Hi y'all! July is almost over, school is almost here and JJ will be starting his 8th grade, which would be his last year in the school system here. With what's going on in the public school these days, I worry about him a lot and sometimes I'm even toying the possibility of homeschooling him just like I did with Josh and Zach. But the boy loves to socialize (we call him the social butterfly of the family), and he is involved in band and sports. So I will just wrap him daily in prayer before I send him out among the wolves, so to speak. I claim daily God's promise of protection in Psalm 91 and my heart is at rest.
On a different note, Michael and I have been, (for months now) exploring and planning to build an earth oven when we return to the Philippines. We have a gas range/oven there but it would be more practical to have an earth oven since we both love to bake and wood is abundant year round. Besides, nothing beats baking on a wood fired oven. It just feels different and very natural when you cook or bake with wood. I grew up using wood to cook our food so I know what it's like.
Right now we have been experimenting with sourdough bread and also the sourdough discards we've accumulated while maintaining a sourdough starter. The reason why we started turning to sourdough is two-fold: one - we found out that regular bread that you buy at the store no matter how the labels claim them to be healthy, is loaded with first of all, an enormous amount of sodium AND preservatives. And two- sourdough goes through a fermentation process and therefore, is good for your gut health. But it has to be home made because store-bought sourdough breads are also loaded with sodium and preservatives. And also the process to make sourdough helps break down the gluten in the flour to make it very easy to digest which is actually good for me since I had a tummy problem myself. And because we've started to watch our sodium and sugar intake we want to make our own bread and pastries when we get back to the Philippines.
Yesterday I made whole wheat roti out of the sourdough discard and we love it as a wrap or tear it and eat it dipped in olive oil. Oh it was so good I'm making another batch today. We've also baked decadent brownies out of the sourdough discard, it was so moist you'll have to lick your fingers :) I decided to film my sourdough experiment yesterday so you can watch it below.
There's so many you can do with a sourdough and sourdough discard and we continue to experiment while we are still here. Then when we get to go back to the Philippines we would have enough know-how to do it there. That's it for now lovely people. I'm going to try another recipe called "Rosemary and Olive Oil Fougasse" which is a flat bread and apparently is best dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. This one I will use the sourdough starter so I best take it out of the fridge to revive it so I can feed it.
We hope you enjoy today's blog and thank you for following. May the Lord keeps us all in our comings and goings, for in Him we live and breath. Until next time.....SHALOM!
