Welcome! Nuestra Casa Es Su Casa ...Our house is your house

A glimpse into the life of Daniel and Jaynee Lockwood and their 12 precious blessings. Thank you for visiting; we pray that what we share here may always bring glory to our wonderful God and Saviour. May you praise the Lord with us for the great things He has done and continues to do as we serve Him sharing the gospel here in the little town of Cuidad Insurgentes, BCS Mexico. He alone is good and faithful!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

January Weather and Fruitcake

It is January, right?  
The children have had a bit of spring fever lately.  
It has been so hot!  I think we've hit the upper 80's/lower 90's for several days.
It is still cool in the evenings/early mornings...40's and 50's so I'm still enjoying hot tea and champurrado for breakfast or before I get to bed.
But in the afternoon...
Well, it's been a bit difficult to get everyone to finish up school after lunch.
We get a good early start, everyone studies/works hard all morning, and then we have lunch around 12:30 pm.  We all eat outside on the picnic tables and then nobody feels like going back inside to finish up.
Of course, we don't usually follow our feelings.
Unless Daddy happens to be home and turns on the sprinklers and grabs a basket ball.
If you can't beat them, join them.  That's when I got out the ice cream. :)
We did finally finish all our studies that day...around 7 pm :-).
But it was sure fun!


 Tell them to smile for a picture and you get this...
Tell them to act normal, and you get this...
Yep, I think I'm rubbing off on all of them! :)

Several people have either emailed or commented asking me for the recipe to the bread I posted a picture of recently.  I make this bread several times a week and it always turns out perfect!  
It calls for white flour and sugar, but I have made it with whole wheat flour, half and half, and also used honey instead of sugar before.  
I currently only have 1 bread pan, and since I usually make 4 loaves at a time (double the recipe), I just shape them into loaves, score the top diagonally with a knife and put them on a couple cookie sheets.  

You simply combine everything, knead it well (I just use my hands...I love kneading bread by hand!), let it rise, punch it down (I love that part too!), shape it into loaves, let it rise, and bake!  Eat warm with butter!  Mmmmmm!
I was going to take pictures of the process, but didn't get very far :)  My hands got messy!
But I did take this shot.
There are only 3 reasons I can think of for which I will remove my wedding ring.
#1- If I am in the hospital and they make me.
#2- If I am making meatloaf and mixing the meat with my hands.
#3- When I knead dough.



Which brings me to fruit cake.  
Did I ever mention that the top of our wedding cake was a fruit cake?  
Really, it was!
Yes, Daniel and I have both been called a fruit cake a time or two :), but that's not the reason we had one on the top of our wedding cake.
It's because my hubby does not really like cake.  But he LOVES fruit cake. 
Yes, he has strange tastes, but I'm glad he picked me! ;)
We were told that you save the top of your wedding cake, freeze it, and then eat it on your one year anniversary.
So I had the lady who make our beautiful cake make the top out of fruit cake.  She had to charge me an extra $25 dollars for that and while I don't know why anyone would pay so much money to make/eat such a thing as a fruit cake, I was (and still am) deeply in love with that man so I was happy to pay for it.
She wrapped the fruit cake with plastic wrap before she frosted it so it would be nice and fresh/frosting free for our anniversary.
I was 6 months pregnant with Timothy our first anniversary and Daniel took me overnight to the coast.  And we brought our fruitcake.
And he ate a lot of it.
And I ate the frosting.
See, we make a perfect match!
I think that was the last fruit cake we had.
Until this week.
Daniel went to pick up the mail at our little post office.
He came home with this small but very heavy box sent to us from a church in Texas.
I opened it up and inside was a beautiful round tin from Collin Street Bakery.
I opened it up and inside was a fruitcake.
The nicest fruit cake I've ever seen!  It was pretty.
I'm sure this church has no idea how much my hubby loves fruit cake.
It reminded me of just how much God loves us to send a fruit cake all the way down to Mexico.
Every day, when Daniel is studying, I serve him a cup of tea or milk and a nice slice of fruit cake.
And he doesn't even have to worry about me eating it. :)


16 comments:

  1. I always take my wedding rings off when I'm making bread too. It's so hard to get the dough out from under the diamond. YUK!!! Had to laugh about you two being fruitcakes. In New Zealand it is traditional to have your whole wedding cake fruitcake. People now are going more towards chocolate or whatever, but fruitcake is still the traditional favourite. Therefore, I don't eat much cake when we go to weddings :) Have a great day!

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  2. You are a fruity bunch but oh so sweet!

    I love that God molds us perfectly together, husband and wife. John and I almost down to everything likes opposites :-) He never has to worry about me eating his cheesecake and I never have to worry about him eating my peanut butter chocolate ice cream :-) A perfect match!

    Hello to you Mrs. Lockwood - From Gracie

    Gianna says "can you tell Mrs. Lockwoods that I say Hi to --- what is her name? oh Susannah":-)

    ~Cinnamon
    p.s working on an email to send you soon!

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  3. Beth, That's neat! I had no idea they traditionally had fruit cake for weddings in New Zealand! My hubby would fit in great there! :)

    Cinnamon! I love emails!! :) And tell Gianna that Susannah has two envelopes on my desk that say GG on them. One feels like it has a pencil inside or something. I think I'll have to open them, inspect them, and then put them in a mailing envelope to send.
    Tell Gracie that she can call me Jaynee and that she should spell her name with 2 e's. :)

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  4. I've never commented before but wanted to say that fruit cake is the tradition for wedding cake in the UK too. In fact I've never been at a wedding where there was any other sort as far as I can remember!
    I enjoy your blog. We are far away but our Saviour is the same the world over!

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  5. You're all so funny!!! The normal picture looks about rights for someone that loves fruitcake so much. Will have to trey your bread recipe... Maybe today. We're snowed in and there is nothing else to do:)

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  6. I think you two are the only fruitcakes that we love :). Well.. along with all your little fruitcakes :).

    What is the "normal" temperature for Jan. there? Reading 90 degrees made me sweat! We are pretty happy that it will be a toasty 40 by Monday here :).

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  7. Well I made your bread:) And blogged about it
    http://crazyjoyouslife.blogspot.com/2012/01/jaynees-bread-and-other-things.html

    :)

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  8. So fun to break away from the "norm" from time to time and just have a happy day of making family memories!

    And, homemade bread? Sounds wonderful, especially here in Ukraine where we are all cooped up in our homes seeking refuge from the cold outside, baking, and all getting chubby anyway. So, bring it on! :-)

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  9. How long do u let the bread rise each time? thx:)

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  10. Amanda, I let the bread rise about an hour the first time and then another 1/2 hour or so the next time.

    Tereza, are you sure you used my recipe??? Yours looks amazingly perfect! You took great pictures too! :)Glad you enjoyed it!

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  11. I just stumbled on your blog and decided to make the bread this morning!! Thanks for the recipe! Hope it turns out like yours does!

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  12. Just wanted to say this is a great bread recipe - and I just love reading about your family! Your entire family is so inspiring in a Godly way! Thank you for being the light to so many!! Can my children send you letters? We'd love to write to you!

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  13. My children love getting/sending letters! That would be great, Gillian!

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