Hello everyone and Happy Family Day!
I have spent the weekend with my darling son – sadly, Daddy has been working.
Patrick and I discovered that the Highwayman Inn in Orillia lets the public use their swimming pool. We picked up a three month pass for only $90 with taxes in. Thank goodness, since I wasn’t sure how to entertain a two year old on a cold and windy weekend. Swimming fit the bill perfectly.
We made a family decision to go gluten-free. I will break this with my 100% rye bread but will keep it at work ;). Since Patrick has so many food intolerance’s (gluten, legumes, and sunflower), it makes it really hard to do family meals and desserts if we are not following the same restrictions. We adults have decided to use legumes in our lunches to get all the fibre rich goodness without exposing Patrick to them.
Breads, cakes, and snacks are the greatest challenge. Thankfully, we already eat a pretty varied diet compared to many families. I need to tell you how much I LOVE the www.glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com. She has put together some really amazing recipes. Thankfully, most of them don’t contain rice (’cause really, it doesn’t make nice flour based products) and they are vegan (although I choose to use eggs and goat milk, I have another nephew who cannot have eggs so it’s nice to have a tasty resource for him too).
My successes so far this weekend have included:
- Oatmeal blueberry muffins (I didn’t add the crumble – not needed – these are great)
- Oatmeal Quinoa breakfast brownies (I didn’t add the blueberries, but will next time)
- Pumpkin raisin bundt cake (I used a butternut squash – perfect)
My breads have not fared well. I am not sure what I’m doing wrong. The one in the breadmaker exploded and caught fire. The one for the oven was a flop (I didn’t cook it long enough – I will try again tomorrow). So for this week anyway, I will have to keep buying the $6/loaf not so tasty frozen bread from the grocery store. Oh well. Keep trying.
Another recipe that will be tested tomorrow is the Raw Cashew Hummus. Patrick loved hummus before we knew it was making him sick. When he sees me buy it (I keep it at the office to not torment the poor little man) he always asks to have some. So, I made the new hummus tonight and we’ll see what he thinks tomorrow. Fingers crossed – it would be nice to add some healthy plant-based protein into his diet.
In an attempt to have more veggies go into the little man’s belly, I also started making chicken burgers, and beef burgers at home. I grate up a carrot, a zucchini, and some peppers into the meat, let it sit overnight to make the veggies go soft, and then fry them up the next day. Some cheese on top and voila! He’s loving them. For those of you with older kids this will be tricky since they will see the difference and may protest. But for those who haven’t experienced too many burgers yet, why not make them think that’s how burgers are made?
OK, that’s it for me tonight. Dishwasher is on, food is put away and the third period of the heritage game is now over. Time to go to bed and read. Another busy day tomorrow – I’m going to make two batches of the oatmeal muffins for the freezer and then we are hitting public skating at the Guthrie arena for 10:30 am.
Wow, I am one lucky women.
Gratefully sleepy,
Kerri Fullerton