I post this because want to encourage Tommy in his photography and because I really want to post pictures of my children (they are so cute!) but I don’t yet know if that is really wise. So for now I add a little color and life to my blog with flowers!

Here is a great Pizza dough recipe. I usualy make it in the KithchenAid mixer. If you need to know how to mix and kneed by hand, let me know and I will put it in the comments. (By hand takes about 20 min. to do). Makes 2 crusts.

Add, in this order, to your mixer bowl:

1 1/4 cups warm water (104 degrees - hot bath temp.)
2 Tbls. extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbls. honey
2 teas. dry active yeast
4 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teas salt

Mix on low until it forms a ball on the dough hook and becomes very soft and springy.

If all whole wheat is too dense for your tastes, substitute 2 of the cups for bread flour. Sometimes I throw in some ground flax seed (about 1/3 cup) for health.

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow to raise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 45-60 min (your oven set to 100 degrees will work for this). Roll it out into whatever shape and thickness I want and place it on a cookie sheet coated with a little bit of olive oil and a sprinkling of cornmeal. Allow the pizza dough to raise again on the baking sheet, from 30 min., or until desired thickness.

Then add toppings - oh, I love pizza toppings! What to choose? Last night we had . . .

A jar of my favorite red pasta sauce
A big fat handful of fresh basil (put on first so that it doesn’t scorch and dry out in oven)
roasted red pepper strips, chopped
4 ounces of crumbled feta cheese
Fresh grated mozzarella cheese
Chopped red onions
A small spoonful of capers

Just throw it on the pizza dough and bake on 425 for 15-20 minutes, until crust is nicely browned and the cheese is melted and starting to brown a wee bit.

Another favorite topping combo is:

Basil pesto (sometimes use Knorr packet found near pasta - its cheap)
small bottle of artichoke hearts (or Kalamata olives - both make it too salty)
4 oz feta cheese
Fresh grated mozzarella
oil packed (or well rehydrated dried) sun dried tomatoes (place these on first as these dry out in the baking - oooo new idea! Knead them chopped up into the crust? hmmm, have to try that . . .)
chopped grilled chicken (optional)

UPDATE - hand mixing technique

Combine water, yeast, oil and honey in large mixing bowl and whisk together. Allow to sit 10 min. to ‘proof’ yeast and make sure it is alive. After 10 min, the mixture should be bubbly. You can cut this short as soon as you see evidence of life or just assume it is alive and move on, if you want.

Add 1 cup of flour and whisk until smooth. Add another cup of flour and change to wooden spoon. Stir in a back and forth manner, instead of ’round and round’. I will usually tip my bowl and stir back and forth, like a pendulum. This helps develop long strands of glueten whereas the round and round cookie-dough method tends to break the strands as they develop. Stir in this manner until you see long strands developing in your batter, (which should be thick like muffin batter) and then stir a minute or two more.

Add the third cup of flour as well as the salt and continue mixing in as best you can. Dough will start to form and get very thick and hard to stir. You will probably have to switch to ’round and round’ to keep going. Add another 1/2 cup of flour and continue stirring, if you can. Once you can no longer stir, transfer dough to a clean surface dusted with flour. Now you will begin kneading.

Kneading - Take ye wonderfule lumpe o breade and fold in half as you press and roll it foreward with the heel of your hand. Turn lump 1/4 turn and then repeat, over and over and over and over agian smoothly, slowly and gently, adding in the remaining flour as necessar to keep the bread from sticking excessively. This is why I praise the Lord for my mixer. Hand kneading will take 15-25 minutes, or even longer, to develop the glueten enough with whole wheat. It makes a great time to sing, pray or talk on the phone! Dough should be smooth, shinny and when you take a piece and hold it up, stretch it. If you are able to stretch it pretty thin so that it is almost translucent before it breaks, then you have well, kneaded bread. The only way I have ever “over kneaded” is by being in a hurry and kneading too fast and rough, making the dough tough. When kneading by hand, I also tend to add too much flour. Err on the side of soft and sticky. Oil your hands to help as well.

Place in an oiled glass bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Raise 45-60 minutes or until just doubled. I commonly raise the bread too long in the bowl. A sunny window, or the microwave with the light on, or in oven set to 100 degrees are good warm, draft free places to raise bread. With the oven option, dough may rise more quickly. Return to above instructions and enjoy!

God gave me to the perfect mother. Marla challenged me to type myself and as suspected, I am ENFJ, with heavy on the J. My mother is a jazz and gospel musician, motivational speaker and artist. Probably an ESFP, heavy on all four. Naturally, she makes a wonderful artist and friend. Naturally, I would make a great legalist. Indeed, my “hippie” days were filled with much legalism of the environmental, frugal sort. I am sure I thoroughly irritated my mother with snotty, teenage-like judgments on her waste-producing and very not-simple lifestyle. However, God knew what He was doing when He gave us to each other. I like to fancy that I have helped inspire mom not to spend so much money and to simplify a bit, but really, she has the instinct in her anyway. More importantly, she has taught me to live with grace, passion and artfulness. So as I delve back into my environmentalism a bit and explore a globally responsible Christian lifestyle, I pray that I would not also dip back into legalism and guilt.

My mother’s artfulness centers around beauty. She has a passion for flowers and light and all things created wonderfully. She has an amazing ear, eye and sense of style. For me, artfulness centers around the beauty of ideas. These are of course connected - I believe both contribute to beauty of “human spirit”. (Gnostics will not like me.) I believe the incarnation indicates the unity of body, soul, mind, spirit and whatever other aspect of personhood God has given us. We can glorify and reflect God through physical beauty as well as through intellectual brilliance. The incarnation has made all things sacred and united.

Mom loves literal abundance; her garden is crammed full of wonderful plants and flowers, her home full of art and beautiful things. She loves to just completely surround herself with beauty. Because I am more of a thinker, all these things around me to think about makes me feel a bit dizzy. Growing up, mom’s abundance felt like chaos and waste. I didn’t see a reason for all of it other than self-indulgence. I became extreme in my minimalism, seeing any indulgence as waste. Mom still dresses with me when she visits (now much to my sincere thanks!), because for heaven’s sake, its good to enjoy and cultivate (with taste) the artistic beauty God gave to the female body! However, if something didn’t have a practical purpose, I thought it was nearly sinful to waste time and money on. Of course, my own pursuits, such as backpacking, traveling, shrooms, and pot were not a waste. (aren’t youth silly?). Had I not been rebelling against Christianity, perhaps I would have become Amish!

What I failed to notice, however, was that God is extremely lavish in His creation. There are all kinds of things and animals flaunting purposeless beauty and even humor. I remember my mom always citing the orangutan’s derriere as proof that God had a great sense of humor! (or which ever dark brown monkey has the bright whitish pink bottom.) I have learned, thanks to the Lord’s lavish grace and kindness to me, that we need not be utter, militant minimalists. However, to me there is an artfulness, a joy, a beauty to simple, conscientious living. As I share my ideas and examples in these posts, please know that my heart is not to try to mould all Christians into some ultra-frugal lifestyle. However, I believe the lifestyle many Christians leave is hardly thoughtful or artful; it is merely drug along by the status quo and convenience. My strongest memory of Nancy Campbell and her daughters at the Above Rubies conference is how frequently they cried “Freedom” with great, Australian accented passion. I challenge the American lifestyle, because I want to share the freedom of body, mind, and heart that I have found by changing my life to artfully, joyfully creatively reflect the values and truths I have been given spiritually.

Of course, I am one who considers re-organizing the closet a creative act . . .

I have tended to be a bit perfectionistic in my cleaning; cleaning base boards and the outside of the windows and steam cleaning the carpet once every two months, touching up the wall paint every month. I would still like to do these things, I enjoy a clean, neat house. It promotes peace in my soul However, there is a more holistic stewardship factor I am learning to consider. I have less and less time as I have more kids (perhaps I will up the cleaning standard again as they are able to participate and help!) and there are other projects that I ought to do instead of cleaning compulsively, such as remembering other’s birthdays, fun projects with my girls, scrapbooking, caring for others in the church and in my neighborhood or maybe doing home improvements instead of touching up the plain white walls over and over again!

I read a principle in my book that struck me and has stuck with me. (Struck and stuck, the ideological equivalent of ’shock and awe’ perhaps?) The purpose of cleaning is to maintain health. Not impress, not achieve perfection, but to promote health. So simple, balancing and true. Jesus said that we would worship Him in ’spirit and in truth’ and that we are to worship Him in all we do. The more I learn to look toward and follow internal, spiritual standards and less external standards, the more abundance my life truly does have. So my standard of clean is to be driven by a heart that seeks to promote physical health in my family, and also mental and spiritual health. Clutter might not breed germs but it breeds anxiety of mind. It might be a stretch to include this under health, but I also think it is godly and loving to clean for guests, not so that they are impressed, but in a manner that might make them feel loved and cared for.

Here are the homemade cleaning solutions I promised to post. Again, I would not use so much ammonia because it is toxic, but its cheap and you can buy a gallon at the grocery store. If you do use it, make sure to NEVER mix it with chlorine.

Ammonia - full strength will “fume” clean an oven. Set a cupful in the oven overnight, with door shut. It will loosen grime. The next day pour the cup of ammonia into a bucket of warm water, add a few tablespoons of washing soda, dip in newspaper and wipe away. Use steel wool for any stubborn spots.

Baking Soda - A new favorite for me. Cheap and healthy! Non scratch powder for chrome, porcelain and all BUT aluminum cooking utensils. Dilute with water to clean fridge, freezer, thermos, and lunch boxes. Will also clean silver. Use for grease fires. There are tons of uses for baking soda you can find on the net. Go to diy.com, Queen of Clean and look up baking soda.

Chlorine Bleach - My laundry salvation. I spot whites with it all the time (if Oxy-clean sprayon doesn’t work, which it usually does. That is worth the money to me!). Use to clean stains from kitchen items as well. Also will disinfect chopping blocks and remove mildew from shower curtains, and disinfect the toilet bowl. NEVER mix with ammonia, toilet bowl cleaners or oven cleaners.

Vinegar - Another favorite cheap and healthy cleaner! Will also kill weeds in the yard (use 20% solution available at organic garden centers.) Combine with baking soda to deoterize your drains. Pour baking soda in drain, then a bit of vinegar. Allow to sit 20 min. before flushing down drain. Add some to the dishwater to make glasses shine.

Washing soda - sodium carbonate, a water softener and cleaner. scrub on pots and pans.

For these solutions, be sure to label and keep them separate.

Brass, Copper and Pewter cleaner - 1/4 cup salt with enough vinegar to dissolve it. Add flour to make a fairly dry paste.