Ten Minutes

Now that it's winter, I'm cooking again. I made a weird chicken stew the other day that was so unremarkable, I didn't eat it. It's hard to have interesting food on a budget. Everyone else liked it, but I think I am just sick to DEATH of chicken. I could live on sea creatures the rest of my life. Unfortunately, the mercury would probably shorten that somehow. Isn't there ANYTHING we can eat without worrying about it poisoning us?

J is doing well on his gluten-free diet, and has healed enough to actually have an appetite again. I got so used to not really having to feed him much that its taken a while to get back in the habit, but we're doing much better.

C is walking, and helping out, and a teency bit better in the car. She still outshines her brother in the sleep area, but being my child, is by no means one of those babies you read about. I keep meaning to nightwean, but she'll get sick, or a holiday pops up, or the dreaded 18-month developmental spurt/sleep regression that it keep getting pushed further away.

I nightweaned J when he was about 21 months. He had finally gotten all his teeth, and spontaneously slept 5 hour stretches on his own for several nights, so I figured he was ready. It only took three days, but he still woke up twice a night or so for another year. Blegh. I'm guessing I'll wait that long for C, also, since that's when the 18 month thing usually is over.

I promise the next post will be more coherent. And maybe even about food!
Thanks for reading,
Anne

Work Week

H was away this week, and I had all these grand plans of straightening up the house and whatnot. Guess how much of that actually happened? I did manage to recycle some unused books and clear off a table, but now the dining room table is a ll cluttered again.

If I haven't mentioned it before, we live in a tiny, 650 square foot house. It's great for having small children, because you are all in the same room all the time, and it's quick to clean up when you need. The biggest problem I have is having a place to put things while I clean other things. I'm constantly shifting stuff around. I told someone once it was like living in a rubik's cube.

Still no big cooking news, except I made a peanut-butter cake with chocolate peanut butter frosting. This was on Cooks.com The recipe is at the end. I decided to add chocolate chips to it, which worked out, and learned that next tie I should grease the pans, and make at least twice as much frosting. It was a practice cake for J's 5th birthday coming up, and boy am I glad it was only practice. Because I didn't grease the pan, it was basically a big pile of crumbs held together by frosting. But everyone ate it anyway.

By the way, a three layer cake is HUGE.

Thanks for reading!


CHOCOLATE - PEANUT BUTTER CAKE

3 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
2 1/4 c. sugar
1 tbsp. plus 1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. butter, softened
1/2 c. creamy peanut butter
1 1/2 c. milk
3 eggs
1 1/3 c. unsalted roasted peanuts, finely chopped (optional)
Chocolate-peanut butter frosting
1 (6 oz.) pkg. semi-sweet chocolate morsels (optional)
2 to 4 tbsp. unsalted roasted peanuts, chopped (optional)

Combine first 4 ingredients in a large mixing bowl; mix well. Add butter, peanut butter, and milk; beat 2 minutes on medium speed of electric mixer. Add eggs; beat 2 minutes on medium speed. Fold in 1 1/3 cups chopped peanuts. Pour batter into 3 greased and floured 9- inch cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean (do not over bake). Cool in pans 10 minutes; remove layers from pans, and cool completely.

Spread Chocolate-Peanut Butter Frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake; chill 1 hour or until firm. Melt chocolate morsels in top of a double boiler over hot water. Drizzle around top edge and down sides of cake. Sprinkle 2 to 4 tablespoons chopped peanuts on top. Chill until ready to serve. Yield: one 3-layer cake.

CHOCOLATE - PEANUT BUTTER FROSTING:

1 (6 oz.) pkg. semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1/2 c. butter, softened
1/2 c. powdered sugar, sifted
1 1/3 c. creamy peanut butter

Melt chocolate morsels in top of a double boiler over hot water; set aside. Combine remaining ingredients in a small mixing bowl; beat on medium speed of electric mixer until smooth. Add melted chocolate to peanut butter mixture; beat until smooth. Chill 15 minutes or until spreading consistency. Yield: enough frosting for one 3-layer cake.

Hot Stuff!

I had a birthday yesterday, and spent most of my child-free hours at bookstores. I picked up a cookbook on quick and easy Indian Food and a food memoir. I'm not really doing much cooking right now because it's summertime and I'd rather be at the playground in the afternoon with the kids than spending 90 minutes cooking. They would, too. I am looking forward to cooking new stuff more once the weather cools down.

Also, it's difficult right now because C is a very short napper, like either 2 30-minute naps or one 60 minute nap, and I don;t have a heck of a lot of time to do anything without her. She's finally at an age where I can give her food prep to do, like mixing and dumping and playing in the sink, I just haven't gotten back in the habit.

But other than that, things are good. J learned to swim this summer, although I'm still a little freaked out by it. Hes sort of abrupt in the water, and today he had to cry "help!" twice before i got to him because I'm so used to him yelling in the water that I sort of blocked it out. I still want to cry just thinking about it.

OK, bed. Thanks for reading.

My oh, my!

It HAS been a while, hasn't it?

Things are going well. J's most recent test for celiac (6 months ago) showed the gluten-free diet healed all the changes, so even though we have a normal diet this year, after February he'll be gluten-free forever.

I'm ok with it now, although it is a bit of a bummer for him that he can't go to birthday parties or pizza places and just eat whatever he wants.

C is 12 months now, and still an amazing child. She can't walk yet, but can stand without holding onto to something. She gets very angry when she isn't eating EXATLY what we are.

And she's waking up.
Nice to see you again!

Tanks for reading,
Anne

Cheese for everything

So, a while back I posted a cheese sauce recipe, but in my search for the perfect easy mac and cheese , I've discovered the obvious.

Take shredded cheese and mix it in hot noodles. Ta-da! Mac and cheese. I can't believe I've never thought of this before.

That's really it right now. I'm going to make some pasta. With gluten. Just for me.
Thanks for reading,
Anne

Little Updates

As our Year of Gluten Free Living draws to a close, I am getting increasingly paranoid that we haven't been gluten-free ENOUGH, and that some kind of microscopic crumbs that touch his food here and there will seriously skew the results. J will be having another upper endoscopy come February, and I just really want things to be definitive. I don't want my precious little boy to have to suffer through an ounce more of medical intervention than he absolutely means, especially because of some sort of failure on my part.

For example, we don't use a separate toaster for his bread. Over the year, he's probably had 6 bagels toasted in the coffee shop's toaster, too.

I'm also not hyper-vigilant about cross contamination as far as processing facilities. All the anecdotal research I've done on this said that you just have to find out what your tolerance is as far as gluten. The problem with that is, he's basically non-symptomatic. As I may have mentioned before, he's never had any GI symptoms related to gluten, and no behavioral symptoms either. The only way the possible celiac was discovered was through blood tests and biopsies sprouting from the bloody stool. And remember, it was a polyp which was causing the bloody stool, not celiac.

So let's all hope I don't screw it up for the boy.

Thanks for reading,
Anne

Feels like Fall

We've been having beautiful weather the past few days here in Baltimore, and so we spent most of the day outside today.

j has been playing that he's Batman ever since he got his cape in the mail. He finds the cape too cumbersome to wear all day, but I've been calling him Batman allweek, and he refers to me as "Mighty Mouse", as I am providing the voice for the superhero version of his imaginary friend, Mousey.

Mousey is a palentologist, rocket scientist, and every other wonderful thing J wants him to be. He's the perfect imaginary friend, as I'm not required to set a place at the table for him, and J doesn't blame things on him. Sometimes James plays with Mousey, sometimes he IS Mousey. He's very versatile.

C is mastering coordinating her hands. She fights with toys when she's sitting up, trying to get the best parts in her mouth. She's very focused and determined, as all babies this age agre. She also shows no signs of rolling over early, which I'm happy about. Once she starts getting mobile, things are going to get tricky.

So that's it for today. Thanks for reading.
-Anne