so sad at our house

We have had a few sad things occur at our house lately. The first sad event is the death of my beautiful Grape Ivy plant. This sad thing used to be so gorgeous! It was full and green and happy and alive and not dead! This plant was given to me in 1998 by my visiting teacher Debbie and I can't remember her last name. She was an amazing young married gal going to school and working 3 jobs. She still found the time to come visiting teaching EVERY single month. We lived in Pullman, Washington at the time and this plant has been with us to Oregon, Colorado, and now Utah. I am a quite sadden by this occurrence.

The second sad thing that happened this past week is I made some truly nasty bread. I am so excited though, because I get to keep trying. I bought a wheat mill/grinder last week and I was looking forward to grinding up some funky, healthy grains and making the best bread/rolls ever. I went and purchased some spelt, kamut, amaranth, oats groats, brown rice, and millet.

I knew this was just going to be the most amazing experience ever, so I waited for the girls to get home from school and then I cracked open the can of hard red wheat I have had in the basement for 4 years and NEVER had any intention of using. We ground up some wheat to get my new wheat mill warmed up and then we started in on the spelt, amaranth, and oats groats.

The smell that came from the mill was one I recall from my childhood - the smell of the feed my grandparents used to feed the chickens. I was not worried, I knew it would make the best bread! I used a recipe I have had around for awhile and works WONDERFUL with white bread. The rolls that we consumed later that evening we not wonderful. I didn't cook them long enough and they were just yucky. I have learned a few things - you need to age your freshly ground grain flour a few days before you use it, whole wheat flour needs to bake longer than white flour; honey would be nice instead of sugar, and I need to use a recipe for wheat bread - it is different than a white bread recipe. So next week I will be grinding again and hopefully things will turn out better.

The last of the deaths this week is the laundry tub. The fabulous red tub was brought into the marriage by Matt. It has served us well, but with the 'train rides' that have occurred in the red beast, it is starting to show the damage. The handles are ripping off and since I used it as a stool last month, the entire bottom of it has cracked and is about to come out. You can see the shirt trying to poke out at the bottom. This tub has made it through many moves and many apartments and homes.

The best memory of this red tub for me is one day while we were at Utah State University I was walking home from class. I saw my husband walking across the parking lot with this red tub on his head like he was an amazing lady from Africa. He had gotten out of class early and was headed to the laundry mat to do the laundry and surprise me. Oh the wonderful days of early marriage!

This is big red's replacement I bought yesterday. We will see if we actually sort as we go! When Matt got home last night, the kids were playing in the red tub in the living room. He said "What has happened to my red tub? Oh Rachel, we can't throw this away. It has too many memories. My mom bought this for me when I got home off my mission and it has been around for a long time. We just can't chuck it." I assured him I would put it safely in the basement because I figured he would say something like that!