Pita Bread Baking

The girls have agreed that I should teach them how to bake a few different types of bread. Not that I am the most successful bread baker around...I have a loaf of rye bread refusing to rise as we speak.....Anyway,what got them all fired up was these pita breads I made the night before last. This is going to be so much fun,we get together every evening when Tarien comes home from work and then we make the dough,leave it to slow rise in the refrigerator for the second rise and pop it into the oven the next morning (which will be my job seeing as I am the early riser in the family ) ...and everybody gets to have warm,fresh,home baked bread every morning for a week....We have to be realistic here...by that time we all would be a little tired of baking bread every day,but at least my kids would (hopefully) have learned something about bread baking...

Pita Bread Recipe


Ingredients:

1 package of yeast, instant or quick rising is fine
1/2 cup warm water
3 cups all purpose flour
1  teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon  sugar
1 cup lukewarm water,make sure the water is not too hot and kills the yeast!


Preparation:

Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup of warm water. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Let sit for 10-15 minutes until water is frothy.

Combine flour and salt in large bowl.

Make a small depression in the middle of flour and pour yeast water in depression.

Slowly add 1 cup of warm water, and stir with wooden spoon  until elastic.

Place dough on floured surface and knead for 10-15 minutes. When the dough is no longer sticky and is smooth and elastic, it is ready.

Coat large bowl with vegetable oil and place dough in bowl. Turn dough upside down so all of the dough is coated.

                          Allow to sit in a warm place for about 3 hours, or until it has doubled in size.



  Once doubled, roll out in a rope, and pinch off 10-12 small pieces.(I did 8) Place balls on floured surface..

  Preheat oven to 500 deg F. at least an hour before baking and make sure rack is at the very bottom of oven. Be sure to also preheat your baking sheet.

    Place balls on floured surface..

Let sit covered for 10 minutes. 

Roll out each ball of dough with a rolling pin into circles. Each should be about 5-6 inches across and 1/4 inch thick.

N.B.  Spritz each circle with a bit of water,which would make them pouf up beautifully.

Bake each circle on a pre- heated baking tray smeared with olive oil  for 3 minutes until the bread puffs up. .

Because my circles were a little bigger than normal,I baked each one individually,which sounds like a lot of trouble but really wasn't as 3 minutes go by quickly and the results were SO worth the effort!

When you take these babies out of the oven...for the love of all that is Holy,do NOT stack them on top of each other.... Instead,be clever and put them on cooling racks covered with a cloth.

We cut ours in halves and filled it with a tuna mayonnaise filling with lots of lettuce...yum,mmm



                                                                         The End

Name That Movie Answer...

Ta Daa!

REAL STEEL

No-one knew except for Michaele, who is way too clever and went and Googled it....

I am sure she was a FBI or CIA agent in a previous life....

This movie is a must see, even my husband who has a pet hate against all Sci- Fi type movies watched this one with a smile on his face....after I got him to sit down and watch....

Name That Movie

Ok,so both our tv's decided to conk in the day before yesterday and we have just arrived home with a 47 inch beast of a LCD thingey and we are lying low watching movies...

"We'll probably get our asses kicked but at least we will go down swinging..."
Name that movie....

Flowers For Leontien

Leontien

Sending you huge [(((( huggs))))],tons of love,kisses and a rose from my garden in South Africa!!!
You are in our thoughts and prayers.
Liesl
xoxoxo

Darting,Capturing and Transporting Rhinos.

A couple of weeks ago Jess went to see how her boyfriend and his team operates to capture and move 10 rhino's they had bought for their Game Farm. She has witnessed a couple of these operations now and absolutely loves it. She has had her truck charged by a very cross Rhino bull once after he woke up from having a wound treated too....! She found herself standing alone on the back of the vehicle when the bull decided her truck was the best target for him that day and she had to slide over the roof to get inside and drive it away before the angry bull could do too much damage! My heart nearly stopped when she told me about that episode...! Are you aware of the rate these unique animals are being slaughtered by poachers in Africa...? I doubt my Grandchildren will see them in the wild.......Anyway,here is a couple of pictures of the "behind the scenes" happenings in the day of the life of a South African game rancher...The pictures are in no specific order as I was scared of losing some due to the new Blogger.....

That's Charl standing on top of the trailer overseeing the loading of  the rhino cow and calf.

Jess is standing on the far right..

You have to be a quick -on-your -feet thinking type of person to do this job as it is very dangerous and the drugs used to put the animal under can be potentially deadly...

Helping a drugged animal onto its feet before loading it...

Charl waiting for the little calf to follow suit and sleep like his Mommy...he wasn't very keen at all!

Hard at work...

The poachers mostly kill the little ones as well....

Charl darting one of the rhinos from their helicopter....

Jess loves flying about in it...

Covering their eyes so they don't stress too much....

The difficult terrain they have to work in...

Come on man,will you get down and sleep already???

The vet cutting off the rhino's horn so the poachers will hopefully leave them alone...

Although the first killings for just the little stump left over has started happening elsewhere in the country already....

It takes a whole lot of manpower to get the drugged animal to the truck....

This particular animal has been shot 21 times with an AK 47 last year but has made a full recovery!!

Thanks to these people fighting behind the scenes to preserve these animals...

Finally!!! The calf is asleep.....!

The End

The Lady In Red And An Ode To The Donkey

While driving through the city of Polokwane a couple of weeks ago,we found ourselves having to drive through the  city centre ...a place we ALWAYS avoid,but Jessica had to be at UNISA to enroll for another course she is taking....I remembered the statue of a donkey that has been there forever as an ode to the humble,hard working  donkey...We went round and round that Plaza at least three times that day and I never once could get a decent pic of it as there is just no-where to park in that area..ever..,it is crowded and busy with taxis speeding by non-stop and Cules made every ones day by passing by the donkey as slowly as he could possibly go....While going through the photos later on,I was thinking how absolutely funny the one pic actually was...

Woopsie...!

My first try...

Can you spot what I was trying to capture on camera??

That darned Colonel is absolutely everywhere!!!

Hallo boytjie!!!

If only that donkey could talk.....

It actually looks like he was thinking of kicking that lady here...

Look at that zoomed in ear and the raised leg....

OK,both ears are floppy and he is only resting that leg closest to the Lady In Red...

Good boy....

The End

Update On Past Two Weeks

Hey all,just a quick update on what has been happening here the past couple of weeks...First off,we had phone calls from two of Cules' hunting buddies that a Zulu named Gerome was in the area looking for hunting hounds...,had to be a team that has been working together for a while and that neither of them had anything he was interested in at that stage and could he help the guy whom has traveled all the way from Kwa-Zulu-Natal. The guy was a old client of theirs and they didn't want to send him all the way home empty handed...It was 8o clock on a weeknight and after a while Cules said sure let him come and have a look...., low and behold he liked Cules' pack and offered him an amount he couldn't refuse since the hounds are a hobby and not a lively hood.... So, all the hounds except for the two Dogos Argentina and a couple of jack Russel terriers  went to their new home in Natal where they have literally thousands of hectares in Zululand to hunt.....The kennels are empty and the farm very quiet...which I kinda like.Then, it was slaughter time and Cules slaughtered pigs and sheep for the household,then, as he was busy slaughtering,friends who came visiting during that time also placed their orders and phoned their friends and family and before we knew it,Cules was elbow deep in blood and gore....We smoke whole weaner pigs at a time and friends who tasted it wanted their meat done the same way...sigh....! So,that being done and over with,the piggys and sheep are  breathing more freely and life is going it's mad,frenzied,Autumns way....My youngest daughter is involved in game capture and working closely with her boyfriends' vet and are constantly doctoring rhinos,sable antelopes buffalo's etc....she gets to fly around in a helicopter and Cules just phoned to ask what they have been doing today and off course,she replied, capturing rhinos!!! Then, while browsing some horsey adverts a few weeks ago,my eye caught an ad advertising a Welsh Sec B mare of the finest bloodlines in South Africa....The owner has breast cancer and is selling all her horses... I replied to the ad and after weeks of deliberation, I finally bought her...there was only one other problem though, I didn't want to leave her in Johannesburg to be covered by another stallion and make another,very expensive,trip up to go and fetch her..,so Cules said I should look at buying a quality Welsh Sec B colt of different bloodlines to the mares' as I could also use him on our Anglo Arab mares to breed classy children's ponies....While searching for a suitable colt I was sad to see that very few people still breed Sec B ponies in South Africa....After a long,long search I finally found him and so "Rhys Ceieniog",the mare and "Roly House Of Stars" (both his parents were SA champions,hence the name) have finally arrived last Sunday.The mare's Sire was imported from the UK and so was the colt's dam Sire,so I am very happy to have been able to get the best bloodlines available to me....

My daughter's boyfriend visited and brought her a gift of carrots....for the horses, a first all right! I think he might just be Mr Right!

She thought it was a scream....

Cules hard at work doing meat cuts...smoked pork in this case...delicious...

At Roly Stud in the Johannesburg area where we went to pick up my Welsh Sec B colt.

Here Cules meets Hydown Pepper,the Welsh Sec A stallion freshly back from winning Supreme Breed Champion at the Horse Of The Year Show!!

That itty bitty little package of dynamite beat the Warmbloods etc for that title!

As we were making our way back from Johannesburg and Pretoria, Cules thought he recognised the area where his Grandparents used to live when he was a child..he told me to get ready to take some pics of the "Ghost House" and true as Bob...there it was, Turrets and all,it was on the corner of a busy intersection and I just couldn't get a good shot of it...

The 18 mo colt settled in at his new home in the bush....

The mare enjoying the grazing after travelling almost 7 hours...

She is a truly beautiful pony and has won numerous showing titles...

Well,that covers the most important happenings of the past few weeks here on Stoncroft Farm...

The End