yellowhooker

I baked the cookies yesterday and they were pretty good. I let them sit in the fridge for a long time - 4 whole days - and baked these in the regular oven. No burning this time, so I'm chalking the prior experience up to the toaster oven. There was still some grittiness, but nothing terrible. So, I would say that's a successful experiment. 

Today also marked my first foray into gluten-free pasta: I made Luigi Vitelli Gluten-Free Corn Penne, with a shallot-ham-spinach-cream sauce. We liked it, but the pasta alone definitely had a distinctive corn flavor. Not a bad thing, but it was a lot like a bowl of tortillas. Which are delicious. But they taste like tortillas, not like pasta. 

Two weeks into this experiment, and I have the following observations: 

I'm not having any cravings for bread, pasta, pizza, etc

I'm really just getting bored of the other options, especially for snacks

Trying to fuel for a half marathon without eating pasta means relying on rice, which can present its own set of problems

I am doing great on the neck pain front, though it was pretty well under control already. I had some soreness and stiffness late last week/early this week, but it seems to be gone today

I had a batch of Jeanne's Gluten-Free Flour Mix made, and was ready to try substituting it for all-purpose flour in some tried-and-true recipes. First up, cookies. 

I made chocolate-chip cookies using my standby recipe from Leite's Culinaria/The New York Times. I baked two cookies immediately after mixing for comparison purposes (and also, I was home alone with a crying three year old and wanted cookies and maybe wine too, okay?), but chilled the remainder for the recommended rest time*. 

First two cookies: flavor was excellent (that is, the same as the conventional recipe). Texture was ok: there was some grittiness, not enough to be a deal-breaker but definitely noticeable. I'd heard this to be a common theme in gluten-free cooking and baking. Also, the cookies did not spread as much as the usually do and they were slightly burned. HOWEVER, since I was only baking two I used the toaster oven, and I suspect this influenced the outcome more than the flours. The cookies were certainly passable, and if you didn't know they were gluten-free, you wouldn't know. Ya know?

The rest of the batch will be baked later this weekend. I may try to use the flour mix in pancakes and/or oatmeal muffins tomorrow morning, but we'll see how tomorrow morning goes. 

I decided to give up wheat for Lent. My acupuncturist suggested that I may have a wheat sensitivity causing some inflammation, and that trying to cut it out of my diet could have beneficial effects. So with Ash Wednesday around the corner I thought it would make for a good Lenten observance. 

What I would like to get out of it: to expand my horizons a bit, experimenting with other whole grains. But mostly to replace the bulk of the place wheat (pasta, pizza, sandwiches, cereal, some sweets but not many) held in my diet not with other grains, but with vegetables and more lean meat and other whole foods. This needs to be balanced with needing complex carbs for running, so it's a work in progress to get all bases covered. I'm not really looking to lose weight, but I am mildly annoyed that the scale is stubborn regardless of how much working out I do. So maybe this will jump-start that.

Week One food recap: the most noticeable immediate change was how much mindless eating I do, even though I thought I didn't. A bit of Jack's leftover pasta, some crackers......it adds up. So I quickly saw that this would force me to do a little more advance planning to ensure I had options for snacks. I've kept oatmeal in the rotation for breakfast and gotten Corn Chex for those mornings when something quick and easy is required (such as when you're up for several hours in the middle of the night because of JACK. Ahem.) Dinners have been vegetable soups, lean meat and veg, and brown rice. No huge difference in dinners really, except we usually have pasta once a week and pizza once. I haven't tried any of the gluten-free pasta or flour substitutes, but will soon.

We started the month with a fantastic trip to San Francisco - Seth had a conference to attend so he and I flew out for the weekend prior. It was our first time leaving the little guy for so long and we were worried but knew he we would do great :). He had fun Skyping with us every day and was very glad to have us back home again.

My parents left for a month in Italy and we've been missing them terribly, especially Jack who assumes it's them anytime the doorbell rings. He's really starting to develop his own relationships with his friends and family.

We visited Grandma (& Great-Grandma!) Catherine at her new nursing home in Redding, and it was great to see her. She'll be 97 soon and hopefully we'll get to celebrate with her in the next couple of weeks.

The month closed out with crazy insane early winter storm - here in NYC we only got some slush and ice overnight but the suburbs were all hit really hard; a foot and a half of snow and no power for a week.

Seth turned 41!

Our favoritest little guy Ben finally came home!

Jack stopped napping, then sort of started again, but not to anyone's satisfaction (including his own). He perfected his thank-you salute, says hi and bye to everyone he sees and says a few more words. He usually has a huge lunch but barely eats dinner.

Diameter of a faucet: aperture

Faucet handle: shutter speed

Water coming through the faucet: light

Number of worker bees waiting in the sink to fill buckets with the water: ISO speed