Clean Up and Move On

Spring cleaning is finally rearing it's ugly head over here!  I have an overflowing pantry that has taken over much of my kitchen and need to organize this gluten free pantry of mine! I have been buying flours when I see them on sale as I tend to go through a lot of flour ..... on scones and pizza dough alone, never mind all these experiments that i have been partaking in!  So the time has come to reclaim my kitchen counters from the bags of flour and boxes of rice crackers.

There is also a nasty mess occurring in the bathroom closet and that will be on my next to do list.  I have come up with an organizational plan, just have to take the time to scoop everything out and put it bak properly.  I have a theory that if everything has a proper home and all four of us (like this will ever happen!) put the things back in their proper homes, then things will stay organized.

The last thing on my list for spring cleaning is the dog fur ..... a constant battle at the moment as their winter coats shed all over my living room floor!  Sweeping every day and vacuuming every week ... a big chore in it's self!  Not to mention all the clean up that must happen before the sweeping begins! Oh spring cleaning, a love hate relationship we have!  I will be posting before and after photos of my projects, well except for the dog fur.  No one needs to see photos of big clumps of dog hair on my floor!

Our Gluten Free Life Week 7

I haven't really been keeping track of exactly when I was told I had to cut all gluten out of my diet, but I think it was about 7 or 8 weeks ago.  Two weeks ago we got the test results for my eldest son, and he too had a very high result for celiac.  We are now in contact with a paediatric specialst, so we will see what comes of that.  So what have we been eating for the past 8 weeks?

Breakfast:
Shakes
GF Nature's Path Cereals
Omelettes
Eggs Benedict on Potato Latkes (not homemade .... breakfast restaurant)
GF Oatmeal
Hot Rice cereal
Yoghurt and Fruit
GF Pancakes (still perfecting this recipe)
GF Waffles (frozen from a box)


Lunch:
antipasta plates (cheese, olives, fruit, nuts, GF crackers)
Rice or Corn Noodles with tomato sauce or butter and parmesan
GF Macaroni and Cheese (recipe coming soon!)
Annies Pasta Rice Noodles (GF lazy mac'n'cheese)
Beef or Bean or Chicken Tacos
Nachos
GF Bread with various sandwich fillings
Leftovers
GF Cheese Scones with salad or soup (recipe here)

Dinner:
GF Lasagna (recipe coming soon)
Beef or Bean or Chicken tacos/tostados/burritos/enchiladas etc
Rissotto
GF Sausages and Mash
Cornmeal Baked chicken fingers with rice or potatoes
GF Spaghetti with Bolognese Sauce
GF Toad in the Hole
Beef or Chicken Stews with GF Dumplings
Roast Dinner with GF Yorkshire puddings
GF Pizza (recipe here)
Breakfast for Dinner
Shepard's Pie
Various homemade soups

I am sure there are more but those are the ones in heavy rotation at the moment!  We eat Mexican food once a week guaranteed and GF Pizza at least once a week.  The kids are not super picky, but right now I don't have the effort to convince them to try new stuff for dinner every night, so the mexican and pizza are great standbys  ...... oh and GF spaghetti that's usually a once a week meal as well!  So typically I only have to be creative 4 days out of the week!  That is until my kids (or us parents) get sick of pizza and tacos.

There are some recipes that I am excited about trying such as the Pan de Yuca and the Tortillas from "No Gluten, No Problem".

Most meals are easily converted into GF, such as soups, stews and baked chicken/fish dishes.  It's the bread that has me hung up right now.  I tried aking GF bread from a pre-bought mix and it turned out okay, a tad sweet and very dense.  I have tried a few different baked loaves of GF bread an they are very similar to the one I baked myself.  I am on the hunt for something a bit more fluffy and squishy.  Oh and hamburger buns .. on the look out for a recipe or store bought ones that don't crumble as soon as you take your first bite!  This is my mission, to find some good bread/bun recipes that are not sweet or dense.  Wish me luck on my continuing GF baking adventures!

Flavourful Gluten Free Pizza Dough

I have been living gluten free for over a month now, and have amassed a lot of wonderful recipes.  A staple in our house is pizza, so I dove into the realm of gluten free pizza dough the day after I got my test results, letting me know I had a gluten intolerance.  In a few weeks I am going to have an appointment with a specialist to get some further testing, so I know just how intolerant I am to gluten.  Anyways .... on with the recipe!  I started with this recipe, and experimented until it had a wonderful, full flavour to it, almost as flavourful as wheat flour pizza dough!

Gluten Free Pizza Dough

1 1/4 All Purpose GF flour

1/3 cup corn flour

2 Tbsp buckwheat flour

1 cup warm beer (GF)

1 Tbsp dry yeast (GF)

1Tbsp sugar (i used unrefined cane sugar)

1 Tbsp honey

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp rosemary

1 tsp salt

2 Tbsp olive oil

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F, or as high as your oven will go.  Heat beer on stove or microwave until it is just above room temperature. Mix in sugar and yeast, set aside for 5 minutes.  Meanwhile mix all flours, garlic powder, oregano, rosemary and salt in a large bowl.  Add beer mixture, then honey and olive oil.  Mix well with a fork, until the dough resembles thick batter.  When you lift the fork out of the bowl and hold it, the dough should slowly drop off of it.  Not too thick or too thin!

Now comes the tricky part.  Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper and cornmeal, then drop dough by spoonfuls onto the pan.  Rinse all excess dough off your hands, then keeping them moist quickly pat down dough until it is spread out and about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick.  I rock my fingers out from the middle to create a bit more thickness around the edge for a crust.  The dough will stick to your fingers if they are not wet, so have a bowl of warm water beside you and dip you fingers often!

Turn oven down to 450 degrees, and pop the pizza crusts (no sauce or toppings yet!) in the oven and bake until just slightly golden brown around the edges.  Approx. 10-12 minutes.  Remove from oven, and turn oven back up to 500 degrees, or as high as it will go.

I am a minimalist so I just use crushed tomatoes straight from the jar, and a fine quality mozzarella cheese, and some sliced mushrooms, with a bit of feta sprinkled on top. Once you have topped your pizza, turn oven down to 450 degrees, then pop pizzas back in the oven until cheese is bubbly and golden.  Approx. 10-15 minutes depending on the amount of toppings you require.  The crust may be a bit overdone, but if it's not, the middle tends not to be cooked properly .... feel free to experiment with timing and temperature!

This is a fairly thin crust. If you like a more doughy, thicker crust, do not spread dough as thin, but increase first baking time so that the crust is cooked properly in the middle. Sometimes I experiment a bit with the herbs and spices, changing to basil, or onion powder sometimes.  

The essential ingredients that boost the flavour of the dough is the beer and the buckwheat.  The beer gives a nice yeasty, fermented grain flavour, and the buckwheat gives a bit of a greener grain flavour. Sometimes I have to add a bit more flour if the dough is too runner, just make sure that it's not too dry!  Good luck!  I would LOVE to hear how your experiments with this recipe and how you tweak it to make it your own!

Gluten Free Buttermilk Biscuits

A couple of weeks after being diagnosed with Celiac disease, I attempted to come up with my own recipe for my favourite biscuits.  These biscuits that I have been eating since I was a kid.  I love them more than bread, or croissants, or maybe even ....... cake, dare I say that!  It could be all the butter and cheese that make these biscuits so delicious and fool proof, but whatever the case, they are on my weekly baking rotation even more than before I began my gluten free lifestyle. Below is the recipe, and I do hope you love them as much as I do!

Gluten Free Buttermilk Biscuits

1cup rice flour

1 cup corn flour

1 tsp xantham gum

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 cup butter, chilled and cut into small cubes

1 cup buttermilk (sub. 1 cup milk and 1 1/2 tsp vinegar)

cheddar cheese cubes

grated cheese for topping

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  In a large mixing bowl, add both flours, xantham gum and baking powder.  Using a pastry blender, cut in the cold butter to the flour mixture, until the mix resembles similar consistency to bread crumbs.  You can also put everything in a food processor and pulse until the desired consistency is reached.  Once butter is incorporated, mix in the small cheese cubes, then the buttermilk.  Drop by small spoonfuls onto a parchment lined baking sheets, sprinkle the tops with grated cheese and bake from 8 to 12 minutes.  Transfer to a cooling rack.  These are best eaten within 24 hours.

**close up of the mixture after buttermilk added**

**biscuits ready for the cheese topping**

**wonderful texture**

Hiatus End

I have been taking a hiatus from this blog of mine.  I have been travelling through my life, enjoying it and just living, not documenting, or sharing.  I have made many discoveries and taken on some large tasks, and decided to dream big.

A couple of weeks ago I was diagnoses with Celiac Disease.  I thought I had cancer (I'm an excellent hypercondriac) so this diagnosis was actually a relief. I have dealt with immune issues, asthma and anemia my whole life, so my allergy to wheat explained a lot.

I have had a number of different emotions since this discovery.  I was happy that it wasn't cancer, sad that I could never have cake from the Dutch Bakery again, frustrated that I had to throw out all my lovely organic flour that I had just purchased, relieved when I started feeling better just a few days ago. The list goes on and on.  I have been experimenting with baking and reading lots of information regarding what exactly I can and cannot eat.  I am mourning all the foods that I cannot eat, and the limitations I have when eating out.  Mind you many of my favourite restaurants have many gluten free options!

I have never been much into bread, but scones, cakes, and cookies are something that I make regularly. So far I have just been using cake and cookie mixes, but have perfected my scone recipe thatI have been using for years into a gluten free scone recipe. I will be sharing my new recipe after the weekend, and hoping to keep up a bit more with this blog of mine.  We will see how this all works out!  For now half of our family are all still recovering from a nasty flu, and I have some suspicions that I am next for the flue rounds.  So off to nourish myself with gluten free cheese scones and lovely home made chicken, vegetable rice soup (extra garlic and ginger of course).  Happy Weekending All!!

Work It Out

Wow!  I have had to step away from this new little blog of mine!  Just too much is going around these parts.  I do think this is the busiest and most energetic I have felt for many winters!  The biggest project occupying myself these days is school.  JJ's school to be exact.  His teacher is a very nice woman, but the homework he is getting for grade one is insane!  Also She is not very tactful, empathetic, or understanding at times.  Also she seems to be very high anxiety and it shows when she talks to the kids, and even us parents.  I am not sure that I want to take JJ out altogether, but I don't think he should be in the class as much as he has been.

I am working on a plan to approach the school with.  I plan to have JJ go to school when he thinks it's most important for him to go.  Also the teachers will let me know when they think it's okay for him to duck out of class.  Once the ball gets rolling with the plan, I have to figure out how to still make the teachers happy (by having JJ still learn what the government requires of him), but ultimately fulfill JJ and have him content, relaxed, and possibly even happy!

I have a copy of the curriculum and have been devising some ways of bringing aspects of it into our daily lives.  We have also started some big projects that JJ can work on when he feels like it. He is currently working on an acrylic painting, writing a poetry book, reading The Hobbit (with me reading about 80% of it) and starting up is own business.

What?!  His own business.  Yes.  This boy likes saving up for a variety of toys and books, so instead of give him chores to do,then paying him, I set things up a little differently.  I post a list of jobs that need to be done around the house. They range in time commitments of five minutes to one hour.  Some are tasks that he has never done before, so he'll need a bit of learning time before starting as well.  He then bids on the job he wants.  He outlines how long it will take and how much he thinks he should get paid.  We decided that 50 cents for 15 minutes work is a fair average, but each job is different so the rate is flexible.

Once I accept his proposal for a job, he gets to work, making sure to note the time he started and what the time is when he is finished.  He then writes up an invoice for me with the actual time spent on the job and how much I owe him.  He submits this and I pay him.  I do, however, not always pay him right away.  Sometimes he has to submit a second request for payment if I leave it too long .... really it's a lot of fun as we are playing stuffy businessmen characters the entire time.  He has the greatest fake serious voice ever!

So from this small exercise, he is learning how the world works, doing a ton of math, make estimations (still math), learning to tell time, writing, spelling, reading ..... just a ton of great things all rolled into something he willingly participates in.

Now he is only 6 1/2 so things don't always get completed.  He was cleaning out a closet for me, and after about 20 minutes, he was ready to be done.  It all lay scattered in heaps on the floor and he was ready to move on.  I told him I would pay him for his time so far, but that he wouldn't be able to bid on another large job until he could show me that he was able to start completing smaller jobs again. He was fine with this and trotted off downstairs to play with his brother.

It took him a week before he decided to even take on another job, but it's his choice of timing.  It makes such a huge difference in his life for him to be the one with choices, and to be in charge of his own time.  In some ways I wish I could homeschool exclusively, but I am not so sure I am ready for this yet!  We will see how the next few months go!

The Beginning

And so starts another week, as I crawl out of the bottom bunk of my boys beds.  Poor Deedot had a rough night.  I am sorry to say that I finally think we have a little cold brewing.  JJ is up early this morning.  You see last night he left a Lego project unfinished and that has probably haunted him all night.  Without stopping to consider breakfast, he is on the floor, pouring over his instructions and snapping pieces together.  It's quiet in the house this early winter morning.  There was a rumour of snow, but I haven't dare look out the window yet.  Snow is not a welcome sight in these parts!

Last night seemed to be a bit rough for us all, so I think the calm of today will heal all our wounds.  After a fews days in Vancouver it's been a challenging transition back to our home routine.  And now back to school we go, with some protests already, in these wee hours of the morning.

There is much to do, even though we have done so much this past weekend.  We have made some big progress regarding our "extra" room, which we will have to rename soon. I have set up a reading nook, organized the book shelves, started to bring in the crafting supplies from their former home in the music room, put all the good dishes set away in the cabinet, and started to weed through our toy collection.

I am going to take things slow this whole week, I don't want to get too overwhelmed.  I will stick with the tasks from Apartment Therapy's January Cure, and just keep up with the daily tidying and cleaning around here.  Now for some tea to start off the day right!

I will post so photos of Vancouver a bit later this week.