Comings and Goings

How can someone be 82% addicted to blogging and NOT blog? Well, I SO love reading all of your blogs much more than I love reading or writing mine. Everyone else seems to be having so much more going on in their lives that is WAY more blogworthy than what's going on in MY life...so there it is, my excuse.

I do have a little bit of news...we've moved! We finally found a place and moved about two weeks ago. We are renting the basement of a cute house up in NORTH NORTH Orem. Our landlady is SO cute! On the night we moved, I happened to be the first to walk in our place and when I walked in, first of all...the place was SO clean and perfectly tidy and then on the kitchen counter was this cute welcome note and a bucket full of cleaning supplies as a little 'house warming gift'. We went to church for the first time on Sunday and turns out, as fate would have it, we moved right into my cousin's ward! Fun for us! We already KNOW someone!

Another fun and exciting event among the Fears Family is Football Season...well, this year it's a bit of a bitter sweet feeling as home games approach. Gary is involved in a club that cleans up after the games to earn money to support the club. And you think it's a yucky job to be a garbage man? At least they get to ride in a truck. Try being the one that PICKS up the garbage! First they use these brooms to sweep all the trash to the isles...then they pick it all up with their HANDS...and then they have this mondo huge powerful hose that they use to spray everything off all off nice and clean...but think about what is coming...WINTER! Yes, even in the winter they need to hose it off. I think that I might need to bail once the white stuff falls. Below is a picture from the last game. See that yellow poncho Gary is wearing? That's because it RAINED through the whole game and during the clean up! It was cold, wet, stinky, dirty, and MUCH more difficult to sweep. I think I like the job of taking the pictures much more than I enjoy cleaning up! But really, don't think I complain about it that much. I'm just trying to portray to you just how big and dirty of a job it really is!

With graduation in sight, Gary has started the job hunting process. It's an exciting time for us. We have NO clue where we will be living a year from now, but Gary is hopeful that it is NOT in the Beehive State. He recently applied for a job with a division of Johnson and Johnson a few weeks ago and this job would require relocation to Jacksonville, Florida. When he told me about this, the first thing that came out of my mouth was "Gary! HELLO! They have Hurricanes in Florida, we can't move there!" to which is response was, "Tara, I already did the research, Jacksonville hasn't had one hit for over 50 years!" - Duh! "Gary, then they are WAY WAY WAY past due for a big one!" a fews days later I had started to actually get over the hurricane fear and enjoy the thought of living near the beach in florida...until we went to Gary's mission reunion where we had a very long and detailed conversation with an Elder that Gary served with who has LIVED in Florida (same area) and said, not knowing my previous reservations on the Florida issue, "Jocksonville is great except that they have the BIGGEST crocodile situation there! They are EVERYWHERE, including people's swimming pools! You see dead crocodiles on the side of the high ways like you see dead dear here. They are like stray dogs and you can't kill them because they are protected and they're moving more and more inland!!" - Yeah, we're not moving to Florida anymore...it's NOT an option. Beach or not, I just can't do it. I'll be sure to keep you posted on the OTHER job options that come our way!

I've had quite a few of you express a desire to order some candles for Christmas gifts, which is a FABULOUS idea and I'm pretty sure I'll be doing the same thing! Scentsy hasn't given us a FOR SURE deadline yet as far as how late into December I can order and still get it before Christmas, so I'm playing it safe until I hear from them and will be placing orders through December 5th to ensure that you will have your fabulous candle supplies in time to wrap up and give away (or put under the tree and keep for yourself) for Christmas gifts. They just came out with 18 new Fall/Winter/Christmas scents so if you have any desire to smell them, call me, come over...ANYTIME!

One last thing, thanks to my FABULOUS bread making skills...pictures posted a few posts down. Many of you have asked me to post my bread recipe...so here it goes. If you're not interested, then you're done and you can move onto your next blog!

Y'all know it's not really MY recipe right? It was just given to me by Shar...the Bosch store lady in Arizona...but she's fabulous and the bread is fabulous and totally healthy too!

Shar's Basic Whole Wheat Bread perfect every time makde from 100% Fresh Ground Whole Wheat

(Yes, that's the name of the recipe)

In Bosch Universal Mixer Bowl with Dough Hook:
6 Cups Warm Water, Approx 15 Degrees
2 Tbs. Sea Salt
2/3 Cup Canola Oil - (Cold Pressed Oil is preferred here)
2/3 Cup Honey - ( Orange Blossom Honey is the BEST)
3 Tbs. Dough Enhancer
2 C. High Gluten Bread Flour OR 1/3 Cup Vital Wheat Gluten (This is what I used)
3 Tbs. SAF Instant Yeast
6-8 Cups of FRESH GROUND Flour (to begin with) (10-11 Cups of Un-Ground grain will make enough flour for this recipe) - I used hard white wheat

Measure your water (I usually have it at 120 degrees because as I add stuff (before adding the yeast) it will cool it down a bit making it the perfect temperature). Then add the ingredients as they are in order. When you get to the part about adding the flour, be 100% ready to add it because you need to add it all within a 60 second time frame so that you can develop the gluten all at the same time and to the same point. Continue to add flour until you start to see the sides pull clean as well as the dough coming clean from the bottom of the bowl. The dough should still be very sticky and does not come together at this point, but the bowl is clean. (Do not add too much flour)

Knead on speed 1 for 8-10 minutes or until the gluten has been developed. If you feel your dough is too dry, simply add a few tablesppons of water to moisten. If the dough starts sticking, simply add a few tablespoons of WHITE flour. (After the 60 seconds of adding your 8-10 cups of fresh ground whole wheat flour, you can not add anymore! If you need to add flour after that point, you need to use basic white flour because the gulten is already developing and white flour does not need to do this)

Oil your hands and remove dough from mixer onto a slightly oiled counter, divide your dough with a dough divider into 4-5 large loaves depending on your pan size.

Shape loaves, and place ina well greased or sprayed (vegelean) pan, never use oil. Cover with a dry towel and let rise until dough has risen double or approx. 2 inches above the rim of the pan. This will take 30-60 minutes depending on the room temperature.

Bake in preheaded oven at 350 for 30-35 minutes, or until the inside temp is 200 degrees. An instant read thermometer is very usedful in telling whether your bread is done. Test after baking time is complete by taking bread out of it's pan and pushing the thermomteter into side or bottom of loaf. If not 200 degrees, place back in pan and bake another few minutes.

Bread can be frozen up to 30 days without freezer burn.