Gaudo-Gaudo

Here is the new recipe I tried tonight. It's really just a peanut sauce served over rice and veges. We liked it very much. My friend used to make it for me when we were in college together in TN. She went as a student missionary to Taiwan for a year before I met her, and she learned all kinds of tasty foreign dishes. I think this one might come from Micronesia. (It's pronounced like "god-oo" I think. I hope you like it!

Please feel free to half this sauce recipe. It makes quite a bit.

1 large onion, chopped finely
4 cloves garlic, pressed
2 to 3 C water
1 can coconut milk
1/4 C hot sauce "Louisiana" brand or similar (I used half that for the kids)
1/2 C soy sauce
1/2 C brown sugar
3 - 4 Tbsp. lemon jc.
2 C peanut butter (use less brown sugar if using sweetened PB like Jif, Peter Pan, etc.)

Cook the onion and garlic in the water until soft. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until warmed.

Serve over cooked rice and steamed potato and carrot chunks (we like baby carrots).

Asian Noodle Salad

Well, so far, so good. I've made 4 new recipes in 4 days. I hope I can keep it up, just maybe not at such a tedious pace.

Here's the recipe (site link) to the salad I made tonight. I appreciate my blogging buddy posting it on her blog the other day. Thanks, SK. I will give you a couple cautions about this recipe though. It makes a huge salad. You are forewarned. Also, I used about 1/2 the hot pepper she calls for. Aren't serano hotter than jalapeno? I used 1/2 a jalapeno. I didn't find it too spicy, though it might have been if I'd used more. I thought it was delicious. The kids ate it, although it is not their favorite. I think it's good to stretch their comfort zone a little bit, even if they are good eaters for kids. I think variety is the spice of life. Hubby on the other hand, is always in a food rut, but he doesn't mind one bit.

First Venture into Thai Food

I tried my friend Tif's recipe for Pad Thai tonight. I had to adjust it a bit to fit our vegetarian needs. (I used some vege broth for the fish sauce, and omitted the shrimp. I was also lacking bean sprouts, so I used some of the fresh bok choy, thinly sliced, that I had left from last night's Chinese.) I did use the peanut butter, and it was pretty good! I would even say very good. At first the kids liked it, but then after they ate it a while, they changed their minds. I may try again in a couple weeks with this recipe that I found on a GFCF recipe group that I visit often. It is quite different than the recipe I followed today.

If any of you non-local readers want my friend's recipe, email me privately and I will get it for you. (You know who you are: all the lurkers I write to all the time! I mean, all my old friends and family that don't comment.)

And it looks like I'll have plenty of time to try a few more recipes in the next couple weeks. I had to take my sewing machine in for a check-up. I may not get it back for a couple weeks. :-( Just when I was getting going really good, too.

Lame Brain & NJ Quirks

I am a bona fide lame brain. I lost my cell phone somewhere in NJ. I have been calling around to every restaurant, shop, and motel we visited there on our last day or so. Nobody has seen it. It's no where to be found. I hate to spend money needlessly. Spending money on a new cell phone just because I lost my other one is pretty high up there on the wasteful list. It really upsets me.

On a much lighter note, here are some quirks about New Jersey that caught our attention. It's definitely a unique state. First, NJ does not appreciate left-hand turns when you're driving. They minimize them as much as possible. When driving down a road you may notice that there is a very long, defined median down the whole road. This median breaks only for another street that intersects perpendicularly. You are not allowed to turn left at those intersections, and you most certainly cannot perform U-turns. There are many signs along the road that direct you to "Make all turns from right lane". There are designated U-turn/L-turn areas before each major road. These places allow you to cross at a stop-light so you can get going in the opposite direction you were traveling prior to your U-turn. As you can imagine, these can be quite spread out along the main road, and you may find yourself traveling a very long way before you can turn around. Also, if you miss one, you got it: drive a long way further to find one again!

In keeping with their mentality that fewer turns are better than many, there are designated entrances/exits to businesses. These businesses will share the entrance with many other businesses. You'll find a large lot of signs all together, indicating that you are to turn at that entrance for where ever you are headed. This can be a problem, when once you get off at the right entrance, you can't even see the business! It's hard to know where to go at that point since the business may be pretty far away from their sign. Very frustrating.

NJ gasoline was very inexpensive compared to our FL gas. When we arrived, the average was about $3.11/gallon. That compares to our local price of $3.52 when we arrived back into town a couple days later.

And the last funny thing we noticed about NJ had us laughing up a storm. We drove on 2 major roads through Wayne, NJ. (Given their policy about U-turns and L-turns, we drove those 2 roads a LOT trying to make sense of everything!) Well, driving those 2 roads so much, we began to notice that every other business, it seemed, had incorporated the State Road # into their name. Here are some examples: Golf 23, Fuelco 23, 23 Nails, 23 Deli, Spa 23, Dodge 23, 46 Ford, etc. I could literally go on and on, as there were that many businesses taking the name of the road they were on. We just found it amusing. I hope you do too. We even went to Golf 23 and drove some golf balls one evening. I'll post pictures of that later. Right now, I have to go order a new cell phone.

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.

Mom and Kids Take D.C.

This first picture was really from our first day in D.C. It is the Korean War Memorial. This picture doesn't do it justice, but these people's pics. are etched into the granite. It was fascinating. (Ch said it would have been done by machine, not by hand, but I still found it amazingly artistic.)

Below are some samples of what we saw and did in Washington D.C. the day we went in to sight-see on our own without hubby/dad, since he was meeting customers:

Riding the Metro Line. (The hotel we stayed in ran a shuttle to the Metro Station.) It's an above-ground train until you reach the city, and then it becomes a subway. It was a little daunting for me to get us on for the first time, but once on, they had fun! Of course, coming back that evening, we had to stand up in the aisles because it was crowded with people getting off work and heading for home.

Here's the subway itself!


The kids remembered Amelia Earhart. This was one of her planes.

We spent a lot of time in the Air and Space Museum. This is only a smathering of what we saw. The boys really ate it up. The only "attraction" we paid money for, was the IMAX movie we saw titled "To Fly". The movie is on it's 25th year, but still totally amazing.

We recently read about the Bleriot XI, and here is a replica of it. It's so much fun to run into things we've learned about. It's especially neat for me to see the kids connect things to the "building blocks" we have laid via our studies.

After the Air and Space Museum, we went next door to the Native American Indian Museum. There was a lot of interesting things to look at that I cannot believe I didn't get pictures of! (I kick myself for not taking more pictures. I do that a lot.) For instance, we spent a lot of time looking at native costumes, guns, tomahawks, arts and crafts, hand made dolls, beading, peace treaty medals, and how to make buck skin for clothing. All were totally amazing.


The kids and I recently read a book about the Blackfeet Indians, so we were excited to find this display. (RSH recommended it to us, so she and her family will enjoy these pics too.)





Excuse my obvious fascination with the flowers we saw around town. I couldn't quit snapping pictures of them, they were so beautiful. I love tulips and pansies anyway.




This wall hanging "quilt" puts mine to shame. It was made in Peru.


A boat made of reeds. (Sorry I can't remember more details like tribe and area.)

Outside the Smithsonian Native American Museum.

More D.C. Pictures to Follow....

I am having difficulty attaching pictures to these blog posts. Must be weak signals with my internet while on the road. So.....I will blog our second day in D.C. later. It requires a lot of pictures.

Stay tuned!