October Blog Party October 4, 2009

To participate in this blog party, pledge to do is something holiday related everyday the month of October and blog about it. You do not have to blog everyday, just chronicle what you’ve been doing on each day when time permits. Deadline to join is October 1st.

October 4th

Todays craft is brought to you by Value Village. My 10 year old son is SERIOUSLY into Harry Potter. In fact, the only things he needs to complete his trunk to head off to Hogwarts are some potions bottles and a Nimbus 2000 as well as a trunk to put them in. He’s already borrowed my cauldron that’s from the 1800’s and made in Scotland, and my cloak (it’s even waterproof on the outside!) So when I saw this particular craft for making Beware Bottles, (near the bottom of the page) I immediately thought of Ian and his particular obsession.  Especially as I have probably 20 vintage spice bottles which will be perfect for the craft!

I’ve also got 2 extra boys today, my BFF’s sons and good friends to my sons, they’ve been staying over this weekend. So we are going to be doing this altogether, and then probably making snacks to go with em!

Remember these guys?

That’d be 3 of the boys and my step-daughter! Muddy little hobbits!

October Blog Party! October 3, 2009

To participate in this blog party, pledge to do is something holiday related everyday the month of October and blog about it. You do not have to blog everyday, just chronicle what you’ve been doing on each day when time permits. Deadline to join is October 1st.

October 1st

I put out the Halloween Decorations  – not the lights, but the various colored pumpkins and skulls, the hanging bats, the skeletons, and the house decorations, colored candles, stuffed witches, paper mache candy holders, signs (autopy room in the kitchen for one)

October 2nd

Made Fallish-Dinner, Beef Stew in the crockpot with homemade bread. Hot food! We haven’t had it much, it’s been toooo hot outside for using the oven!

October 3rd

Seasoned 2 cast iron cornbread pans, one shaped like a fish and one like corn. Make gluten-free ‘corn’ bread with sausage, cheese and savory herbs to finish the seasonings. I say ‘corn’ because unbelievable, even though I’ve got 3 months worth of pretty much everything else we eat, we are amazingly out of cornmeal! So I used masa instead and they are really really yummy! Comment if you’d like the recipe!

Kaia’s 2nd Birthday Partay August 9, 2009

what’s This?

Obviously a pink heart right?

Into cutey delicious gluten-free cupcakes!

Bad picture of the castle cake (that’s a vinland flag)

She ate the crown first, then the whole frog head as screams of ’she must be Ozzie Osbourn’s daughter’ rang in the background

and Owyn’s sloppy goblins he cooked in the crockpot with momma’s supervision – he’s eight

My GF Bread vs: Pamela’s Bread Mix July 25, 2009

First, the pictures and I think you’ll come to the same conclusion I did:

View from the top Pamela's then Mine

Texture and Appearance seems very similar

Time for the Taste Test - Pamela's on one side. Mine on the other!

My bread was made with my GF flour mix – the most nutritionally healthy bread mix (unlike rice mixes) that I could come up with which didn’t taste extremely strongly (like bean mixes) and most resembled wheat flour cooking. The muffins, pancakes and other things that we make with it all turn out very well and even our gluten-eaters gobble them down. But bread for sandwiches seems like the ultimate test of your flour mix. Even just a bit off or crumbly and it doesn’t satisfy that deep-set need for ‘just like wheat bread’.

First thing, upon looking at the bread. Pamela’s browned more nicely, and had a smoother top. They both rose about the same however.
I also added flax seed and a 1/4th of a cup mollasses to both mixes. Need those extra bits of fiber and vits/minerals!

Smelling the bread, they both smelled pretty awesome. However, mine smelled a BIT more yeasty than it should. I was a dope and added an extra 1/2 tsp of yeast to the mix just to ’see’. Instead of following what I knew. Darn me and my drive to experiment!

Both mixes were put in the bread maker, same ‘dough’ setting, rose once, and then taken out, put in my grandma’s old pans, let to rise again, then baked.

Both breads had similar texture, and amount of holes. My bread had a few larger holes in it than Pamela’s did, and her bread seemed a bit less crumbly. Plus the strong yeasty smell my bread was emitting!

Taste? Well, taste, Pamela’s won! My bread was much to yeasty, the texture wasn’t quite right due to the crumbly-ness (and had to be toasted to eat the rest of the loaf)

What am I going to do next time I make my own bread? Well, I’m going to use less yeast (ha!) and I’m going to add in a packet of unflavored gelatin to the mix. Plus some powdered milk. I think this might fix most of the problems!

So until next time…

Kombucha Tea = Vinegar! July 23, 2009

Click the picture to go directly to an article by Arwen O’Reilly about Kombucha (picture is her’s as well! isn’t it awesome!!)

This article/recipe is for those of you who already own a kombucha SCOBY, or have access to getting one, and are semi-familiar with the premise of Kombucha Tea. I’m not going to make any health claims or any boasts about how awesome it is.

I will however say I’m a busy woman. And I take time, several hours a month, and put it into making kombucha, so you can draw your conclusions for that LOL

Making Kombucha Tea into Vinegar for home use

Step 1. Make tea – 4 tea bags for vinegar, 6 for drinking kombucha
Step 2. When tea is done, but still hot – add in 3/4 cup of sugar for each gallon of water
Step 3. You let the water cool to room temp.
Step 4. Add the tea to your kombucha tea starter, and the kombucha mushroom that you’ve put in a big container (5 gallon bucket, 5 gallon water jug, etc)
Step 5. Let it sit about a week and a half in a cool dark place.
Step 6. Using a pressure cooker or large 4/5 gallon pot, place a filter where you can dump the kombucha tea through it. I use a large cloth one over the top of my pot.  Run all the kombucha tea through a filter. When the cloth starts getting clogged with debris. I take it off and rinse it, then put it back on. I keep dumping the kombucha in the pot until I’ve got about 3 inches left in the bottom of my container (the starter tea) and the mushroom of course.
Step 7. Put the pot on simmer for about 2 hours if it’s a large pot. If it’s a pressure cooker, 20 min on 10lbs. The idea is to kill all the bacteria in the kombucha tea that make up the SCOBY or the ‘mother’ so no new one can grow.
Step 8. It’s now vinegar, run it through another filter, to catch all of the dead ‘mother’ particles.
Step 9. Place your vinegar in it’s storage containers.

I use vinegar all over the house. I use it as a hair rinse in the bathroom. It’s in several small spray bottles all over the house with some basil tea as a homemade ‘febreeze’. It’s in a gallon container in the laundry room to put in a downy ball for each load of laundry (it makes hung laundry less crunchy, helps eliminate problems with hard water, which is important to me as we use cloth diapers and cloth pads) We use it in cleaning counters, sinks, and most especially in cleaning hard water off of the shower walls, shower fixtures and toilet insides. I also give vinegar to my neighbors, who love it LOL.

Request for you the Reader July 22, 2009

If you are reading this, could you please comment how you found me?

(here’s me!)

I’m insatiably curious! Truly!

I’ve noticed that someone put me in Condron.us. I’m sure that some of you are here from a yahoogroup I’m on, following my sig line. Others are here because I commented on your post and you were curious yourself LOL!

I’d just be nice to satisfy my ticking brain for once with  comments from readers. I’d love to know how you found me and where you’re reading from, it’d be so cool!

map counter

My 2 Year Old July 22, 2009

My baby is 2 today. At 4:15 in the morning 2 years ago my water broke (a first for me after 3 other children) and we embarked on this new adventure after only a couple of hours in the hospital. Kaia shot out of me so fast, with only 1 push, the midwife barely had a chance to catch her. Kaia’s daddy flinched watching Kaia slide towards the floor. Then she stopped slipping, yelled and yelled and yelled while they weighed her, checked her signs. Then they handed her to me to nurse and she ate with gusto for 45 min. Little piggy.

Kaia is so different from my other children in a lot of ways. She says Who-wee instead of horse and  chocklitt in a deep growly voice like her big sister did as a toddler. Her penchant for getting up between 5:30 and 6:15 is definitely like her big brother Owyn. He’s often found getting her a bowl of cereal, and then getting me while she’s happily munching. Just because the two of them awake at about the same time.

Otherwise, she’s daring, climbing trees, ladders, shelves, tables, you name it, with ease. I think she’s fallen maybe a couple of times. No serious bruises or bumps. My other kids have been covered in both to the point where I was scared to take them out publicly for fear people would think we were abusive! She KNOWS how very cute she is, and utilizes that with every breath, batting her eyelashes, fluffing her hair, the perfectly turned smile, with just the right amount of dimple. She loves wearing beautiful clothes, but has no problems with putting on a gorgeous dress, then going outside and helping me dig holes, or climb trees, or dump dirt into her water table to make mud pies.

She’s a dancer. I really believe that this little girl has got talent, serious talent. We are going to have to find the money somewhere to get her dance lessons, because talent like this shouldn’t be squandered. I danced as a child, and did ballet, until I was old enough to be on toe shoes (before my teachers daughter, who was the same age, because I was that good), but we moved, and we were poor. And I’m not built like a dancer. Never have been. Maybe a dancer for rap video’s when I was thin. But Kaia doesn’t have my body. She’s got her daddy’s body. And he’s tall, thin, and with long long legs and muscles that would be perfect for dancing (if only he had rhythm LOL).

Kaia’s almost completely potty trained now, and she did it herself honestly. She still wears diapers to bed and if we are going to be out of the house for more than 30 min. But I guess it’s time to sell off my diaper stash. I’m going to be sad to see it go. Seriously. However, and here is where birthday comes in LOL. We don’t have money for presents, and we don’t have money for decorations. But I do sew, and I do have a cretive mind.

What does Kaia need? Well she needs panties to be honest! She’s wearing her 7 yo sisters right now, and while Ingrid is very very thin, so they kind of fit, they are very saggy, and they aren’t Kaia’s. So after I’m done typing this out, I’m going to finish sewing Kaia some panties out of one of her daddy’s old t-shirts and appliqueing some decorations on them. She’s going to squeal with delight I know it LOL!  Kaia also needs more nightgowns, I got so sucked into depression with my 3 oldest children gone to their fathers for the summer that I just wasn’t capable of anything but doing normal household chores. My brain isn’t wired to be creative and to create when I’m that sad.

I’m also finishing up the birthday banner I started, and Kaia also saw this dress on a blog I was reading:

and is now DEMANDING a dress like this. Yes, she’s only 2. You’d think she’s 4 with how she picks up on the fact that ‘mommy can make this for me’

So today, it’s underwear with hearts and starting a rainbow dress for Kaia. Then finishing a banner (it’s only bias tape, I don’t know why I’m resisting *sigh*) Then MAYBE another nightgown. At least I’m helping to get rid of more of my fabric stash right?

I’m also making my ‘famous among friends’ crockpot spaghetti sauce, and the kids are already saying ‘It smells so gooooood’ and ‘It’s making me huuuuungry’ LOL, plus a chocolate brownie cake (GF) with chocolate icing. Because Kaia IS a girl (and is related to me LOL)

My Local Publix is Awesome July 21, 2009

A week and a half or so ago, I did my monthly shopping trip into the town about 30 miles away. I live in a very small rural town, which does have a grocery store, but some items are SO expensive, that it’s often worth it for me to shop elsewhere if I need more than just milk and other basics (though their meat sales are awesome). They also don’t have very many gluten-free options, besides what is naturally so (and Chex! yay!). So I take a long drive with a ton of kids in tow, and we make a day out of grocery shopping. Everyone comes back exhausted from all the searching, scanning aisles, the long drive, all the walking, and just brain fogged and the heat!

Part of this is because it’s literally a search in every single aisle of Publix to find something.
So I emailed my local Publix’s manager after our last trip. I didn’t get anything back. Then last night I got a phone call!

The manager wanted to talk to me about a whole bunch of different things, and to also tell me she’d taken at least one of my suggestions to heart and was going to implement it. Plus, adding a few additional foods I’d suggested! We talked for maybe 20 minutes, and she told me she’d been on vacation and didn’t get my letter until last Friday. But she wanted to make sure all her ducks were in a row before she called me. She said that she’d been getting a lot of complaints lately about the fact that you literally had to search the whole store for the GF food. Some is in the diabetic section, some in the baking section. It’s crazy. I’ve gotten so upset, using my months allowance on stuff I wouldn’t have bought if I’d had a better choice (quinoa macaroni noodles) then finding Tinkyada noodles in the diabetic section. The manager told me that even if the food was half eaten, that if I thought it was gross, found a better product at the store, whatever, that she knew I shopped there, and they’d take it back for the full price returned so I could get what I really wanted, but couldn’t find.
The manager told me she’s got a ton more gluten-free food in the warehouse, but they just simply don’t have room for it at the moment. She also said she’s getting the materials together to build an extra 8-10 feet on the Health Food section, to make a single GF section. She said until then, things are going to have to be all mixed in together, but she loved my idea to her about putting out ‘eye grabbers’ I think she called them. You know, the brightly colored signs that stick out and say *75% off* or *On Sale*, but instead, they are going to stay *Gluten-Free* How cool is that?!

So I’ve never met any other Celiacs here, I’ve started a group on Yahoogroups for local Celiacs, but this gives me hope that our Publix is being so cool and accommodating. Maybe I ought to put up a sign advertising the group there! It’d be so lovely to have a potluck where I could eat everything and my kids could play with other kids who ate gluten-free as well. (I’d also love to start a Celiacs club for people who need a support person at the hospital – but that’s another post)

I’m so so happy with the manager at Publix. It’s lovely to know that she really cares about her customers, and will really think about what they said. It’s also nice to know that our GF section is just going to get bigger and better! It may be a longer drive to Publix for me than some other places, but she’s definitely pulling me away from them! She also told me that I didn’t need to go to the Asian food store if I’d just tell her what I wanted. I laughed and told her that she could definitely get ahold of Mochiko, but Cassava flour was probably beyond her (and she wouldn’t want to go to all the trouble for something that wouldn’t give her much return).

Also, if you guys would give me a list of things you just cannot live without as far as GF things go. My list includes Pamela’s bread mix and Tinkyada noodles. Plus Mi-Del Arrowroot and Ginger cookies. But we haven’t had much of a chance to get new GF items and just try them out because of where we live (no trader joes or health food stores) so some suggestions for me, to suggest to the Publix Manager would be great!

Overall, I’m just tickled pink by the whole thing. It’s so nice to see that people really do care.

Meredith

Picture Post – June Happenings July 17, 2009

My Amerucana's are almost 3 months old!

Rosemary from the Garden - hanging to dry and then heading to a friends house who LOOOOOVES Rosemary!

Ground up Basil - Harvested from my back yard

Cucumbers from a friends garden

Black Turtle Beans

Drying all those apples the kids didn't eat!

Painting my stuck in the 50's Kitchen

4th of July GF Blueberry Cake with whipped cream and strawberry topping

Our new Fish Pond

Millet- Popped up where the Chickens used to be!

Baby Fig Tree!

Tadpoles to TreeFrogs - The Gathering, these are about the size of a child's pinky fingernail

Our new Cat - Tommy the Manx

Pickles on their way to the jar

Kaia stole a pepper from the garden and is enjoying the fruits of her efforts

My Peach Kefir soda brewing!

Fresh Eggs from MY Chickens in homemade bread = Awesome!

Kitchen Window Painted, Bottles put back, Yarrow soaking in Olive Oil, and Kaia loves the bottles

Pickles! I made them!

Cabinets Painted! Food Put Up!

SparkPeople and birthdays July 16, 2009

A few things….

On loosing weight:
Somehow, I looked in the mirror and I’d gotten quite chubby for me. I’m normally overweight. Heck at my VERY thinnest – when my friends asked if I was on drugs I wavered between 125-132. I’m not only big boned, but have very heavy bones (I’ve never broken one!) and I’m quite muscular, partly from my good Pomeranian blood (yes, you heard me right, it used to be a country) and partly from years of ballet, gymnastics, basketball and football.
So I’m used to being a size 12-14 and I’m ok with that. I’ve got a little waist, a big butt, and a chest that’s large enough to balance the butt out mostly. I sag in places (hello! four babies, and 9 pregnancies!), but I never had much in the way of cellulite and I had a pleasant shape.
Not so much anymore. I look in the mirror and think *ick!*

Then I saw a blog-y friend posting about using sparkpeople. So I went and checked it out, it’s got a little thingy that I can use to input my food, if it’s not in the database, I can put it in. I can also use my fitness checker to input how much I’m excersising. It’s not just asking for push ups, jogging, walking, gym workouts and the like. I can put in pulling weeds (gardening) and how long, and it’ll calculate how many calories I’ve burned. Or the other day I painted the kitchen more, and it calculated how many calories I’d burned. So it’s pretty awesome for something FREE in my book!

On Kaia, my baby,
she’s almost 2, It’ll be July 22nd at four something in the morning that my water broke (for the first time after four kids!) She’s almost fully potty trained now amazingly enough. The first out of all my kids that not only did it before her 2nd birthday, but also basically just did it herself. She didn’t like the little toilet, and insisted upon the big toilet, and that was that! We’re still working on pulling down pants, and pulling them back up. But it’s a work in progress. I’m going to be sad to see all her old cloth diapers go onto a new home. We’ve evolved over the last 2 years into almost exclusively pockets, and I do love them. I wish I’d had them with my first!
She’s also picked up SO many words, it’s like a new word an hour! The worst of them all though is Fuck. It’s supposed to be truck.. Only…..( So amusing but embarrassing at the same time) in the grocery store parking lot, she sees a delivery truck and yells ‘I Keem Fuck!’ (Ice Cream Truck) and the whole parking lot turns to look!!  My honey  says ‘No darling, it’s a Chip Truck’ and Kaia goes ‘ooooooooh, Shit Fuck!’ (queu smacking of head and turning bright red).

I’m getting on sewing her all sorts of stuff for her birthday and her cake is inspired by this:
and this

Frogs (her favorite, she screams that word all the time and we investigate the tadpoles in the backyard every day) princess crowns, sparkles, flowers and wands. Oh yeah.
She’s almost swimming, she loves being in the pool at my friend  Skyla’s house for hours at a time, with or without water wings. She’ll float a bit, and put her face in the water and blow bubbles. Plus spinning and bouncing about LOL.  Today, while ‘helping’ me water the garden. She snuck off and got into the bell peppers (we’d found two almost ripe ones yesterday). I turned back around and she was halfway through a pepper. Held it up upon seeing me, looked REALLY cute (to get out of trouble) and said PEPPER! heheheh. Yes, I got pictures!

Tomorrow, I’m going to be posting pictures of all sorts of things I did. I’m getting good I think! However, my oldest daughter is wandering about outside with the camera at this time, so I think I’ll let her do her thing.

Oh, also tomorrow… My GF flour mix in a taste test with Pamela’s GF Bread Mix, the best bread mix for GF I’ve found so far. Who are the testers? My honey, my oldest daughter, and possibly some friends…. Tune in tomorrow LOL!!