Baking bread, burping yeast

These days, Dominic is pretty quick to use the word "Me." As in, "Who wants a chocolate chip?" "ME!" "Who wants to go running in the stroller?" "ME?" "Who's ready to go night-night?" "NO NIGHT-NIGHT!"

And my favorite "ME!" occurs on the occasions he lets out a nice loud burp. Before anyone else can dare take credit for it, Dominic hollers out "ME! ME!"

On Monday the kids had a field trip to a local bakery, the Great Harvest Bread Company, where they learned all about yeast and milling flour and, Vincent's favorite part, how the milling room has to be explosion-proof because the friction of yeast being milled can potentially cause an explosion. The baker also showed them how yeast "eats" sugar in warm water, and she passed around a bottle full of the mixture and told them to listen carefully.

"You'll hear it burping," she explained, and suddenly Dominic was all ears. As the bottle came our way he grabbed it, held it up to his ear, and with a gigantic grin as the yeast bubbled and burped he yelled out, "ME! ME!"

So if you ever burp around him, don't try and claim it as your own.

We came out of the field trip with yummy bread, free cookies and packets of wheatberries. The kids were especially excited about these. You can eat them -- they're crunchy -- or plant them, which we did. After only four days they'll sprout, and in our humid NC weather the plants will never dry out or die. So the good news is that apparently I have found something for my garden that actually won't die. And you can put the wheat grass in smoothies and omelets.

We also learned some nifty yeast experiments, like using the rising yeast to blow up a balloon. I foresee many an afternoon of the kids clustered around a bottle full of yeast, sugar and water, watching the balloon inflate, and Dominic hopping up and down, calling out, "ME! ME! ME!"