Then everything went crazy at our house and making bread is something I no longer had the time for. Did I mention it was by hand and not cheating with a bread machine or mixer of any sort?
Shoot forward in time about 7 months or so and I read a couple of Survivalist blogs and start freaking out because I have about 5 cans of food in my pantry and if the end of the world as we know it happened my family would starve because cream of mushroom soup and tuna aren't all that great together and are really hard to stretch to feed a family of 7. I learn that wheat berries will store for 30 years in the right conditions and are what flour is made of anyway. Plus there are tons of ways to use them and they are super beneficial if you sprout them, and since I have been trying to be on a get-more-healthy kick, I considered myself sold! Lo and behold my local Walmart (sigh) has them and pretty reasonable too. So I buy 25 pounds of wheat berries. And then I buy a couple more sacks of wheat berries.
Now I am the proud owner of about 100 pounds of wheat berries. But to make flour you need a grinder of some sort and so I get one of those. Now I am the proud owner of 100 pounds of wheat berries and a hand-crank grinder and guess what? No freshly ground flour and no hand made bread. Although I did bust out the grinder to make sure that it does, in fact, grind the wheat. Just in case it didn't and I had to return the thing.
One of my bags-o-wheat.
I am blaming it on the fact that my life is just too busy to make bread, let alone grind the flour for it. You know, because reading all those design blogs is just so time consuming. And it's not my fault that Word World on public television is such a great show. I suppose I could line up all my kids manufacturing style and make them all grind the berries into flour, and when it comes time to kneading they could each take a turn starting with the oldest down to the youngest for maximum kneading impact, but I am not sure that is such a good idea because Truitt just learned how to pick his nose, and I am sure this is something he learned from his older brothers and sisters....
Good thing that wheat berries last for so long, because I am not sure I am going to get around to them any time soon. Although, now that I am thinking about it, we did get our tax return and if I bought a bread machine that would cut down on a lot of the time involved with making bread. Hmm, I wonder if I could convince hubby that this was a good idea? We do go through a lot of bread, so much so that Kembia and Moyz have started turning up their noses at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Plus, I am pretty sure that I am home-schooling Ava next year, so maybe I can make her grind the wheat berries and make bread and write it off as home-ec. Do the even require home ec any more? Well they will at the Nelson School of Life. I remember when they used to make classes take home the little battery powered babies that poop and cry and all that stuff. Ava would be like whatever, I can do this with my eyes closed. Give me three of those things to take care of and then maybe it might just be a challenge. I always thought that they did it to discourage kids from getting knocked up in high school, but perhaps they need to up the amount of children you take home seeing as the rate of young, still in school, minor-aged mothers seems to still be increasing. Maybe I should offer the local school a chance to send their kids to my home for that portion of the class. It seems like a pretty good way to help promote abstinence.
Okay, back to the wheat berries. I just learned that my uncle is a wheat farmer, and berries is a yuppie term for it. They call them wheat kernels. He grows wheat in Montana where I just learned an interesting fact that 70% of the wheat grown in Montana is exported. And my awesome price for wheat that I was paying actually sucks and is expensive compared to just buying it off the farm. But this is all okay, because if wheat berries can truly last for 30 years, they could theoretically outlive me (that's a depressing thought) and I can just bequeath them to a lucky family member, who I am sure will be more than ecstatic about the gift. Probably, just for fun, I think I will have them go to my new niece, who currently is 1 month old. Sweet little thing that she is. Mostly I would do this because her parents are the yuppiest, high maintenance people I know. And in the off chance that they are reading this blog, I love you to death! But truly, they are great parents and I really do love them a lot. But it would be stinking hilarious to see their expressions when their first child gets 100 pounds of wheat in the event that I kick the bucket before I use it all up.
And until I either kick the bucket, or actually make bread with my wheat berries, at least I have the comfort that they last forever. Some day, I swear I will make the best loaf of bread known to mankind and then I will kick myself severely for wasting money on store bought, laden with all sorts of preservatives and crap, bread.
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