sorry, ducklings- i feel awful that it's been so long since we chatted. i've had to focus on some personal stuff, like work being hard, and helping out friends, and dealing with my usual and complete breakdowns in the face of change. so anyways. hopefully, i've gotten all my kinks worked out at my job (me + new boss sometimes = corrective action for me. i should be used to it by now, but i still am ashamed that it happens. i'm blaming it on this job being the first new one i've had in five years, and it being so close to the previous job that i get cocky and make stupid mistakes. lesson learned. i'm moving on now.) and at home (new job also = new pay schedule, which means that i've been broke as a joke for the last three months. hopefully, lesson learned there too... plus it helps one's marital status if one can in fact pay the bills. sigh. thankfully, i'm not single, so i guess my husband does in fact love me.) and with my friends (change is good, even for them.. accept it and move on! be happy!) so i can now focus on the holidays. and the holiday knitting.
the broke as a joke situation means that i'm doing stash-diving knitting for christmas this year, which is fine. i have a bunch of really lovely odds and ends stored aways from previous projects- from mercerized cotton to alpaca to actually nice acrylic (although the price you pay to get really nice acrylic is high enough that i should have just bought natural fiber... i'm occasionally a dummy) so everybody is getting one-skein wonders for christmas. the crazy thing- the nuts thing- the thing that makes me rethink medication, is that i'm making 14 projects this year. dear lord- shoot me now. i do have seven of them done, but seven still to go, and i'm wondering if they're just not gonna happen. plus the stuff i get for folks that hate knitting (they're big jerks). it's nuts-making. thankfully i have plenty of downtime at work. i have to date made three pairs of socks, three hats, and a covertable glove/cowl set. i have to go: fingerless gloves, a small scarf, and five hats. the hats may not be hats by the end... it depends on my mood. the plus side? not having to go the mall for any christmas presents this year. (my "too cool" brothers might just be "too cool" for gifts, is all i say.)
so keep tuned for crazy! it's bound to happen, as i'm just a few inches away from the edge to begin with. i'll also maybe have a recipe for you in the near future. who knows? it could all happen. i'm staying positive, right up until i'm not any more.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
chili time
it's october, folks! my favorite month of the year. i'm not really sure what makes october so awesome- it could be that the leaves have put on their fireworks show for everybody- one last hurrah before sleeping the winter. it could be that there's always that threat of snow in the air. it could be the amazing indian summers we have here. it could be the zombie crawls and trick-or-treating. or, it could be that this is the time of the chilies.
chilies mean fall in colorado. the smell of them roasting on street corners starts in august and finishes in november, but late september and early october are the best time. i can't smell them without thinking of raking leaves and drinking cider and having a fire. it's a cozy smell. there is a festival dedicated to roasted chilies in the town where i work, and my husband and i always go, lugging about at least a bushel of roasted goodness to take home with us. the air is like mace, the pace is frantic, and farmers sweat themselves nearly to death managing the barrels roasters and flame throwers that make the humble pepper a thing of beauty. over one hundred thousand people came this year to celebrate chilies- and we never buy enough. (as an aside- a festival completely dedicated to foodstuffs is a thing of beauty all its own. there should be more of them.)
i never really ate green chili as a kid- a rare thing for somebody who grew up in colorado. it's like the state food. but my parents weren't from here and really didn't like the spicy mexican fare, so i grew up eating a lot of asian inspired cuisine. the first time i had green chili, it was a revelation. (thank you, banana. you gave me the gift of chili too! no wonder i love you.) i can't even put into words the wonder of a good green chili. my best friend and i make it often, and when i'm welcoming somebody to colorado (in this case my brother's new bride! i'll write about the wedding soon- but it was lovely, if really really cold.) green chili is the first thing i make them. it's thick, spicy, warm, and filling, and has the flavors of sunshine and heat to keep you remembering the blistering summer all through the year. it's love in a pot.
Sharon's Gluten-free Green Chili
brown 1-2 pounds of boneless pork (could be stew meat, or chops- whatever is on sale. it's going to cook forever, so it doesn't have to be fancy meat) in some olive oil
add in 1 onion, diced fine, and 5-6 cloves of garlic, minced.
cook until onion is tender, then add in a pound of roasted green chili, skinned and minced fine
sautee together for about ten minutes
in a seperate dutch oven, melt half a stick of butter on medium heat, then add in a quarter cup of gluten free flour (i use Bob's red mill all purpose) to make a roux. cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly, until the roux is light brown. add in 8 to 10 cups of water or broth (if using water, then add in the appropriate amount of boullion to make a broth). dump in the pork mixture.
dice up quite a lot (however much you want, really- i like my stew really potato-y) of yukon gold potatoes and put them in the chili. (i know the potatoes sound weird, but it's traditional if you're making the chili as a main dish. if you're making it as a gravy, you leave em out) add in two cans of rotel. season with salt and pepper- and then walk away. you're going to have to simmer this bad boy for at least 45 minutes on low, stirring occasionally. it's better if you leave it an hour, but that's hard to do sometimes.
come back, and serve it up! we like to have corn tortillas with it, and put sour cream and cheese in the soup, especially if you have little ones eating it. it can be VERY spicy. fair warning. eat it up, warm yourself, and think of summer.
chilies mean fall in colorado. the smell of them roasting on street corners starts in august and finishes in november, but late september and early october are the best time. i can't smell them without thinking of raking leaves and drinking cider and having a fire. it's a cozy smell. there is a festival dedicated to roasted chilies in the town where i work, and my husband and i always go, lugging about at least a bushel of roasted goodness to take home with us. the air is like mace, the pace is frantic, and farmers sweat themselves nearly to death managing the barrels roasters and flame throwers that make the humble pepper a thing of beauty. over one hundred thousand people came this year to celebrate chilies- and we never buy enough. (as an aside- a festival completely dedicated to foodstuffs is a thing of beauty all its own. there should be more of them.)
i never really ate green chili as a kid- a rare thing for somebody who grew up in colorado. it's like the state food. but my parents weren't from here and really didn't like the spicy mexican fare, so i grew up eating a lot of asian inspired cuisine. the first time i had green chili, it was a revelation. (thank you, banana. you gave me the gift of chili too! no wonder i love you.) i can't even put into words the wonder of a good green chili. my best friend and i make it often, and when i'm welcoming somebody to colorado (in this case my brother's new bride! i'll write about the wedding soon- but it was lovely, if really really cold.) green chili is the first thing i make them. it's thick, spicy, warm, and filling, and has the flavors of sunshine and heat to keep you remembering the blistering summer all through the year. it's love in a pot.
Sharon's Gluten-free Green Chili
brown 1-2 pounds of boneless pork (could be stew meat, or chops- whatever is on sale. it's going to cook forever, so it doesn't have to be fancy meat) in some olive oil
add in 1 onion, diced fine, and 5-6 cloves of garlic, minced.
cook until onion is tender, then add in a pound of roasted green chili, skinned and minced fine
sautee together for about ten minutes
in a seperate dutch oven, melt half a stick of butter on medium heat, then add in a quarter cup of gluten free flour (i use Bob's red mill all purpose) to make a roux. cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly, until the roux is light brown. add in 8 to 10 cups of water or broth (if using water, then add in the appropriate amount of boullion to make a broth). dump in the pork mixture.
dice up quite a lot (however much you want, really- i like my stew really potato-y) of yukon gold potatoes and put them in the chili. (i know the potatoes sound weird, but it's traditional if you're making the chili as a main dish. if you're making it as a gravy, you leave em out) add in two cans of rotel. season with salt and pepper- and then walk away. you're going to have to simmer this bad boy for at least 45 minutes on low, stirring occasionally. it's better if you leave it an hour, but that's hard to do sometimes.
come back, and serve it up! we like to have corn tortillas with it, and put sour cream and cheese in the soup, especially if you have little ones eating it. it can be VERY spicy. fair warning. eat it up, warm yourself, and think of summer.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
nostalgia
people always ask me what life was like for me as a kid. i'm not sure if this is a question that a lot of people get, but i guess when you grow up the way i did, folks get curious. it's not every day that people run in to somebody who has twelve adopted brothers and sisters, who was homeschooled from kindergarten though twelfth grade, and who was actually adopted herself. my family is huge, boisterous, and in your face, and how we all survived til adulthood (or mostly adulthood- my youngest sister is eleven. that makes her nineteen years younger than me. yeah, we're pretty weird all right.) is a mystery even to us. my mom also tells me that when she dies, i can write a book as payback for my childhood. so, to both embarrass her (cause it's a bitch, right?) and satisfy some other nosey parker's curiousity, i shall now occasionally write vignettes of my childhood right here. i think it will be theraputic for me, if nothing else, and most likely cheaper than therapy...
we didn't have summer vacation at my house. we had summer, of course. but where other people had time off from school, days to sleep in and be lazy, and camp, my family had... work. see, that's the problem with being homeschooled. even in the summer, you can't flippin' leave. (this was also the case with snow days. school's not closed if you live at school. it's a miracle i still talk to my mother.) my siblings and i would wait and wait and wait for memorial day, hoping against wild hope that this year- this year would be the year that we'd get to relax, maybe go on vacation or to waterworld- something normal and fun. and every year we would be dissappointed.
we'd usually get a day or two where my dad wouldn't wake us up yelling "up and at em!" at seven am (followed by a quick ripping off of the covers) to lull us into a false sense of security. and then, after a day or two of relative leasure, my mom would come up with this summer's work project. she'd always announce it with happiness (or maybe glee) at the lunch table. one memorable summer's work was "we're going to break up the old cement basketball slab, save all the pieces, and use them to build a patio on the second terrace of our back yard! which reminds me. we're also going to build a terrace!" (i do wish i was kidding about this, by the way.) this was usually met with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm- which is to say, none at all, accompanied by frantic phone calls to relatives for temporary custody. and when my mom would say things like "we're all going to work on this for a couple of hours every day, and i'm sure it will be done really fast!" we all knew that what she really meant was "you guys are going to be getting up at six thirty and working for at least six hours every day while i supervise. the girls will get your meals. you won't be getting paid at all or have any reward whatsoever except living in my house, but i will count your work as p.e. credit! won't that be nice!" it was not nice, by the way. (notice the volunteering of "the girls" in the food prep. i am nine years older than my next sister in line, so what my mom really meant was "S will get your meals." i learned to cook for an army by the age of 15. cause have you ever seen how much nine boys will eat after a morning's labor? i got a summer job pretty quick, i can tell you.)
it always looked odd, too. my parents live in a pretty nice area of our fair city, and they (because this needs to be said in my family) are anglo. my siblings, on the other hand? are not. now, just imagine being a hapless stranger driving through out neighborhood at random. my brothers are all in my parent's very nice front yard, dismally swinging shovels and pickaxes in their white tank tops and dirty shorts, all while looking like they would give anything to escape. what do you think you might believe was going on there? yup. they look like a chain gang. ahhh, forced labor. we never really did get a whole lot of people driving down our street more than once, come to think of it.
we weren't allowed to leave the house until our allotted work was done for the day, and even then it was often a struggle. my mom is a great checker of your work, and she's also a perfectionist, so we often ended up doing the same bit of a job over and over til it was entirely correct. (she counted this as "life skills" credit.) this was every summer of my childhood- at least until i got a paying job. my family has always been about everybody making their own money, and they didn't stop me when i got that first job at the movie theater. (for which i also got free movies. it's a pretty cushy deal when you're sixteen.) i think i might have been the only person there who thought of their job as an escape from work. i'm completey grown now, and out of the house, but my youngest siblings are still in the work gang, digging dirt and moving cement all summer. when i visit and see their misery, all i can tell them is "get a job! it's the only way...." cause the words "summer vacation" still don't mean a thing. actually, come to think of it, they might mean "free landscaping". or "those kids as sure as certain not getting into trouble on my watch!" (yeah right.) but they certainly don't mean "freedom" or "fun". at least not in my house.
we didn't have summer vacation at my house. we had summer, of course. but where other people had time off from school, days to sleep in and be lazy, and camp, my family had... work. see, that's the problem with being homeschooled. even in the summer, you can't flippin' leave. (this was also the case with snow days. school's not closed if you live at school. it's a miracle i still talk to my mother.) my siblings and i would wait and wait and wait for memorial day, hoping against wild hope that this year- this year would be the year that we'd get to relax, maybe go on vacation or to waterworld- something normal and fun. and every year we would be dissappointed.
we'd usually get a day or two where my dad wouldn't wake us up yelling "up and at em!" at seven am (followed by a quick ripping off of the covers) to lull us into a false sense of security. and then, after a day or two of relative leasure, my mom would come up with this summer's work project. she'd always announce it with happiness (or maybe glee) at the lunch table. one memorable summer's work was "we're going to break up the old cement basketball slab, save all the pieces, and use them to build a patio on the second terrace of our back yard! which reminds me. we're also going to build a terrace!" (i do wish i was kidding about this, by the way.) this was usually met with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm- which is to say, none at all, accompanied by frantic phone calls to relatives for temporary custody. and when my mom would say things like "we're all going to work on this for a couple of hours every day, and i'm sure it will be done really fast!" we all knew that what she really meant was "you guys are going to be getting up at six thirty and working for at least six hours every day while i supervise. the girls will get your meals. you won't be getting paid at all or have any reward whatsoever except living in my house, but i will count your work as p.e. credit! won't that be nice!" it was not nice, by the way. (notice the volunteering of "the girls" in the food prep. i am nine years older than my next sister in line, so what my mom really meant was "S will get your meals." i learned to cook for an army by the age of 15. cause have you ever seen how much nine boys will eat after a morning's labor? i got a summer job pretty quick, i can tell you.)
it always looked odd, too. my parents live in a pretty nice area of our fair city, and they (because this needs to be said in my family) are anglo. my siblings, on the other hand? are not. now, just imagine being a hapless stranger driving through out neighborhood at random. my brothers are all in my parent's very nice front yard, dismally swinging shovels and pickaxes in their white tank tops and dirty shorts, all while looking like they would give anything to escape. what do you think you might believe was going on there? yup. they look like a chain gang. ahhh, forced labor. we never really did get a whole lot of people driving down our street more than once, come to think of it.
we weren't allowed to leave the house until our allotted work was done for the day, and even then it was often a struggle. my mom is a great checker of your work, and she's also a perfectionist, so we often ended up doing the same bit of a job over and over til it was entirely correct. (she counted this as "life skills" credit.) this was every summer of my childhood- at least until i got a paying job. my family has always been about everybody making their own money, and they didn't stop me when i got that first job at the movie theater. (for which i also got free movies. it's a pretty cushy deal when you're sixteen.) i think i might have been the only person there who thought of their job as an escape from work. i'm completey grown now, and out of the house, but my youngest siblings are still in the work gang, digging dirt and moving cement all summer. when i visit and see their misery, all i can tell them is "get a job! it's the only way...." cause the words "summer vacation" still don't mean a thing. actually, come to think of it, they might mean "free landscaping". or "those kids as sure as certain not getting into trouble on my watch!" (yeah right.) but they certainly don't mean "freedom" or "fun". at least not in my house.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
september is for soup
hi there! how was your labor day? hopefully awesome and filled with the kind of wonder that only the holiday at the end of summer can bring. i've never really been sure of what labor day celebrates, unless it's some unspoken homage to the god of grills or something. if you lived in my mom's house, though, it was meant for labor. she'd make us get up at six in the morning and build something, or clean something, or move stuff around. (my mom is a furniture hoarder, and is constantly having to rearrange her house to make room for another couple of couches or a dresser. she has dressers in the living room. i am sadly not kidding.) i, as the oldest and the only person who had any ability to cook, would have to make lunch and dinner for my millions of brothers who would be hungry, hot, and cranky from the forced, well... labor. this was the story of every labor day of my childhood. in fact, i was often the only cook in my house, and had to perfect the "quick food for a crapton of people" recipes that save my butt in the kitchen to this day. my mom wouldn't let me leave the house until i had something for dinner going, which was my chore for four nights a week. the other nights were pizza night, lasagna sunday, and leftovers. (these nights, by the way? never change. and the lasagna is the frozen kind that comes from sam's. i never can make it to sunday without the nostalgic smell of the many times my mom forgot to take the carboard off the lasagna before cooking it coming flooding back to my nostrils...)
anyway, i learned very quickly that one of the best and cheapest (why cheap? oh, cause i had to make the food budget lists for the family too. i don't think this qualifies as child abuse, but i'm not completely sure on that.) ways to feed the fam was to make soup. one pot meals are always the way to go, as you can cram a whole heck of a lot of stuff into one pot, set it cooking, and then flee the scene while you still have permission to use your dad's car. i've gotten pretty expert at soups of all kinds, and make them whenever an occasion calls for it. my chef husband even steals my recipes for the restaurant sometimes, and that's pretty much the biggest "i love you- and your food" i ever get from that guy. labor day, for me as an adult, means the beginning of soup season and my favorite time of year to actually get up and cook something.
my new favorite soup, since the discovery that wheat makes me seven different kinds of sick, is lentil. there's a bunch of folks who just made that "yukky" face that's sometimes seen on poison bottles when i said that, but trust me. it's good. it's also vegetarian- in fact, it's vegan and is completely non-processed in terms of ingredients and you can get almost all the stuff for it at your local farmer's market, if you're so inclined. i pretty much get all the ingredients at walmart, but i am a poor librarian. do whatever your conscience tells you is right, luke. so here's the recipe of the day: gluten free, vegan lentil soup. the ingredients might seems a little weird, but it's the best stuff ever with some cheese (not vegan then, i guess) on top and some rice crackers or a sandwich. yum. i love september.
Lentil Soup
sautee up one diced onion and four cups sliced carrots in olive oil til they are nice and tender
add in two cans of rotel tomatoes and chilis, undrained (or some diced up tomatoes and green chilis from the market, if you wanna)
put in six-eight cups of water and veggie boullion, or veggie broth, or even chicken broth if you don't care about that
rough chop a big bunch of spinach and put that in the pot too
add in 1 and 1/2 cup of green lentils
season with salt and pepper
add the juice and zest of two lemons
simmer for 45 minutes or until the lentils are tender.
serve with cheddar cheese on top, if you're eating cow products, and put in some lovely almond crackers or a sandwich of some kind. perfect for those days in september that have a little nip to them.
anyway, i learned very quickly that one of the best and cheapest (why cheap? oh, cause i had to make the food budget lists for the family too. i don't think this qualifies as child abuse, but i'm not completely sure on that.) ways to feed the fam was to make soup. one pot meals are always the way to go, as you can cram a whole heck of a lot of stuff into one pot, set it cooking, and then flee the scene while you still have permission to use your dad's car. i've gotten pretty expert at soups of all kinds, and make them whenever an occasion calls for it. my chef husband even steals my recipes for the restaurant sometimes, and that's pretty much the biggest "i love you- and your food" i ever get from that guy. labor day, for me as an adult, means the beginning of soup season and my favorite time of year to actually get up and cook something.
my new favorite soup, since the discovery that wheat makes me seven different kinds of sick, is lentil. there's a bunch of folks who just made that "yukky" face that's sometimes seen on poison bottles when i said that, but trust me. it's good. it's also vegetarian- in fact, it's vegan and is completely non-processed in terms of ingredients and you can get almost all the stuff for it at your local farmer's market, if you're so inclined. i pretty much get all the ingredients at walmart, but i am a poor librarian. do whatever your conscience tells you is right, luke. so here's the recipe of the day: gluten free, vegan lentil soup. the ingredients might seems a little weird, but it's the best stuff ever with some cheese (not vegan then, i guess) on top and some rice crackers or a sandwich. yum. i love september.
Lentil Soup
sautee up one diced onion and four cups sliced carrots in olive oil til they are nice and tender
add in two cans of rotel tomatoes and chilis, undrained (or some diced up tomatoes and green chilis from the market, if you wanna)
put in six-eight cups of water and veggie boullion, or veggie broth, or even chicken broth if you don't care about that
rough chop a big bunch of spinach and put that in the pot too
add in 1 and 1/2 cup of green lentils
season with salt and pepper
add the juice and zest of two lemons
simmer for 45 minutes or until the lentils are tender.
serve with cheddar cheese on top, if you're eating cow products, and put in some lovely almond crackers or a sandwich of some kind. perfect for those days in september that have a little nip to them.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
why am i not sleeping? *now with recipes!*
i gotta be up at 6:15 am tomorrow, ducklings. why, oh why am i NOT SLEEPING? i wish i knew. insomnia is no fun at all... by the time i actually enter dreamland that dang alarm clock will have gone off and i'll be driving my happy ass to the middle of nowhere to provide library services to possibly five people. i just keep telling myself that i love my job (repeat as mantra til i start to believe it) and that i'm thankful to have it. sigh. if i could just get over ambiguous job descriptions, people's hurt feelings, non-working phones, and the fact that i have to deal with middle school aged children, i would have a dream job. apparently this is why i went to college. don't tell my mom.
so, life hasn't been all that fun lately. work is hard, i got an awful creepy crud coming back from my vacation that made my 30th birthday both miserable and anticlimactic, and i completely screwed myself in terms of money and my husband (who is usually the most longsuffering dude on the planet) found out about it. guess which thing has caused the most trouble? yup, the money. i have got to figure out how to handle money. it's a weakness that i have had to deal with since i had money to spend resulting in a horrible credit score, a debt settlement, and a lot of marital spats. well, no longer. i have a budget spreadsheet, which makes me feel quite the adult, and a complete intent to use it. we'll see. the best part is that it does all the adding for me, as i am a moron who has completely failed at all things math. i'm going to say that math is more of a "concept" to us artistic types than "fact" but the "fact" is that math comes up and bites me in the butt every dang time. (i want you to imagine me doing the air fingers thing with the quotation marks in the last sentence.) so i am hoping that this will work. after all, if i can stick to the danged gluten free diet, i can stick to a budget, right?
speaking of the gluten freeness, i have been cooking and i have found a recipe! first off, i was having quite a time finding gluten free cream of mushroom soup and was despairing, as i am american and that's a pretty crucial ingredient to most of our haute cuisine. i was overjoyed to find out that walmart has a gluten free mushroom soup that's quite good and doesn't break the budget. so, i was going to make pot roast tonight, and i always use the packet for the slow cookert, til i looked at it this morning and saw that they third ingredient on the label was "wheat gluten". and then i panicked, cause i already had the roast thawed and i had no beef boullion and what the heck was i gonna do cause i needed to go to work in half an hour! and then i calmed down and made this recipe. it's good too! and i'm not just saying that- the three people i live with also really liked it. so here i go: first recipe on this site- just for you!
Gluten Free Pot Roast (capitalized so you know it's important)
1 5lb rump roast
1 can gluten free cream of mushroom soup (from walmart)
1/4 C gluten free soy sauce
1 small bag baby carrots
1 onion, sliced
1 C water
1/4 C gluten free flour
salt and pepper to taste
season the roast with the salt and pepper. put in crockpot, along with the soup, soy sauce, water, and veggies. (you can brown the meat first if you want it to stay together, i prefer my pot roast as more of a stew.) cook on low 8 hours, or high 4 hours. when you come back to the roast, there should be a lot of juices. take out about a half a cup of the juice and put in the bowl with the flour. add a little tap water til the mix becomes a slurry. add to the rest of the roast in the pot, straining if it's lumpy. this makes the gravy! give it another ten minutes or so and then eat with potatoes or noodles.
ok- gonna try to go to sleep now. i'll see every body on the flip side!
so, life hasn't been all that fun lately. work is hard, i got an awful creepy crud coming back from my vacation that made my 30th birthday both miserable and anticlimactic, and i completely screwed myself in terms of money and my husband (who is usually the most longsuffering dude on the planet) found out about it. guess which thing has caused the most trouble? yup, the money. i have got to figure out how to handle money. it's a weakness that i have had to deal with since i had money to spend resulting in a horrible credit score, a debt settlement, and a lot of marital spats. well, no longer. i have a budget spreadsheet, which makes me feel quite the adult, and a complete intent to use it. we'll see. the best part is that it does all the adding for me, as i am a moron who has completely failed at all things math. i'm going to say that math is more of a "concept" to us artistic types than "fact" but the "fact" is that math comes up and bites me in the butt every dang time. (i want you to imagine me doing the air fingers thing with the quotation marks in the last sentence.) so i am hoping that this will work. after all, if i can stick to the danged gluten free diet, i can stick to a budget, right?
speaking of the gluten freeness, i have been cooking and i have found a recipe! first off, i was having quite a time finding gluten free cream of mushroom soup and was despairing, as i am american and that's a pretty crucial ingredient to most of our haute cuisine. i was overjoyed to find out that walmart has a gluten free mushroom soup that's quite good and doesn't break the budget. so, i was going to make pot roast tonight, and i always use the packet for the slow cookert, til i looked at it this morning and saw that they third ingredient on the label was "wheat gluten". and then i panicked, cause i already had the roast thawed and i had no beef boullion and what the heck was i gonna do cause i needed to go to work in half an hour! and then i calmed down and made this recipe. it's good too! and i'm not just saying that- the three people i live with also really liked it. so here i go: first recipe on this site- just for you!
Gluten Free Pot Roast (capitalized so you know it's important)
1 5lb rump roast
1 can gluten free cream of mushroom soup (from walmart)
1/4 C gluten free soy sauce
1 small bag baby carrots
1 onion, sliced
1 C water
1/4 C gluten free flour
salt and pepper to taste
season the roast with the salt and pepper. put in crockpot, along with the soup, soy sauce, water, and veggies. (you can brown the meat first if you want it to stay together, i prefer my pot roast as more of a stew.) cook on low 8 hours, or high 4 hours. when you come back to the roast, there should be a lot of juices. take out about a half a cup of the juice and put in the bowl with the flour. add a little tap water til the mix becomes a slurry. add to the rest of the roast in the pot, straining if it's lumpy. this makes the gravy! give it another ten minutes or so and then eat with potatoes or noodles.
ok- gonna try to go to sleep now. i'll see every body on the flip side!
Thursday, July 19, 2012
things happen....
again, it seems, i have let too much time lapse between our chats. i am sorry. i care for you, my ducklings, i really do. life just gets in the way of me speaking with you regularly, which honestly is a pretty shabby excuse for laziness. i do have quite a few hours in the day that i could use to speak, but for some reason they're taken up with the very important pursuits of reading trashy mysteries i find on my library shelves and watching youtube videos about mermaids. i really wish i was making the mermaid thing up, by the way. i'm not. ahh, the life of a bored librarian. but let's turn our attention to something a wee bit more edifiying, shall we?
so, three weeks ago, part of my city burned down. the waldo canyon fire, in its incredible day of destruction, burned over three hundred homes in my neighborhood. i don't really have a lot to say about that- the media and local and state governments have done a really amazing job letting people know what's been going on in our neck of the woods. my husband, cat, room mate, and i were evacuated for five days- we weren't in any danger (the fire ended about a mile and a half from our house) but we needed to be out of the way of the firefighters and law enforcement people who were doing their very important jobs. i could go on and on about how much being evacuated stunk, and how i know that i will never ever ever again be able to live with my parents for longer than five days, and how one large cat vs. two small dogs equals total chaos, but it's not important. we're home and we're safe. there are a lot of people who can't say that, and i know or have met a good majority of them. not only do i live near the burn area, but i was a local librarian there for five years, and we're a pretty close community. hearts were broken, and now it's time to heal. i also would like this to be my heartfelt thank-you to the firefighters and law enforcement who took an absolutely horrible situation and made it better. things could have been so much worse, and i thank everybody involved from the bottom of my heart. you're heroes, you know.
also during this wonderful time, i made a rather unfortunate personal discovery. i had been trying to loose weight for my trip to new orleans (i am going for my thirtieth birthday. thirty! geez.) and started a diet where i wasn't eating many carbs. i have been struggling my whole life with intestinal issues, and pretty much thought that i would just have to live with em and that they weren't that bad. well, a side effect of not eating a lot of carbs is not eating a lot of wheat products. i started doing that, and within TWO DAYS i had no more stomach issues. no more symptoms. huh, i thought. so i looked up gluten intolerance on the interwebs, and i had nine out of ten of the symptoms. so no more gluten for me, i guess. i know that there's a test that you get that confirms celiac disease and such, but i'm not going to pay money to get it done. all i know is that i didn't feel good, i stopped eating gluten, and now i do feel good. that's all i need to know.
of course, this means a life change. i don't have a problem sticking to the diet, because i feel better. i do have a problem with being a foodie, as now i can't eat in nearly all the places i want to, and i have a baked goods issue that is as shameful as it is problematic. i am no baker, so making my own won't work for me. i have a bit of grief over no more italian restaurants (yes, the chains have gluten free menus. with salad on them. and gummy pasta with marinara. not what i want, i tells ya.), no more green chili and fried food at the fair, no more cinnamon rolls at the mall..... and the list goes on. but i feel like crap if i eat it now, and i can't believe i put up with that level of discomfort for that long. it's just a life change that is really hard, because i love food and experiencing new foods, and eating out with friends, and the having to be so careful is really quite a drag. sigh.
ok. that was not the same level of suck as the fire, i know. hose of us dealing closely with the fire are still in a bit of shock. someday, i'll be able to write about how much it breaks my heart, seeing my mountains blackened and charred, seeing rubble instead of homes on the hillsides, knowing families who have lost it all.... but the wound is still too fresh. so i'll mope instead about my dietary restrictions and be sad that a favorite part of my life isn't really available to me any more- it's a coping mechanism.
hopefully my next post will be a return to goofy, with maybe a side of gluten-free recipes thrown in for good measure. we'll see. i'm ready for happy.
so, three weeks ago, part of my city burned down. the waldo canyon fire, in its incredible day of destruction, burned over three hundred homes in my neighborhood. i don't really have a lot to say about that- the media and local and state governments have done a really amazing job letting people know what's been going on in our neck of the woods. my husband, cat, room mate, and i were evacuated for five days- we weren't in any danger (the fire ended about a mile and a half from our house) but we needed to be out of the way of the firefighters and law enforcement people who were doing their very important jobs. i could go on and on about how much being evacuated stunk, and how i know that i will never ever ever again be able to live with my parents for longer than five days, and how one large cat vs. two small dogs equals total chaos, but it's not important. we're home and we're safe. there are a lot of people who can't say that, and i know or have met a good majority of them. not only do i live near the burn area, but i was a local librarian there for five years, and we're a pretty close community. hearts were broken, and now it's time to heal. i also would like this to be my heartfelt thank-you to the firefighters and law enforcement who took an absolutely horrible situation and made it better. things could have been so much worse, and i thank everybody involved from the bottom of my heart. you're heroes, you know.
also during this wonderful time, i made a rather unfortunate personal discovery. i had been trying to loose weight for my trip to new orleans (i am going for my thirtieth birthday. thirty! geez.) and started a diet where i wasn't eating many carbs. i have been struggling my whole life with intestinal issues, and pretty much thought that i would just have to live with em and that they weren't that bad. well, a side effect of not eating a lot of carbs is not eating a lot of wheat products. i started doing that, and within TWO DAYS i had no more stomach issues. no more symptoms. huh, i thought. so i looked up gluten intolerance on the interwebs, and i had nine out of ten of the symptoms. so no more gluten for me, i guess. i know that there's a test that you get that confirms celiac disease and such, but i'm not going to pay money to get it done. all i know is that i didn't feel good, i stopped eating gluten, and now i do feel good. that's all i need to know.
of course, this means a life change. i don't have a problem sticking to the diet, because i feel better. i do have a problem with being a foodie, as now i can't eat in nearly all the places i want to, and i have a baked goods issue that is as shameful as it is problematic. i am no baker, so making my own won't work for me. i have a bit of grief over no more italian restaurants (yes, the chains have gluten free menus. with salad on them. and gummy pasta with marinara. not what i want, i tells ya.), no more green chili and fried food at the fair, no more cinnamon rolls at the mall..... and the list goes on. but i feel like crap if i eat it now, and i can't believe i put up with that level of discomfort for that long. it's just a life change that is really hard, because i love food and experiencing new foods, and eating out with friends, and the having to be so careful is really quite a drag. sigh.
ok. that was not the same level of suck as the fire, i know. hose of us dealing closely with the fire are still in a bit of shock. someday, i'll be able to write about how much it breaks my heart, seeing my mountains blackened and charred, seeing rubble instead of homes on the hillsides, knowing families who have lost it all.... but the wound is still too fresh. so i'll mope instead about my dietary restrictions and be sad that a favorite part of my life isn't really available to me any more- it's a coping mechanism.
hopefully my next post will be a return to goofy, with maybe a side of gluten-free recipes thrown in for good measure. we'll see. i'm ready for happy.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
random list of bad clothing choices i saw in chipotle
ok, let's face it. i spend an inordinate amount of time in chipotle mexican grill. i can't help it. they just need to stop putting crack in all of their food- because that's really the only reason i can think of that would result in my level of chronic addiction. also, the burritos are the size of my head. when you're as poor as i am, that's a really big selling point. at any rate, i'm there a lot. for some reason, the chipotle that i frequent has a lot of people who make fashion choices that most kindly could be described as "questionable" and unkindly described as "awful". now, i'm not against making a bold fashion statement, mind, but well- just let me tell you what i've seen:
#1: brown girl in brown, skintight volleyball shorts. now, i know that one of our local high school's colors are white and brown- i get that. but this girl's skin was the exact same shade as her teeny tiny shorts, and i first saw her from behind. she looked like she was only wearing a shirt. a short shirt. i was horrified until she turned around, and then i realized that she had an androgynous barbie doll front. i was still horrified, but only to understand that she didn't care that people might think she was going around bare-assed. ahh, to be seventeen again.
#2: pith helmet and short shorts with sandals on a portly gentleman. it may not have actually been a pith helmet, but dude looked like indiana jones crossed with an elderly day tourist. i almost expected him to burst out with an "egad! an oriole in its natural environment! take its picture with me for posterity! include my whip!" except for that we were in a chain burrito restaurant.
#3 a younger guy with pockets that were entirely too decorated. i don't have much to say about this- you've all seen those guys. but seriously- how do they sit down comfortably? i would think all that ass bling chafes.
#4 hipster in light blue and grey striped shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and black air jordans with knee high black socks. i guess when you're still figuring out your identity, your wardrobe can become confused. it's all: "i'm a sensitive, poetry writing, dave matthews band loving, tree hugging liberal" on top and "i can talk about sports!!!!! see? i have basketball shoes! i'm like a gangster!" on the bottom. gotta play to all the demographics, ya know. who knows what the girls like nowadays, anyway?
in case you guys are wondering, except for one of these, i saw all of this today. my chipotle is, frankly, awesome like that. and no. i'm not telling you where it is. get your own people watching restaurant! (preferably one that puts crack in their food. it helps with the people watching if you have to be there all the time.)
#1: brown girl in brown, skintight volleyball shorts. now, i know that one of our local high school's colors are white and brown- i get that. but this girl's skin was the exact same shade as her teeny tiny shorts, and i first saw her from behind. she looked like she was only wearing a shirt. a short shirt. i was horrified until she turned around, and then i realized that she had an androgynous barbie doll front. i was still horrified, but only to understand that she didn't care that people might think she was going around bare-assed. ahh, to be seventeen again.
#2: pith helmet and short shorts with sandals on a portly gentleman. it may not have actually been a pith helmet, but dude looked like indiana jones crossed with an elderly day tourist. i almost expected him to burst out with an "egad! an oriole in its natural environment! take its picture with me for posterity! include my whip!" except for that we were in a chain burrito restaurant.
#3 a younger guy with pockets that were entirely too decorated. i don't have much to say about this- you've all seen those guys. but seriously- how do they sit down comfortably? i would think all that ass bling chafes.
#4 hipster in light blue and grey striped shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and black air jordans with knee high black socks. i guess when you're still figuring out your identity, your wardrobe can become confused. it's all: "i'm a sensitive, poetry writing, dave matthews band loving, tree hugging liberal" on top and "i can talk about sports!!!!! see? i have basketball shoes! i'm like a gangster!" on the bottom. gotta play to all the demographics, ya know. who knows what the girls like nowadays, anyway?
in case you guys are wondering, except for one of these, i saw all of this today. my chipotle is, frankly, awesome like that. and no. i'm not telling you where it is. get your own people watching restaurant! (preferably one that puts crack in their food. it helps with the people watching if you have to be there all the time.)
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