You’ve all been so encouraging as I write my posts about healthy eating…and all the other homemaking and parenting and random stuff I blog about! I love your comments and emails…KEEP THEM COMING!

I’ve received lots and lots of questions from you, and just so ya know, I’ll try to answer all of them. If it’s a question about healthy eating, I’ll try to answer it somewhere within my Getting Real With Food series. Thanks for being patient with me.

If you asked a question a long time ago about something else and I still haven’t responded….ask again. Sometimes (most of the time) I don’t even call my kids by the right name. I KNOW I’ve surely failed to respond to some of your  questions. (“A-Jus-El-Mal-Asa”…I have to go through all of them, just so that I can go back to the one I started with in the first place.)  (It’s a good thing we don’t have pets too.) 

So before I lose track of these two questions from my last post about the farmer’s market, I’ll answer them now. :)

Here are the pictures I showed you of what I made last Thursday…

    

First question… 

Can you tell us what the other foods are? I think I see pretzels? what else?!?!?! Also, can you tell us/show us how you package these goodies for the market?

Last week I made two batches of pretzels, one recipe of cinnamon rolls (which made five pans of eight), one batch of flourless peanut butter cookies, one batch of giant chocolate chip cookies, a pan of chocolate chip brownies, three loaves of applesauce bread, a double batch of white flour tortillas and a double batch of whole wheat tortillas. (The whole wheat tortillas turned out ugly this time…so we kept them for ourselves!)

I packaged the pretzels in five bags of five, and the rest I packaged individually so people could buy one at a time or several at once. The cinnamon rolls I slid carefully onto a paper plate then put tons of ooey gooey frosting on them and covered them with a baggie. I cut the brownies into 12 large squares and wrapped them in plastic wrap. I wrapped the giant cookies and the applesauce bread in plastic wrap also. I put the peanut butter cookies six to a plate and covered them with plastic wrap. The tortillas went into baggies in sets of eight. 

We came home with only seven pretzels (I took 47…not bad!), and a few odds and ends of cookies and such. The cinnamon rolls sold out fast! (Must’ve been the ooey-gooey frosting!)  I was surprised that there wasn’t much interest in the applesauce bread. (What, they only want the unhealthy stuff?!)  Matt suggested I take samples because if people tasted it…they would WANT it!! (He’s so sweet!)  I’ll try applesauce bread one more week and if it doesn’t go well, I won’t make it anymore. (For the farmer’s market that is. I’ll SO keep making it for us!)

Next question…

The food looks fantastic! How do you find time to do all that baking with four kids? I’d love some pointers. I really enjoy baking.I would love to sell some baked goods at our local farmers market:)

If I say, “I don’t know how I do it. I’ve decided that I must be insane.” would that be discouraging? ;)

My insanity aside, I LOVE baking and I’m pretty fast in the kitchen. I have established a bit of a farmer’s market baking system that has worked pretty well so far.

First…the chocolate chip cookies freeze very well so I make them on another day when I have time and freeze them. Done. Also, I think the applesauce bread is moister and tastier on day two, so I bake it on Wednesday night before bed.

I then make sure my kitchen is clean and my ingredients are ready for a baking marathon on Thursday…

I get up early and get my first round of pretzels mixed up. While they are rising, I get the chocolate chip brownies in the oven. While they bake, I do some dishes and mix up the peanut butter cookies. As soon as the brownies come out, the cookies go in. 

Then, I mix up, roll out and cook the tortillas. 

By then the prezel dough is big and fat and lovely…so I start shaping and baking those. While those bake, I mix up the cinnamon rolls to rise. While they rise…I rest a while. (What a good idea.)

Once I get the cinnamon rolls ready and rising, I mix up my next batch of pretzels (I find that if I mix up a double batch at once, they just don’t do as well…that’s why I do two separate batches). 

I bake my cinnamon rolls while the prezels rise…and I work on my mountain of dishes. And package up the food that is cooled enough. 

After the cinnamon rolls come out of the oven, I begin shaping and baking the last round of pretzels.

When I’m done with that and the cinnamon rolls have cooled, I frost them. And then I’m done. Shew!

Where are the kids during all of this? I have no idea. Just kidding. Sort of.

No really, they are asleep for the first few hours of it, and that’s when I get a ton of it out of the way. Then they get up and eat breakfast (okay, we did cereal last week…and might just have to do that every Thursday this summer unless I make something ahead of time!). After breakfast, they just play…and I think they get dressed eventually too.

Last week, my very sweet friend Jenny called while I was baking and asked if Elias and Malachi could come over and play with her kids for the afternoon. She came and picked them up and everything. She’s awesome! The boys loved it and it made me feel less like I was neglecting anyone.

For the most part, my kids are pretty good at playing together during these times that I’m baking my brains out (well, that doesn’t sound very tasty, does it?). Or sometimes they come help me…or sometimes I’ll put them on another job doing something else. They actually really get excited about farmer’s market day…and the hardest part for them is that I’m baking all these really yummy things and not letting them eat ANY of it. The nerve.

Now…I wouldn’t want to do it everyday, because it does wear me out…and I don’t get to spend good down time with the kids…but once a week for a few weeks during the summer is good. And if I haven’t mentioned it before…I do love to bake.

Note to self about this upcoming Thursday:  Remember to eat. Good grief, I never forget to eat…but I totally forgot until about 2 pm last Thursday when I said to Matt, “Wow, I’m really starting to feel light headed.” Duh. Eating food is usually a helpful way to keep yourself upright. 

I’m gonna try to remember that this week. :)

Any more questions?!