Puffy Pitas and Head Trauma

No, the pitas and head trauma are not related.  I'm combining two weeks' worth of posts into one in a rather awkward fashion.

First, the pitas--

I like to try to master recipes for things that one would most often resort to going to a store to get.  They are most often bread-related, but I've also done things such as teriyaki sauce.  Because of the internet, it's so easy to find the recipe for these things, so I'm not claiming to have any great gift at coming up with the recipes myself.  But even when you have a recipe, it sometimes doesn't pan out, and you have to struggle, and re-do, and study to find out where you went wrong.  This happens a lot with the breads.

So I really wanted to make pitas.  The list of ingredients is short, the mixing of it is pretty straightforward, but the baking of it is tricky because you are trying to get the pitas to puff up like balloons to create the inner pocket.  So about two years ago, I was vacationing with my fam' at the homestead and set aside a day for figuring out pitas.  The instructions I had were to use a baking sheet to put the pitas on and an oven heated to 500 degrees.  I did that, but the pitas didn't puff.  I rolled them thinner and thinner.  They didn't puff.  I left them in longer, sprayed water on them.  No puffing.  I ended up with a lot of puff-less crackers which we salvaged by pouring butter on them and dusting with cinnamon and sugar.  Tasty, but no pita, and I felt defeated.

So I recently happened upon another pita recipe on a blog that talked about the struggle to get the puffing.  I wondered if they had solved it.  They talked about the various strategies such as spraying and a pizza stone (I tried both of those).  Then there was an update that talked about trying a suggestion from a commenter that actually delivered pretty consistent results.  Instead of putting the pitas on a stone or baking sheet, they put the pitas directly on the oven racks (you can also use a cooling rack, like I did, since the slats are closer together), and Ta DA!  Puffy pitas!

Can you tell how happy I am?  So the recipe I used is from King Arthur flour here.  And the website containing the oven rack suggestion is here.  One of these days, I wish to master danish pastries and croissants.  I already have recipes to experiment with.

Now for the head trauma--

So I think I've already mentioned my mischievous, destructive son, Declan.  So this last Thursday, he was just having one of those days, being a bit of a monster, pestering, whining, yelling, screaming, annoying.  He's been releasing his anger in worse and worse ways.  First he tries screaming, then he'll start stomping everywhere he goes.  He gets a time-out for screaming, then when he stomps to his room, I pull him back to where he was and make him walk there again without stomping.  When I do this now, he'll start swinging his arms trying to hit me or trying to kick.  On this particular day, he kicked the baby, not hard, but he did it intentionally.  The other thing that he does now is he takes whatever is in his hand and chucks it across the room.  Which is what he did on this day, and that proved to be the final straw for me.  I was telling him to be patient while I finished up entering in my bills on the computer before I could turn on the TV for him.  He threw what I think was the remote and I heard it hit glass.  The window?  The sliding glass door?  The TV?  I don't know.  So I was up and after him in a flash (of course, he was trying to run away from me).  I grabbed his arm and began swiftly marching him towards his room.  But in my haste, I marched him right into the corner of the wall!

Ugh!  He hit the top-right side of his head on it so hard, it made me sick to my stomach.  I saw some blood, so I whisked him up and ran to the bathroom to put a washcloth on it.  He actually didn't cry for long, and there wasn't a ton of bleeding, but when I surveyed the damage, I could tell that a band aid wouldn't cut it.  I'll spare you the details.

I tried taking him to urgent care, but they wouldn't take him because it was a head injury, and they said if he needed an MRI, they couldn't do it.  So I got stuck waiting four hours in the emergency room with a three-year old who won't sit still.  He was crawling under all the chairs looking for garbage, candy, gum (and yes, he found some and tried to eat it), crawling under people's feet, talking to strangers and probably bothering them (he seems to be lacking any sort of healthy fear of strangers).  I was afraid to put any severe restraints on him because I knew he'd start screaming and kicking, and occasionally I would take him outside when it seemed his energy was starting to boil over, but then I would be worried that I would miss them calling us back.  The nurse at the front assured me they probably wouldn't take the time to look for me outside when I asked if she could tell me where we were at in line and told her I didn't know how much longer I could control my son.  I thought I heard them call us twice, so I'd gather our stuff up, grab Declan, only to be disappointed when I finally got up to the nurse.  Fast food restaurants use microphones and speaker systems, why can't they?

We finally were called back, and I was given the choice of staples with or without anesthetic.  Having experienced the burning of the anesthetic myself when getting stitches in my fingers, I opted for taking advantage of his obliviousness and going without.  They said that only two were needed, and it would be quick.  Which it was, but it still hurt, and I felt bad all over again for being the cause of it.

So he's doing fine, but I remember praying earlier in the week that I would be able to have more patience when my children pushed my buttons.  This seems a harsh, but rather effective way to get the lesson across as to what a lack of patience can lead to--an injured child and a long wait in the emergency room that will put your hastily discarded patience to the test.  So to people everywhere--if you are squeamish at the sight of blood, you don't have a lot of time on your hands, and you aren't really serious about accepting the monkey's paw-like ramifications, then DON'T PRAY FOR PATIENCE.  You will have the lesson figuratively pounded into your head, and literally pounded into the head of one of your nearest and dearest.  Now hopefully something more than a wall corner and a couple of staples got pounded into Declan's head.  But I'm sure the amnesia erased it.