The Tale of Two Loaves

As much as the Interwebs have been my saving grace both in researching Audrey's medical conditions and in finding recipes, I am convinced that some people randomly throw together some ingredients and then post them along with false photos. Then they sit back, hands behind their heads, staring at the computer screen. And they laugh a maniacal laugh - mwahahahahahah - as they imagine the money spent on their faux recipe, the time wasted, the huge stack of dishes. Of this I am convinced.

One of Audrey's favorite lunchtime meals is sandwiches. I have successfully made a pretty tasty gluten-free loaf; however, it contains sorghum flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and yeast...all ingredients she shouldn't have. So imagine my delight when I found an ebook with a recipe for sandwich bread. And according to the recipe, my resulting sandwich bread would look like this:

Looks like normal bread, right? And not just normal but delicious, right? The ingredients - eggs, butter, salt, coconut flour...well, it occurred to me that for those ingredients to make bread, it would probably take a miracle. Or perhaps some act of science I am yet unaware of since I haven't been baking this way for longer than three days. But I thought maybe the eggs would make it puff up. Or maybe there is some type of natural leavening property to coconut flour. 

I decided to give it a try. 

Now tell me, does this look like the photo above?

I'm no Rachel Ray, but COME ON! I'm not so incompetent in the kitchen that I would screw it up this badly. Honestly, when it came out of the oven, I thought, No biggie. This may not work for a sandwich, but we can enjoy this as a snack this afternoon. Um, no. It is the driest "bread" I've ever had in my life. It went in the trash. Yep, 6 eggs, expensive grass-fed butter, and equally expensive coconut flour...in. the. trash. 

I was still determined to feed my little girl sandwiches for lunch, so I did what I should  have done in the first place: I googled "whole new mom sandwich bread". Whole New Mom is my go-to gal for most things, including homemade skincare products and now Candida-friendly recipes.

Through my search, I found the following recipe: 

Grain-free Sandwich Bread

1 c. cashew butter (or almond butter)

4 large eggs, separated

1/2 - 2 T. honey

2 1/2 t. apple cider vinegar

1/4 c. almond milk

1/4 c. coconut flour

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

1. Preheat oven to 300. Place a small dish of water on the bottom rack. Prepare a greased 8.5x4.5 bread pan.

2. In a mixer, beat the nut butter and egg yolks.

3. Add honey, vinegar, and milk to butter and egg mixture and mix.

4. Combine coconut flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl.

5. With a hand mixer, beat egg whites until peaks form.

6. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix thoroughly.

7. Add egg whites to mixture and mix until combined but be careful not to overmix.

8. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes. Do not open oven until 40 minutes have passed. 9. Loaf is done when toothpick inserted in the middle is clean.

10. Allow to cool 20 minutes before removing from pan. Then allow to cool an hour before cutting.

(Original author: Danielle Walker from Against All Grain)

And...drumroll...this bread turned out much more like bread. Different but bread.

The main difference in this bread from "normal" sandwich bread is the texture. The texture is more like a quick bread (think banana bread). However, I think if we had had more time on our side and let it sit like she recommends, it would have been more like sandwich bread. Also, next time I will completely omit the honey because, for one, my baby doesn't need honey, and for another, the sweetness added to the texture to be reminiscent of a quick bread.

A couple of notes:
**Nut Butter - the recipe called for cashew butter. Peanuts are a no-no on a Candida diet. Something about peanuts molding easily. Or something. Anyway, I knew I had some cashews in the pantry that I could make into cashew butter myself. But they had clearly been neglected for awhile, and ew! I think I know what moldy nuts are now. Not like the green mold you see on bread, but they were a little bit furry. Yuck! I already had some almond butter in the fridge and had to make a bit more to equal a cup.

Making your own nut butter is so easy! You just put the nuts in your food processor and let it go until the nuts turn to butter. Almonds take awhile longer than peanuts...usually about 15 or 20 minutes. And you may need to turn your food processor off mid-process because the food processor tends to get really hot, and you don't want it to burn out!

**Coconut Flour - coconut flour and almond flour both are very expensive! So far, I have been spending a small fortune buying Bob's Red Mill brand at the grocery store; however, Honeyville Grains carries both items in bulk and for a much more reasonable price. PLUS they only charge $4.49 for shipping! I have ordered wheat from them many times. I think they are currently out of stock on the coconut flour, but hopefully they will get more soon.

Anyway, Audrey and I both enjoyed our sandwiches on our Second Attempt Bread...

...and we enjoyed the bread - topped with some unsweetened cinnamon butter - again for a snack in the afternoon!

In which making a pizza almost becomes a full time job

For the last few years, I have worked hard researching and experimenting and cooking as I have attempted to get our family to the point where we eat only real food (ie: food that does not come in a box). That's been great training for me. For example, over those years, I have successfully rid the house of high fructose corn syrup. Now I must take it a step further and rid the house of cane sugar. Additionally, there have been various times when I have "gone gluten-free" just to give it a try, so I am already familiar with various ways to cook without the forbidden grains and flours. Now I'm taking it a step further by cooking without many of the acceptable gluten-free starches like tapioca and potato starch and flours like rice and sorghum flour.

This is still a big, giant challenge for me, though.

Thank goodness for Pinterest and Google!

For lunch today, my sous chef and I made pizza...with a cauliflower crust. The original recipe comes from The Detoxinista. Although I don't know how to do one of those fancy-schmancy recipe cards you can print from my blog, the recipe is available at the end of this post sans all the interruptions of my scattered brain.

1. First, you need your ingredients: cauliflower, soft goat cheese, salt, an egg, and oregano. You will need the following equipment: a food processor, a large saucepan, a fine mesh strainer, a finely woven dish towel, a large bowl, parchment paper, and a baking sheet.

2. Go to the store to get goat cheese. (Note to self: read the recipe all the way through at least the day before preparation.) The recipe calls for soft goat cheese. I didn't want to use cream cheese. I didn't have any homemade cream cheese. And I knew that regular cheese would not hold the crust together, which I could only assume was the purpose of the soft goat cheese. I have never purchased goat cheese because I'm not particularly fond of it, so naturally it took way longer at the store to find it than I anticipated.

3. Break off florets of cauliflower and place in food processor. Pulse the food processor until the cauliflower resembles rice. Trust me. It really will resemble rice after a few pulses!

4. Meanwhile, if you were really organized, you would have been boiling about an inch of water in the bottom of the large saucepan I mentioned. Of course, if you are not that organized, it's not too long of a wait. Just don't watch the pot, right?

5. Anyway, after the water starts boiling, scrape all of your cauliflower "rice" into the boiling water and boil for 4-5 minutes.

6. Now strain your "rice" in the mesh strainer. Then put your strained "rice" in your finely woven dish towel.

7. Wring out the water.

8. Totally burn yourself. Don your dishwashing gloves and give the "rice" another wring. Get it as dry as possible.

9. Place dry "rice" in a large bowl.

10. Realize that in your attempt at prudence, you didn't process nearly enough cauliflower for this project.

11. Take the rest of the head of cauliflower and repeat steps #4, 5, 6, 7, and 9.

12. Beat your egg.

13. Place the beaten egg, the goat cheese, the oregano, and the salt in the cauliflower.

14. Mix together very well.

15. Place parchment paper on the baking sheet.

16. Spread the cauliflower mixture out on the baking sheet. If you happened to pop over to the Detoxinista's site, you'll see how nicely she patted hers out. Hers even has a nice lip at the edge of the crust. I was going for the artisan look, plus I have a cuter assistant.

17. Bake at 400. Oh, right...you should have preheated your oven to 400. Bake at 400 for 35-40 minutes.

18. Top your pizza with the desired toppings.

19. Pop back in the oven until the toppings are warmed through.

20. Enjoy!

I make my pizza sauce by first sauteeing a bunch of veggies in a saucepan. Once they are soft, I add diced tomatoes. I take the immersion blender to these because my three older kids won't eat something they suspect might have a vegetable in it, and lumpy vegetables is a dead giveaway. After I blend until smooth, I add tomato sauce. Then in goes oregano, basil, salt, pepper, and a bay leaf or two. Normally, I would then add a swirl of molasses to combat the acidity of the sauce. Since molasses has sugar, today I left it out which resulted in less than perfect but still pretty good pizza sauce. (Once I can procure some Yacon Syrup, I hear it is an acceptable substitute for molasses.)

For Audrey's and my cauliflower pizza, I added the pizza sauce and lots of veggies. Thankfully, she is my one kid who will eat anything, so vegetable lumps don't scare her away at all. I then sprinkled a bit of cheese on top. With a Candida diet, you are supposed to omit milk because lactose is a sugar; however, I am allowing her to have Kerrygold cheese and butter. Kerrygold is from grass-fed cows. As with most cow's milk cheeses (I think), it has no sugar. (Surprisingly, the goat cheese has 1g of sugar.)

My other three kids had their pizzas on whole wheat and flax pita bread (not homemade). One might ask if I don't care about my other three kids. I do. Obviously. I am not forcing them to comply with our new diet 100% for a number of reasons. First and most importantly, they are not currently the ones with the big health crisis. My number one goal right now is to get Audrey better. Secondly, we've already spent at least one of the children's college funds on food this week. It is especially expensive during this learning curve because I am messing up a lot of what I am making or I'm following recipes that weren't good in the first place. Once I've made it around that learning curve and perhaps down the road a bit, I can include the other kids in my experiments more often. And, last, my three older kids, while supportive of Audrey, are not shy about voicing their opinion about food. So, if I were to present them with a cauliflower pizza, this might elicit a less than favorable comment from them before the first bite is even taken. I want Audrey to try the food without bias from her older siblings.

Anyway, I have digressed on quite a tangent as I am wont to do. I suppose you'd like to know the verdict. Was this cauliflower pizza that took me forever and a day to make worth it? And the answer is definitely! Obviously, it will come together a lot quicker next time, so certainly we will make it again. Audrey really liked it, and so did I.

So here's the recipe in short. And, really, I will teach myself how to do a printable recipe card someday. Someday...when making a pizza doesn't take me all day long!

INGREDIENTS
4 c. raw cauliflower rice (I used a whole head of cauliflower)
1 egg, beaten
1/3 c. soft goat cheese
1 t. dried oregano
pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS
1. Place florets of cauliflower in food processor and pulse until cauliflower resembles rice.

2. Place riced cauliflower in about an inch of boiling water. Boil for 4-5 minutes.

3. Drain cauliflower in fine mesh strainer. Then place cauliflower in finely woven dish towel and wring all water out of cauliflower.

4. Place in large bowl and add beaten egg, goat cheese, oregano, and salt. Mix well.

5. Spread on parchment paper on baking tray.

6. Bake at 400 for 35-40 minutes.

7. Remove, add desired toppings, and place back in oven to cook until cheese is melted.

Fighting the Bad Guys

I've decided to pick up my blogging pen once again, only this time I am going to be joined by my eight-year-old. I told her I was going to add a cooking blog to our family blog. I asked her if she would like to be my sous chef, my food critic, and my fellow blogger. She replied, "Ummm...I don't really know what you're talking about, but sure!" I think she'll catch on.

I want her to be involved because we have started a rather challenging diet in an attempt to heal her little belly. The doctors call it Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome (CVS) - every four weeks or so she spends 4-5 days hanging over a bucket. In my search for answers, I had a lengthy discussion with a friend whose daughter experienced the same symptoms and whose doctor offered the same diagnosis. Like me, she wasn't satisfied when the doctor said, "There's not much you can do but get through each episode." So she sought answers and finally found them through another doctor who told her that her daughter had an overgrowth of yeast (sometimes called Candida) and needed to be on a gluten and sugar-free diet. My friend's daughter has been CVS-free for 8 years now.

I explained it to Audrey this way:

Your tummy has good guys and bad guys in it. The good guys help you fight disease and stay healthy. They are also supposed to stay numerous enough to keep the bad guys from taking over.

The bad guys like to eat sugar. So when you eat lots of sugar, the bad guys start to grow and multiply and TAKE OVER! (And you know that we - you and me - have a sweet tooth, right? So even though I homemake most treats, they're still sugary.)

(The dots are sugar. Duh. We're getting really scientific here.)

Once the bad guys take over, you start to feel bad. Different people feel bad in different ways. For you, your body gets mad about all the bad guys, and you throw up a lot.

So what we have to do is stop feeding the bad guys. In addition, we need to take what are called probiotics because those will help the good guys grow and multiply and then THEY can take over!

And so that is how we came to the conclusion that Audrey needs to be on a gluten and sugar-free diet. And really, I've adopted more of a primal/paleo approach because I think all of the starches and weird flours of the gluten-free diet are as bad or worse than a standard diet.

I hope and pray this is the answer. "Mainstream" doctors will not admit this is a problem. They will tell you not to believe all of the hocus pocus a naturopath will tell you. Well, a week of vomiting every few weeks is no way to live, and all the mainstream doctor is telling me is that we have to "get through each episode", so I have no choice but to listen to a naturopath (or, rather, a friend who did listen to an alternative medicine doctor). I did contact a lady on a CVS forum who sent me a list of specialists in the country. Though there are only a handful, there is one in Boston and one in New York, so it would be feasible to make an appointment with them. However, I was a bit discouraged because the lady told me that, with medication, her grandson went from having episodes every 4-6 weeks to only having them every 4-6 months. She called that a miracle. That's no miracle to me; that's still a week of vomiting two or three times a year.

I am joining my sweet little girl on this journey. It wouldn't be fair for her to go it alone, plus I suspect most of my health problems stem from too many bad guys in my gut. The rest of the family, by default, is adapting as well, though I also don't think it would be fair to enforce it 100% with them. For her part, my baby girl is an absolute champ. She has accepted her new way of eating without a single complaint. I hope blogging her journey will make it more enjoyable for her so she doesn't get discouraged.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday: It's all about me.

Playtime. Scrub-a-dub. Getting ready. Time to eat. Sweet dreams. I have four babies' scrapbooks full of photos that would illustrate these prompts very nicely. However, at this time in my life, I am the proud owner of 1 sometimes grouchy teenager, 2 usually not too unbearably smelly boys, and 1 Princess who just recently discovered Modesty. Photos of them sleeping and eating wouldn't really be all that cute anymore. Or welcomed (by them).

So this week I decided to focus on me. NOT that photos of me sleeping and eating are in the least bit cute. But you see, my husband and I share a birthday, and we celebrated it this week. They say life comes full circle from babyhood to old people(hood). Since I'm 40 now I guess I have crossed that line into old people(hood), right?

And since it was my birthday this week, this is going to be all about me.

1. Scrub-a-Dub-Dub
I've recently become quite concerned about all of the chemicals I put on my skin. After all, the skin is the body's largest organ, and it pretty much soaks in whatever you put on it. In light of this, I have started using goat milk soap bars. I love them! They are so silky smooth and don't leave your skin feeling all dried out like a normal soap bar does. I get my goat milk soap from a local farm. The soaps are brought in from another local named Goatboy Soaps.

That duck? He (or she?) comes from a "small" collection we have. Every time we go to the orthodontist both the patient and the tag-a-long little sister get to choose a new one.

Um...we've been to the orthodontist just a few times.

2. Getting Ready
Again as part of my Purifying My Cosmetics campaign, I decided to give homemade lotion a try. I used a recipe from Whole New Mom. My husband hates the smell of it, but I rather like it and the scent disappears pretty quickly so it's really a non-issue. I did add a drop or two of DoTerra Lavender Essential Oil but will perhaps add a bit more next time to cover the shea and cocoa butter smell so it is not so offensive to my better half.

3. Time to Eat
The night before our birthday, my husband and I escaped for dinner.

At dinner, my sweet husband presented me a gift card for a massage and mani/pedi. So...I see more ME time in the near future!

4. Playtime
So we got home from Outback, and as I walked in the door, I was surprised to find a darkened, quiet house. I was worried for a split second...until I saw all of the streamers suspended across the room and littering the floor. My husband had secretly contacted some good friends of ours to come over while we were at dinner and work with the kids to make the house look like Party City. I've never had a surprise party before, so how much fun is that?

Turning 40 is a little bit rough, but I had a WONDERFUL birthday!

5. Sweet Dreams
As I mentioned in the beginning, I'm quite sure you don't want to see any photos of me drooling on my pillow. No matter how sweet I look asleep. But I have to tell you...for the last few weeks, my life has looked pretty much like this:

So my SWEET dreams have been of Hawaii where Mark and I visited October 2011:

Obviously, I had to pull these photos out of the archives, but don't they look inviting? And so much better than life under two feet of snow?

Linking up with Ashley for Photo Scavenger Hunt.

President's Day Week

Last week I mentioned how bored I am with our home school. I decided to fun it up a bit this week by implementing the first of, hopefully, many theme weeks. Appropriately, this week's theme was President's Day. Possibly inappropriately as you'll see below, most of my themed activities centered around food. But...apparently, that is just how we roll around here.

We started Monday morning (yes, we schooled on President's Day!) with a President's Day Scavenger Hunt which covered George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and the requirements for becoming POTUS.

The kids used our friend Google to come up with the answers.

Monday night we enjoyed Chicken Fricassee for dinner accompanied by Farmhouse Buttermilk Biscuits. According to The Questing Feast, this is a dinner of which Abraham Lincoln was particularly fond.

And ready for more food?

There were Hoe Cakes for breakfast one morning.

Yes, it may look like just a pancake, but it is made with a mixture of cornmeal and whole wheat flour. The cornmeal adds a really great texture. Additionally, there is some sugar in the recipe as well, which obviously adds a delightful sweetness...accentuated by the honey. Supposedly, honey and melted butter is how George Washington enjoyed these cakes. Interestingly, they were dubbed Hoe Cakes because they were often made using the end of a hoe warmed over a fire as a pan.

And more food:

Cherry-filled cookies to remind us of the legendary cherry tree Washington cut down.

There was one other non-food activity, though I suppose one could easily relate it back to food. I like to educate the kids about health whenever possible. I put together a little PowerPoint presentation about Lycopene. I'm sure later you'll totally see how lycopene fits neatly into the theme.

Thanks to my much-more-tech-savvy-than-me husband, I was able to present my slideshow on the big screen TV. I love that he showed me how to hook my computer up to the TV because I always gain the children's attention with a large screen. This week we were also able to watch YouTube videos about Washington and Lincoln through this media.

And just to emphasize that this week was not ALL about food, we learned about the proper format of a business letter after which we wrote letters to the president. Some of my students' (*cough* the 7th grade girl's *cough*) were a bit more well thought out than others' (*cough* the boys' *cough*). In the letters, they told the president what they like about living in America and what they would do if they were president.

Of course we ended the school week with some homemade pizza.

Because pizza is covered in pizza sauce.
And pizza sauce is made of tomatoes.
And tomatoes contain lycopene.
And lycopene starts with an L just like Lincoln.

Duh.

Linking up with Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for her Weekly Wrap-Up.

In which Valentine's Day is a nice break from the monotony.

As I made my way up to the register to purchase these friendly barnyard Valentine friends, I came this close to making the trip back to the seasonal aisle in the back of Target to place them back on the shelf. The incessant mooing and oinking from the pair of cows and pair of pigs were drawing stares from my fellow shoppers, and I could only imagine my house with the noise of four children AND four farm animals. But I decided to keep them because I know how my children love annoyingly loud trinkets. And of course the pig and cow poop candy. Another plus.

The smiles the farm animals brought this morning were worth the annoyance, and I will endure the mooing and oinking until I can endure it no further at which point two cows and two pigs will surely mysteriously disappear to find their place in the also mysterious Annoying Toy Heaven.

As I mentioned in my last post, our homeschool year has been quite uneventful. Things are moving along just as they should be. Kids are doing their assigned work. I keep right on assigning. They keep getting it done. I really can't complain. But I'm a little bit bored. I'm sure they are too.

I haven't done much "cutesy" stuff this year. Partly because the older they get, the fewer cutesy options there are. Also, I'm lazy. I need to stop being lazy and start planning and executing more exciting activities. So...I am planning. I have some fun things in store for next week. As for this week, though, I am thankful for the fun little break in monotony Valentine's Day provides.

The kids woke up this morning to some Valentine surprises. Yes, candy. Lots of candy.

I also had good intentions of making heart-shaped pancakes, but the only large heart cookie cutter I have is covered in red paint. As my own Valentine pointed out, it was probably made in China, and the paint is probably full of lead. It didn't seem such a brilliant idea, then, to have it sit on a hot griddle.

So I made chocolate chip pancakes smothered in powdered sugar with a sprinkling of color. So long as it's sweet and unhealthy, the kids really don't care what shape it comes in.

 

During school we learned about the various legends that compose the history of Valentine's Day. We also had a little word fun by seeing who could make the most words in five minutes out of the phrase "Happy Valentine's Day".

After my heart failure at breakfast, I redeemed myself at lunch by creating heart-shaped potatoes to eat with our leftover chicken wings.

And then it was cookie time! Valentine's Day, like Christmas, must include a cookie decorating session.

I did not have the time today to be all fancy with multiple colors and decorating pastry bags, but like I said, if there is sugar and it is unhealthy, they don't care if it's fancy.

And this one? She did enjoy decorating cookies and eating them. It's just that she's a teenager and hates to have her photo taken. You see...this is why I have a completely unbalanced number of photos of the Princess.

I love her anyway. Happy Valentine's Day!

Linking up with Ashley for Photo Scavenger Hunt.

In this post, you will find candy, kisses, pink/red, love, and smiles.

Also linking up with Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for her Weekly Wrap-Up.

Blizzard

I'm a mean mom. While all the other schoolchildren within a 100 mile radius (at least!) are enjoying a day off school because of the approaching blizzard, I am forcing my children to continue on with their schoolwork as usual. But we'll make up for it when we're soaking up the sun at Disney in May while the rest of the schoolchildren are tackling final exams.

This has been an exceptionally smooth year of school in our home. This year I have not dealt with attitudes from any of the kids regarding getting schoolwork done. Nor has there been much frustration over learning any of the material. It's just been an easy, smooth year. I know it's not me. I'm pretty sure it's the kids. I've got good kids.

I suppose the goodness in them is what kept them from complaining too much when I announced school was still in session this morning. Not that there is much else to do when one is housebound. And I suppose the fact that we are trapped inside by snow is what inspired me to once again pick up my blogging pen and put it to virtual paper. Of course the picturesque view from the window which keeps distracting me from the computer screen is quite inspiring in itself.

Audrey captures the scene from the camera on her handheld device.

She laments that the grill ("What is that thing called? You know, the outdoor oven thing?") 

is part of two of her shots, but that one shot turned out "well".

I've said before that I feel a bit like Jonah who caused the great storm that rocked the ship. Not that we were running from anything when we moved to Connecticut, but since this blizzard is at least the third or fourth "historic/record-breaking" event since our move up here just two years ago, I feel like local residents may soon want us to leave the Constitution State!

Whether or not Mother Nature cares one way or another where our family resides, so long as the power stays on so that we remain warm, I'm not opposed to enduring a blizzard. And the kids sure will have fun when it's all over and they can roll around in it! As for me, I'm enjoying this cozy, lazy day and the beauty of watching the snow fall.

Linking with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Kris' Weekly Wrap-Up. "Weekly" is being a bit dishonest since I haven't been here in WEEKS, but I have to start somewhere, right?