GF Coping Strategies

Going gluten free hasn't been easy around here.  I've had to make lots of adjustments, but, by the grace of God, I am finding ways to make it work.  I thought I'd share a few of these helps in case there are others making this change.  So here are a few tips from a newby GF family:

1 - GF mixes.  Yes, they are more expensive than buying individual GF flours and mixing them, but in the beginning, it's nice to have them ready to go.  I wont buy alot of prepackaged GF foods, but these mixes make it easier to make my own.  Two that I like especially are Pamela's Baking Mix and Kinnikinnik Bread Mix.  We made hamburger buns with the latter and they turned out great.

2 - GF pasta.  My kids don't like it!  I buy Tinkyada Brand because that's the best we've tried (and I like the name :) but my kids still say "Oh, it's gluten free pasta" in a not-too enthused tone.  But!  I discovered that if I put the pasta, dry, in the crockpot with sauce and some water and let it cook 4-6 hours, nobody complains.  Doing it that way, the pasta absorbs the flavors of the sauce and you don't get that GF flavor that my kids are not used to   yet.

3 - Variety.  When we went GF we discovered just how often the kids had toast for breakfast.  I knew it was alot,  we were going through tons of bread.  We haven't found a GF bread we like that well, so we came up with a rotating breakfast menu.  There is no toast on it but the kids are doing great with it.  Here are a few of the items we've been eating more of - with pictures even!

~ Eggs. Boiled, scrambled or fried.  We are eating alot more eggs around here.  Builder really doesn't like eggs.  I understand, because as a child I didn't either.  But I found a simple way to make it bearable for him.  We call them "starry eggs".  They are just scrambled eggs, cooked inside a cookie cutter in the pan, with melted cheese on top. He still doesn't LOVE them, but he complains less. Here's a picture:

~ Waffles!  We actually won a waffle maker at a recent school fundraiser we attended and it gets used alot.  Pamela's mix comes to the rescue here. Social Butterfly has become the official waffle maker and she does a great job!  I buy real maple syrup, and the kids gobble them up!

~ The other thing we've been eating more of is granola.  I've always enjoyed making granola, and making it GF is really no big deal.  My breakfast kitchen helper, Builder, enjoys making it too.  Lots of "cups of this and cups of that" to add to the big bowl and mix!  Here, builder is spreading a batch out on clean towels to cool:

4.  Chicken Strips.  This was a tough one.  My kids love chicken strips, especially Jetter.  He judges a restaurant by how good the chicken strips are.  He's a real connoisseur of chicken strips, let me tell you!

My husband's cousin, who has a son on the GF diet, taught me to make them at home though, and it's so easy!  We actually purchased a fryer for this purpose.  I've always avoided fryers because I thought that was such an unhealthy way of preparing food.  But if my kids are going to order fried chicken strips in restaurants, or if I'm going to buy frozen strips so they can eat them at home, what's the difference?  Actually, they probably eat them less now because I have to fry them.  To make them, simply cut up raw chicken breast, dip it in GF flour, then egg, then cornmeal mixed with salt and pepper.  Into the fryer they go until they are done.  Yum!

5.  Special Treats.  I really want my kids to know that just because we are eating GF, it doesn't mean that food has to be boring.  There are all kinds of prepackaged GF treats out there, and occassionally I buy them.  I'm much happier when we are eating something homemade though.  The baking mixes mentioned above are really helpful for this.  The Pamela's Baking Mix makes some pretty good chocolate chip cookies! We've also found that some of our old favorites are actually gluten free, like "No Bake Cookies"!  (Just check the oats to make sure they are gluten free.) 

Recently, a neighbor gave us some rhubarb.  I've never cooked anything with rhubarb, but with the help of Pamela's mix and my new cookbook, my morning kitchen helper and I made this rhubarb crisp for breakfast.  It was a great way to try something new.  (Note: Simply in Season is not a GF cookbook.  I just adjust the recipes.)

As I find more ways to cope with this new diet, I will add them to the blog.   If you have some GF tips put them in the comment box and I'll post them!

Gluten Free Badge

You may have noticed the new "Gluten Free Badge" over on the side bar.  I think we've been messing around here with this gluten free thing for a couple of years.  When we discovered that Beany had a problem with gluten we went 100% gluten free ... for a while.  The results were very positive.  Beany started growing again, and his "asthma" disappeared.  But the positive results did not just affect Beany.  Builder and Jetter also had some interesting changes.  Jetter, for one thing, slowed down.  He was actually able to concentrate.  His handwriting became legible, and he no longer dealt with asthma.  Builder became less emotional.  His temper tantrums just about ceased and he stopped telling me his stomach hurt.  He was the happy starry-eyed kid I remembered from a few years ago.  I wondered if all this could actually be the result of eliminating gluten from our diet.  But really?  I mean, Builder and Jetter's problems weren't really physical ... I didn't think.  The gluten free diet is very difficult and over time I decided that Jetter and Builder had just matured beyond their problems.  I decided that I would keep Beany on the gluten free diet but we could lighten up with everyone else.  They were thrilled to have their "real" pizza and pasta back.  Night Owl has become an amazing cook and he treated us each weekend with his delicious pizza. 
Of course, this lasted for only a while.  Pretty soon Beany began to realize that his pizza looked different than ours.  He started to notice that while he got plain tortilla chips the other kids were getting that orange powdery looking stuff on theirs and theirs tasted really good!  He also decided he really wanted Social Butterfly's peanut butter sandwich instead of his own. 
 
 I don't remember when, probably sometime in January, Beany ate a regular piece of bread.  He devoured it.  He must have thought it tasted really good!  I dreaded the next day thinking I would see all kinds of terrible results, but nothing happened.  Okay, so that was no big deal.  We just wont let it happen again.
    
Some weeks later, there was another incident where he had gluten.  Probably Jetter's birthday when it was too hard to tell Beany he couldn't have any of that wonderfully blue birthday cake.  Then there was Social Butterfly's birthday in March and of course there was vacation when we ate all kinds of food we normally try to avoid.  Finally, April hit and I looked around at the kids and realized some changes had been taking place, slowly, so I didn't notice until they were full-blown.  I noticed Jetter was once again getting into trouble all. the. time for not behaving during school time.  Builder was whining, whining, whining, and "starving" all the time.  And Beany was no longer gaining wait, but had actually lost a few pounds.  And then there was that nebulizer that had spent and entire year packed away in the cupboard.  It was now sitting out on the counter in regular use.  Finally, a couple of weekends ago, I spent  the day in the emergency room with Beany.  Enough is enough.  Dad and I had a long talk about it and while eating gluten free isn't easy, and can be a bit expensive, we realized that this is something we have to do for Beany, and in some ways for Builder and Jetter too.  So I pulled out my GF cookbooks, went to the library to borrow a couple more, changed all the menus back to what they used to me, and we're restarting this journey.  I've realized that the GF diet can't be something special we do for Beany, it actually involves some lifestyle changes.  We have to say "good-bye" to that fast food restaurant we like to stop at after piano lessons, no more ordering pizza, Night Owl is experimenting to find a crust recipe that doesn't really taste gluten free, and we're learning that many restaurants have gluten free menus, you just have to ask.  So it's a big change, and it's not easy because the kids really don't like the different taste of gluten free foods.  I just keep telling them they'll get used to it and we keep on. After a week I'm seeing those positive results again and I'm encouraged.

I'm hoping to post some links to various gluten free sites to offer encouragement to those who are on this same diet.  If you know of any, please leave the information in the comment box.

Can I Count This as School?

My kids are all running here and there this morning.  Social Butterfly was working very hard on "a secret" yesterday.  This morning she got up early and showed me all the little clues she had written so her brother's could have a treasure hunt.  There were about 50 clues!  She hid them before the boys were awake, and now they are searching for the mysterious treasure.  Any time I try to rope them in so we can start our day I hear "Oh please!  Just a few more minutes?  We need to find these clues!"  They are so excited!  I hate to tell them, but at the end of this grand hunt there is a ziplock bag of  leftover cookies for their treasure... the cookies nobody wanted yesterday.  Ah well, I guess they are reading and Beany is having the time of his life with all this excitement!

There isn't any snow or fog for a 1 hour school delay, so I guess we'll call this a "Treasure Delay". 

Cheese!!

Guess what we made yesterday?!  Mozzerella Cheese!  It was fun!  A friend came over and taught Social Butterfly and I how to do it.  I was surprised at how easy it was, and it only took about an hour.  My friend gets all her supplies from cheesemaking.com .  I should have taken a picture, but I forgot, and now the cheese is about gone.  We ate some of it just plain, and the rest went on top of baked ziti which we had for dinner.  Yum!  This is definitely something we could get used to!

Am Appetitlichsten! Delicieux! Delisiozo!

A Meal From Switzerland!

Dad and I felt like we ate dinner at a restaurant in Switzerland last night! Night Owl and Social Butterfly worked together to make a most delicious dinner. We started with a cheese fondue, made with 3 different Swiss cheeses and white wine. Night Owl actually made a Swedish bread that we used for dipping. I was very impressed with the bread! It came out beautifully. The cheese fondue which chef Social Butterfly worked on was no easy feat either. Keeping it warm enough to melt all the cheese but not so warm that it scorched was difficult.

The main course consisted of chicken roulades made by Night Owl, an incredibly delicious potato dish made by Social Butterfly, and fried apples also made by Night Owl, with Social Butterfly helping. Wow! Dad's going to take the leftovers to work tomorrow to make his co-workers jealous. It was one of the best meals I 've ever eaten.

As if that wasn't enough we had an incredibly rich chocolate fondue with strawberries, pound cake and marshmallows for dipping. I'm sure I gained 10 pounds.

Night Owl was not too thrilled about getting his picture taken!

During all this cooking we were wondering about the language spoken in Switzerland. Dad already knew but he let us figure it out. This neat site shows that there are actually 3 main languages spoken there, French, German and Italian.

http://www.swissworld.org/en/switzerland/resources/animations/languages_and_dialects/

This morning I did another search to find out how to say "delicious" in each of the languages:

am appetitlichsten is "delicious" in German,

delicieux - is the French term for "delicious",

and delisiozo is "delicious" in Italian

The Cook Off - Phase 2

Phase 2 of the Great Summer Cook Off is underway and we're having lots of fun. Last weekend, Dad even joined in and cooked dinner!

Here's Dad as he makes delicious food from Germany! The kids weren't too sure about the purple cabbage, but the potato pancakes were a big hit!

Social Butterfly cooked some delicious hamburgers and cheese puffs from New Zealand. Her meal ended with this beautiful Pavlova. We found out it is a traditional New Zealand dish named after a ballerina. How "girly" can you get? A perfect dish for our Social Butterfly.

Night Owl wowed us with his food from Panama. He made Red Snapper, Beef Empamadas and Fried Plantains. The Plaintains were the only thing left to take a picture of. Needless to say we aren't plaintain eaters here, but Beany gave them a try!

This weekend promises more fun with food from Greece, cooked by Social Butterfly and food from Japan, cooked by Night Owl!

The Great Summer Cook Off

Well, we're already starting Phase 2 of the Great Summer Cook Off so I thought I would tell you about how Phase 1 went.

First I will tell you that this was all Night Owl's idea. I was shocked!

After watching something on the Food Network he decided that it would be fun if he and his sister had a "cook off". They chose 5 different categories and each of them had to cook an item from each category, one per night. (I'm thinking, "That's 10 days of either Night Owl or Social Butterfly cooking in my kitchen. This could be a very long 10 days!")

Here they are deciding who will pick first:

The categories were:

pizza (of course)

burgers

chicken

salad

pie

THEN, they put a whole bunch of random ingredients into a bowl. For each category they had to draw an ingredient and use that in their recipe. For pizza, Night Owl picked chocolate and Social Butterfly picked shrimp. So one night we had a shrimp alfredo pizza that was DELICIOUS, and of course Night Owl's idea for a chocolate dessert pizza with a sugar cookie crust was a big hit too!

Picking the Ingredients:

One of Night Owl's biggest challenges was for his "burger" category. He picked apples as his ingredient. Nobody was looking forward to this meal. But, he surprised us all. Since "Burgers" doesn't necessarily mean beef, he used ground turkey. He diced and cooked some apples that he mixed up into the ground turkey and then made them into patties. He served them with bacon on top and melted "Applewood Cheddar" (his favorite cheese). They were great and we were all amazed! Here he is with his famous burger: (Yes, he's had a hair cut since this was taken!)

Social Butterfly's challenge was to make Pie with corn as her ingredient. She found a recipe for Shepherd's Pie that had corn and won her daddy's heart. (This is one of his favorites that I rarely cook!)

The kids had so much fun with this they decided to do a "Phase 2". This time they wrote various country names on slips of paper and put them into a bowl. The rule here is that you have to cook a whole meal from that country. The really fun thing is that Dad just had to get involved with this one! So, Social Butterfly will be cooking food from New Zealand tonight. Tomorrow night, Night Owl will be cooking food from Panama, and on Sunday, dinner will be cooked by Dad and the food from Columbia. This could be REALLY interesting!