Ironically, the one thing that has been doing well in our garden is the okra I planted on a whim.
We gathered enough the other day to make gumbo! And I just have to say – my wife’s gumbo is da bomb! Don’t ask me what it is but cajun cooking comes easy around here!
Twelves hours prior I created a yeast starter using a bit of dried malt extract, water, yeast nutrients, and the yeast. This gives the yeast a “head start” for fermentation. I’d like to give a shout out to our good friend Lauren for the stir plate and Erlenmeyer flask. You rock. While not essential but tremendously beneficial, the stir plate helps provide oxygen to the yeast and drive off CO2.
Here’s the freshly crushed malt ready to begin the mashing process.
The challenge I wanted to really overcome from my previous brews was chilling the wort. Enter the wort chiller. This version is immersible. Basically, it’s 25 feet of copper tubing placed in the kettle through which chilled water is pumped carrying heat away from the wort. There are a few other ways to chill the wort but this system provides the biggest bang for the buck in terms of money and maintenance. What use to take me 3 hours using just ice baths was done in 40 minutes!
I found the wort chiller on eBay (new, hoses and fittings included) for $40 and a submersible pump at Harbor Freight for $25.
To further improve this method, another system can be added to simultaneously pump wort from the bottom of the kettle and return it through a small, crimped piece of copper tubing that would create a whirlpool effect inside the kettle – circulating the wort around the chiller. This however would require a food-grade, high temperature pump; something for which I am not yet willing to shell out the bucks. And it may not be that much more efficient given I’m brewing a small batch (2.5 gallons).
If your marriage preparation program was anything like ours, it couldn’t stressed enough that the most intimate thing two people can do is pray together.
As parents, we certainly teach our children how to pray and they often pray for the things we do. During our evening prayer, we start with our youngest able and willing prayer, now Muffin, and each child has her/his turn at including their prayer intentions. Fulton and Therese will often pray for us (that we would be more like Mary and Joseph), their friends, the homeless and the unborn even before we can mention them. They sometimes even pray for “everyone in the world.”
Friday, Lindsey gave Therese a rosary with a medal of St Therese on it. Therese was so pleased and the next morning when we went to Mass, she asked Father Oliver to bless it afterwards. Saturday evening she comes up to me while I’m clean up after dinner and asks to pray the rosary while Adam was bathing the other kids.
She initiated it and she had her prayer requests for our Blessed Mother–she wanted to pray for her Grandma and Grandpa Gretencord for their anniversary they are celebrating today and she want to pray for Zachary on his Baptism on Sunday, and for Miss Lindsey who gave her the rosary. And we started and we prayed just her and I–in Latin at her request. (Therese has been on a mission to pray every thing in Latin these days…I think it’s more of a way to share prayer with me individually since the other kids can’t do it yet. She simply wants something we can do together without the other kids.) It was the most beautiful rosary I had prayed in a long time–because it came from her and was from her heart. It reminded me how intimate prayer can be–how two people can share in prayer and be very close spiritually during that time.
As I contemplate the demands on my time with another baby, I can’t forget that praying with each child even individually is a beautiful way to connect and be intimate. I also realized that I can’t underestimate the impact that our shared prayer has even when they are all wiggley and appear to be disinterested.
Yesterday two new babies at our parish were welcomed into God’s family through the Sacrament of Baptism. We were blessed to be chosen as the God parents of one of them, Zachary Peter. Zachary is the 3rd child and 3rd son of our friends Teresa and Doug.
After 4 years of use, I think we’re in the market for new clothe diapers. Some of the Chinese prefolds started to tater a bit in the middle and the edges a couple of months ago… They don’t seem like they are so soft on Muffins buns right now.
When I started thinking of how long I had them, I remembered that I got them half a year before Fulton was born. They gave us a good run!
It’s been a while since I’ve posted some pictures of the kids. We haven’t done a whole lot of exciting things. But we did go on the Texas Alliance for Life Safari at the Texas Disposal System wildlife preserve. And just yesterday we had a trip to Austin Children’s museum. And of course we’ve been enjoying baby Zachary who will be baptized tomorrow and we have the honor of serving as his God parents.
Here are Fulton and Gianna with Zachary. Therese is already excited about baby G coming, but it was nice to see Fulton and Gianna have a loving interest in babies too!
My little tree-climbing monkey at the safari!
Since her experience at vacation bible school, Therese has been quite diligent about adding the accents to her name so that people will not mistakenly call her “Tereese.”
On the bus to see the animals…Muffin is not so excited that there’s no air conditioning!
While the rest of us were enjoying brisket. Therese “wolfed down” two pickle sandwiches!
Muffin going down the slide at the museum. I think it was her favorite attraction!
Gianna checking out the tamales in the En Mi Familia exhibit. The last time I saw these painting it was on a trip to northern California probably a decade ago. But I absolutely loved them because they brought back so much of my Latino history and experiences growing up. It was delightful to see the exhibit made interactive at the ACM.
If we have enough kids, we might actually have a real mariachi group someday!
And finally, here’s Therese demonstrating how to make tamales. Since I’ve made them before, I know that it’s one of those things I’d okay buying and not making them from scratch!
This week Therese and I officially started first grade. And let me say, I’m pooped! I’ve been using the book, “The Well Trained Mind,” by Susan Bauer as a guide to how much we should be doing at this stage. I pieced together my own curriculum though. Essentially we need to do about 3-4 hours of learning a day in writing, reading, grammar, spelling, math, history, science, religion, and Latin.
We’ve had our challenges though. Therese is not an independent learner yet. She wants me sitting with her while she does her work. My hope is that in the next 7 weeks before Baby G comes along, I can ween her from my being there every second. However, she’s a fantastic reader. I know she can read the directions on her own. She’s actually surprises me at how much she can read. Now, I’m working on comprehension and synthesization with her.
My other challenge of course is that the other kids want my attention too during “school” and each wants me just to work with him or her. Gianna is pretty independent when she has some good books with her. Fulton wants to do what Therese is doing or wants his play buddy to be available. He also expressed a desire to learn how to read. So I’m going to give it a go with no expectations–that is, if he decides he doesn’t want to continue, I’m not going to push it.
Schooling this year has demanded a bit more organization on my part. Because so much time is demanded each day I really need to be careful at how much I plan outside of school time for the week especially since we have Adoration and Catechesis of the Good Shepherd on two days of the week. The last couple of months we’ve establish a nice and consistent routine in the morning that is flowing nicely into our school time. It also has be a springboard for establishing who among the kids does what chores in the house (such as putting away dishes, setting the table for meals, putting away toys). In addition, since Therese is starting to count money she feels like she wants to earn money for chores . So we’ve come up with a nice list of things she can do outside of what is expect of her as a member of the family at this point (such as sweeping, folding laundry, clearing and wiping the table after meals).
This is all a learning process. Hopefully we can get into a nice groove that will not change too much with a new baby and lack of sleep! 
I’ve been spending some time reading and studying on the home brew front. It’s truly fascinating to learn about the various methods and ingredients used to produce the many styles of beer. However, one can only learn so much by keeping your nose in the book or glued to the monitor. Reading is good, doing is better. And seeing that my last batch is running low it’s time to brew.
Next up is a Belgian Dubbel for two reasons:
and enjoyed it.
Malt (in the brown bag), hops, dark sugar, and yeast waiting for brew time
