving on.  I use it A. Lot.  I use it for baking: cakes, cookies and bread.  I use it for canning:  applesauce, spaghetti sauce and ketchup.  I've used it for making baby food and grinding up chicken.  I have pictures of my oldest standing at the mixer, 'helping' momma, and she has the same stance I do when I'm working at the mixer *one hand resting on top of the mixer*.  I've got a couple of the attachments, so it seemed logical to order the grain mill.  It is not logical to buy the grain mill and then have it burn up my motor, then have to buy a new Kitchenaid mixer *I really don't want to live without it, so I'd want a new one.*

With all that said, I've purchased a Nutrimill grain mill.  Expensive.  That's what I have to say about it right now.  I've done my research on freestanding grain mills too.  I saw some that were over $400.  I saw some for about $30, but those were hand mills, and let's be honest, do I really want to try and hand mill my flour?  Probably not.  The price per pound for wheat berries is actually cheaper than buying the generic whole wheat flour from Fry's *aka Kroger*.  And since we go through a lot of flour *I figured we'd have gone through at least 10 pounds of whole wheat flour this month...maybe more*, this seems like a logical step.  At some point, we will recoup the cost of the grain mill.

My mill should be here by Monday.  In the meantime, we'll be using my store bought flour. 

Oh and our new favorite bread recipe can be found here.  It is so yummy!  I do tweak it just a little because I don't want to buy powdered milk right now.  So, I use half milk and half water.  I also double the recipe to have a bigger loaf.  I didn't have millet before, but I picked some up at our whole food store on Monday.  I also like to split the sugar into different kinds; sometimes I use brown sugar and white sugar.  Other times, I use honey, but you have to watch the amount of liquid you have in your breadmaker so you don't have 'soupy' bread.  I think I may try molasses in a future batch.  I'll keep you posted.

And one other thought about fresh milled flour.  Apparently, once you go fresh, you don't want to go back.  Hmm, we'll have to wait and see.  Stay tuned for more blogging regarding our new adventure.