Making Croutons

In the midst of a busy first week of school (our homeschool journey continues into first grade, and students got access on Monday to the seminary class I'm teaching in Anglican history this semester). Lots of good things happening, and I'm trying to be very disciplined to keep on top of things despite tiredness and my worsening (recurring) hearing problem.

In the midst of busyness, sometimes it's the really simple things that bring us pleasure. Pleasure for me today came in making croutons.

Yes, croutons! I'm not, alas, very creative in the kitchen or very domestic in general. I love baking, and I'm an adequate cook, but I'm not the type of person who dreams of ways of making things from scratch (I sometimes wish I was).

But our grocery budget is so tight right now it's almost non-existent, and I've been trying very hard to not throw away anything if I can help it. I suddenly realized that I had two small chunks of butter left from the sticks of butter I usually use for baking, and 4 slightly stale pieces of rye bread that no one wanted to eat (and were either heading for the sidewalk to feed birds, or to the trash if I was in a hurry the next time I cleaned the fridge). It occurred to me that I should probably make croutons, especially given the fact that I love them and we haven't been buying them lately (every time I put them on the list, I cross them out as a non-necessity because we need to stretch the budget for other things).

I whipped out my handy Super Baby Food Cookbook (a great book, and useful for much more than making baby food) and found a quick and easy recipe for making croutons. I modified it slightly to accommodate what I had on hand and my aging oven which always needs to be set a good 25 degrees lower than recipes called for. Then I melted the butter, sprinkled in some Italian spice mix I keep on hand, and cut up the stale bread pieces into small squares. Tossed them all in a plastic baggie and then baked them for about 20 minutes at 275.

Result: really delicious smells wafting through my house and a deep sense of pleasure that we have croutons that I actually made myself and that used up food that otherwise might have been wasted.

Strange, but sometimes simple pleasures mean a lot!