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
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…
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:
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!!
I’ll just go ahead and upload all the pictures from Morgan’s cake. Sadly, one picture turned out from Ian’s mandrake fondant sculptures. They turned out pretty neat looking, but more like pissed old men than whining babies LOL. However, they sunk into the ice cream, rather than hanging around on top. So the visual wasn’t quite the same, but the kids really loved them heh
I’ll go ahead and point you at Niel Cicierega if you are wondering WHY in the heck we did a cake like this. We are big fans at this house *grins*
Then on to Morgan’s cake:
Morgan's drawing used for the pattern
Morgan wanted a white cake with rainbow sprinkles
After dying the fondant with decent dye, I put them in bags, or on wax paper to roll out
After rolling them out. I put the pattern pieces on them and cut them out with a very sharp, small knife
Then I started putting them all together
Morgan, dressed as Harry Potter looks on in glee (that’s my daughter’s expression for glee) She’d probably kill me if she knew I included that picture
After putting most of it together, I cut the edge off the purple
Then added the ‘wrist’ for the puppet master
The whole thing together
Then my VERY FIRST time ever writing on a cake. So please don’t make fun of me LOL, it says ‘Voldemorts Nipple’
Then, they destroyed all my hard work!
A few months ago, on the Silly Yaks list I’m on, on yahoogroups. Someone posted about a cake in a cup they’d made.
Earlier today I was whining to myself (well ok, my honey too in passing) how I wanted brownies, or cake, or chocolate chip cookies or SOMETHING sweet, rich and chocolaty!
So I’m putting up the coffee cups after the younger kids have gone to bed, and I have this recipe kind of tap dance through my head.
Of Course I have to try it. And of Course I had to mess with the recipe LOL! I’m that kind of girl.
Just so you know, the older kids who were washing dishes have pronounced this ‘chocolately coffee goodness in a cup’ and ‘we’re definitely keeping this recipe!’
So kid tested and approved (and it’s with gluten free flours hahahaha)
Spiral Owls Cake-in-a-Cup
4 TB flour (my mix worked very well)
4 TB sugar
2 TB unsweetened cocoa
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp xanthum gum (if this is GF)
1 tsp instant coffee granules
mix together well, then add
2 eggs
Mix well again, then add
1 TB oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 TB milk, cream or milk substitute
mix well, then microwave on high for 3 min. Watch it, it’s an awesome display of science in your microwave, the kids and I were fascinated!
It’s really good! Very rich, chocolately, it has filled my craving to completion. It’s a very moist cake, almost custardy (which is a plus in my book from dry, crumbly cakes you mostly get with GF flours)
Cake Rising in the Microwave
Chocolaty Goodness Wafting Up
Between the near constant glutening this past week (the cross contamination issues have gotten out of hand as I’ve gotten sicker) and somehow spraining my wrist so badly it hurts just to lift my arm up I’m darn near helpless.
Did you know how hard it is to hunt and peck for someone who types 98 wpm? Or get dressed one armed? Change a wiggly babies diaper? Cut a mushroom? Dishes? Laundry? Clean house?
Luckily it is very easy to read to children or have children read to you, and we are learning a lot about fish. But my arm is aching just sitting here, so it’s back to supervising the boys and their muffin math.
Ok, I have borrowed a friends camera. Only, I really stink at taking pictures. BOTH of my grandfathers were photographers professionally and by hobby, and my sister is awesomeness as well. I just, well, I just stink. But hey, my artistic stuff goes elsewhere. So out of about 20 photos that I took, only one turned out even SLIGHTLY good. The rest were so blurry, they hurt my eyes to look at. So I’m going to take the stuff outside in a bit and take pictures of the cuteness I’ve made lately. But here’s a teaser k?
Yes, that’s a penny, this is the 2nd door I made. See how tiny it is? I’m in the first stage of painting it, with the black laid down so it looks more detailed when I get the brown, brass and stone colors on.
The kids and I have decided that the door is for PennyMen. (if you click that, it’s a link to the story about Pennymen by Charles de Lint (fave author) on Google book search beta)
It’s raining like the dickens here today, so my plan of cutting the pallets to make my raised gardens can’t go into effect until later this afternoon when it ceases to rain! However planting is either going to need to start soon (within a few weeks) if the weather continues it’s weirdness (I’m in a tanktop at the moment) or Winter is going to turn vicious and I won’t be planting until March. Either way. The garden beds NEED to get up. Last years garden was practically eaten by the weeds and though we got a pretty decent harvest. Decent isn’t enough!
Also, the neighbor lady across the street said I could use her metal fence posts until April when she’s going to need them. So a nice temporary fence is going to go up in a few days. I found some chicken wire being thrown away on the side of the road the other day, just a very small amount. But perfect for a potato bed. You make the chicken wire a circle and clip it together, use mulch, typically straw along the bottom. Put your potato pieces in, and then cover, as they vines grow up, cover them with more straw and your potatoes go up up up and stay clean and easy to retrieve!
I made massive quanties of food yesterday, a looooong loaf of bread since we’ve got everyone here now (all 8 of us!) and make enchilada’s with half the mix going in the freezer for later use.
Anyways, my coffee has been drunk and it’s time for me to go be productive! May your day be productive too!
A *lot* of things have changed over 2008.
I think the two things that stand out most in my mind is my huge change in relationship status (from a military wife to single mom) and the change my house has undergone.
I’ve always been a firm believer in turning off the lights when you leave the room. Turning off the water when you brush your teeth, using dishpans in the sink, instead of wasting tons of water (and then using the water to water plants). But I’ve never really had children old enough to help, or husband who stood behind me on it (and most of the time we lived on base which really isn’t conducive to much but staying in your house and not making waves)
But this past year and a half saw us:
This Year, there are more things I’d like to do
I’m sure there’s a LOT more that I’ve forgotten in each list, but with my 17 month old heading into nap time (we’ve been awake since almost 6am) she’s getting a bit toooo bandit like to comfortably think and stay on the internet anymore! LOL
A while back, Ginger Lemon Girl posted a blog about her to-die-for chocolate chip cookies.
All of ours had been tasting wonderful, but ending up flat and chewy. Kind of toffee like. Like I said, YUM, but not so beautiful, and not what we were used to in cookies.
Something to understand, my mom is an indifferent cook. She cooked simply because we needed to eat, but didn’t feel any affinity with the ingredients, the kitchen or the act of making food for her family. My dad is an inspired cook, he owns his own restaurant now, but when I was younger he did Chuckwagon Catering (literally, pioneer style, on an open flame in the middle of nowhere for cattle drives, Yeah, I’d make a good pioneer wife LOL). However, he’s one of those cooks that only cooks when he *feels* like it. So when he cooked it was wonderful. But when he didn’t we got stuff like gizzards and gravy on toast and ‘goulash’. So I started cooking when I was around 7, and then time spent with my grandmother (mom’s mom) only encouraged my cooking gene and baking gene. So I am USED to cooking, and doing it well. I’m used to praise with mouths full, and wide open eyes, full of surprise and admiration. I *know* that I cook well, and I *know* that my baking skills are very good. So switching to gluten-free cooking was easy. Switching to gluten-free baking? Not so much. Even following recipes didn’t do me much good. I got depressed and my spirits plummeted everytime I had to try and bake bread. Thinking about the loaves failing, the muffins that only the dog would eat makes me sad even now. It was like throwing money out of the window, just because the ingredients are SO expensive and we ARE poor. I dreaded baking. But my kids are used to muffins, cookies, breads etc for snack at least 3-5 times a week, so I slogged on.
It was worth it. I knew it would be. But in the midst of feeding Sammi (our dog) the leftovers it hurt, a lot.
Now I instictively know the right texture for the mix. I know how much liquid to add to cookies, breads, muffins. I know instictively the right amout of starch/crumbly flour/fine flour to add to a flour mix. I know when to add stuff like gelatin and how much xanthum gum each thing needs. It took a few months, but I got it.
So anyways, onto the cookies.
You can find the recipe here:
For the flour mix, instead of what she called for I used my mix here.
I’ve got my ex-boyfriend and his two daughters over today.(no school or work today for them thanks to the Hurricane) So 2 adults, with my fiance coming over later, and 6 children. The cookies are gone LOL. But there was much nomming and chocolate smeared faces. Much little girls (who don’t eat gluten-free) going ‘these are gluten-free? wow!’ and asking for 2nds and 3rds and disapointment on all faces when the cookie sheet was empty. Only to see 5 little faces light up when I told them I had more in the refridgerator for snack! LOL!
So fueled on cookies, I went out and cleaned the garage some (it’s raining like crazy here thanks to Hurricane Fay) and enjoyed the winds and mist on my face.
Happy Friday to everyone, I hope your’s has been as enjoyable as mine!
So the boys and I have something we call ‘Muffin Math’
Where we make various flour blends (and try to remember not to get too excited and write them down LOL)
and then use our math skills to make muffins (mostly muffins, sometimes it’s cookies or bread/pizza/bun dough)
So when the boys ask ‘Is it a muffin math day mom?’ and leap around yelling Hooray! Yay! you know they are good muffins.
This year I’ve decided to get a lot more strict on my little bit of this, little bit of that cooking style around the children. I’m not teaching them the life skills they need when they are on their own with that sort of thing. Well, ok, my 14 cooks like that now, but a 9 and 7 yo need basic skills before they go to advanced you know?
So Monday we sat down. We took some lined paper and a pen, along with clear paper protectors for a binder, and got to writing down all the things we need to make muffins, then drew pictures next to them (helpful reminder for Owyn, who can read, but not the big words yet, plus Kaia who will be helping in a couple of years)
Then we made a list of ingredients for our most perfect of muffins, the ones that ALWAYS turn out perfectly moist, always make our taste buds sing, even our gluten-eating buddies that come over look at us with pleading eyes when they see these cooling on the stove LOL
Monday, I helped the boys, we went through the list together, Ian and I discussed with Owyn the difference between 1/4 a cup and 1/2 a cup. A lot of pictures were drawn LOL. Funny, that Ian can’t remember how to say one fourth, he instead says one slash four, but Owyn remembers the proper terms. They make a good team.
Anyways, yesterday, they decided they wanted to do Muffin Math all by themselves! I had Ian turn on the oven with my supervision, and then turned them loose. The only mistake Ian made was in using 2 and a half cups of THE ONE HALF CUP measuring cup, instead of 2 cups whole cups and then the half cup. We discussed this, he felt stupid, but I don’t think he’ll make that mistake again. (this makes me feel like I haven’t been doing all that great of a job, since he’s been cooking since he was 7, so making an elementary mistake like that means I’ve been taking over to much for him)
But all together, I helped them with turning the oven on, spooning the mix into the muffin pan, and placing it in the oven (oh and the flour in the proper amount) and they turned out WONDERFUL.
Once again, 12 muffins, GONE.
So here’s the recipe, I use the flour mix in my previous post, if I used brown rice flour versus white rice flour they’d be healthier, but with the flax seed and quinoa flour, both high in the good stuff (good fats, protein and fiber) I try to tell myself it balances out the shortening right??
The Boys Brown Muffins
Preheat the Oven to 350. Grease the Muffin Tin.
In mixing bowl, place all of these ingredients:
1 Stick of Shortening
1 cup of brown sugar – packed
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup mollasses
Now use the beater until all the way mixed up and they look creamy.
Now add into the bowl:
2 1/2 cups GF flour mix
1 cup raisins
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cardamom
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp xanthum gum
1/2 cups flakes (we use quinoa flakes, but gf oats would work just as well)
1 cup water
Mix this with the beaters, using a spatula to scrape the sides down, for 2-3 minutes.
Use a 1/2 cup measuring cup and use that to scoop the mix into 12 muffin holes on the muffin tin. Fill the muffin holes almost all the way, then place in the oven for aprox. 20 min.
These don’t rise super high, but they have a great moist cake consistency, are somewhat crumbly, but not the normal fall apart like other GF muffins are, and when my 1 year old squishes hers between her chubby little hands, they compress and stay together, like gluten bread does!
I’m going to experiment with adding zucchini and carrots (as soon as my zucchini are ready in my garden!) and using a cream cheese icing on top and see how they do for carrot cake (Pretty well I’m guessing)
