The color yellow and some project updates

"I've been thinking about it for a long time and I've decided to start liking the color yellow"--the Big Girl

I love my first child's optimistic attitude. On the contrary, I tend toward worst case scenario thinking. For a few months after my (self) diagnosis, I tended to wallow and complain. Then I realized this was my life and I could embrace it with all the optimism I could or I could be pessimistic and make it that much harder on myself. I want to look at my gluten-free loaf as half-baked instead of half-raw. Or to mix metaphors, I want to just make up my mind to like the color yellow.

In other news, it's time to choose my projects. Apparently spring began yesterday (since when do the seasons not change on the 21st???) so I'm a day behind.

The reading and renovation projects have begun (I'll update next month) and in addition, I want to make this month's focus the meal planning and budgeting.

Off to squeeze as much as I can out of the remaining 20 minutes of quiet time (Big Girl) and naptime (Little Girl)!

More spring resolutions

So back to my list of resolutions:

5. Organize our medical history. This has been bugging me for awhile. Any time I need quick access to records, I have to dig through tons of irrelevant stuff to find what I'm looking for. I want to have a file for each member of the family, organized by date, with the unnecessary weeded out. I think what's held me back is the fear of throwing out something important. I need to take time to find out what I should have as a hard copy and what can easily be obtained online.

6. Make more of my own bath products. I have to confess that I get fired up about doing this whenever I read a book/blog about green living, then I get swayed by finding a bottle of 25 cent conditioner. I love doing good things for the planet but especially in the early newborn days, my sanity and function as a mother seemed more immediate. As proud as I am of how nice and organized this is, I would love to be able to gradually replace with homemade. I made my own laundry soap a few weeks ago and it even gets cloth diapers clean so I think that's working out better than I hoped.

7. Be better about grocery budgeting. So here's another confession: I don't budget. I do have a set amount that I withdraw every month and use for "frivolous" things (kind of like an allowance). But on things like groceries, I've just been operating under the assumption that frugality is so ingrained in me that I'll instinctively spend within appropriate guidelines. I'm probably right, but I want to verify for my own peace of mind. Plus, I think this might help me be able to make meaningful splurges. For example, I have wanted to buy some chocolate covered gluten free pretzels for the longest time. But every time I saw them I would think, "oh, I'll just get those next time since I'm not sure where I am in the budget." Having no budget, that day never came. It might turn out I'm saving enough every week to justify spending $5 on pretzels every now and then. 

Hmmm while I'm at it, I can probably ditch the glutenated boxes of pasta. I have been GF since May of 2011. I wonder how old they are? I'm pretty sure the macaroni moved cross-country with us.

8. Speaking of cooking, I want to organize my recipes and menu plan. My husband occasionally goes on a no-flour, no-sugar diet which involves further restrictions than my everyday diet (most GF stuff has some kind of flour, whether corn or rice, and he can't eat either on this diet). Ideally, I would have 25-30 "regular" meals (meaning GF meals) and an additional 30 or so NFNS that I can swap in when needed. Some of these could definitely overlap. 

I really wanted to have 12 resolutions and focus on one a month, but since some of them are quite large and ongoing (reading and major renovations) I think I'll leave it at those eight. T-minus 3 days!

P.S. After previewing this, I think maybe I will go ahead and add a ninth: learn how to take good pictures! I took a photography class in college and really think I would have failed if not for a generous professor taking pity on me. 

How gluten turned me into a foodie

I used to be known as the cookie queen. In fact, at my wedding shower, I ended up with three cookbooks totally devoted to cookies. Every potluck, I knew what I was bringing and everyone else knew as well. 

I didn't have quite the same passion for cooking. I think I liked to bake because of the joy it brought to people to bite into a fresh baked cookie or brownie. Let's face it, nobody's eyes lit up at cauliflower casserole. 

I was a good cook (definition: I only burned one thing a month) but I just saw it as yet another chore to check off my list. I looked forward to pizza night not so much for the pizza itself but as a huge weight lifted from my shoulders.

Enter gluten stage left. 

My first thought: I'm going to have to cook every meal. Now I know that to be untrue, but when I was first navigating the wilds of gluten-laced-everything I knew I didn't know enough to face a dinner out.

We ate a lot of gluten free pasta and tacos in corn tortillas in the early days and I tried to covert all my favorite recipes. That went over something like this:

1 can cream of chicken soup. (Okay, I can use cornstarch and chicken broth--oh, by the way, check labels on the chicken broth, especially if using bouillon--and make this well enough in advance)

1 package stuffing (bake a loaf of gluten free bread, let it cool, cube it, toast it, season it)

2 cups cooked turkey (no problem, I'll just have my slow cooker going alongside my oven baking bread and my stovetop cooking cream of chicken soup)

2 cups grated cheese 

Quite frankly, it was the grated cheese that broke the camel's back on that particular recipe (Thanksgiving Casserole, by the way, and if any of my gluten-eating friends want the recipe, it's actually quite delicious without all the substitutions). I was okay with chopping, dicing, and grating, but not in addition to spending two days making substitutions for everything.

So I learned to cook around gluten. I very rarely need to swap ingredients out, and when I do, I don't even notice. My mind just fills in "gluten-free pasta" or "gluten-free soy sauce."

The other night, I made pork fried rice completely off the top of my head with only a bare bones outline for inspiration. It was delicious, substitution free, and a lot tastier than anything I used to make. I felt I had finally arrived as a chef, and what's more, I enjoyed it!

My fried rice recipe:

3 pork chops

about 3 cups cold cooked rice

green onion

corn

soy sauce (gluten-free of course)

sesame oil

mushrooms

eggs

Dice pork chops very finely and cook until done. I used a little sesame oil. Add more sesame oil to pan and add in rice, green onion, corn (I thought these were peas until I opened the freezer but the corn tasted good too), and sliced mushrooms. Shake soy sauce over everything until it looks right. Stir fry everything and then add eggs and cook some more. 

Next time, I would use peas instead of corn and maybe leave out the eggs. The recipe that inspired me said to use them but honestly I couldn't tell a difference. Also, I was a little heavy handed with the soy sauce so I would use less. 

Also, next time I will remember to take a picture before devouring this. :-)

Some spring resolutions

Unlike most people, I like to start resolutions at random times throughout the year. With the upcoming arrival of spring (?--my thermometer says 36, but anyway) I made a list of goals to begin on March 21st and continue through the spring of 2014.

I read the book "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin last year and am in the middle of reading the sequel: "Happier at Home." I was struck by the goals she set for herself with the end goal of attaining happiness. I realize that a lot of things that will ultimately make me happy won't actually be all that fun during the process (organizing medical records) but will bring me a sense of peace which will equal happiness. 

So without further preamble, here are my goals for the upcoming spring to spring year: 

1. Be more up to date on current events. Last night at church, I realized how woefully behind the times I am on the topics that polarize our country. I can tell you the top five ways to calm a crying baby or the arguments for or against "Ferberizing" or "attachment parenting" but I honestly could not discuss foreign policy with as much knowledge. I always said I didn't want to be a mom that completely lost herself in her kids to the point where she had no outside interests. So, while politics doesn't really interest me all that much, I think I need to know enough to be able to carry on a conversation that doesn't revolve around the best place to buy/method to wash diapers. 

2. Shop my craft closet. I have a habit of buying all the materials for a project, starting, then either losing interest, finding a substitute at a garage sale for some ridiculous price like a quarter, or moving on to another more pressing project and forgetting to go back. I want to finish up all those projects in my closet like the twin size quilt that was supposed to be a Christmas present, then a birthday present. Maybe it will be a Christmas present this year. Other than fill-in-the-gap supplies, I want to challenge myself not to buy any new supplies until my birthday (which is approximately six months from now and an easy way to remember).

3. Read one fiction and one non-fiction book a month. I kind of have a head start on this as I have been doing it since January, so this should be easy for me to follow through.

4. Complete one major renovation project a month. Notice I did not say one ROOM a month. At a different time in our lives, this might be possible, but for now I would like to set a goal to just finish one big thing. Our goal is to be completely finished by the end of 2014. So, toward this end, I've already started this goal as well. Past "big projects" have included painting my kitchen, removing 12x15 feet of old tile from our guest bedroom, and fixing damaged drywall in the same room and painting the walls gray (see previous post about my $12.50 paint). 

There are more resolutions but I'll save those for another post. These are definitely the more interesting of my goals, while the others revolve more around budgeting and organizing.

The Appliances are Conspiring...

Sunday night our dryer stopped working. My washer and dryer seem to have an arrangement: only one of them is allowed to break at a time. However, the washer typically breaks when I'm down to three clean diapers and no back-up disposables. The dryer breaks when it's raining, snowing, or both. Yesterday being a somewhat nice day in late February (39 degrees and windy), I did the obvious and hung one load of clothes on the line. It took six hours, but hey, it was free and the job got done.

Today is also 39 degrees but pouring down rain with the threat of snow later in the day. While my youngest is decently attired thanks to yesterday, my oldest has no pants.

Never one to back away from a challenge, I scoffed at the concept of lugging my wet clothes to a laundromat and sitting there for an hour while they tumbled dry. Too complicated and too obvious. Instead, I went on Pinterest and found a tutorial on making a drying rack from an old baby gate.

Wait, thought I. We have an old 6 foot baby gate that has been gathering dust for the past three years! Problem was, it wouldn't stay extended vertically. Thankfully, with our house being in such disrepair, I'm always finding random aftermarket pieces of our house that don't seem to belong. There is one such giant hole in our ceiling with a railing around it. I hooked the lip of the baby gate into the rail and extended it to the floor.

I think I can fix our dryer with a $20 part and a screwdriver but in the meantime, it's good to have this completely free solution.

In case you were wondering, I dug into my oldest child's summer stuff and paired some things up with tights and jackets to get her through the next few days. And yes, I did wash more diapers just in case. Don't want to cut it too close again.

My top 5 gluten free products

While I'm a cheapskate who likes to make most things from scratch, there are certain products it's well worth the cost to keep in my pantry at all times. Here are the top 5 that I can't live without:

5. Trader Joe's granola. I think this is too sweet for breakfast cereal but it's great mixed into a little plain or vanilla yogurt.

4. Trader Joe's corn pasta. Okay, I admit I have a thing for Trader Joe's. At my store, spaghetti and penne are only pennies more per package than regular old wheat spaghetti. Plus, with a good sauce I can't tell the difference. The rice is okay but it gets slimy quickly if you get distracted, say by your 4 year old and 7 month old at dinner time. Not that that ever happens at my house.

3. Okay, one more Trader Joe's post then I'll call it quits. It's a tie between these:

 and these:

I know cookies aren't a necessity of life but these sure beat making your own or doing without and watching everyone else at a potluck gobbling delicious treats. What makes the snickerdoodles even better is they are free of the top 8 allergens. When we get together with a certain group of friends, we represent five different allergies between us. It's almost like planning a military campaign to make sure the wrong people don't end up with the wrong food. These are a no-brainer.

2. This one's a little strange. Most other products I like because I can't tell the difference between regular and gluten free. This just tastes unique. Sort of chewy, full of spices, it might not be everyone's cup of tea. It doesn't taste like pizza crust as most people know it. It's an original and doesn't try to be a sub-par copycat.

And finally...

1. Pamela's baking mix. I don't know if Pamela is a real person or a fictional character like Betty Crocker but she deserves the Nobel Prize. This obviously helps Sunday night pancake dinner make a comeback in our house but it also makes great biscuits and is a good flour mix to use for those recipes that call for something like two tablespoons of flour for thickening.

There you have the five products I'm willing to pay someone else to make for me.

All photos from amazon.com and ebay.com

Beyond the kitchen: renovating on a budget

My new year's resolution is to keep up with this blog. In keeping with that goal, I realized I have to expand my topics beyond gluten-free cooking. I'm going to post recipes/substitutions when I find a good one, but will also post topics on the general concept of frugality.

In addition to raising a 4 year old and a 5 month old (already!), I am also working with my husband on renovating a house we bought last summer. We moved in 16 months ago but I have been a little busy for...umm...the last 14 months to really do any contributions to this time-consuming project.

Our current office/guest room was apparently done in a Hawaiian motif, complete with orange and blue walls and rust colored outdoor carpet. Anyone who knows me can guess this isn't exactly my taste; also, part of the wall was damaged. We are going more with neutrals (gray walls, wood print vinyl floors), with the color coming in the form of yellow curtains to replace the broken closet doors. For the last two weeks, we have spent several evenings after the kids go to bed removing the old flooring and patching the holes and other wall damage.

Which brings me to the frugal aspect of my post: custom $12.50 paint. I have long been a fan of the mis-tint paint section at most hardware and home improvement stores. Often, though, quantity is limited, hence my oldest daughter has a two color room: half dark purple, half light purple. I really don't want to do the patchwork look on all my walls, though, so I have been scouring the clearance section for good neutrals. I found two slightly different shades of gray. They were the same sheen and were close enough that I thought they would mix well. I dumped both cans into a bucket, stirred really well with a paint stick, and poured them back into the cans. Ta da--two gallons of paint for $5 each, plus a $2.50 bucket=custom paint for less than a quarter of the cost. Besides the savings, it's just fun to mix paint!