Still here....

I know I haven't written for awhile, but nothing new is happening here. 

I have been doing a lot of family history searching and am pleased with what is out there.

So many people are doing their families, it is so cool! I love finding my family and putting a name to a date into time periods of history.

Have you ever put a name and birthdate of a family member on google.com and see what comes up? It's great, especially if they are born before 1890. Most names that I have done have had some sort of story online. Thanks to all my unknown ancestors out there doing the work, you are great and I love the stories and pictures.

One distant cousin that I met online had a picture of my parents when they were first married and he didn't know who they were. What a surprise to both of us, as I was thrill to print off that picture and he got to know me and my parents!

If you have family pictures without names, please put them on a picture site as deadfred.com or ancestry.com or many other picture sites. Some will see it and let you know who it is. There is a group on facebook called: "Genealogy Photos" where you can also put unknown pictures.

On most of my family lines, that I have been working on have at least 14-15 generations back!

Here is the famous picture of my parents, that might of been lost if I didn't email my cousin and find out if we were related or not.

What a treasure! Aren't they cute? 

Great Aunt Iza, my dad (Glenn Utterback), my mom (Emma Armstrong Utterback), 

Great Aunt Iola and my grandfather (William Everett Utterback).  Iza and Iola came down to visit their brother, my grandfather. The picture is taken at the house of my parents around 1950, where I lived until 8 years old.

Valentine's Day

Just wanted to share my nice Valentine surprise.

My daughter, Cynthia, came over last night with a beautiful pot of red tulips.

Aren't they pretty?

Since my husband death, Cynthia has been pretty good at the different holidays and other times, to bring little gifts. 

I also recieved a nice card in the mail from a good friend.

How thoughtful this year has been.

BBD #17,Sourdough Potato Bread, (rolls or hamburger buns)

Had some leftover mashed potatoes from lunch, extra canned milk, (that I didn’t use in the potatoes) and the starter was sitting out to make some bread, so I thought why not go ahead and make my potato bread for this month’s BBD #17 on potatoes, from http://notitievanlien.blogspot.com/2009/02/announcement-bread-baking-day-17.html . Gotta love Bread Baking Day. 

As I was looking for a good recipe, I found lots of them. So, I decided to create one. The reason behind this was that every recipe I looked at had good ingredients, so I chose what I wanted from different recipes and came up with a pretty good roll recipe. I liked the idea of sour cream, but didn’t have any, yet I just made some yogurt, needed to use up the canned milk, didn’t want to put extra butter in, as there was some in the potatoes and woo – la, (I am sure I misspelled this saying wrong, but hopefully you get the idea.) the recipe came together.  As you can see from the pictures, I made one loaf of bread, some rolls and hamburger buns. We made hamburgers for dinner and the buns were great!!!

Sourdough Potato Bread, Rolls or Hamburger Buns

1 cup sourdough, freshly feed

1 package dry yeast

½ cup warm water

2 tablespoons sugar (added at the last minute, as I didn’t think the dough tasted right without it)

½ cup yogurt

2 cups mashed potatoes, leftovers is good (mine had salt, pepper, milk and butter already in them)

¾ cup canned milk

1/3 cup vegetable oil

6 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

 

In a small bowl, put the water and sprinkle in the yeast. Let set and proof for 5 minutes.

Put into a large bowl and mix the sourdough, sugar, yogurt and yeast together.

Next add the potatoes, milk and oil.

Start adding the flour one cup at a time and when it starts to where the dough comes and forms a ball, take out of bowl and put on lightly dusted with flour.

Knead for about 10 minutes, adding flour as necessary.

You might add up to a cup more, but don’t let the dough become thick and dense. (I like my dough a little sticky as it seems to be lighter when baked.)  

Put all of this into a large greased or oiled bowl and let rise about an hour.

Take out of bowl and put onto lightly dusted floured counter or table top and punch some of the air bubbles out.

Shape into 2 large loaves, 3 smaller ones or make into rolls or hamburger buns.

Bake in preheated oven at 350˚.

Loaves baked for about 35-40 minutes.

Rolls for about 20-25 minutes.

Hamburger buns for about 25-30 minutes.

We really enjoyed the rolls and hamburger buns the best.

This makes a lot of dough, the picture only shows some of the rolls. I baked 1 loaf, 10 rolls and 6 hamburger buns.

Oatmeal Bread

This is a good oatmeal bread that slices up nicely, even the next day. We pretty much ate the first loaf way too fast, that I forgot to take a picture. And the second loaf I gave away. So the next morning I made a fresh strawberry, blueberry yogurt shake and had a piece of toast from the bread. Yummy! My son, also enjoy this for a different breakfast. For the shake, it is just a few strawberries, blueberries, homemade yogurt, a little milk and a little Agave nectar, blend in the blender and enjoy!

Here's the recipe for the bread!

1 cup cooked oatmeal (I make some ahead for breakfast and save out 1 cup and let cool)

1 package yeast

½ cup warm water

1-2 tablespoons dark molasses

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoon butter, melted and cooled a little

4-4 1/2 cups flour (you can do a mixture of flours- wheat, white, spelt)

Put warm water in a bowl and add yeast to proof for 5 minutes.

In a mixing bowl put in the molasses, butter, oatmeal and mix slowly with dough hook in your mixer. Add yeast and 2 cups flour and mix. Slowly add rest of flour and salt, mix for at least 5 minutes, until dough forms a ball. Let set 5 minutes and then mix again for 1 minute.

Dough should be soft and slightly tacky. If clumps of dough stick to your hands can knead in a little more flour, but keep dough a little sticky.

You can knead this by hand if you don’t have a mixer with a dough hook. Knead for about 10 by hands.

Grease a bowl and let dough rise in it for 1-2 hours, until double.

Punch down, form 2 loaves and put in 2 separate greased loaf pans (8 ½” x 5” pans).

Put in pre-heated oven at 350˚ for 30-35 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean, or until internal temperature reaches 190˚.

Makes 2 loaves. I made mine into round loaves.

Sweet Potato Blueberry Pancakes

I have found these wonderfully delicious pancakes! Yasmeen, you have a great idea, so I re-did mine just a bit. Please see her recipe as well as this one.  The family loved them!!!! They puffed up beautifully.

http://yasmeen-healthnut.blogspot.com

Sweet Potato Blueberry Pancakes (revised)

Ingredients:

1 cup flour (can use all-purpose-unbleached or wheat or ½ white and ½ wheat)

¼ cup wheat germ

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon soda

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon nutmeg, freshly ground

¼ teaspoon cinnamon, ground

1 egg

2 tablespoons oil

1 ¼ cup buttermilk

1 cup sweet potato, cooked and pureed (let cool)

¾ cup fresh blueberries (can be frozen blueberries)

  In a 2 quart bowl, whisk or sift together the flour, wheat germ, baking powder, soda, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon.

Add to this the egg, oil, buttermilk, and sweet potatoes.

Bake on pre-heated and greased pancake pan. Bake about 1-2 minutes each side.

Serve with your favorite syrup.

 *Note: I still had to add about ¼ cup more milk to make the batter thinner. I used regular milk for this part.