Rolling in dough

Once every couple of weeks, I use a stand-mixer for making the dough for our sandwich and toast bread. The hook and bowl have to be washed by hand. So, while it's out and in use, I like to get it good and dirty with lots of dough.

Last Friday, I used the mixer to make whole wheat dough for 4 loaves of sandwich bread.

Then when that bread dough was out of the mixer, I started a batch of multi-purpose French bread dough, which can also be used for pizza crust and focaccia, in addition to laves of French bread. I make enough of this dough at one time for 4 loaves/uses of dough. I ball these up and place on a sheet of oiled plastic wrap, and freeze in a large zippered plastic bag.

And finally, I used the mixer for a batch of refrigerator, rich roll dough. This dough stays "good" for about 4 days in the fridge. Saturday morning, I used a portion for homemade donuts. Saturday evening I made crescent rolls to go with our dinner. Then on Monday, I took out the last of the refrigerator dough and made rhubarb sticky buns to have with breakfast on Tuesday (and yes, also for a snack for myself on Monday afternoon!)

Thirst-quenchers

We had a mini-heat wave, here, over the weekend, with temperatures soaring into the high 70s! Okay, not exactly blistering, but warm enough to want plenty of chilled beverages.

Saturday morning, I made 3 pitchers of cold drinks for our family. One, a fruity punch, made with the last of the blackberry pancake syrup, some red currant drink syrup, water and about 1 cup of flat lemon-lime soda, leftover from the March birthday of my two daughters.

The second beverage was a black tea and lemon iced tea, made from Dollar Tree black tea and bottled lemon juice. I didn't sweeten it, but left that up to each drinker, which was a good choice, as neither of my daughters wanted it sweetened.

And the third beverage was the one which surprised me with it's popularity in our family. I made a tomato juice, using canned tomato paste, onion powder, crushed celery seed, lemon juice, water, sugar and salt. I made a little over a quart and by mid-afternoon we were down to 1 cup of that juice. As it turns out, all three of my kids (and myself) loved it. So, this is definitely a beverage to continue making this season. A good way to get a veggie serving in each day, with minimal added sugar. And it only costs me about 30 cents per quart to make (with the price I paid for my ingredients), not too bad.

Gone are the days of those vibrantly-colored pitchers of Kool-aid in our fridge!

What are your family's favorite warm-weather beverages? Have you found that as your kids grew up they preferred less sugary drinks, and/or opted for more nutrient-dense beverages?

_________________________________________________________