The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride

On Sunday, September 28th, I will be participating in the 2014 Distinguished Gentleman's Ride to help raise awareness about prostate cancer, and to raise money towards research for a cure.

This ride is basically an antithesis to the typical motorcycle rally, where the costume of choice is typically black leather, the bikes of choice are usually from a well-known American V-twin manufacturer, and mottos such as "Loud pipes save lives" and "Live to Ride, Ride to Live" rule the day.  Not that there's anything wrong with that. 

This ride, on the other hand, is about tweed, corduroy, handlebar moustaches, bikes from the OTHER manufacturers, and where mottos like "You meet the nicest people on a _____", and "Born to be mild" set the tone.  

Here's a link to my ride page on the DGR website: http://www.gentlemansride.com/rider/Danomatic.  Take a look around, and if you like what you see, please feel free to make a donation for the cause.  I thank you in advance for your support!

Squeezo !!!

This is Dan's latest addition to the farm...  The Squeezo strainer...

We've been inundated with veggies and trying to find ways to preserve them.  Apparently, the Squeezo has been around for decades and is still made in the US.  He found this one on eBay and I have to admit, this thing is pretty darn cool.  Quarter your tomatoes, toss them in, poke them down and turn the crank and you have tomato puree in minutes.  Today we strained about 3 dozen tomatoes and I made homemade pasta sauce and chili - both were super sweet from the fresh tomatoes.  We also have a berry and pumpkin screen.  Tomorrow we're going to roast pumpkins and make pumpkin puree.

4th of July

This was the first year we got fireworks to celebrate 4th of July with the kids.  They didn't love the loud ones, but overall they had lots of fun.  We stretched it out over several days.

I can't remember what were were shooting off that required sunglasses.  And for the record, I tried to get Evie to stop sitting like a rag doll on the gravel, but she rarely listens to reason.

Evie was really getting into the snapping things, although she only made a few snap...

Samuel liked these too.  When Evie's wouldn't "snap" she'd go looking for them to try again...

On night #2 we shot off some bigger fireworks...

And of course sparklers.  Samuel did pretty well, but it was a little nerve wracking watching Evie with hers...

Take the Picture!

Dan had to travel down to Dallas a few weeks ago.  About mid-way through his first day, I thought it would be cute for him to get a picture of the kids doing something sweet.  They were playing in their room and I walked in and announced "Samuel, give Evie a big kiss so I can take a picture and send it to Daddy".  He did, but I missed the moment and snapped the picture just as he was pulling away.  So I told them to do it again and they did, but they both were distracted by the TV behind me so it wasn't very cute.  I told them to do it a third time, which they did, but I missed the moment yet again.  When I told Samuel I missed it his response was "Mommy?!".  I told him to do it once more and I wouldn't miss it again.  I raised my camera and Samuel said "Are you ready?".  I assured him I was and he grabbed Evie's head and planted one on her followed up with "Did you get it?".  And I did!

This may be one of the cutest spontaneous, turned staged, turned back to spontaneous photos yet!

Gluten-free, Low carb Homemade Pizza!

Pizza is another one of those menu items that has been hard to duplicate since going gluten free/low carb.  I've made quite a few versions (some including cauliflower) and have finally come up with one that I think is a winner.  It holds up like a pizza should (unlike cauliflower versions) and has a really good texture.  I make 3 crusts at a time - we eat one and I freeze the other two crusts for quick meals during the week.

2 Tbsp gluten-free yeast

2 Tbsp (42g) honey (17 carbs)

1/2 cup warm water

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 egg white

1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

2 cups almond flour (16 carbs)

1 cup tapioca starch/flour (104 carbs)

1 ½ tsp sea salt

1.       In a warmed bowl, combine the yeast, honey and water.  Let sit for at least 5 minutes until it gets foamy.

2.       In a small bowl, combine the olive oil, egg white and vinegar.

3.       In a medium bowl, combine the almond flour, tapioca starch, and salt.

4.       Once the yeast is foamy, add the wet and dry ingredients to the bowl and mix for about 30 seconds, scraping the sides to ensure it’s all incorporated.  Gather the dough together into a ball.  The dough is very wet… it’s okay.

5.       Cover the bowl with a tea towel and set in a warm place for 75-90 minutes.  Then proceed to the next step.

 
6.       Put a pizza stone or heavy baking sheet in a 500 degree oven to pre-heat.

7.       Divide dough into 3 pieces (these will be pretty small pizzas).

8.       Lightly oil sheets of parchment paper and turn the dough onto them.

9.       With oiled hands, gently flatten dough to about 10”.

10.   Put 1^st pizza on the pizza stone or baking sheet and bake for 4 minutes, turning half way.  Repeat for other pizzas (at this point, you can let these cool and freeze them).

11.   Add toppings and bake for another 3-4 minutes.

Notes:

• Almond flour is filling, so although these are smaller than regular pizzas, you will probably eat less.  I generally only eat a slice or two.
• You could also make 2 larger pizzas instead of 3 smaller ones.
• If I weren't so concerned about being low carb for Samuel, I would use equal amounts of almond flour and tapioca flour (1 1/2 cups each) for even better taste and texture. 

Carb info:

137 carbs total

Divide that by 3 pizzas = 46 carbs each

Cut into 4 slices = 11.5 carbs per slice.  Your tomato sauce will add a little additional carbs and possibly your toppings.  Adjust as necessary.

Comparison: a quarter of a small Domino’s pizza (just the crust) is about 35 carbs.

Spring 2014 catch-up pictures

I have lots of random pics from the past few months.  I'll post all at once to catch everyone up.


My birthday, but who's opening the presents?...

I think we're going to have two more big readers in the family.  Both love to read my Nook...

WHAT!?!...

Snack-time indoor picnics are fun!...

Samuel and Evie love going on four-wheeler rides.  Samuel only likes going slow.  When Evie rides with Daddy by herself, she lets out an ear-piercing scream while yelling "FASTER!!!"...

Helping plant this years' garden (which is doing great!)...

Two super-excited kiddos to serve Mommy breakfast in bed for Mother's Day...

Our first stay at a hotel with Samuel and Evie.  Both slept in the same bed and did really well.  The pillow bumpers did their job...

Family picture to celebrate Brian graduating from MSU...

 

After Brian's graduation, we continued south to Arkansas to visit Dan's parents.  We took a ride on the Eureka Springs Railway...

 

 

And we went to what may be Samuel and Evie's favorite playground.  Although, the slides always shock us and cause tons of static electricity...

 

That's all for now....

Fun Day at the Airport

There's a little regional airport that my parents used to take me to when I was a kid.  It has a single runway and you can walk right up to the action.  I've taken Samuel there several times, but there's never been anything going on.  One day Samuel, Evie and I were out shopping and I noticed lots of small planes buzzing around so I decided to try again.  JACKPOT!  The airport has hosting a skydiving class.  Planes, a helicopter and skydivers parachuting were all over the place!  We watched plane after plane take off and land about 30 yards in front of us.

Then we had a helicopter land in the grass right in front of us.  We watched the action for about 45 minutes and were getting ready to leave, but since it's a 45 minute drive home I figured Samuel should go potty.  I tentatively went into the tiny airport office to ask if they had a restroom, and they did.  Again, we were set to leave.  An airport member/volunteer started chatting with Samuel and Evie asking if they were having fun.  He then offered to give us a tour of the hanger behind the airport.  The kids got to see 6 airplanes up close....

And got to sit in one (although Evie barely sat in it long enough for me to snap a picture, thus her not-so-happy face)...

The volunteer pointed out all the different plane parts, showed us engines, etc.  It was fun for me too!  In the end, we ended up spending about an hour and 20 minutes there.  What a great free afternoon!  Samuel was so excited to see all of this going on.  I shot this video with my cell phone right after the helicopter landed; I think it's so adorable.  Clarification... in the video when we talks about pro-pellers, he's referring to helicopter rotors.  :)

Thayer's vs. Diabetes

Many of you out there know Samuel was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was 13 months old.  Shortly after diagnosed, his diabetes doctor wanted to put him on an insulin pump.  Although Samuel was the one with the disease, managing it was obviously up to us.  My oldest sister has Type 1, so it's not foreign to me, but I've certainly never dealt with it first hand.  We declined the pump because we felt it was important for us to understand how it affects him - which foods cause his blood sugar (BS) to spike, how much activity causes it to drop, etc. Pumps are almost too easy (want a snack/sweet = just give yourself a little insulin).  Our opinion is that having a pump too soon after being diagnosed removes the need to learn the disease.

Fast forward a little over 2 years to December of 2013.  After 2 years of 5 shots per day, 6+ finger pokes/BS tests a day, and roughly 10 doctor visits the message from the doctor was the same.  Samuel's A1C (3-month average BS) was almost that of a non-diabetic.  They've repeatedly told us he has one of the most controlled BS of all their patients.  While that was good to know, we felt there was still room to improve - there were still too many lows and too many highs that we couldn't control with 5 shots a day.  It was time for a pump.

There are a lot of pumps to choose from and Dan researched all them.  Many aren't approved for people under the age of 16, so that narrowed our options.  It was also important to know what was happening with his BS between his 6+ finger pokes per day.  A special device called a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) shows us his BS (sort of, but I won't bore you with details) which allows us to look at his pump any time we want and see his BS and a graph shows us if he's trending up or down.  Pumps have a learning curve to them, but after 3 months, we're fairly fine tuned now.  Samuel definitely likes not getting 5 shots a day now, but he doesn't love removing the infusion set (how the insulin is delivered) or the CGM sensor.  Here's what Samuel has to live with 24/7...

Since he's little, he wears a belt that holds his pump. (I'm not willing to take a chance of his pump going into the toilet while he goes potty).  Most adults would just wear this with a belt clip, like a cell phone and he'll have that option when he's older.  You see the hose going from the pump to the infusion set on the left?... this is how the insulin (in the pump) gets into his body via a thin catheter.  There's a slow drip that constantly administers insulin to his body (just like your/my pancreas does).  On the right is his CGM sensor.  There's a tiny catheter that goes into his skin, with enzymes on it that "sense" what his BS is.  It's not 100% accurate because it's not using blood, but more importantly we can look at his graph and see how he's trending.  The CGM part is a little groundbreaking... his doctors office has no other patients under the age of 16 that have a CGM.  We just had his first checkup since going on the pump and his A1C was the same as the last visit.  Not great in our book, but not bad either.  We expected the first few months to be higher while we tweaked his settings, so I'm encouraged that we will get better.

Even though he's young, we try to teach him a lot about his disease and he's gotten use to the pump and CGM.  It's interesting though because he still remembers the shots.  Just the other day, he and Evie were coloring and all of a sudden he said "Oh no, Evie, you need your shot!"  I looked up from what I was doing and found him "checking" Evie's sugar (with a colored pencil)...

and then announced that she needed a "shot" (again, with a colored pencil)...

 

The fact that diabetes ends up in their play time doesn't really surprise me, but for some reason these two pictures put me through a range of emotions.  On one hand I'm so proud of how he handles this (granted, he doesn't know any different) and it also shows just how resilient and adaptive toddlers are.  But the next time I look at it, I'm nearly in tears because it's something he'll have to endure the rest of his life (and I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say it's something that impacts our whole family).  The fact someone so innocent (ornery, but innocent) has to deal with this is sometimes hard for me to process.  And although I pray every day that he'll be healed, we feel as though God has something in store for him (or us) via this disease.  What that will be... time will only tell.

Homemade Play Dough

Play-Doh brand play dough is a classic child favorite, but unfortunately it contains wheat, which does not fly in our wheat-free home.  It's also now made in China, which brings up questions of safety (and all the other issues related to outsourcing our economy).  There are wheat-free, American-made versions out there, but they are quite expensive, and therefore not well-suited to a 2 and 3 year old who like to leave their Doh sitting out on the table for hours at a time, growing rock-hard in the process.  So, instead of buying Play-Doh or Play-Dough we decided to make some wheat-free, organic play dough at home.  As usual, we had some excellent helpers. The recipe below produces white dough, which most recipes do not.  Dan found this recipe on the celiacfamily.com blog, and hopefully they won't mind us sharing it with you:

Gluten-free play dough

• 1 cup rice flour
• 1/2 cup corn starch
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 T cream of tarter.
• 1 1/2 t cooking oil
• 1 cup water, hot but not boiling
• Food coloring, if desired

Directions:

1. Mix all dry ingredients together in a medium pot.
2. Add the vegetable oil, then the water, and continue to mix until thoroughly combined.
3. Heat the pot on the stove over low heat for about 3 minutes. Stir frequently with a silicone spatula.
4. When the dough starts to pull away from the sides easily, turn out the dough onto parchment paper or a paper plate. Let it cool briefly until you can work it with your hands.
5. Knead food coloring into the dough until you get the color you desire.

Additional Notes:

• Don’t overcook the dough. It shouldn’t need more than five minutes.  If you cook it too long it will fall apart when kneading.
• To add food coloring, make a well in the middle of the ball of dough and drop the food coloring into the well. Close up the well with the outside dough, keeping the food coloring in the middle of the ball. Then, carefully begin kneading it until the color is evenly distributed throughout the dough.
• If needed, adjust the texture with small amounts of water (for dry, crumbly dough) or cornstarch (for sticky dough).
• Makes about 2 cups of play dough, or about 2 baseball-size balls of dough.

Store in tightly sealed plastic bags or containers.
Samuel isn't sure what's going on yet...

...but he likes helping!

Daddy's little helpers:

Evie taste-testing the results.  I don't recommend it as a snack food, but it's perfectly safe!

This is what happens when you use too much food coloring.  The remedy is to grab another one of the white balls and mix it in to distribute the excess coloring.

Kitty or Kiddie toy?

Our cats, Buddy and Ivy, received a toy for Christmas.  It's a little arm that spins in a circle underneath some fabric.  It's a really simple design and Buddy will bat at it for quite a while.  But, I'm not sure who it entertains more...

The kitties or the kiddies?

Gluten-free, Low carb Pancakes

Since going gluten-free, pancakes have been one of the harder "breads" to duplicate.  We've tried a lot of recipes over the last year, but all fell short.  They were either too soft, too coconut-y, too mushy, too bland, etc.  Today I looked in a recipe book that I've had for some time.  It called for arrowroot powder, but I recently learned you can easily substitute cornstarch.  The recipe also called for 1/4 cup agave, which we don't use so I usually substitute honey.  But, this made it really high carb (at least too high carb for our family and Samuel's diabetes).  Dan is our resident pancake maker, so he took the recipe and tweaked it.  The result: the best pancakes we've had since going GF.  They cooked/browned like a regular pancake and the inside was light and fluffy and not mushy.  It's not to say we'll stop looking, but this one is our go-to recipe for now.

2 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup water
1 1/2 cups almond flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp cornstarch


In a blender, combine the eggs, vanilla and water; process on high for about 1 minute or until smooth.  Add the almond flour, salt, baking powder, and cornstarch, and blend until combined.  We cooked our pancakes using grapeseed oil because it has a high smoke point and has a very neutral flavor (versus coconut oil).

Total carb count for the whole batch is about 19 net carbs and this recipe will make about 20 smaller pancakes (about 1 carb each) or 10 larger pancakes (about 2 carbs each).  (Comparison: your typical wheat flour pancake has about 15 carbs each).

Hope you enjoy!

Beauty sleep

Playing is sometimes so much work you just need a nap.

PSA: How to boil an egg. Seriously.

We eat a lot of hard boiled eggs - in salads, as snacks, for deviled eggs.  Heck, sometimes my dinner is just a hard boiled egg and a hunk of sharp cheddar cheese.  But I hate peeling them!  With as many as I peel, you'd think I'd be really good at it.  It doesn't seem like rocket science, but I've tried various methods in my 36 years and none have made much of a different.

Until now.

The secret?

Drum roll please.....

...

...

...

You don't boil.... you STEAM them!  Turns out it really isn't rocket science!  Here's how you do it.

1)  Place a cheapo steamer basket into a pot big enough to hold your eggs.  Fill it with water until it just reaches the bottom of the steamer basket.

2) Bring water to a boil.

3)  Place eggs in, like so...

4) Put a tight lid on, set timer for 12-15 minutes and let it go - don't lift the lid!  The water will stay at a hard boil, but it's the steam that actually cooks the eggs.  (I started with 12 minutes and they were fine, but a little soft in the middle.  If you like firmer yolks, you'll probably need to go the full 15 minutes.)

5) Put eggs in ice water immediate after the 15 minutes is up.  Use right away or transfer to fridge.

6) Commence peeling.  Here's a trick I discovered about a year ago and combined with steaming, it makes for really easy peeling.  Break the shell around the middle in three different places.  Then lay the egg on the counter and roll it around to create fine cracks all over the shell.  (Just hard enough to crack the shell, but not the egg underneath.).  Then find a starting point, get under the filmy membrane and peel away.  The shell usually comes off in two or three pieces for me, almost like a ribbon.  Like this...

 See how the shell looks like snake skin?  That's all of those little cracks you created from rolling it on the counter and thus separating the shell from the egg.

If you're not a hard boiled egg eater, you've probably moved on from this post already.  But if you are a hard-boiled egg eater, you should give this method a try next time!