Food, Quilting, and More

I have GOT to get us out of our little food rut. I have not been doing good enough providing a wider variety of GFCF meals for my family. We eat the same things over and over again. Fresh blueberries are ready, so I made blueberry muffins, TWICE. First batch very dry and lumpy. We ate them anyway. But I thought I could do better, so on the second time, more liquid. They puffed up nicely, but fell when I took them out, even though they were cooked throughout. We ate them too, and they were better, but I felt really let down. A friend of mine and I were chatting about this briefly at the park. Part of the reason I don't try much GFCF baking (as I have more success with cooking than baking) is because it's so deflating to my ego when it doesn't go well. I am a perfectionist by nature, and it doesn't sit well with me to fail time and time again with anything. But the only way I can experience baking success is to try, so I am *trying* to try more things. That is my wimpy pledge. I will hereby experiment more often with my baking. I guess I should pledge a certain frequency, but alas, I can't bring myself to go that far, yet! (Wink, wink....) Can you see in this picture how much the muffins shrank once they had cooled? It's because they rose so high and then shrank about 40%. I might try again with less baking powder.

Along the experimenting theme, I got stuff to make Chinese food at home tonight. I made it alright, and boy! I really tip my hat to any so-so Chinese chef, let alone a great one. It's hard to co-ordinate the different dishes and keep everything going all at once. It felt like a three-ring circus, even without the kids' help tonight! I think that a large part of the problem was that I wasn't using any recipes. I cook a lot just by "winging it" and can do it pretty well (I know, just not the baking!) I guess that's not going to work very well for me with Chinese food. But it was so cute. C and H were eating their supper tonight, and they both relayed to me that the egg foo yong was very good, but the other "dish" wasn't my best. But...."I'm sure you'll do better next time. This was a learning experience for you tonight that you can learn from." If there's one thing the GFCF business has done for my kids other than the out-and-out healing of symptoms, they are getting very flexible with what they'll eat. They've been so patient with it all.

I've been meaning to do it, and finally did. I started our juice keifer up again today. It wasn't hard; why did I put it off? We haven't been making it since I broke my keifer jar about a year ago. This jar is still pretty small, and I have to get a bigger one. I know we felt better when we were drinking it on a regular basis.

C seems to have a much better appetite lately, and I believe it's due to the 5HTP he's started. Whatever the reason, it's wonderful. He's actually starting to gain some weight on his skinny little bod. He surprised us all today when not too long after dinner, he vomited up what seemed to be his entire supper. No sooner was he done bringing it up, he asked for something to eat because he was really hungry. He had no symptoms whatsoever, and neither do the rest of us. Just so you don't go blaming his trouble on my Chinese cooking, I recalled that he had a massively large glass of water with his meal. I think it was all just too much volume for him.

I found a full-grown green tree frog sitting on the window sill of our master bathroom this evening. I have no idea how he got in there, but it must not have been too long ago because he was quite moist. (Come on. We've all found dried frogs or lizards in our Florida homes, haven't we?) Our windows have not been open and the bathroom's not near any doors that open to the outside. I quickly rescued him and put him outside where he can find more bugs and water.

We had to feed the snakes today. The mice the pet shop sold us must have been bigger than usual. Both the snakes took much longer to swallow them than usual. This fascinated the kids. Sorry to be so graphic, but that was part of our day.

I was excited to find a praying mantis on the ceiling of our garage today. I told the kids about it, but they had already seen it too. Tif--what can we house him in if we capture him for another pet? He's bigger than a baby, but no where near as big as an adult.

And my last prominent recollection from today: I finally received the walking foot in the mail today that I ordered before we left for our trip. My sewing machine is about 18 yrs. old, and it was very inexpensive (or should I say cheap??) The quilting phase of my quilts were not going very well and I was told that a walking foot would feed the top layer through the machine like the feed dogs feed the bottom layer through. So I tried it out tonight. It was like learning to sew all over again!! I think I need an adjustment or two on the machine. The presser foot does not want to lift off the floor of the machine now. Maybe because the walking foot is heavier than the other presser foot? Anybody know of a local sewing machine repair shop? I'm sure it's just a minor adjustment that is required.

Rained Out

Well, if you live here locally, you can imagine that Ch's race was indeed rained out. He was pretty upset. He had been so ready: car's gears changed to match the requirements of the track, the weights shifted around appropriately to suit the upcoming track conditions, a new friend ready to come to the track with him, the car washed and mud free. He's had H practicing all week on using his new-fangled stopwatch and marking the times, so he could record his dad's lap times and those of the lead car. The car was even loaded up in the trailer and ready for us to pull out of here today promptly at 2 o'clock.

We were wondering last night if there would be rain trouble. When a weather forecaster on the news predicts 60-80% chance of rain it can mean one of three things. Either they are right on with their predictions, or they have just timed it wrong. The third option is that they missed the mark completely, but that actually doesn't seem to happen much these days thanks to their massive modern computer weather analysis programs. Today, they miscalculated when the rain would hit us. We woke up to tornado watches which included our county. We expected rain to occur starting sometime fairly early in the morning. The race track, a little north of us, said they would call the "rain-out" by 1:00 p.m. if he was going to call it at all. They weren't getting any rain either.

They finally called a cancellation on the race at around 4:15 p.m. and they really needed to. Evidently there was a lot of street flooding there in the area they ended up with so much rain. But I feel like I wasted half of my day, waiting to find out what would happen. I had to keep checking the radar on the computer, and the track's website every so often. I needed to pick up a prescription (a 1/2 hr. drive north of me) and made it there in time before closing, but I've never made it there that late before, and didn't even know when they would close! As it is, I barely made it to the library just 5 min. before closing time. But I'm glad to have the books I requested, since if I don't get them within a few days of them calling that they're in, they will return them to the host library. Invariably, they always come in the very afternoon of the same day I had already visited the library in the morning.

Well, we finally got some rain here at our house. It started raining around 7 p.m. and hasn't really stopped until now. It is pretty late now, after midnight. It let up somewhat a few times, but rained continuously since then. I cannot wait to check the rain gauge to see how much rain we got. It should be quite a bit this time. As I sit here tonight, typing up this blog post, I can look out my front window across to our adjoining neighbor's property, and see a really large spot of water. It's dark outside, but it's actually reflecting the moon light. That's how I know we must have gotten substantial rain because that "lake" has been dry for many months now.

I do worry about our little bitty tomato plants though. They were out in the storm. I didn't think to bring them in for cover but probably should have. They are very small. We started them from seeds. They actually sprouted very well, but may be quite flat now if the rain was too hard on them.

And what am I doing up so late? Insomnia of course, induced by the fact that we are still under tornado watches. It has that kind of effect on me. Ch sleeps like a log and won't even wake up for a security alarm blaring away in his ear. So the burden is on me to hear stuff in the night, like the sound of tornadoes, or kids stumbling around in their sleep, looking for the bathroom. This has happened a few times already in our new house, and it wasn't pretty. Yes, lucky me. The boys both sleep very soundly, just like their dad.

Playing Catch-up

Caution--Potentially boring post to follow!

Oh, the life of a mom! It becomes especially interesting when the whole house gets ill with the flu. We've had a decent week now that we're all recuperating and nearly recovered. Lots of laundry and housework. There have been trips to the store for groceries, the bank, post office, and library. We don't live real close to any kind of shopping, so it's a couple hour trip when we go. I had put this off while we were sick. We even got quite a lot of school work done this week. Now I'll have to try and get caught up (again!) with blogging. The last few posts were only posted because luckily, I had several posts saved in drafts, just waiting for pictures to be attached.

And now it's nearly Friday already! We'd like to go to the park tomorrow, but we still have chores to do, and may not make it. We're going to the race track tomorrow with our own race car driver in the afternoon. Unless, of course, it rains all day and the race is cancelled. If that's the case, Ch will be quite upset. He's been working on setting up his car for the past 2 weeks after sunset. (It's time for farming if the sun is still up.) His last race, a special feature before the new season started, was cancelled due to rain as well! Tomorrow's race is the very first of the season.

I'm sitting here on the couch, typing away on my laptop, but I can't seem to wrap my head around writing. My favorite show is on though: Dirty Jobs. You've gotta love Mike Rowe. He's funny and truly educational at the same time. I love it! Maybe that's why I'm distracted. Oh, no!! The new segment of Dirty Jobs that just came on is of Mike being visited by the doctor in his hotel room because he's sick!! He's cracking jokes even while he's ill.

It's Cold Outside, so I Caved.

Well, last night was officially the coldest night we've had so far this season. I know that for a fact, because I finally turned on the heater this morning. When we built this house, we invested in better insulation, knowing it would pay for itself many times over in the years to come. Hubby and I have been curious as to how cold it would have to get, before we had to turn the heat on. The temperature outside this morning registered 41 degrees. I caved this morning when the temperature reading on the thermostat was teetering between 69 and 70. I turned it on to 70 degrees, and have been running the fire in the fireplace. So now the temp. registers 73 degrees. I am so glad that the insulation is doing it's job so well. I always rely on milder fall and spring weather to lower the electric bill and thereby help the budget situation. I hate the summer heat in Florida, but the rest of the year more than makes up for it!

Here is a picture of our blueberry nursery as it appeared this morning. There was so much steam coming off the plants, as their morning water was warmer than the ground.


So, I can't wait to tell hubby these details, as he monitors them with keen interest as well. We must be getting older, because funny stuff like this is so captivating to us now! Like levels of rainwater in the rain gauge, debates about county planning and the governor's promises to lower property taxes. There's also discussion about nationwide recession, the hoax of global warming and politics. 10 yrs. ago, all of this would have been considered topics of interest for the old and stodgy! Well, maybe 15 yrs. ago is more accurate. But here we are, old and stodgy ourselves! Where has the time gone?

Oh, why would I have to wait until later to tell hubby all these rapturous details? Because he left the house this morning at the insane hour of 1 a.m. Yes, it's the first day of the duck hunting season. I am SO glad he thought twice about taking the boys with him today. He'll wait until another day soon, when he can take them out around 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. I believe this will be H's 3rd year to go out with him. So, from now until sometime after Christmas, I will be bunking with B on the nights that C plans to go out in the early mornings. It's quite an interruption to my way of life, but one that I am resigned to. My husband has a thirst for life, a driving force to experience so many things! Sometimes I don't always understand it. But that's okay, because I know that's who he is. He is a passionate person about living.