A Domestic Weekend

I was on my own with our son for much of the weekend. With a very busy week ahead, it was kind of nice to fall into a domestic rhythm. A staff meeting, parent-teacher interviews, an improv show, and our Matthew Barber concert all await me this week. It's going to be crazy. Did I mention that Nanny and Poppy are coming too? So, over the past few days, I did the things I know I won't have time for until next weekend.

cooking and baking (soup, bread, apple-blueberry sauce)

gardening

(even though our yard is a construction zone, spring bulbs have managed to reveal their splendor)

hanging laundry on the line

(thanks for all the wonderful responses to my "On the Line" column)

Earth Day Clean-up

Kieran constructed this garbage monster at library program. He named it "Moppy" but refused to put any garbage in it. Instead, he filled his mouth with sand. Moppy had a rough day and after losing one of his eyes, concluded his short life with this somewhat horrifying grimace.

And don't forget...

BIG NIGHT THIS WEEKEND

Friday, April 30

An Evening for Shari Mulville

The Brockville Yacht Club

Door open at 6:00pm

Admission $20

Matthew Barber (Juno-nominated musician)

Silent Auction

All are welcome!

Busy Bee Gluten Free

I've started a separate blog to provide information and recipes I've gleaned throughout my two year gluten-free adventure. I will post ingredient information and tips on how to be gluten-free with a busy schedule. For those of us who don't have time to grow and grind our own buckwheat, there is hope...

http://www.busybeeglutenfree.blogspot.com/

So...I won't write about gluten-free cooking/baking in this blog as much.

Make sure you also check The Brockville Voice link to the left for my Christmas column.

Cookies and Pots

Cookies

I feel like shouting this news from the rooftops! I just made a delicious gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free chocolate chip cookie. Kieran and I both ate one and stared at each other in disbelief. We are both accustomed to my creations turning out a little...dry...crumbly...chick pea-tasting...blah. Now, we rejoice.

What they heck was in them then? you ask. Bob's GF flour, coconut oil, vanilla, applesauce, ground flax seed, xanthan gum, salt, evaporated cane juice...nothing too strange or difficult to find. I found the recipe from--you guessed it--Baby Cakes. I'd love to include the recipe here but I didn't create it so then it might be an intellectual property sort of issue.

http://www.babycakesnyc.com/

Honestly, I'm not working for them or anything. It's just the best darn cookbook I've found for my boy's food issues.

Pots

Sue's Christmas Pottery Sale

Saturday, December 5th, 11am-5pm
293 Albert St., Kingston, ON
*some of Sue's early work
*pots from a personal collection
*new work
*sale items/end of line selections

***a portion of the profits go to the Stephen Lewis Foundation

Sue is a dear friend of mine and an amazing potter. She was my first pottery teacher. If you're in the area, going would be worthwhile.

Early Riser...

Parenting a pre-schooler is like joining the army. I do more before 9:00 am than most people do in a day. I was awakened at 4:45 am on Sunday by a "little mouse" who claimed it was time to get up. Almost an hour of cajoling later, he finally pulled me out of bed. Pre-child, I would sleep until 10:00am on a Sunday morning. Wow. Those days are gone. For now.


So, before the sun even rose, we got to work trying out two recipes from my new Baby Cakes cookbook. Since becoming gluten-free and sugar-free, I've desperately missed banana bread and corn bread. And so the experimenting began.

The thing I like about these recipes is that the ingredients are whole foods. Some gf cookbooks I've tried have dubious ingredients. I also have mixed feelings about chick pea flour. I know it's healthy and it works well for texture, but sometimes, it feels like I'm eating a "banana flavoured dry crumbly felafel" instead of banana bread.

Sunday morning felt like real baking. The house was filled with that smell, that baking smell. When we came back from our walk, there were two lovely things cooling on the stove--just like old times.

My boy helped me mix. Everytime I'd put another item into the bowl, he'd stir softly and whisper, "ingredients."

And the results made me weep. Well, not quite, but almost.

The banana bread is moist and holds together beautifully. The corn bread...well, I think it's worthy to accompany my chili. That's something that has been missing from my life for the past three years. A good cornbread recipe to go with my chili. Yay!

Now, I think this Erin McKenna woman is a genius. I'm grateful that she spent the time to test all of these recipes for those of us who struggle in isolation, trying to find good things to replace our comfort foods.

So, if you're gluten-free and want to decrease the refined sugar in your diet...need I say more. It is vegan but I don't see any reason why you couldn't replace rice milk with dairy milk, if that's what you prefer. I followed the recipes closely because I wanted to see how they worked.

New Writing:

Make sure you check my two new links. You can read my columns in The Brockville Voice by clicking on the link to the left.

I also set up a link to my story "Getting Set," which was published in the Brockville Recorder and Times on Saturday.

Welcome Back Friends

I unpacked more boxes this weekend. As I mentioned in my column two weeks ago, I love my books. I hadn't seen my cookbooks in months so it was lovely to be back in their company. We even have a new book on the shelf. Welcome Baby Cakes!

There's a story behind so many of these. Chantal gave me ExtraVeganZa--some of her dishes are in the photos because it's her friend's book. Klaudia gave me The Compassionate Cook, which contains my all-time favourite chilli recipe. Anyone who knows me has tried it. A Great Bowl of Soup was a birthday gift from Shari--I love the tomato-lentil soup. I found Cooking With the Dead in a used bookstore one summer when I was feeling particularly crunchy. Then, there's my Moosewood Cookbooks: samosas, butternut squash soup, zippy cheese sauce, Moosewood Brownies (oh...my old gluten guzzling days). The famous BUDDHA'S JEWELS can be found between these pages. That's another story.

Mike bought The Joy of Cooking when we first met because he wanted to cook for me.

I'm still waiting.

Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Halloween

Halloween is one of my favourite times of the year. Last night was perfect. Friends came over for pizza before we headed out trick-or-treating. The wind settled a little and the rain stopped about twenty minutes before our monkey, dinosaur, Darth Vader, and kangaroo burst out the door. Dry leaves crunched beneath our feet and clouds tumbled across the moon as we ran from house to house.

Special occasions usually mean lots of treats--treats containing sugar and gluten. We avoid both things in our house because we find Kieran does better without them. Sooo...we have to be creative. And creative we were yesterday. My boy and I were up early mixing and measuring, making all kinds of yummy things to celebrate Halloween.

I'm not going to lie. Switching to a gluten-free, sugar-free diet sucked at first. I love to bake but found flour combinations and xanthan gum unsatisfying. While I still miss truly stretchy dough, I'm starting to gain more confidence in baking without my traditional ingredients. I also find chick pea flour to be more satisfying than wheat flour. If I have a muffin made with chick pea flour for breakfast, I'm sustained longer.

A good friend of mine recently switched over to a gluten-free diet. She bought me a new cookbook called Baby Cakes: Vegan, (Mostly) Gluten-Free, and (Mostly) Sugar-Free Recipes from New York's Most Talked-About Bakery by Erin McKenna. Love it! Yesterday, I roasted a small pie pumpkin and had just enough puree to make pumpkin-spice muffins and pumpkin gingerbread. There's even a recipe for icing--I haven't tried it yet but it's on my list. I'm so happy to be baking for my son, finally. These recipes work. And trust me, because gluten-free ingredients are so expensive, when a recipe doesn't work, I growl.

Here's a collection of ingredients I used to make my muffins and gingerbread. As you can see, they aren't really in-line with a 100-Mile Diet approach. However, we can now get buckwheat flour close by and honey can be used in many recipes in place of sugar with a bit of tweaking. Here's some new ingredients I've been using that certainly aren't local but I couldn't live without:

Agave Nectar: natural sweetener produced in Mexico and used in tequila. It's sweeter and more fluid than honey. It takes longer to absorb into the bloodstream so it doesn't spike your blood sugar the same way as refined sugar.

Coconut Oil: what a great find! It must be cold-pressed to maintain its high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. I keep reading about the boundless health benefits of this oil--it's even been compared to breast milk. After I work with it, my hands (which spend most of the cold months chapped and bleeding) are actually soft and healthy. Imagine what it does to our insides.

Now, you're probably wondering what we give out for treats. This year, I found tiny play dough tubs for the little kids. We also gave out chips and chocolate bars. If we're going to eat sugar, it better be accompanied by chocolate. Mike actually gave out a bag of organic raisins. I'm waiting for our house to get egged.